Scott would become one of the industry's most powerful filmmakers, nominated for three directing Oscars ("Black Hawk Down," "Gladiator," "Thelma & Louise"). But as a Hollywood newcomer he fought with his American crew to realize his vision. This left little time for working with actors, resulting in what may be the most colorless performance of Ford's career.

Moreover, Scott insisted on filming in a haze of atmospheric smoke that left actors gagging and forced crew members to work in surgical masks.

The film went over schedule and over budget.

It was not a happy set.

Yet in a recent phone conversation Hauer said it was the high point of his career.

"It's true that lots of people on the set were unhappy, they were breathing smoke and we had a director not totally at ease with handling actors," said Hauer, who played Roy Batty, the leader of the renegade replicants.

"But I had a ball, basically. I know that it was a rough moviemaking experience. That happens sometimes. But I had a pretty good understanding of what Ridley wanted from me. We got along well ... perhaps it was our shared European background."

Ford, on the other hand, reportedly has rarely spoken to Scott in ensuing years and declines to be interviewed about "Blade Runner."

The first few minutes of "Blade Runner" establish an atmosphere unlike any other movie. It begins with the camera flying over Los Angeles in 2019. Huge smokestacks vent orange balls of flame into a black sky thick with pouring rain. Every now and then a "spinner," an airborne car, zips between buildings rising 50 and 60 stories, thousands of illuminated windows twinkling like stars.

Far below the plebes (the majority of them Asians) in rain slickers and glowing umbrellas scurry through crowded wet streets lit by neon signs. Overhead float huge blimplike aircraft fitted with gigantic TV screens across which flicker a never-ending stream of commercials. Loudspeakers blare out advertising slogans that make conversations almost impossible.

All this was done with pre-computer technology by special effects master Douglas Trumbull ("2001: A Space Odyssey," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"). The street scenes were shot on the old New York set on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank; production designer Lawrence G. Paull employed existing buildings, retrofitting them with futuristic accouterments to suggest a new society built on the foundations of an old one.

The film's dark visual palette (most scenes take place at night) was reflected in "Blade Runner's" overall style. Mimicking film noir, the movie was filled with shadows, surly cops and sinister strangers.

Deckard's love interest - a woman named Rachael who because of false memories doesn't realize that she is herself a replicant - was played by film newcomer Sean Young, sporting a hairdo and broad-shouldered wardrobe right out of the 1940s.

All this gave "Blade Runner" a unique look and feel. But Deckard's tracking down and systematic elimination of the fugitive replicants (played by Hauer, Joanna Cassidy, Daryl Hannah and Brion James) is most important, according to the film's fans, for the way it raises existential questions.

"The movie can be as deep - or as superficial - as you like," said Haun, who wore out his original VHS copy of the film. "It can simply be a beautiful movie with great action scenes. But the more you see it, the more you get into the movie's philosophy. Lots of layers. This movie has stamina."

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