Too bad he didn’t upgrade the music on “To Live and Die in L.A.” before the movie’s debut in high definition (via Fox/MGM).

Ready to Wang Chung tonight? Me neither. Be warned that the one-hit wonders from the post-new wave era are all over the soundtrack with a Music By credit. Friedkin’s excellent taste in music (”The Exorcist,” “Sorcerer”) went MIA on this 1985 project.

Aside from the Wang doodling, the crime thriller ages well, in part because it created a gritty L.A. that fused the bleak side of downtown with the Long Beach port and nearby San Pedro. We’re a long way from Hollywood and big hair.

Like “The French Connection,” it’s an actor’s movie: William Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Turturro and Dean Stockwell, with solid support from Darlanne Fluegel and Debra Feuer. The first three were relative unknowns when Friedkin hired them, bypassing established actors as he did on “French Connection.” He compares Turturro with Peter Lorre.

The Blu-ray reprises the special edition DVD of 2003 and even includes it, with the standard def disc carrying the extras: a feature-length commentary by director Friedkin, an alternate ending mandated by the studio (awful) and a quite good (but dated) making-of docu. The trailer is the only extra on the HD disc.

The Blu-ray’s lossless audio (DTS-HD 5.1 MA) keeps the motors running on all six speakers, with significantly more punch and presence than on the SD. While the HD images post some improvements over the DVD — chiefly a much-needed upgrade in detail — don’t expect too much. The movie is still soft, grainy and a bit washed out, with occasional speckling. (Friedkin calls the print “the best that ever existed” for the film.) The menus look better but similar. Owners of the DVD might want to hold out for a new HD edition.

Friedkin talks in the commentary and documentary about his efforts to create a “counterfeit world,” in which the actions and emotions are as deceptive as the money. The real feds investigated the production for its “totally authentic” counterfeiting process. “They just tried to browbeat me,” says the director, who sent them packing.

The lengthy car chase sequence — in which Friedkin vowed to top the stunts in “French Connection” — remains astonishing, complete with the wrong-way driving sequence that freaks out L.A. freeway veterans. “We had to do something different,” the director says. The making-of breaks down how they pulled it off.

The movie follows a Secret Service agent (Petersen) as he obsessively hunts a hip and deadly counterfeiter (Dafoe). The agent loses one partner to the criminal, and the new one (John Pankow) fears he’s next. The Petersen-Dafoe dynamic rules the movie, with the usual melding of good and evil.

“To Live and Die” also is remembered these days for the red-hot sex scene with Petersen and Darlanne Fluegel, the male nudity presumably raising eyebrows back then.

While not as strong as “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist,” this one ranks among Friedkin’s best and most exciting works. Twenty-five years on, there’s plenty of life left in “To Live and Die in L.A.”

The best crime-genre movies on Blu-ray that I’ve seen in recent months:

Gomorrah: The Criterion Collection’s excellent import of the contemporary Italian neorealist film about mob activity in and around Naples, Italy. Five stories are told, each better than the other.

Snatch: Guy Ritchie’s best movie follows a bunch of oddball hoods around London as they try to get rich without killing themselves. Wild, weird and exciting. America is well-repped by Dennis Farina and Brad Pitt.

Public Enemies: Johnny Depp plays John Dillinger. Be sure to watch the excellent extra features, which detail how real locations were used whenever possible, including the shootout in the country lodge.

Also: “La Femme Nikita” and “The Professional”: Death with a French accent.

Glenn Abel writes the blogs DVD Spin Doctor and Download Movies 101. He is the DVD/Blu-ray columnist for Moving Pictures magazine.

This blog works the mean streets of HD video — the places where men are in bad need of a shave, the femmes are all fatale, and someone just might have an axe with your name on it.

I’ll be writing about down-and-dirty genre films on Blu-ray, making the Blu-Steel blog unique in its oddball specificity: B-movies, films noir, crime thrillers, horror movies … whatever oddities are lurking out there in HD.

Low-rent movies on a high-tech video format. Yeah. That’s it.

I hear this HiDef web site is gearing up for the big Jan. 5 Blu-ray release of “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.” I’m bracing for dark and dismal with a probability of meat cleavers.

Let’s kick off the festivities with “Audition,” a twisted piece of business from Japanese director Takashi Miike. The 1999 horror classic just debuted on Blu-ray, courtesy of Shout! Factory.

“Audition” is no routine J-horror movie, although it certainly helped popularize that genre in the West. Modern torture-porn movies such as “Hostel” have nothing on this film, yet it remains a work of art.

Miike’s film has plenty to offer the serious movie lover — but even the director feels a need to warn off viewers of gentler sensibilities:

“You may regret watching it,” Miike humbly says in the Blu-ray’s introduction to “Audition.”

The movie somehow blends mind-bending horror and lonely-hearts drama.

The tale is of a handsome yet lonely widower who uses a movie audition as a ruse for meeting women. He’s soon obsessed with a long-haired beauty who, as it turns out, comes with plenty of baggage — stuffed full of instruments of torture.

“She didn’t want to be mean to guys,” says actress Eihi Shiina, who played the part. “It was her way of expressing her love.” Yikes.

This 10th anniversary edition is a welcome update of the title, even though the wear and relatively low production values are apparent on Blu-ray. Certainly this is one of the best horror Blu-rays of 2009.

Devotees no doubt wanted to go kiri-kiri-kiri (deeper-deeper-deeper) with a definitive anniversary edition, but Shout’s Blu-ray (and DVD) editions are by far the best to date. They include a feature-length talk by Miike and his screenwriter, as well as more than an hour’s worth of cast interviews.

Leading man Ryo Ishibashi and supporting actor Renji Ishibashi sit for interesting interviews, but you’ll want to start with the talk by actress Shiina, a chatty Kathy who tells about living in this famed movie’s shadow.

As a result of “Audition,” “I’m on bloody sets all the time” (doing horror movies),” she says with a laugh. “This is not good.”

As for “Audition’s” horrific finale, she says filming it “wasn’t as shocking as most people (would) think.” Miike directed it “in a cute way.”

Actor Ryo Ishibashi agreed: “Miike was having so much fun with the scene.” Especially when the leg was sawed  off.

Renji Ishibashi, who has appeared in numerous Miike films over the years, has this to say about his friend and director: “He is strange and I hope someone stops him.”

Glenn Abel has no intention of stopping Takashi Miike. He writes the blogs DVD Spin Doctor and Download Movies 101. Glenn is the DVD/Blu-ray columnist for Moving Pictures magazine.