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“Rolling Thunder” * (1977, Shout Select) Soldier William Devane returns to Texas after a seven-year stint as a Vietnam War POW to find a son that doesn’t remember him, a wife engaged to someone else, and a fistful of gold coins as repayment for his captivity. Said coins catch the attention of four desperate types (among them James Best and Luke Askew), who separate him from the loot but not before killing his family and shoving his hand into a garbage disposal; now outfitted with a prosthetic hook, Devane teams up with equally taciturn ex-POW Tommy Lee Jones to track down the quartet in Mexico. Few audiences found favor with director John Flynn and co-scripters Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould’s mix of stark, introspective drama and exploitative violence; even 20th Century Fox disowned the final result when producer Lawrence Gordon refused to cut the grislier scenes and unloaded it on American International Pictures. In recent years, these elements, along with Schrader’s connection to the film, which shares several DNA strands with his script for “Taxi Driver,” have helped “Rolling Thunder” find favor with ’70s-minded cineastes and grindhouse devotees alike (and combinations of the two, like Quentin Tarantino, who named his production company after the film). Shout Select’s new Blu-ray presentation will appeal to that demographic with a 4K transfer taken from the original camera negative and new commentary tracks by Gould and historian C. Courtney Joyner, among others; other new extras include an interview with Joyner about Flynn’s film output, a talk with composer Barry De Vorzon, and Eli Roth’s take on the film from “Trailers from Hell”; interviews with Devane, Jones, and Schrader, as well as trailers and TV spots are all culled from a 2013 Blu-ray release
