Fear and Desire was Stanley Kubrick's first feature film. It was filmed in the mountains near Los Angeles, CA, in 16mm B&W with sound dubbed in post. (Dubbed in post? Who else do we know who's done that?)
Sometime in the early 90s it was shown at a film festival along with Kubrick's second film, Killer's Kiss, as "early Kubrick." Kubrick's response was to issue an apology for the film, calling it "a very inept and pretentious effort," and an attempt to buy and destroy every copy. He failed at the latter; some copies survive in the hands of museums and collectors.
I recently acquired a DVD of Fear and Desire from an eBay auction. It appears to be distributed by an outfit calling itself Elusive Video or some such. From a tranfer standpoint the DVD is pretty bad . There is a short clip from F&D in Jan Harlan's film Stanley Kubrick: a Life in Pictures which looks pretty good so the poor quality of the DVD must stem from a point where it was out of Kubrick's hands. I think it's probably a copy of a copy of ....
My reaction after seeing the film is: well, whudda you know! Stanley Kubrick was once one of us! His assessment that it's "a very inept and pretentious effort" is right on. Oh, well! Everyone has to start somewhere. Maybe he should have taken Rodriguez' advice (40 years before Rodriguez gave it) and made 40 bad shorts before tackling a feature.
Alongside other low-budget, no-budget films (Jet Benny, Forever Evil, The Dead Next Door, War of the Planets, Bleak Future, Lost Tribes to name a few) it's not at the top of the list but neither is it at the bottom. Actually it's close to the bottom. :twisted:
Kubrick's next three films, Killer's Kiss, The Killing, Path's of Glory each show a quantum leap in craft and artistry. Not bad to go from "a very inept and pretentious effort" to a masterpiece in only five years.