Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #490 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-12-04
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, German, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Turkish, Danish, Icelandic, Swedish, Hungarian, Polish, Dutch, Arabic, Finnish, Czech, Greek
• Dubbed in: German, Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A sleeper hit when released in 1986, Stand by Me is based on Stephen King's novella "The Body" (from the book Different Seasons); but it's more about the joys and pains of boyhood friendship than a morbid fascination with corpses. It's about four boys ages 12 and 13 (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell) who take an overnight hike through the woods near their Oregon town to find the body of a boy who's been missing for days. Their journey includes a variety of scary adventures (including a ferocious junkyard dog, a swamp full of leeches and a treacherous leap from a train trestle), but it's also a time for personal revelations, quiet interludes and the raucous comradeship of best friends. Set in the 1950s, the movie indulges an overabundance of anachronistic profanity and a kind of idealistic, golden-toned nostalgia (it's told in flashback as a story written by Wheaton's character as an adult, played by Richard Dreyfuss). But it's delightfully entertaining from start to finish, thanks to the rapport among its young cast members and the timeless, universal themes of friendship, family and the building of character and self-esteem. Kiefer Sutherland makes a memorable teenage villain and look closely for John Cusack in a flashback scene as Wheaton's now-deceased and dearly missed brother. A genuine crowd-pleaser, this heartfelt movie led director Rob Reiner to even greater success with his next film, The Princess Bride. --Jeff Shannon

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 5
French\German\Italian\Spanish
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital Mono English French German Italian Spanish
Dolby Digital Mono
Feature Length Commentary By Director Rob Reiner
Featurette
Filmographies
Isolated Score
Menu Music
Music Video Ben E King stand By Me
Arabic\Bulgarian\Czech\Danish\Dutch\English\Finnish\French\German\Greek\Hebrew\Hindi\Hungarian\Icelandic\Italian\Norwegian\Polish\Portuguese\Spanish\Swedish\Turkish

Synopsis
Based on Stephen King's novella THE BODY, director Rob Reiner's STAND BY ME is the disarmingly tender and subtly sublime story of four kids on the precipice of early adulthood who embark upon a quest. There's Gordie (Wil Wheaton), the intelligent, creative one with the obviously bright future. His best buddy, Chris (River Phoenix), hardens his image in order to hide the pain from the physical abuse he endures at home, all the while harboring the hope of escaping that image. Rounding out the foursome are Vern (Jerry O'Connell), the pudgy tagalong, and Teddy (Corey Feldman), a loyal and funny but troubled kid with a death wish.
When the four boys hear about a dead body 20 miles down the railroad tracks from their small Oregon town, they clandestinely set upon the unwieldly journey to lay eyes on this rare find. Amid numerous misadventures, Gordie, Chris, Vern, and Teddy savor what may be their last chance to revel in the simple life of children; around the corner is a future that could tear them apart, not to mention a tough teen gang who desires local fame by finding the body first. Enhanced by excellent performances and an engaging plot, STAND BY ME ranks among the best of the myriad coming-of-age films to dot the 1980s cinematic landscape.

Customer Reviews

"Stand By Me" is a lyrical, funny coming of age tale .....
Okay, I admit it. Like Rick Blaine in Casablanca, I am a "rank sentimentalist." As such, there are many movies that can bring me to tears: E.T., Summer of '42, Casablanca...no matter what era they were released or who directed them, there will always be movies that will jerk some heart-felt tears out of this mostly action-adventure film watcher.

Stand By Me, Rob Reiner's 1986 bittersweet coming of age story based on Stephen King's novella The Body, is definitely one of those movies that move me.

Starring Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation), River Phoenix (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), Corey Feldman (The Lost Boys), Jerry O'Connell (Sliders, Joe's Apartment) and Kiefer Sutherland (24), Stand By Me tells how a group of four boys goes into the woods in search of the body of train-struck Ray Brower, hoping to recover it before a gang led by Ace (Sutherland at his meanest, menacing best) does.

Reiner, working from a well-written screenplay by Raymond Gideon and Bruce A. Evans, excellently captures King's nostalgia-tinged story's mix of drama, comedy and even a bit of horror. He coaxes very natural acting from his four main actors, particularly from Wheaton, Phoenix, and O'Connell. Even Feldman, a child actor I really did not like in other films before his career flopped, is heartbreakingly poignant as Teddy Duchamp, the son of a mentally-ill World War II veteran. Despite being scarred by his father's harsh punishments, Teddy is proud of his father's wartime service. One of the best scenes is his confrontation with the mean junkyard operator of Castle Rock, where Teddy's conflicting emotions of anger and love for his dad are summed up by his tearful yell of "My father stormed the beach at Normandy!"

The heart and soul of this movie comes from the friendship between Gordie Lachance (Wheaton), the sensitive would-be writer, and Chris Chambers (Phoenix), a bright kid who seems destined for disgrace because he comes from the wrong part of Castle Rock. Chris projects a tough shell to hide his inner turmoil, while Gordie is having trouble coping with a family tragedy.

Reiner shines as a director capable of mixing moments of comedy (watch for a hilarious exchange revolving around the mystery surrounding Goofy's identity -- "Mickey's a mouse, Pluto is a dog...so what's Goofy?"), drama (an encounter with an approaching train), and a wickedly gross revenge story told by Gordie involving a very large boy and a pie-eating contest.

A particularly effective narration by Richard Dreyfuss (who plays the adult Gordon Lachance) adds just the right mix of wry humor and bittersweet nostalgia, and Jack Nitzsche's gentle and subtle score, with its interpolation of the classic rock 'n' roll song "Stand By Me" just heightens the poignancy of this affecting tale of boyhood friendship.

A quiet classic
Adapted from the Steven King novella, The Body, Stand by me is set in 1950s Maine( well, it is Steven King) and follows four young freinds as they they set out on a hike in search of the dead body of a child of their own age, killed by a train. The film opens with Richard Dreyfuss seated in his car, the the grown up version of his character, Gordon Lachance, now a proffesional writer. The elder Lachance acts as narrator for the story, reminicing on the events of that trip , his relationship with his freinds, paticularly Chris, played by River Pheonix, and how the search for a dead body became more than just a trip out of morbid fascination but a search for themselves, their own personal hopes and dreams, pains and sorrows and their escape into each other. The movie differs from the book in certain areas, as it must, paticularly in the relationship between Gordy and his deceased older brother( John Cusack ), and the ending is slightly less sombre. The magic of this film is the exploration of childhood that everyone can relate to, and sets this film apart from many a sickly hollywood coming of age drama. Boasting an irresistible soundtrack of old rock an roll classics, this film is responsible for bringing the Ben E. King song of the title back to life. Nostalgic but not sickly, funny and sad, this film lures your childhood memories out of their hiding place and plays them before your eyes. Compellingly acted by its child stars, this film is made all the more powerful when watched now, knowing the real life fate River Pheonix. A must see.

The VHS was great, but the DVD is... WOW!
I've been a huge fan of this film since it first came out. It currently holds my personal record for the film I've seen more times than any other, and in the week since I bought the DVD, I've added another 3 viewings.

This isn't the kind of film people will buy if they don't know what it's about, so I won't go into a synopsis of the film or a review of it. What I'd like to write about are the extras on the DVD. The extended "making of" feature answers all the questions we ever asked, with present-day interviews with Reiner, Wheaton, Feldman, Connell and Sutherland. None of them got *too* maudlin about River Phoenix... Also present is Stephen King, who hails SBM as the first movie adaptation of any of his books with which he was pleased, especially as the film cahnges the focus from the Chris Chambers character to Gordie.

Anyone who knows the film well should absolutely hear Rob Reiner's running commentary to the film. This is my one criticism of Columbia - it wasn't easy to find: the option on the menu page didn't work and it had to be called up by selecting Audio Soundtrack 7. Explaining both the technical ins and outs of how some of the shots were achieved (don't miss the train dodge!) and the impact of filming some of the scenes put a new perspective on the movie for me.

I was also glad to discover that I'm not the only one who thought that Will Wheaton's and the young doe's facial features looked remarkably similar... :)

All in all, if you've worn out your copy of the VHS, invest in the DVD - it's worth it! Not to mention that Rob Reiner knows how to use a panoramic cinema screen and the widescreen version just looks so much better than the P&S versions available on VHS!