This Is Spinal Tap | 4K UHD+Blu-ray

Musical mockumentaries were hardly untrodden ground by the early 80s. Projects like Lisztomania, The Rutles: All You Need is Cash, and ABBA: The Movie had all previously realized the idea with some semblance of success. What Spinal Tap did, then, was to completely change the script.

Much like Die Hard did to ‘tower climb’ movies or Jaws did to ‘creature features’, Rob Reiner’s look behind the scenes of heavy metal icons Spinal Tap—in the midst of their latest American Tour—reinvented a strange micro-genre of cinema, leaving an entirely new set of tropes and standards in its wake. In many ways, it feels like every mockumentary since has been little more than a reimagining of this single film.

Certainly that sentiment rings especially true for movies like A Mighty Wind, CB4, Fear of a Black Hat, Jackie’s Back, and Pop Star, all of which tend to follow the same patterns of ups, downs, ins and outs for their recording artist subjects through comedic vignettes. All of which makes Spinal Tap a fundamental text in the history of film. This is a point where the industry changed forever.

Special Features (via criterion.com)

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Rob Reiner, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Alternate 2.0 uncompressed stereo soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
• Three audio commentaries, featuring Reiner; actors Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer; producer Karen Murphy; editors Robert Leighton and Kent Beyda; and band members Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls
• Conversation between Reiner and actor Patton Oswalt
• The Cutting Room Floor, featuring ninety-eight minutes of outtakes
• Spinal Tap: The Final Tour (1982)
• Excerpts from The Return of Spinal Tap (1992)
• Interviews with the band for its 2009 Back from the Dead album
• Trailers, media appearances, and music videos
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Alex Pappademas