Editing A Woman Under the Influence (section)

== Release ==
Upon completion of the film, Cassavetes was unable to find a distributor, so he personally called theater owners and asked them to show it. He got it booked at art houses and shown on college campuses, where he and Falk would discuss it with the audience. According to [[Jeff Lipsky (filmmaker)|Jeff Lipsky]], a college student who was hired to help distribute the film: "It was the first time in the history of motion pictures that an independent film was distributed without the use of a nationwide system of sub-distributors."<ref name="TCM" />

The film was screened at the [[San Sebastián Film Festival]], where Rowlands was named Best Actress and Cassavetes won the Silver Shell Award for Best Director, and the [[New York Film Festival]], where it captured the attention of such film critics as [[Rex Reed]]. When [[Richard Dreyfuss]] appeared on ''[[The Mike Douglas Show]]'' with Peter Falk, he described ''A Woman Under the Influence'' as "the most incredible, disturbing, scary, brilliant, dark, sad, depressing movie", and added that he "went crazy. I went home and vomited", which prompted curious audiences to seek out the film capable of making Dreyfuss (who is himself [[Bipolar disorder|bipolar]]) ill.<ref name="TCM" />

=== Home media ===
In 1992, [[Touchstone Pictures|Touchstone]] Home Video released the film on [[VHS]].<ref>{{cite book|title=A Woman Under the Influence VHS|asin=6302503841 }}</ref>

On September 21, 2004, [[The Criterion Collection]] released the film—together with ''[[Shadows (1959 film)|Shadows]]'' (1959), ''[[Faces (1968 film)|Faces]]'' (1968), ''[[The Killing of a Chinese Bookie]]'' (1976), and ''[[Opening Night (1977 film)|Opening Night]]'' (1977)—in [[DVD region code|Region 1]] as part of the eight-disc [[DVD]] [[box set]] ''John Cassavetes: Five Films''. Bonus features for the film include an [[audio commentary]] by composer and sound recordist [[Bo Harwood]] and camera operator Mike Ferris, a video conversation between Rowlands and Falk, an essay by film critic [[Kent Jones (critic)|Kent Jones]], and audio and written interviews with Cassavetes from 1975. On October 22, 2013, the box set was re-released on [[Blu-ray]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Criterion Announces October Titles|url=http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=11651|website=Blu-ray.com|access-date=June 8, 2014|date=July 15, 2013}}</ref>