Studiocanal is releasing a new 4K restoration of Thorold Dickinson’s ghostly chiller The Queen Of Spades at cinemas on December 23rd and will be releasing the film on Blu-ray for the first time and on DVD and Digital on January 23rd.
Starring Dame Edith Evans, Anton Walbrook and Yvonne Mitchell, the film is based on a short ghost story by Alexander Pushkin and is considered Dickinson’s most accomplished piece of work.
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Synopsis:
St. Petersburg, 1806. Army officer Herman Suvorin (Anton Walbrook) has become obsessed with playing cards, particularly the game of Faro, where the Queen of Spades is considered an unlucky card.
On stumbling upon a mysterious book about the secrets of a notorious Count, Herman becomes convinced that the elderly Countess Ranevskaya (Edith Evans) possesses the secret of winning every game.
Desperate to learn the secret for himself, Herman devises a plan to gain access to her house by seducing her young Ward, Lizaveta (Yvonne Mitchell). The plan goes awry when Herman accidently startles the Countess, leading to her death.
At the Countess’s funeral, Herman comes to pay his respects, but when he leans over her open coffin, her eyes open and he lets out a howl of fear. From this point, Herman finds himself drawn into a satanic world of madness and mayhem as he is haunted by the Countess and the curse of the Queen of Spades.
The Blu-ray and DVD release includes an introduction by Martin Scorsese plus the following extras:
- Anna Bogutskaya plays The Queen of Spades
- The Nightmare People: Thorold Dickinson on Saturday Night at the Movies
- Audio Commentary by Nick Pinkerton
- Analysis of The Queen of Spades by Philip Horne
- Audio interview with Thorold Dickinson (1951)
- Audio Interview with Thorold Dickinson (1968)
- Behind the Scenes Stills Gallery
- Set Design Gallery
- Original Trailer