Belizaire the Cajun is returning to Abbeville for a week-long viewing at the Lafitte Theater in Abbeville.

It will start this Friday and run throughout the weekend and end Thursday, April 7.

It was orginally released in 1986 and parts of it were filmed in Vermilion Parish.

A romantic adventure, Belizaire the Cajun is set in pre-Civil War Acadiana where a wily herb doctor must save a life, defeat murderous vigilantes, win a woman’s heart, and escape the gallows in what Variety called, “one of the looniest hanging scenes ever committed to film.”

Belizaire’s writer-director and Cut Off native Glen Pitre penned the screenplay while working as a cook on an offshore supply boat. In a true-life Cinderella story, in 1983, the script was selected from among hundreds for production assistance by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute.

Lafitte Cinema co-owner Dave deGraauw said, “We have known Glen for decades and are honored that Lafitte Cinema is one of only three theaters in Louisiana selected by CoteBlanch Production to re-lease this highly acclaimed movie on this special 25 year anniversary of its release. This should be a treat for those who are in the movie itself, or want to re-live a movie tha tells such a great story about our rich Cajun heritage

Two years later, after coaxing two dozen Louisiana rice growers, sugarcane farmers and oil tycoons to invest, Pitre and producer Allan Durand of St. Martinville were on the set with then-screen-heart-throbs Armand Assante and Michael Schoeffling (fresh off of Private Benjamin and Sixteen Candles, respectively).

Even the year-before’s Best Actor Oscar winner Robert Duvall flew down to play a cameo.

Now, a new generation of Louisianians can enjoy Belizaire.

“It’ll be fun for the people whose parents and grandparents have been talking about it for 25 years to finally see it,” Pitre says. “I hope they’ll be as proud of its Louisiana-made, Cajun story as I am.”

Lafitte Cinema co-owner Dave deGraauw said, “We have known Glen for decades and are honored that Lafitte Cinema is one of only three theaters in Louisiana selected by CoteBlanch Production to re-release this highly acclaimed movie on this special 25 year anniversary of its release. This should be a treat for those who are in the movie itself, or want to re-live a movie tha tells such a great story about our rich Cajun heritage.”