Product Details

• Actors: Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Rodney Dangerfield, Everett Quinton
• Directors: Oliver Stone
• Writers: Oliver Stone, David Veloz, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Rutowski
• Producers: Arnon Milchan, Clayton Townsend, Don Murphy
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Letterboxed, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 2
• Studio: Vidmark / Trimark
• VHS Release Date: July 30, 1996
• Run Time: 118 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (230 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304118406
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #345,430 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

Oliver Stone would like to have the last word on America's media culture of voyeurism and violence, but whatever he's trying to say in this grisly, unconventional movie comes across terribly garbled. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play traveling serial killers who become television celebrities when a Geraldo-like personality (Robert Downey Jr.) turns their madness into the biggest story in the country. Stone extensively rewrote an original script by Quentin Tarantino, and he employs a mosaic of different film stocks, video, and pop pastiches to create a sense of blurred lines between visual phenomena. (The background on Lewis's character's life as an abused child, for instance, is presented as a sitcom starring Rodney Dangerfield.) But the result of these experiments is a pompous, even amateurish effort at grasping the reins of a real-life national debate. One almost wants to tell Stone to sit down and raise his hand next time if he thinks he has something to say. The controversial director would like Natural Born Killers to be nothing less than a monumental achievement, but it's one of the emptier entries in his filmography. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker

"Bonnie and Clyde" in a blender. Oliver Stone uses fractured, blindingly fast editing to depict the warped consciousness of Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis), a pair of young sociopaths in love. They're familiar types, and Stone's "ideas" about American violence turn out to be the same glib received notions that we've seen in countless other outlaw-couple movies. The oddest thing about this would-be satire is that, for all the gore and hysteria, the film doesn't feel particularly impassioned; it's a frivolous barrage-as pointlessly head-splitting as a Professor Irwin Corey monologue, and not nearly as funny. Also with Robert Downey, Jr., Tommy Lee Jones, Russell Means, and Rodney Dangerfield. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Violence as a media event, February 18, 2000

By 

JLind555 - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Natural Born Killers [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"Natural Born Killers" is not about glorifying violence; it's a chilling parody of the American fascination with violence. The quick changes from color to black and white and back again, interspersed with animated sequences, point up the satiric nature of the movie.

Mickey and Mallory, very well played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis, are two killing machines without heart or soul or conscience; their only redeeming virtues are their love for each other. They aren't meant to be sympathetic characters and they're not, but Oliver Stone's direction makes them pale in depravity besides some of the other characters -- the sadistic warden, the despicable detective and his morbid fascination with Mallory, Mallory's nauseating, sexually abusive father, and above all, Robert Downey's superb characterization of the media pimp who feeds off blood and gore.

The last scene in the movie, of Mickey and Mallory on the road with their two children, and Mallory about to deliver a third at any minute, underscores the whole message of the film; violence feeds on itself and begets yet more violence. Those viewers who were most upset by the movie missed its message. "Natural Born Killers" is a brilliant, disturbing depiction of the shallowness of American culture at the end of the 20th century.

Judy Lind

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece. Brilliantly Nightmarish And Thought-Provoking, October 18, 1999

By 

Mr. Fellini "Fellini" (Orange County, California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Natural Born Killers [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" is not just a movie, it is an experience. It is a wild, dark ride that serves as a study of today's culture and it's fascination with violence. This movie is not so much about the killers, but about how the killers capture the public. The screenplay is masterfully structured with moments of vicious rage, deepness, dark comedy and powerful visual images. The film is hypnotically watchable due to the great mixing of different film formats, camera angles, colors and the breathtaking cinematography of Robert Richardson. "Natural Born Killers" is a great study of where our culture is going. Stone is a genius of cinema, one of the greatest directors there has ever been. This movie is effective, provocative, feverish and driven. It's electrifying. In fact, it's not as violent as you may think it is. It's the break neck speed it goes at and it's intense feeling. "Natural Born Killers" is both intense and brilliantly nightmarish. It's disturbing, as it should be. This serves as a slap on America's face, to wake it up. "Natural Born Killers" is a masterpiece, as Roger Ebert said: "Seeing this movie once is not enough."

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greatest Movie of the Nineties, December 1, 1999

By 

eric graves - See all my reviews

This review is from: Natural Born Killers (Director's Cut) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Natural Born Killers is easily the best movie to come out of this decade. It is surreal, highly intelligent, sarcastic, and like the Exorcist, seems to have some kind of power beneath the simple plot. The actors and actresses all perform perfectly as their characters, Tommy Lee Jones rightly over-the-top, and Woody Harrelson a subtle, evil Mickey Knox. The cinematography is simply amazing, pure amped beauty, the psychological screens behind the action, the desert, and my god, the violence of the riot... perfect.

There's something going on in every sceen of the movie, like Owen at the beginning in the diner, or pictures of Mallory's father when she's with the gas station attendant. The movie was deep (sorry about the cliche) like in the whole Native American sceen where the word "demon" and "too much t.v." flash on the muderers chests. Later in the movie we hear more explictily about the demon in Mickey's amazing television interview with Wayne Gayle.

But the main reason about why is movie is what it is and somehow more, is its message. It isn't subtle about it either. The media has gotten way too important, fed itself fat on society's rich blood, and yet we scream for more, we want our blood sucked. Every day our lives are permeated with violence, violence in movies, television, the news, and we crave it. Natural Born Killers was a wake up call, and a choatic brilliant one at that, turning a warped mirror around and pointing it at the audience. You see those people worshipping Mickey and Mallory at the outside the court sceen, that is us, that is who we are, and this movie tries to get us to wake up and see that.