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Like him or loathe him, Paul W.S. Anderson is one of the king­pins of mod­ern genre film­mak­ing thanks to the suc­cess of his Resident Evil series.  Cult film types inter­ested his work will get a chance to see his debut film because Severin Films is prepar­ing DVD and blu-ray ver­sions of Shopping.  This film, which fea­tured Jude Law in his first screen role, was very con­tro­ver­sial in the U.K. and will be pre­sented in an remas­tered, uncut ver­sion with extras.  Read on for the early news on this chav-chaos epic:

SEVERIN TO RELEASE ‘SHOPPING’ STARRING JUDE LAW UNCUT ON BLU-RAY & DVD

FOR FIRST TIME EVER IN AMERICA

THE STUNNING FEATURE DEBUT

FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE #1 MOVIE IN THE WORLD!

LOS ANGELES, CA, September 16, 2010 – Severin Films today announced the acqui­si­tion of North American home video rights to Paul W.S. Anderson’s con­tro­ver­sial, action-packed debut fea­ture SHOPPING.

Along with mark­ing Oscar™-nominee Jude Law’s (SHERLOCK HOLMES, TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) fea­ture film debut, SHOPPING packs an all-star British cast includ­ing Sean Bean (LORD OF THE RINGS), Jonathan Pryce (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, BRAZIL), Sadie Frost (BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA), Sean Pertwee (DOG SOLDIERS), and 60s icon Marianne Faithful.

Anderson, the direc­tor of the cur­rent world­wide #1 box office smash RESDIENT EVIL: AFTERLIFE has helmed an impres­sive string of big bud­get crowd-pleasing action block­busters such as MORTAL KOMBAT, EVENT HORIZON, RESIDENT EVIL, ALIEN VS. PREDATOR and DEATH RACE. But it was SHOPPING, his hard-hitting cau­tion­ary tale of adrenaline-addicted youth run amok, that first brought Anderson to the atten­tion of Hollywood. Which was for­tu­nate since the  sub­se­quent con­tro­versy sur­round­ing SHOPPING nearly killed Anderson’s career in his native United Kingdom.

SHOPPING cap­i­tal­ized on a fis­sure in England’s early-90s youth cul­ture – ram-raiding, the prac­tice of using stolen cars to plow into store­fronts, then steal­ing every­thing you could carry before author­i­ties arrived. SHOPPING’s too-graphic depic­tion of ram-raiding (which included a scene that showed you how to steal an alarmed car in 60 sec­onds or less) caused a full-fledged tabloid out­cry in England, with yel­low jour­nal­ists claim­ing the film would inspire a wave of copy­cat crimes nationwide.

The hys­ter­i­cal cam­paign against SHOPPING forced the infa­mous British film cen­sor­ship board to stall its release for nearly a year, enforc­ing numer­ous cuts to Anderson’s gritty, post-apocalyptic vision. By the time a cen­sored ver­sion limped into British cin­e­mas a year later, SHOPPING’s com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal prospects were irrev­o­ca­bly dam­aged. The press, lay­ing in wait, sav­aged the then-unknown Jude Law’s per­for­mance to the point where Law’s nascent film career was put onto life sup­port. Eventually, a even further-truncated ver­sion was released the­atri­cally in the U.S. by Roger Corman.

But now for the first time in North America, the fully unhinged, uncut ver­sion of SHOPPING is roar­ing onto DVD and Blu-Ray with all the con­tro­ver­sial ram-raiding footage restored in stun­ning high-definition. A host of exclu­sive spe­cial fea­tures are cur­rently in pro­duc­tion includ­ing inter­views, com­men­tary, deleted scenes and more.

“SHOPPING is a ter­rific acqui­si­tion for us,” says Carl Daft, co-founder and CEO of Severin Films. “The crit­ics not only missed the boat on SHOPPING, they never set foot on the bloody pier. A level-headed review of 90s British cin­ema will reveal that SHOPPING was the actu­ally the first of a wave crime-inspired UK films, includ­ing SHALLOW GRAVE, TRAINSPOTTING, and LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS. It’s unde­ni­able that with SHOPPING, Anderson was first to the punch, with Danny Boyle and the like doing the own fine work bring­ing up the rear. It’s beyond high time this British action auteur was given his due as a mav­er­ick of pop­u­lar cin­ema and our Special Edition release of his elec­tri­fy­ing debut will start the ball rolling.”