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| Director: Michael Cimino
Actors: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $0.48
You Save: $14.47 (97%)
New (7) Used (14) Collectible (3) from $0.44
Rating:  131 reviews
Sales Rank: 8260
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 2
Running Time: 150 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 6304071906
UPC: 027616581136
EAN: 9786304071908
ASIN: 6304071906
Theatrical Release Date: November 19, 1980
Release Date: July 16, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New! Mint in boxed set. Factory sealed.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 131
 Happy 25th Birthday, HEAVEN'S GATE! August 30, 2005
Stephen H. Wood (South San Francisco, CA)
19 out of 21 found this review helpful
1980 marks the 25th anniversary of one of the strangest media events ever. There was an eagerly-awaited invitational preview on a Thursday for a four hour Michael Cimino western called HEAVEN'S GATE. The whole industry came out in force to see Cimino's first movie since his Oscar-winning THE DEER HUNTER (1978) and, at a budget of $40 million, a movie that had bankrupt United Artists. The result was apparently an unholy disaster-so awful that Friday opening day regular engagements were abruptly cancelled. Reviews were venomous, focusing much more on the hefty budget and how an arrogant auteur filmmaker had brought down a studio with his excesses. Roger Ebert was particularly hostile. The 219 minute movie was sent back to the editing room with Cimino and several original editors. In mid-1981, an all-new HEAVEN'S GATE was brought out at only 149 minutes. The same hostile reviewers, except for Kevin Thomas in THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, still hated the movie for being too long and not having a coherent story. I saw that shortned print, adored the movie, and sent a rave review to Mr. Cimino. I got a very positive thank you letter from the filmmaker himself saying it was a hit in France. In America, I think the 149 minute print played for only two weeks in deserted theaters. Just for good luck, animal rights groups who had not seen the movie in any form were protesting the mistreatment of horses in the film.
Thank God for home video! While heavily censored TV prints of HEAVEN'S GATE still run 149 minutes, the uncut 219 minute roadshow version (which importantly never got a theatrical run for the general public) is available on letterboxed videocassette and DVD. Let us wish it a Happy 25th Birthday, forget all budget problems, and just evaluate what is up on the screen for 219 minutes.
According to writer/director Cimino, the Johnson County War took place in 1892 Casper, Wyoming. It was a battle waged between Eastern European immigrants and American cattlemen. The cattlemen, led by a despicable villain named Canton (Sam Waterston at his nastiest), claimed that the immigrants were stealing cattle and land in exchange for sexual favors in a local whorehouse run by Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert). Acting under authority of the President and Federal Government, Canton and his Cattlemen's Association came up with a death list with 125 immigrant names on it, including Ella. The movie's central protagonist is marshall Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson in the performance of his career), who is in love with Ella. So is a bounty hunter named Nate Campion (Christopher Walken). How can the critics say there is no story here?! There is a passionate and romantic love triangle wrapped inside a powerful western conflict. As God is my witness, the uncut HEAVEN'S GATE is my favorite western of the last 25 years-yes, including Best Picture Oscar winners UNFORGIVEN (1992) and DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990), which are admittedly very good adult westerns also.
I have no idea what HEAVEN'S alleged $40 million budget would be in 2005 dollars. Probably $80 million, which is hefty, but not unreasonable for a four hour period western meticulously shot on location on magnificent Idaho and Montana locations. An entire frontier town (Casper?) was built in Kalispell, Montana. A working antique train was brought to the location. Nothing was too good for the genius who had won Oscars for THE DEER HUNTER only two years before. The movie's art direction got a 1981 Oscar nomination. The dusty sepia Panavision photography, by Vilmos Zsigmond, captures the look of antique photos. There were horse wranglers for dozens of horses, dance and skating instructors (for an exquisite extended "Blue Danube Waltz" at Harvard at the beginning and a memorable roller skating scene in the film's middle). David Mansfield's fiddle and mandolin score is unforgettably beautiful and haunting throughout, especially when "The Blue Danube Waltz" becomes a slow motion dirge during the latter battle scenes. The climactic battle is violent and seems to go on as long as the real 1892 cattlemen/immigrants battle. It is a horrible and beautiful sustained sequence--maybe lasting an hour of screen time--that is severely shortened in the cut TV print. This is one gorgeous piece of filmmaking by a master who admittedly let the movie get away from him. It IS too long and IS too pessimistic. But at least you can see where the money went. It is a true labor of love movie that, ironically, may be Cimino's finest films. I don't think it is quite as great as THE DEER HUNTER, but certainly it is better than Cimino's modestly budgeted subsequent films.
(PLOT SPOILERS-BEWARE!) It is impossible to discuss why I love the uncut HEAVEN'S GATE so much without discussing the 20 minute Prologue and five minute Epilogue. So many critics call these scenes extraneous and confused, but they are the very heart of the movie for me. The Prologue takes place at 1870 Harvard with Jim Averill as a young student in love with a young woman he is frustratingly too shy to talk to; they exchange smiles. Averill is haunted by this beautiful young woman all his life, as I am by a married young woman I loved at UCLA long ago and cannot get out of my mind. Joseph Cotten has a cameo as a head professor, and John Hurt is the class orator. Look at the end credits. Writer Cimino really did his homework-these are real speeches being spoken. And the dance on Harvard lawn, a lengthy and enthralling "Blue Danube Waltz", may be one of the American cinema's loveliest set pieces. Shockingly, it is sometimes cut for time on TV showings, instead of the overlong battle much later.
The Epilogue is the key to the whole movie for me. Study it. (PLOT SPOILER ALERT!) It is 1903, and Jim Averill is the sole survivor of the bloody Johnson County War. I won't tell you how or where Nate and Ella die. We are on a yacht off Newport, Rhode Island at sunset. Averill is below deck with a young woman. He has finally married at least a surrogate for the girl of his dreams from Harvard long ago and is still deeply unhappy. He lights a cigarette for his presumed wife, while staring off into space, lost in his dreams of the past. He walks back up on deck for one of the most beautiful final shots in the American cinema of the 1980's. (Beware of an old VHS tape version that omits this final scene and freezes on Jim below deck!) And Mansfield's music, as always, is incomparable.
So, the majestic and magnificent HEAVEN'S GATE, in its uncut 219 minute form at least, is a portrait of the entire lifetime of Jim Averill, from Harvard youth in 1870, to Wyoming marshall in 1892, to a lonely middle aged intellectual man in 1903 with all of his friends dead or long gone. It is so haunting, and Mansfield's exquisite music plus Zsigmond's sepia-tinted Panavision photography, again make it a truly special motion picture if you have a whole evening viewing slot. (There is an intermission on the letterboxed VHS copy I am reviewing.) Happy 25th Birthday, HEAVEN'S GATE!
(UP FRONT CAUTION: THIS MOVIE CONTAINS STRONG AND SUSTAINED VIOLENCE, HORSES AND TRIP WIRES, PROFANITY, AND SEX SCENES WITH FRONTAL NUDITY. REVIEWED FROM LETTERBOXED VIDEOCASSETTE.)
 misunderstood masterpiece April 5, 2005
Robert Wright (Atlanta, GA USA)
17 out of 21 found this review helpful
Cimino's magnum opus is the greatest film of the eighties and maybe the most beautiful achievment of the last 50 years. Vilmos Zigmund's work is relentlessly astonishing and the cast is masterful. Full of astonishing moments, the film works on almost every level. The problem American audiences had with the film I think comes down to rhythm. Heaven's Gate functions on a level that we Americans are not used to: a stately measured implacable pace building to inevitable disaster that explodes in the final battle sequence. One is reminded of early Russian classics, of Godard and Antonioni, and perhaps mosty tellingly of Renoir in the detail of observation of the period. Cimino made the ultimate American epic and nobody was ready to give in to his terms. Do so and you'll discover one of Hollywood's last great achievments. Buy it. See it. Treasure it. For there will never be another film like it. Nothing since even comes close. Our loss.
 Looking for a great cinematic tale of the West? June 6, 2004
Scuba Steve (Reston, VA, USA)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
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...then buy Unforgiven.
Let's just set the Heaven's Gate plot aside for a moment (all 3 hours and 40 minutes of it). Even granting this self-indulgent, obtuse epic a pardon, the DVD still deserves to be tried, convicted, and buried in the cheap seats on Boot Hill. The Heaven's Gate DVD is, without question, the WORST DVD that I have ever had the (dis)pleasure to view.
Why? Well let's start with the video quality, which is horrific. No, I'm not referring to the Director's color palette. Yes, the chosen sepia tones are annoying, but I defer to the critics and assume that it was an inspired choice. No, I am referring to the film transfer....which was apparently done on someone's five year old PC using film reels stored in the back of an adandoned Ford Falcon station wagon sitting in the desert for the last 20 years. The transfer is awash with reel change markers, dirt, scratches and random purple spots, which appear throughout the film. Furthermore, the quality varies SIGNIFICANTLY between reels. Okay, let's assume that you can tolerate the transfer. Can you still enjoy the film? Sure...if you can read lips.
The sound is horrid. The mix is insanely poor. The center channel is low and muffled. In fact, it is so poor that we stopped the movie and played every game that we could with the surround sound system, television, and the DVD player...all to no effect. I'm not talking about trying to tweak a less than perfect 5.1 soundtrack - we were just trying to understand the actors! The sound is so muddied and overwhelmed by supporting background noise that much of the dialog is completely unintelligible. It was so bad that we even tried to turn on the subtitles. Unfortunately, my high school French is rusty and my friends' Spanish more so. Yes, that's right - no English subtitles.
I am not even going to address the plot. Nope. I'm not even going to say that it was obtuse, meandering, and in need of serious editing. Whoops, I guess that I did. I mean, what the heck? Nearly four hours and no background on the motivation for the Harvard types to move West. No background on the relationship between "the association" and the state and federal governments...or perhaps the main characters? Well, I suppose that, given time constraints, all possible interesting back stories had to be shelved...and understandably so. I mean who has time for such trivia when you need to dedicate ten minutes to a roller skating musical number...or 15 minutes to a drunken college graduation ceremony?
Run from this movie. Run and hide. It may (and I emphasize MAY) be tolerable with a better transfer, but the DVD is a cruel joke. We kept waiting for Ashton Kutcher and the Punk'd crew to jump out and give us the real DVD.
Michael Cimino owes me four hours of my life and four dollars for the rental. I will be contacting my attorney in the morning.
As bad as they say it is March 3, 2005
Steven Hellerstedt
16 out of 33 found this review helpful
One of the most expensive art-house movies I've ever seen. (Meaningful glance. Look out window wistfully - Seven minutes later.)
May have deserved another star for photography, but by the end of the film pouring blinding light in through slightly open doors and windows and underlighting the foreground, and then drenching it in a sepia-bath, got old. (Go to roller rink. Have derby hatted rollerskating boy with violin play a symphony or two while rabble pound and cheer. Have him go into bandbox. Cut to shot of Jeff Bridges vomiting. Exchange meaningful glances for five minutes. Have band play long dance tune so rabble can roller-dance. More meaningful glances. Finally have Isabelle and Kris dance in now empty building.)
HEAVEN'S GATE moves about as quickly as a gila monster with a gullet full of Seconal. Brutally bad, with too much dross and too little dramatic pacing. (Exchange one last long lingering glance and, unless you like train wrecks masquarading as movies, move on, pilgrim.)
Hell's Service Entrance March 21, 2004
BluesDuke (Huntington Beach, California)
15 out of 20 found this review helpful
Based on his making of this disaster (the Amazon review program insists that I cannot give it a blank rating; I assure you, I would not confer a single star upon this monstrosity), I have always believed Michael Cimino would have made a perfect government official: overspending, misspending, malspending other people's money on behalf of things not even close to what they were purported to be, the difference being that the Constitution does not enjoin, for better or worse, against artistic incompetence. (Yet.) Should be subtitled, "How To Destroy The Studio Founded By Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Pickford In 40 Million Easy Lessons."
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