On October 21st, BCI Eclipse will release a double-disc Collector’s Edition of William Grefé’s killer snake film, Stanley. What an age we live in, hey? Stanley stars Chris Robinson as a Seminole Vietnam vet who uses his connection with rattlesnakes to enact vengeance on his enemies. (“Stanley” is the lead snake’s name, BTW.) The film will be anamorphic widescreen, and will come accompanied by commentaries by Grefé and his screenwriter, Gary Crutcher; a 50-minute documentary on the making of the film; and a featurette in which Grefé re-visits locations. In theory, this one’s right up my alley; but given that the film notoriously contains as much real snake killing as its re-make, The Jaws Of Death, did real shark killing….I’m not so sure.
More Warners news. On October 7th, double-discs of The Shuttered Room and It!, and The Brides Of Fu Manchu and The Chamber Of Horrors, will be released. (Odd choice of order, considering that Warners also holds the rights to revered horror icon Christopher Lee’s first outing as the oriental mastermind, The Face Of Fu Manchu.) Again, these will be Best Buy exclusives….although they may not remain so. The previous Warner/Best Buy discs will be re-released for general sale in October. HOWEVER— Word on the street is that Warners’ use of the R-rated cut of When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (translation: boobies) was a mistake; and that when the film is re-released, they will substitute the G-rated cut (translation: no boobies). So if boobies are of any particular interest to you, you might want to pick up a Best Buy copy ASAP.
(And a public shout-out to Scott Hamilton for nabbing me copies of the first three BB releases.)
Oops! This one nearly slipped by me. September 9th will see the release of the Fox Horror Classics Collection Volume 2. Using the term “horror” rather loosely, this set will consist of the gothic melodrama Dragonwyck, starring Vincent Price and Gene Tierney; the long-MIA Chandu The Magician, with Bela Lugosi in one of his rare post-Dracula hero roles; and Dr Renault’s Secret, with George Zucco as a mad scientist dabbling in Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know.
September 9th also sees a whole slew of earlier releases from MGM/Fox re-packaged as triple-disc sets (although sometimes with four films). The quality of the sets varies from the surprisingly good to the you-gotta-be-kidding-me. This buyer is eyeing off the “Stay Out Of The Water” set (The Alligator People, Lake Placid and Swamp Thing), but there’s something there for most tastes. Details here.
#1 by supersonic on September 6, 2008 - 3:17 am
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For two edits of the same film to diverge so far as one being G and the other being R is rather remarkable. Is this indeed so?
And speaking of boobies vs no boobies versions of films, I wonder which Swamp Thing that’s going to be.
#2 by lyzard on September 6, 2008 - 3:39 pm
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The uncut version is about ten minutes longer and contains what I’ve seen described as “nudity and sexual situations”. No doubt some of our more knowledgeable contributors can expand on the differences between the two versions. (By the way, that would be an American “R”, which is certainly a lot softer softer than the Australian one; what does the British “R” cover?)
#3 by Baron Scarpia on September 7, 2008 - 3:49 am
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Speaking as a Brit, I find it sometimes difficult to tell what a British R would cover (I assume that our ’18’ cert is equivalent to a R). It seems that it’s far easier to get an ’18’ with sexual content than gore though. The BBFC’s own guidelines puts much more emphasis on sex than violence. The BBFC also gets fairly uptight about putting children into vioent situations.
On that note, I was watching the extremely pedestrian The Vampires’ Last Orgy last night. I suspect that the only reason it has an 18 certificate is because of a child’s death – if you don’t accept that, the entire ratings concept becomes nonsensical.
#4 by MatthewF on September 7, 2008 - 7:02 am
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Can ‘when dinosaurs ruled the earth’ really contain *ten* minutes of nudity and sexual situations?
On the rating thing, I think that an R is softer than a british 18 certificate. recently we had a good old fashioned media fuss about the rating for the Dark Knight (12A in the UK) and how it was too distressing for children. it made me quite nostaligc for the 80s when that seemed to happen every other week.
#5 by lyzard on September 7, 2008 - 2:19 pm
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Our system is broader: G, PG, M, MA and R, with actual entrance restrictions on the last two (no-one under 15 unaccompanied, no-one under 18). R-s are rare; most films get away with an MA. The American R seems to start about our M. And yes, we had a bit of a fuss when The Dark Knight got an M rather than an MA.
#6 by Blake Matthews on September 7, 2008 - 4:15 pm
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“Can ‘when dinosaurs ruled the earth’ really contain *ten* minutes of nudity and sexual situations?”
That’s what gets me. This type of genre-fare was made before the time of fanboys (and fangirls – Lyz and Jessica) and huge internet B-movie communities and such. Thus, I can’t imagine these movies could be made with decent budgets and then marketed only for adults (or the 17 and up crowd).
#7 by Blake Matthews on September 7, 2008 - 4:42 pm
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Oh, and we speak of fan girls, let’s not forget the Ferret. 🙂
#8 by El Santo on September 7, 2008 - 8:14 pm
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I’m especially puzzled by the notion of an R-rated cut of When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, because Creatures the World Forgot— a movie in which a clothed female breast never once appears– got a PG in the States two years later. I suspect the American distributors trimmed the nudity out of When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (except for that one brief flash of nipple when Victoria Vetri’s top slips as she’s scrambling off the raft) of their own volition before they ever sent it to the MPAA ratings board.
#9 by KeithA on September 7, 2008 - 9:37 pm
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There are plenty of films that were released as GP in the 70s that would get R ratings today if they were put back up for review. There was a time when you could have all sorts of nudity and freaky pink smoke aphrodisiac future sex (Logan) and still be considered acceptable for kids.
Dinosaurs contains two “sexy” scenes, only one of which contains any nudity. The one just implies a couple sexy cavepeople having sex in the bushes, but as they enjoy it, it’s filthy and unacceptable for human eyes. The second scene is nude swimming that features a minute or so of boobs and butt, then goes on to “lie down by the fire” stuff. The two combined run about three minutes. The ten minutes of extra running time is certainly not dedicated entirely to nudity.
#10 by Dr Freex on September 8, 2008 - 6:21 am
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Indeed. I recall being dropped off at the Rialto for a double feature of “The Moonshine War” and “The Green Slime”. The former is *not* kiddie matinee material, and has some brief nudity, which caused a near riot in a theater crowded with pubescent sugar monkeys. And, yes… GP.
There was a brief period in the late 60s/early 70s when America almost developed a sane attitude toward sex in media. Of course, it’s now back to the point where God forbid my ten year-old son should see a naked breast, but watching Schwarzenegger destroy the West Coast for two hours in Terminator 2 is considered okay.
#11 by MatthewF on September 8, 2008 - 8:18 am
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Of course ‘Dinosaurs’ is a Hammer film, and they frequently produced different versions of the same film for different markets, featuring more or less sex and gore as local tastes allowed (generally continental europe got more of everything and the UK and US got less, what with us being a bunch of uptight anglo-saxons, i haven’t the faintest what Australia got). Since their films were treated pretty shabbily through the 70s and 80s (and owned by about a dozen different companies) they often lost track of the different versions and frankly it’s anyone’s guess which version will turn up on which disc.