date and saw The Deer Hunter, and we left the theater and walked for like an hour and nobody said anything; we were just kind of stunned about that." The deaths of approximately 25 people who died playing Russian roulette were reported as having been influenced by scenes in the movie. Honors and recognition In 1996, The Deer Hunter was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". American Film Institute included the film as #79 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies, #30 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills, and #53 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition). The film ranks 467th in the Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time, noting: Cimino's bold, powerful 'Nam epic goes from blue-collar macho rituals to a fiery, South East Asian hell and back to a ragged singalong of America the Beautiful [sic]. De Niro holds it together, but Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep and John Savage are unforgettable. The New York Times placed the film on its Best 1000 Movies Ever list. Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran who became a counselor with the U.S. Department of Labor, thought of the idea of building a National Memorial for Viet Nam Veterans after seeing a screening of the film in March 1979, and he established and operated the memorial fund which paid for it. Director Cimino was invited to the memorial's opening. Home media The Deer Hunter has twice been released on DVD in America. The first 1998 issue was by Universal, with no extra features and a non-anamorphic transfer, and has since been discontinued. A second version, part of the "Legacy Series", was released as a two-disc set on September 6, 2005, with an anamorphic transfer of the film. The set features a cinematographer's commentary by Vilmos Zsigmond, deleted and extended scenes, and production notes. The Region 2 version of The Deer Hunter, released in the UK and Japan, features a commentary track from director Michael Cimino. The film was released on HD DVD on December 26, 2006. StudioCanal released the film on the Blu-ray format in countries other than the United States on March 11, 2009. It was released on Blu-ray in the U.S. on March 6, 2012. On May 26, 2020, Shout! Factory released the film on Ultra HD Blu-ray featuring a new Dolby