Bwana Devil (blu-ray)

Bwana Devil, the production that launched a brief vogue for 3D films in the 1950s, will be released on blu-ray this month, making its first appearance on video. (It was never released on VHS, laserdisc, DVD, etc.) Bwana Devil, directed by Arch Oboler, wasn’t the very first 3D movie — the first commercial release in 3D was The Power of Love in 1922 — but it was the film that brought 3D into the mainstream.

US cinema attendance peaked in 1946, and quickly decreased, as GIs returning from World War II settled down in the suburbs, started families, and embraced the consumer lifestyle. That same period saw a rapid rise in television ownership, and the film industry sought to differentiate the cinema experience from domestic TV viewing with 3D and widescreen processes.

Bwana Devil’s Natural Vision (anaglyph) 3D system drew audiences back to the cinema in 1952, though the 3D craze came to an end after a couple of years. Oboler attempted to revive the format in 1966, with The Bubble, filmed in a less cumbersome process known as Space Vision. (3D, edited by Britt Salvesen, is an excellent history of all forms of 3D imagery. 3-D Movies, by R.M. Hayes, was the first book on stereoscopic cinema.)

Fear and Desire (4k blu-ray)

Stanley Kubrick’s debut feature film, Fear and Desire, will be released by Kino Lorber on UHD and blu-ray next week in its original version, which is nine minutes longer than the theatrical cut. Kino Lorber previously issued the theatrical version of Fear and Desire — and one of Kubrick’s short films, The Seafarers — on blu-ray and DVD in 2012. The same transfer was issued on blu-ray and DVD by Eureka! in 2013. (The Eureka! discs included not only Fear and Desire and The Seafarers, but also Kubrick’s other shorts, Day of the Fight and Flying Padre.)

Fear and Desire was originally titled Shape of Fear, and had a running time of seventy minutes. In his book Stanley Kubrick Produces, James Fenwick reported that Shape of Fear was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1952. Film historian Gian Piero Brunetta subsequently discovered correspondence between Kubrick and the festival’s director confirming that the film was shown out-of-competition at Venice.

For its US theatrical release, Kubrick cut nine minutes of footage to increase the film’s pace, and it was retitled Fear and Desire to target the sexploitation market. (Arguably the same mistake was made in 1999, when Eyes Wide Shut was marketed as an erotic thriller.) Kubrick made Fear and Desire independently, and controlled the rights to its distribution after its initial theatrical run. Apparently embarrassed by the film, he sought to prevent it from being shown again, though there were occasional unauthorised screenings in the 1990s.

Kubrick’s decision to cut Fear and Desire was not unusual for the director. He also removed two minutes of footage from Paths of Glory before its theatrical release, and may have deleted a scene from Killer’s Kiss at actress Irene Kane’s request. He cut nineteen minutes from 2001 after its premiere, and removed the climactic custard pie fight from Dr. Strangelove. (The custard pie footage is held in the archive of the British Film Institute, though the Kubrick estate does not allow access to it.) Thirteen minutes were deleted from Spartacus after its premiere. Most famously, Kubrick deleted an epilogue from The Shining and released the film outside the US in a version twenty-five minutes shorter than the American cut.

Until the 2012 blu-ray and DVD releases, the only version of Fear and Desire available on video was a bootleg VHS sold via eBay. This transfer had been duplicated so many times that the image was barely watchable. The difference between the VHS edition and the new Kino Lorber 4k restoration is like night and day, and the company’s forthcoming UHD and blu-ray set will also include 4k restorations of all three of Kubrick’s short films, making it the definitive presentation of the director’s early work.

Cannibal Holocaust (4k blu-ray)

Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust was remastered in 4k for the first time by 88 Films in the UK last year, and their new transfer was released on UHD blu-ray and standard blu-ray discs. The film’s opening titles were digitally recreated for the 4k version, using a slightly different typeface [pictured left] compared to the original version [right]. The new titles include several typos: Franco Palaggi and Franco Di Nunzio’s first names both mistakenly appear as “FRANKO”, and ‘authenticity’ is misspelt “autheticity”. (A full stop is also missing.)

As a UK release, the 4k version has been censored by the BBFC, though only one sequence — the killing of a coati — has been cut. As if to offset the typos and censorship, the 88 Films discs also include an excellent new audio commentary by horror expert Kim Newman and writer Barry Forshaw. The US blu-ray, from Grindhouse Releasing, is uncensored, though for purists the only truly complete version is the Dutch Ultrabit DVD edition: in this print, the documentary sequence The Last Road to Hell is a few seconds longer.

The film is notoriously shocking, and remains one of the most famous titles caught up in the ‘video nasties’ moral panic in the UK during the early 1980s. Its genuine cruelty to animals is, of course, indefensible, but it’s also notable as the first ‘found footage’ horror film, directly influencing The Blair Witch Project and indirectly inspiring the wave of Blair Witch imitations that followed.

Cannibal Holocaust is undeniably an exploitation movie — from a cycle of cannibal-themed Italian horror films that began with Man from Deep River (Il paese del sesso selvaggio) — though it transcends that reputation with its critique of the mondo documentary subgenre. As discussed in Killing for Culture, mondo films mutated from the relatively mild Mondo Cane to violent ‘shockumentaries’, a trend that Cannibal Holocaust both condemns and exploits.

Surprisingly, the film has been available uncut on DVD in Thailand for more than twenty years, prior to the introduction of the rating system. (As noted in Thai Cinema Uncensored, Thai film censors are concerned far more with politics and religion than with violence.) It was shown at Jam in Bangkok in 2015, and a screening at Thammasat University was planned in 2020, though this was cancelled due to the coronavirus lockdown.

Cannibal Holocaust is not the only film whose title sequence has been mangled on blu-ray. All standard blu-ray releases of Ingmar Bergman’s classic The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) feature a Swedish title screen with a missing word: “SJUNDE INSEGLET”. (The definite article “DET” has been omitted; 4k UHD blu-ray releases are unaffected.)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (blu-ray)

Sergio Leone’s epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo) is the greatest ‘spaghetti western’ ever made, though it has a long and convoluted editing history, with three different cuts supervised by Leone and numerous revisions by MGM. Fortunately, the most recent 4k restoration rectifies most of the problems with previous video releases.

When the film premiered in 1966 in Italy, it included a sequence set in a grotto, which was deleted by Leone for pacing reasons before the general theatrical release. Then, in 1967, Leone removed more than ten minutes of footage for the international version. VHS and laserdisc releases were direct transfers of the original theatrical versions (albeit with some missing shots), but later DVDs, blu-rays, and UHDs are restorations and reconstructions, all of which are compromised to some extent.

MGM first attempted to reconstruct the international theatrical version for a 1998 DVD release, though some sequences were sourced from Italian prints, leading to inconsistencies with the 1967 version. In 2002, MGM created a new, extended version utilising all extant footage, including the grotto sequence that Leone himself had removed before the Italian theatrical release. This 2002 version also featured new foley effects and newly looped dialogue in some scenes.

For blu-ray and DVD releases in 2014, MGM remastered their extended version and altered the colour grading, adding an incongruous yellow tint to the image. The extended version was remastered again for new blu-rays and DVDs released by Kino Lorber in 2017, when the yellow tint was removed. 2017 also saw the second attempted reconstruction of the international theatrical version, though this followed the flawed template of the 1998 attempt.

The film was released again by Kino Lorber on 4k UHD and blu-ray in 2021, this time with an almost flawless reconstruction of the international theatrical version (the only inconsistencies being in the title sequence). Reconstruction credits were added to the end credits sequence of this release, and to all UHD, blu-ray, and DVD editions released since 2002.

The Seventh Seal (blu-ray)

Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) was released on blu-ray and DVD in 2007 by Tartan in the UK, to mark the film’s fiftieth anniversary. Other blu-ray and DVD releases followed over the next decade, from Criterion in the US, Studio Canal in France, and Arthaus in Germany.

Unlike all previous releases on VHS and DVD, each of these blu-ray discs has an altered version of the film’s opening title sequence: the first word, “DET” (‘the’), is missing, and the rest of the title thus appears off-centre. This anomaly was corrected by Criterion for their Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema blu-ray collection, which featured a 2018 restoration of The Seventh Seal that reinstated the definite article into the title sequence. 4k UHD releases from Criterion and the BFI also feature the complete title (although unfortunately the blu-ray disc included with Criterion’s 4k release doesn’t).

Irréversible (DVD)

Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible is notorious for its real-time rape sequence, its brutal (CGI) fire extinguisher murder scene, and its reverse-chronology narrative structure (though the latter was heavily influenced by Memento). Irréversible (like most of Noé’s films) is sexually explicit and intentionally confrontational; to see it on its theatrical release in 2002, I had to drive to a cinema thirty miles away (as local cinemas wouldn’t screen it) and read a notice warning viewers that it contained disturbing images.

Last year, Noé recut the film, putting it into conventional chronological order. This new version was released on DVD and blu-ray in France and Germany by Studio Canal in 2020, and will be available on blu-ray in the UK from Indicator later this year.

The recut version is actually shorter than the original, losing almost ten minutes of footage, notably from the S&M club sequence: explicit shots of sexual activity both outside and inside the club have been removed. Another change occurs after the end credits: the caption “LE TEMPS DETRUIT TOUT” (‘time destroys everything’) has been replaced by a new, more optimistic maxim: “LE TEMPS RÉVÈLE TOUT” (‘time reveals everything’).

14 ตุลาคม

14 ตุลาคม: 40 ความทรงจำเดือนตุลาคม (‘14th October: forty years of memories’), a four-part Thai PBS documentary on the 40th anniversary of the 14th October 1973 massacre in Bangkok, was released on DVD in 2014. The series, broadcast in 2013, was the first substantial 14th October documentary since historian Charnvit Kasetsiri’s 14 ตุลา (‘14th Oct.’), which was released on VHS to commemorate the twentieth anniversary in 1993.

Charnvit’s hour-long documentary was later released on VCD under the English title October 14 Thai Student Uprising 1973, and repackaged with the docudrama Tongpan (ทองปาน) and the 6th October 1976 massacre documentary พ.ศ. 2519 (‘2519 B.E.’). Episodes relating to 14th October from the บันทึกเมืองไทย (‘save Thailand’) documentary series were also released on VCD in 2001.

Le jour se lève (blu-ray)

Le jour se lève marks the high point of ‘poetic realism’, the fatalistic, atmospheric French thrillers that anticipated American film noir. Starring French cinema’s most iconic actor, Jean Gabin, Le jour se lève combines the meticulous visual style of its director, Marcel Carné, with a sophisticated flashback structure from screenwriter Jacques Prévert.

Le jour se lève was released on blu-ray by Studio Canal for its 75th anniversary in 2014. This restored version features two minutes of additional footage — including a rather risqué shot of Arletty in the shower — censored by the French government on the film’s original theatrical release.

Cannibal Ferox (blu-ray)

The short-lived Italian cannibal horror subgenre was one of the most controversial chapters in the history of exploitation cinema. Umberto Lenzi directed the film that launched the cycle, Man from Deep River (Il paese del sesso selvaggio), though Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust is the only example of any real cinematic interest. Despite its exploitation origins, Cannibal Holocaust provided a multi-layered critique of mondo filmmaking, and it directly influenced The Blair Witch Project and other ‘found footage’ horror films.

Cannibal Ferox replaces the structural sophistication of Cannibal Holocaust with ritualised, explicit violence. As Kim Newman wrote in Nightmare Movies: “Lenzi takes the form about as far as it can go in the direction of gratuitous violence”. Both films contain scenes of genuine animal killings, and both were included on the ‘video nasties’ list in the UK, though Newman calls Cannibal Ferox “the nastiest of the nasties”.

The deluxe blu-ray edition of Cannibal Ferox released by Grindhouse in 2015 features approximately twenty seconds of newly-discovered footage. This extra material, which has no soundtrack, includes additional shots of a pig being killed. The blu-ray supplements include a feature-length documentary, Eaten Alive! The Rise and Fall of the Italian Cannibal Film, directed by Calum Waddell, featuring interviews with Lenzi, Deodato, and Newman.

The Criterion CollectionDr. Strangelove

Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove was first released by the Criterion Collection on laserdisc, in 1992. That transfer was supervised by Kubrick himself, and he even designed the front cover, though the disc was swiftly withdrawn from sale after Kubrick complained about the unauthorised inclusion of a screenplay draft among the supplementary features. (The draft script opened with a segment titled The Dead Worlds of Antiquity, told from the perspective of an alien civilisation.)

The Criterion laserdisc presented Dr. Strangelove “in its original split-format aspect ratio for the first time.” The film alternated between 1.66:1 and 1.33:1, as it had on its original theatrical release. (Criterion’s Lolita laserdisc also featured these alternating ratios.) When Dr. Strangelove was released on DVD for the first time, in 1999, the split-format was retained, though all subsequent releases have been matted to 1.66:1. Sadly, the Criterion blu-ray, released in 2016, is also framed at 1.66:1, though it does have an uncompressed mono soundtrack.

The blu-ray’s supplementary features include an extraordinary new discovery: an exhibitor’s trailer of highlights from the film, narrated by Kubrick himself (“Please remember, as you watch this, that the material is uncut”). The disc also includes an interview with Mick Broderick, author of the excellent Reconstructing Strangelove. The packaging is equally impressive, with reproductions of the “miniature combination Russian phrasebook and Bible” and the “Plan R” dossier.

The Birth of a Nation (blu-ray)

The Birth of a Nation, the first epic American film, is now rightly regarded as racist propaganda. Even on its original theatrical release, it was condemned as inflammatory. Nevertheless, it’s a historically significant film, and it was released on US blu-ray by Kino in 2011. A UK blu-ray edition, as part of the Eureka! Masters of Cinema Series, followed in 2013. The Birth of a Nation was the very first film to feature an intermission, and the “End of the first part” intertitle was restored for the two blu-ray releases. (It had been missing from previous video versions.)

Blade Runner(30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition)

The Blade Runner 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition blu-ray features five (yes, five) versions of the film: the original theatrical release (with the studio-imposed happy ending and narration), the international theatrical cut (with slightly more violence), the director’s cut (with the unicorn dream sequence), The Final Cut (with some CGI enhancement), and the workprint. (For an exhaustive comparison of the different versions, see Future Noir.)

The three-disc blu-ray set also includes the feature-length documentary Dangerous Days, a definitive guide to the making of the film. The set was originally released on DVD in 2007, and was rereleased on blu-ray in 2012 for the film’s 30th anniversary.

The Exorcist (blu-ray)

Mark Kermode’s The Fear of God is the definitive documentary on the making of The Exorcist. It was first broadcast on BBC2 in 1998, and an extended version (featuring interviews with actress Mercedes McCambridge and censor James Ferman) was released on the BBC iPlayer last year. However, the 2010 blu-ray release of The Exorcist contained a thirty-minute featurette, Raising Hell: Filming The Exorcist, which includes newly-discovered silent 16mm footage shot on the set. For the blu-ray release, Friedkin made some minor tweaks to his extended cut, removing two of the subliminal CGI demon faces he had added to The Version You’ve Never Seen in 2000.

The Criterion CollectionThe Tree of Life

Terrence Malick’s stunning The Tree of Life was released on blu-ray by the Criterion Collection in 2018. One disc features the theatrical version, though Malick also created an extended version (fifty minutes longer) especially for the Criterion release. The extended cut has also been reframed, revealing slightly more of the image while retaining the original 1.85:1 aspect ratio.

It Came from Outer Space (blu-ray)

Jack Arnold’s classic 1950s sci-fi film It Came from Outer Space was released on blu-ray in the UK in 2016. The disc features both the 3D and conventional 2D versions of the film, though this edition is particularly significant for completists as it includes the original theatrical intermission.

Intermissions are usually associated with epics such as Gone with the Wind, though they were required for all 3D films in order to change reels on both projectors. So, despite its brisk eighty-minute running time, It Came from Outer Space also had an intermission, and this blu-ray release is the first video edition to include it.

Different Views, Death Sentence

Suthachai Yimprasert’s Different Views, Death Sentence [sic] (ต่างความคิด ผิดถึงตาย ๖ ตุลาคม ๒๕๑๙) was released on DVD in 2011. The documentary explores the long-term issues that led up to the 6th October 1976 massacre at Thammasat University, providing context and analysis missing from Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s documentary Paradoxocracy (ประชาธิป'ไทย).

Pleasure Factory (DVD)

Pleasure Factory (快乐工厂) was made in Singapore by Thai director Ekachai Uekrongtham, whose previous film was Beautiful Boxer (บิวตี้ฟูล บ๊อกเซอร์). When Pleasure Factory was shown in both Thailand and Singapore, an explicit masturbation sequence (featuring Loo Zihan) was censored, along with two sex scenes. Altogether, around two minutes of footage was cut. However, the film was released uncut on DVD in Europe and America.

The Sweet Gang (DVD)

The Sweet Gang (ยกก๊วนป่วนหอ), a low-budget sex farce directed by Niran Thamprecha, was made for the Thai straight-to-VCD market in 2005. It was also released on VCD and DVD in Hong Kong (界女鬥一番). (The film's on-screen title is The Sweet Gang, though the video covers all drop the definite article.)

The Sweet Gang is of almost no interest, except for its use of self-censorship for comic effect. Whenever a character is about to disrobe, the film is interrupted by a flashing "SENSOR !!!" [sic] warning. This happens several times, lasting from a few seconds to more than a minute, by which point the joke has worn rather thin.

A very similar device was used by Apichatpong Weerasethakul three years after The Sweet Gang. When Syndromes and a Century (แสงศตวรรษ) was censored in Thailand, Apichatpong replaced the cut sequences with silent, black footage to highlight the censorship.

Jan Dara: The Beginning (DVD)

Jan Dara: The Beginning (จัน ดารา ปฐมบท), directed by Pundhevanop Dhewakul, is a prequel to Nonzee Nimibutr's original Jan Dara (จัน ดารา). It stars Mario Maurer, who later starred in Pundhevanop's At the Gate of the Ghost (อุโมงค์ผาเมือง). (Both films demonstrate why Mario, a former model, is more famous for his looks than his acting skills.)

For its theatrical release in 2012, Jan Dara: The Beginning was cut to obtain an '18' rating, though a Thai senator started a brief moral panic by complaining that it was still too sexually explicit. (The film has plenty of topless nudity, which is rare in mainstream Thai cinema.) The Ministry of Culture responded by requiring cinemas to check audience-members' ID cards at the box office.

According to the Film and Video Act, age verification is only required for films rated '20', while the lower ratings ('13,' '15', and '18') are purely advisory. The exceptional (and illegal) ID-check was not widely enforced by cinemas, and the film had already been playing for a fortnight before the policy was confirmed. The DVD is uncut (almost half an hour longer), and rated '20'.

78/52 (DVD)

The title of Alexandre O. Philippe's documentary 78/52 refers to the (supposed) seventy-eight camera setups and fifty-two shots in the shower scene of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. (It could have been called A Long Hard Look at Psycho, but that title was already taken by Raymond Durgnat's book.) After an introduction to Psycho's cultural significance, the documentary analyses the shower scene shot-by-shot: the painting covering the peephole, the "calm before the storm", the three jump-cuts as Marion screams (echoing the monster's first appearance in Frankenstein), and the montage as she is attacked.

Talking heads, all filmed in black-and-white, include Hitchcock scholars Stephen Rebello (author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho), Bill Krohn (author of Hitchcock at Work and Masters of Cinema: Alfred Hitchcock), and David Thomson (author of The Moment of Psycho). Philippe's greatest coup is his interview with Marli Renfro, Janet Leigh's body double, who has rarely spoken about her role before. The most revealing contribution comes from Walter Murch (editor of Apocalypse Now), who meticulously deconstructs Hitchcock's editing and camera placement.

This is not the first study of Psycho's shower scene: Philip J. Skerry's book Psycho in the Shower also includes a detailed analysis of the sequence. Surprisingly, Skerry isn't interviewed in 78/52, though his book (like Rebello's) is essential, especially if read alongside Richard J. Anobile's book of Psycho stills. (Leigh has written her own memoir on the film, Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller; and Hitchcock is a lightly fictionalised account of Psycho's production.)

78/52 includes plenty of clips from Psycho, though it clearly couldn't secure the rights to the original Bernard Herrmann score. It also features short extracts from Laurent Bouzereau's documentary The Making of Psycho. The DVD includes a fascinating extended interview with Philippe, and a booklet with a short written statement by him.