It’s been 35 years since the release of Jacob’s Ladder, an unusual hybrid of war drama and horror film, which adds another layer of time’s passage onto a film that blurs eras. Released on Nov. 2, 1990, Jacob’s Ladder (which screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin had been toying with for a full decade) fell somewhere between a combat story (like Platoon) and a post-war veteran story (like Coming Home or In Country); a purgatorial space that would prove thematically fitting, and key to its long-term success.
