Legendary director John Ford’s The Searchers is the story about an American Civil War veteran who goes on a long journey to rescue his niece from the Comanches after the rest of his brother’s family is attacked and murdered during a raid on their farm in Texas. The journey takes several years and has many obstacles along the way.

Taking place in 1868, Ethan Edwards (silver screen icon John Wayne, The Shootist, The Cowboys, Big Jake) is the Civil War veteran who takes that journey to find his niece, Debby (screen legend Natalie Wood, Miracle on 34th Street, West Side Story). Along with him for the ride is Martin Prawley (Jeffery Hunter, King of Kings, A Kiss Before Dying), and Reverand Captain Samuel Johnson Clayton (Ward Bond, 3 Godfathers, The Quiet Man). Their mission is to find her, and get revenge on the Comanches led by Chief Cicatriz, aka “Scar” (screen veteran Henry Brandon, Drums of Fu Manchu, Black Legion, The Land Unknown)

This epic film has some fantastic actors and actresses assembled for this picture which include actor/director Ken Curtis (Gunsmoke), Vera Miles (Psycho, The Wrong Man), and Western star Harry Carey, Jr. (Rio Grande, The Way West) among them. Even John Wayne’s son Patrick (Sindbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Beyond Atlantis, The People That Time Forgot) even has a small, early role in the film. The feature is one of the greatest Westerns ever made and is in the top 100 greatest American films ever made. This movie is easily one of John Ford’s best films. Watch it and see why!  

A fun fact – out of the over 200 films Ward Bond starred in, a whopping twenty-three of them were with John Wayne.

Henry Brandon was an actor that I only heard of because of his role in The Land Unknown. As I soon discovered, he turned out to have a film career which lasted for over sixty years, and he was known for his playing various ethnic roles and characters in different genres, including Film Noir, Westerns, B-movies, and serials.

The Searchers is The Warner Archive Collection’s first 4K UHD release. It contains two discs, the 4K UHD disc and a Blu-ray. For this review I will be covering the UHD release.

This is a brand-new restoration of The Searchers has been worth all the herculean efforts to have its appearance looking as good as it does now. This is one of the best restorations for a classic film that I have seen in recent memory.

The film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1:85:1 and boasts a new 2160p image that has both HDR10, and Dolby Vision included in the transfer. The video quality for The Searchers looks magnificent and boasts the strongest details and textures that you will see in this movie, starting with the scenery, where the cinematography by Winton C. Hoch absolutely looks incredibly vivid and beautiful just to look at!

The sharpness of how the characters look at times is so strong in some spots that they seem to jump out at you and have a kind of 3D look. The skin tones are highly detailed and clear. The colors are as lavish and robust as ever with strong blues, browns and reds. The blue skies have never looked any bluer, the brown mountains and other areas along the terrain look superb. Overall, the 4K UHD image has an added richness and sharpness that the previous Blu-ray lacked and has made the movie look like it was made this century!

For this release, the English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that has been applied has an extremely rich sound with clear dialogue, music and gunshots. The various audio noises do not interfere with each other and have a balanced fidelity. Max Steiner’s memorable background score sounds fantastic! There are no age-old anomalies such as hiss, crackle, or pops that occur during the audio presentation. English subtitles are offered for this release.

The Searchers has some extras as well, which were all ported over from the Blu-ray that came out in 2006.   

The UHD disc has the audio commentary track with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich that is from the Blu-ray.

Also, from the 2006 Blu-ray which are part of this package include the following:

The original theatrical trailer, the 1996 Introduction by Patrick Wayne (son of John).

The Searchers: An Appreciation which is a retrospective with filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Curtis Hanson, and John Milius

A Turning of the Earth: John Ford, John Wayne, and The Searchers documentary.

 The Searchers World Premiere in Chicago: Newsreel Coverage, and the Outtakes can all be found on the Blu-ray disc.

And yes, the other featurette, Behind the Cameras – A quartet of short black-and-white promotional pieces is another extra that has been ported over. This is the supplement this is hosted by Gig Young and contains the following:

Meet Jeffrey Hunter

Meet Natalie Wood

Monument Valley

Setting Up Productions

There are no new extras but this package, but the legacy supplements should certainly satisfy those who are greatly interested and own the film on UHD. You can safely retire the old Blu-ray as this new release has all the extras on top of the fact this 4K UHD release looks and sounds the best it ever has and will be for the foreseeable future.  The Searchers 4K should be the new standard on how movies in the UHD era should look and sound like. To me it is flawless release and one of the best discs on 4K that I have ever seen for an older movie. Easily, this release gets my highest recommendation!

The Searchers

Director – John Ford

Cast- John Wayne, Vera Miles, Natalie Wood

Country of Origin-USA

Distributor – Warner Brothers/Warner Archive Collection

Number of Discs –2

Reviewed by – David Steigman

Date –12/29/2024