Forty years old this year, the neo-noir Blood Simple marked the debut of Joel and Ethan Coen, and remains a captivating example of low-budget filmmaking.

To date, Joel and Ethan Coen haven’t made a pure horror film (though they’ve talked about it). Blood Simple, their 1984 debut, undoubtedly comes close. A neo-noir shot on a low budget, it shows that the writer-director brothers had their style down right from the beginning of their careers. Its script is witty and terse; its photography is fluid and stylish; its characters and tone are somehow both mundane and off-beat. Like so many of their later film, Blood Simple also defies easy categorisation; it’s a neo-noir, it’s a black comedy, and in several visceral scenes, dips gleefully into horror.

Much like Fargo or The Big Lebowski or any other thriller-infused Coen brothers film you could name, there are no criminal masterminds in Blood Simple – just ordinary,...