Shocktober Revisited: Dawn of the Dead (Extended Cut)

 This review originally appeared in 2011 as part of a series on George Romero's "Dead" films.

Welcome back to Retro Reviews: after the Night of the Living Dead anniversary hack job, the Cap'n needed a palate cleanser, preferably with zombies. I watched Shaun of the Dead (with the Edgar Wright / Simon Pegg commentary on, because I'm the kind of person who listens to commentaries, thank you very much), but I realized what I really wanted to watch was Dawn of the Dead. The last three times I saw the film, however, I had seen the theatrical cut, so it seemed high time to shake things up. It was time for the longer, zombie-er-er "extended" cut!

While I will cover aspects of the film, this review will also cover the history of the "extended" cut. Accordingly, I won't recap Dawn of the Dead for readers unfamiliar with the film, and will more than likely include spoilers.

Unlike the mangled, pointless Night of the Living Dead 30th Anniversary edition, Dawn of the Dead's history of alternate versions goes back almost to the film's release. There are a number of different cuts (many of which were bootlegs in the era of VHS) in different countries, but Anchor Bay settled on three versions for its Ultimate Edition: the theatrical cut (127 minutes), the "extended" version (139 minutes), and the "European" cut (121 minutes).

The Ultimate Edition is, in many ways, a combining of earlier (albeit bare bones) releases of the films: in the early days of DVD, Anchor Bay released the "extended" version as the "Director's Cut," a disc so early in the medium's existence that Dual Layer technology had not yet been implemented, meaning that you had to flip the disc halfway through the film*. Romero was quick to point out that he preferred the shorter, theatrical version, so when releasing the Ultimate Edition, it was given the "extended" moniker and suggested as producer Richard Rubenstein's preferred cut. The European Cut, also known as Zombi, was re-edited by Dario Argento for foreign audiences; this version is shorter, removes much of the humor, and adds a few smaller character moments.

And that is, in a nutshell, your brief recap of the different versions of Dawn of the Dead. For the purposes of today's Retro Review, the Cap'n is setting the wayback machine to the version I've had the most contact with, the "Director's" or "extended" cut. Over the years I've had multiple copies of the longer version on VHS and DVD, and while the Blu Ray release is the theatrical cut, the version I've seen as often (if not more often) is the longer cut.

Young cinephiles are always excited to find something they didn't know existed, especially "alternate" cuts of films they love. I had seen Dawn of the Dead, maybe made a copy on VHS, and knew the film well by the time I first saw the two tape "Original Director's Cut" at, of all places, a used Record Store. Assuming that the Dawn of the Dead I knew was merely a charade, some censored version, I paid eight dollars (or whatever the price was) to see the "true" Dawn of the Dead, and to show it to all the other zombie fanatics I knew, as I would with so many other films over the years. Despite the fact that this was something mass produced - not to mention something someone already bought and sold - we thought we had the inside track on movie secrets!

I confess that I owned the "flipper" disc of the "Director's Cut" as well as the later Theatrical cut (which wasn't a flipper), and more than likely owned the re-release that preceded the four disc Ultimate Edition (which I still have). The holy grail until the Ultimate Edition was Zombi, the Argento cut, but aside from stripping away much of the social commentary and the underlying humor that sold it, Argento's version (disc three) isn't much more than a footnote best remembered for allowing Lucio Fulci to make Zombi 2 (or, as it's known in the U.S., Zombie). Let's take a look at what makes the "extended" cut so, well, extended.

The chief difference between the "extended" cut (disc two) and the theatrical version (disc one) of the set is that there's more of just about everything: more mall, more interview footage with the scientists, more ransacking, more mall shopping montage, and more chaos at the beginning, both in the WGON news station and in the housing project. With twelve extra minutes, there's actually less zombie carnage and more time spent developing the relationships between Roger, Stephen, Francine, and Peter. The additions are spread out over the film, usually in little chunks rather than a noticeably different sequence. Over the years the 127 and 139 minute versions bled together so much that I don't notice when minor additions are missing or present.

In fact, the only scene I can directly point to is early in the film: an extended encounter between the protagonists and police officers escaping by boat. In the theatrical version, most of the conversation is limited to the conversation about escaping to an island ("any island") and the cop asking for cigarettes. In the "extended" cut, there's a longer standoff between the two groups, and a cameo that I found interesting with respect to Romero's last three "dead" films.

Visitors to the Blogorium (and no doubt many other pages) have periodically dropped in my Survival of the Dead review because Alan Van Sprang appears in Land, Diary, and Survival of the Dead, playing what may or may not be the same character (Brubaker, Colonel, and Sarge, respectively). Since Land takes place after Diary and Survival, it is entirely possible that Van Sprang is playing the same soldier, but it turns out Romero also cast an actor in Dawn of the Dead for a minor part only to use him in a lead role in his next "dead" film. Joe Pilato, who plays Captain Rhodes in Day of the Dead, is one of the escaping officers in Dawn of the Dead. The "extended" cut expands his cameo by giving him the most interaction with Stephen and Francine, and he's listed in the credits. It's almost certain that Pilato is not playing the same role; the Van Sprang connection remains to be seen.

Other than that minor trivia tidbit, the "extended" cut of Dawn of the Dead does feel a little padded at times. Oh sure, it's nice to spend more time in the mall, to see more of Roger before he "turns," and feel the sense of time as the Monroeville Mall shifts from dream to nightmare, but in other ways the additions hurt the film. The film's opening at WGON is interminably long, and while it conveys a sense of chaos as the world tries to explain what's happening, the urgency of Francine needing to escape diminishes with every cut back to George Romero's cameo, or to the longer argument on-camera about the nature of the dead. The cumulative effect actually lessens the immediacy of "getting away," in part because the audience is now mired in the minute details of keeping the station operational.

It also takes twice as long to introduce Ken Foree's Peter and Scott Reiniger's Roger during the apartment complex raid. The sequence is adversely affected as a result: while the raid itself doesn't appear to be any longer than in the theatrical version, it certainly feels longer because the WGON sequence dragged the pace of Dawn of the Dead to a crawl, and by the time the foursome leaves in the helicopter it feels like the film may never find momentum. Romero's theatrical cut allows the film to have a sense of urgency, of desperation, before the film slows down in the middle, then to pick up again during the biker raid near the end.

With respect to pacing issues, I will say that there's no great harm done to Dawn of the Dead as a whole in the "extended" cut. It's hardly a mangled version of the film and, at times, benefits from a more languid pace. At two hours and twenty minutes, you're going to get more Dawn than you ever knew you needed, but for fans who wore out their shorter versions, it's a nice break from the norm.

Join the Cap'n next week when I continue "March of the Dead" by reviewing, um... Day of the Dead? Maybe? Return of the Living Dead part 2? We'll see when we get there.



* Early DVD adopters might also remember this from Goodfellas and Sleepers discs as well.

Shocktober Revisited: The Frighteners

 Review originally appeared in 2009

 It's been quite a while since I'd seen The Frighteners from beginning to end, but after watching it last night, time seems to be kinder to it than I remembered.

 The first time I saw The Frighteners was sometime in 1996, when my dad took me out to the Colony in Raleigh (the only theater playing it as I recall) to see Michael J. Fox's comedy horror epic. I don't really think I knew who Peter Jackson was at the time; I certainly hadn't seen Bad Taste, Dead Alive, or Heavenly Creatures, but I knew about Meet the Feebles (the most demented puppet movie not this side of Jan Svankmajer) and was probably seeing it soon. I was thinking The Frighteners would be something along the lines of Ghostbusters, since the ads play up the humor. Clearly, I was mistaken.

 I remember liking The Frighteners, although the mix of humor to horror tended to lean heavily in one direction or the other for long periods of time, and the hell worm eating Johnny and Patricia (Jake Busey and Dee Wallace-Stone) really disturbed me at the time. Critics seemed to take exception to a horror comedy that was more horror than comedy, and to this day The Frighteners is regarded as a misfire for Peter Jackson.

  Looking back at it, I'm not so sure. Yes, the film is marketed as a comedy, and yes, it's not a comedy in the sense that Ghostbusters is, or even Dead Alive, which took gore to such extreme lengths that one couldn't help but laugh. The horror in The Frighteners is unabashed; characters we care about are murdered wantonly by the Soul Collector, and the gore is often more disturbing than laughable (with the notable exception of Jim Fyfe and Chi McBride's ghosts in the first act, where gore is played for laughs). Jackson pulls the rug out from under us, setting us up for a funny romp and then turning things dark very quickly.

 That being said, it still works if you know what you're getting into. Even having not seen it in years, I knew The Frighteners was a horror-comedy that leans more in one direction than the other, and when weighed with what Jackson's done before and since, the movie give us a glimpse of a director moving from one type of film to another.

 For The Frighteners, Jackson really relied on the still fresh WETA team to use what computers could do in 1995 to make the ghosts seem real in the film, and because of what they accomplished, he felt comfortable enough to consider making The Lord of the Rings next. Frighteners was also Jackson's first major studio picture with an "A List" Star (bear in mind that Kate Winslet was an unknown when Heavenly Creatures came out and had not yet appeared in Hamlet or Titanic) and a large budget. For a director accustomed to low budget movies, this was a high concept film, and Jackson's brand of black comedy was a little darker than most American audiences were ready for.

 Uneven as it may be, The Frighteners is still fun to watch, and as the last major starring role for Michael J. Fox as Frank Bannister, a time capsule of an actor still in his prime. It also has a fine supporting cast, with Trini Alvarado, the aforementioned Busey and Wallace Stone, Fyfe, McBride, John Astin, and Jeffrey Combs playing the most demented FBI agent you're likely to see. Oh, and let's not forget that extended cameo from R. Lee Ermey, basically reprising his role in Full Metal Jacket.

 The version I watched was the extended Director's Cut, which runs a little over two hours and adds fourteen minutes back into the running time. A few sequences seemed new (like the ghosts dressing up as The Grim Reaper to scare Frank and more flashback material of Johnny and Patricia) but for the most part I can't really remember what was new and what wasn't.

 The Frighteners is unfairly maligned in the Peter Jackson filmography, and certainly worth another look. You might be surprised that is still holds up, or that Jackson went from this directly into Lord of the Rings, but a watered down PJ film this is not.

Spoiler of the Day: Halloween II (2009)

 Okay, follow me if you can - Michael has been seeing visions of his mother and younger version of himself, who lead him to kidnap Laurie. He takes his sister to a barn, and Sheriff Brackett and officers surround the area. Dr. Loomis arrives and against Brackett's wishes, he goes into the barn to try to reason with Michael. Then we have two different endings:

 Theatrical Version - Michael kills Loomis in the barn, and is gunned down. Laurie puts on Michael's mask and walks outside. She takes her mask off, and the film dissolves to Laurie in a mental institution.

 Director's Cut: Michael shoves Loomis through the barn, and kills him in front of the police, who gun him down. Laurie walks out, picks up Michael's knife, and despite Brackett's pleas otherwise, one of the officers shoots Laurie, killing her. We then dissolve to Laurie in the asylum, where Michael's / her mother is coming down the hallway with a white horse. She smiles.

 Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Friday the 13th

Five Movies: Alternate Cuts That Helped

 Yeah, I thought I might be talking about Star Wars this evening, too. But I'm not nearly far enough into the Blu-Ray set to do that, so you're just going to have to wait a little bit.In case that wasn't clear, yes I did get the Blu-Ray of the complete series for the extra three discs, which I've been poking through when I have time. I never said I wasn't going to; I just said I'd think about it. Go back and look for yourself. But I digress, let's take a look at Five Movies that benefited from revisionist directors, writers, producers, or actors.

I have, in the past, bagged on THX 1138, Aliens, Terminator 2, Donnie Darko, and The Exorcist for alternate versions (usually called "Director's Cuts") that remove ambiguity or clutter up the film with unnecessary subplots or sequences. This past week the cyclical outrage over changes to Star Wars again brought up the debate about whether the creative force behind a film has the right to alter their movie, or if the movie belongs to the audience.

 In some cases, these alternate versions are effective or even improve upon the film, with or without the participation of the original cast and crew. This was actually a harder list to put together than the "Theatrical Cuts I Prefer" counterpart. I ended up leaving out a lot of alternate versions; The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly has an interesting "extended" cut, as do Apocalypse Now and Touch of Evil. I've decided to leave them off not because I don't like them or, in some cases, prefer the alternate cuts. The "workprint" version of Alien 3 is the only alternate cut we're likely to see since David Fincher has no desire to revisit the film, so I'm leaving that out of the five, although it materially changes the experience of watching the film. Not having seen the theatrical cut of The New World, I don't want to compare the two necessarily, although the differences are by all accounts atmospheric in nature (as I understand it, Blood Simple is a similar situation). I opted to leave out The Lord of the Rings and Leon: The Professional, but freely admit I prefer the Extended Editions.

 To keep to the rules, these are five films that have been changed dramatically by revisiting footage, inserting or deleting material. One or two have subtle changes in visual effects, but all of them are as or more interesting because of the alterations.

 1. Brazil - What is frequently forgotten when looking at the battle over Brazil is that between the two extremes of Gilliam's cut and Universal's "Love Conquers All" cut is that they reached a compromise before the film was released in December of 1985. The theatrical cut of Brazil was twelve minutes shorter than Gilliam's original cut (details covered here, which also mention a fourth version of the film), and it wasn't until the Gilliam approved Criterion release of the film that fans were able to see his complete cut of Brazil. Taken in its full scope, I tend to appreciate the abrupt opening and better sense of absurdity in the world than in the American theatrical release.

 2. Payback - This is a point of contention between friends, because I am partial toward Brian Helgeland's "Director's Cut - Straight Up" Payback, many of them hate it. Payback was a film we were tremendously fond of in 1999, and it's no-nonsense, smart ass attitude was a huge component in seeing it three times in the theatres and many more times on video. I wasn't aware that Helgeland walked away from the film when he couldn't cut the film in a way palatable to Paramount, Warner Brothers, and Icon Productions (Mel Gibson's company). I had no idea that the explosions, the narration, and Kris Kristofferson weren't a part of his original conception of the film. That the ending was much bleaker.

 After Helgeland left, Gibson shot much of the new material himself and that's the Payback audiences saw in theatres. And I really like that Payback. In 2004, Gibson and Warner Brothers reached out to Helgeland to see if he wanted to put together his version of the film - a leaner, darker experience - and he took them up on it. The resulting film is a dialectical Rashomon to the theatrical cut: they tell roughly the same story in a similar way, but the execution is different. Helgeland's cut is more mean-spirited, more direct, and isn't as interested in moments beyond Porter getting his money back. Gibson is more ferocious, and a violent exchange with Deborah Kara Unger shifts their relationship into a more volatile state. Porter is less likable, less identifiable, and his situation ends the way it probably would have, the way he thought it would. I realize that I'm in the minority even liking the director's cut, but I think it's a fascinating contrast to the "audience friendly" version I was first enamored of.

 3. Kingdom of Heaven - Longer is not always better. Ridley Scott's extended cuts of Gladiator and Robin Hood, for example, don't improve anything (in the latter case, they just muddle things more). Kingdom of Heaven, on the other hand, benefits significantly from expanding from two-and-a-half hours to a little over three hours as a Director's Cut. The theatrical cut briskly moved along, undercutting the scope and depth of the Crusades. However, by reincorporating nearly 45 minutes of footage, Scott eases the choppy nature of the film and lets it breathe as a full-fledged epic. (See differences here, and they're significant changes) When I mention Kingdom of Heaven, I make a point to recommend the Director's Cut, because while the running time may shy people off of the film, the shorter cut isn't worth bothering with.

 4. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - As far as I know, the only way to see the alternate (referred to as Unrated) cut of Conquest is on Blu-Ray, but two changes shift the tone of the film significantly. Only the opening and closing were changed in 1972 (to secure a PG rating), and of the two the ending is more important. The brutal beating of a gorilla in the original opening sets the tone, but Caesar's post-riot speech at the end has been removed entirely. Instead of appealing for mercy, Caesar allows the humans to be beaten to death, and the bloodied apes are shown stacking the bodies of riot police officers. Gone is the implication that apes and humans could or should live side by side, which makes Battle for the Planet of the Apes (which also has an alternate Blu-Ray cut) a little more tenuous. The shift, however, is in keeping with the militant tone of the film.

 5. Blade Runner - I couldn't not put Blade Runner on this list. I really thought about leaving it off, because nearly everyone agrees that there's a stratospheric leap in quality from the Theatrical Cut to the "Final Cut" (named so because Scott was not actively involved in the already exisitng "Director's Cut"). Many of us grew up with the narration laden, expository heavy Theatrical Cut on VHS, and while it is what drew most to the world of Blade Runner, the 1992 "Director's Cut" really sparked a renewed interest in Ridley Scott's follow-up to Alien.

 Personally, I prefer the Final Cut, because it reflects changes Scott wanted to make but couldn't (he was working on Thelma and Louise). The differences between the DC and FC are not always evident, but are minor adjustments (the dove flying away, Zhora's death scene, the shift in one of Batty's demands to Tyrell) designed to make Blade Runner more cohesive. The most significant change is Deckard is no longer dreaming about the unicorn; he is shown to be awake the entire time. The Final Cut retains much of the ambiguity of the Director's Cut but has the polish and attention to detail Scott was unable to provide at the time. If I'm going to watch the film, nine times out of ten it's the Final Cut.

Spoiler of the Day: Blade Runner

 So, depending on which version you watch, there are two ways this can go:

 In either version, Deckard nearly falls to his death and is saved by Roy Batty. Batty explains his appreciation of life before dying, and Deckard goes back to his apartment. Here's where it gets fuzzy.

 Original Theatrical Version: Deckard provides narration while he and Rachel drive off down a highway in the woods and it implies the ending is unknown, but hopeful.

 Director's Cut / Final Cut: Deckard goes home, grabs Rachel, and they leave. The film goes to credits. It's important to note that the Director's and Final cuts strongly imply that Deckard is also a Replicant, necessitating their haste.

Tomorrow's Spoiler of the Day: Hellraiser

Let the Blogorium Speak for Itself...?

 Hrm. The Cap'n doesn't really have a review today. I thought I might, but over the last two days I watched Halloween II with Rob Zombie's commentary track and the group commentary for Trick 'R Treat. I've toyed with the idea of doing write-ups of commentary tracks, as they seem to be the least accessed feature on nearly every DVD and Blu-Ray release. For some reason, it never seems as interesting to write about them as it does to listen to them. Appropriately, many directors, writers, producers, and actors feel like it's not as interesting to listen to them talk about a film when you can let the film speak for itself. Steven Spielberg doesn't record commentary tracks for just that reason, along with David Lynch and the Coen brothers*.

  Part of the appeal of a "Rogue Commentary Track" is that it would allow people who have a marginal history with the film, but who appreciate something about the film, to speak at length about what they take away from it without forcing people to pay anything. If it ever happens, that is. I certainly don't have the equipment to make that happen, but I do know a number of well versed cinephiles who could sit down and provide insightful and entertaining tracks for films that go underrepresented. It's the technical end that's hanging that idea up, and the scheduling; there's rarely time that everyone could get together.

 Well, let's try to make something out of this commentary-centric Saturday. Trick 'R Treat was fun to watch (virtually) with the director, editor, composer, producer, and storyboard artist, and I picked up a few more connective tidbits that I hadn't caught yet. The film really does reward multiple viewings, because it is packed with overlapping character moments. I honestly had no idea that Brian Cox wanted Mr. Kreeg to look like John Carpenter, but it's actually a clever nod that I can see during his segment.

 After listening to the Halloween II "Unrated Director's Cut" commentary, it's clear that two things dominated the making of the film: the decreasing budget / schedule and the editing. Zombie is clearly frustrated that a number of sequences were hampered by schedule cuts, including the Phantom Jam (which was supposed to take four days to shoot but was shortened to one night), and while he feels the film suffers from the shortcuts they had to take, he's reasonably satisfied with the director's cut.

 I'm happy that I found a copy of the Theatrical Cut (available in Canada, but I'm not sure if it is here in the US), because based on Zombie's description of what was cut, alterations made to existing footage, and his feelings about the changes, that unlike many "director's cuts," this is a radically different version of the film. Tonally the films sound quite different: the relationship between Laurie and Annie is less antagonistic, Michael's visions are more ambiguous, and the ending heads in a different direction. Zombie is happier with his cut of the film (available on Blu-Ray), but I think being able to watch both will be a valuable point of comparison. There's also a commentary on that DVD, and I wonder if it's also distinct from the director's cut, as it would be difficult to simply cut out many of the descriptions of what differs.

 All of this may seem irrelevant to many of you, as I understand that people really seem to hate Halloween II. As someone who really hated Halloween, I find it odd that people were less interested in seeing Zombie go off in his own direction with the sequel, and it makes me wonder what exactly it was that you all liked about the 2007 remake. Aside from the hospital dream sequence, Zombie makes no effort to stick to remake "rules," and while it may have problems, I think that Halloween II works as a sequel, and considering that the original Halloween II is a mess of sloppy plot points, needless coincidences, and stupid characters, I'm going to give the edge to Rob.

 Oh well. That seemed more interesting to write than it probably was to read for you. I'll see what I can do to rectify that in the coming days. I have found more than a dozen horror films from the 1980s that I've never heard of before that seem like they'll be fun to review. Until then...



* With the notable exception of The Man Who Wasn't There, which is a low-key affair featuring Joel, Ethan, and Billy Bob Thornton, where they impart a number of interesting details along with what may or may not be a whole bunch of trickery about the film. It depends on whether you trust the mercurial Coens or academics, who claim to have "figured them out" without actually knowing them.

Throwing the Baby Out with the Bath Water

For almost twenty years, possibly longer, but certainly as long as the "director's cut"* of Blade Runner has been available on home video, a long standing debate exists as to whether Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a replicant or not.

In fact, any iteration of the boxed set (the four disc set or the five disc "briefcase" edition) has a ten minute featurette titled "Deck-A-Rep: The True Nature of Rick Deckard" where both sides make their case (Ridley Scott says Deckard is, Harrison Ford says he isn't, and a number of people involved in or admirers of the film weigh in). One of the contributors is director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist), and his impassioned defense of why Deckard isn't a replicant is embedded below:

What I've always found interesting about Darabont's argument is how many people I know simply dismiss his entire reading of the film because of the last sentence. Because he "rejects" the "Deckard is a replicant" argument out of hand, they accordingly reject the points he's making. One professor suggested that his unwillingness to consider the alternative automatically invalidated his position, which seems problematic to me.

Darabont's point - that Deckard's evolution in the film is meaningless or at best ironic if he's a replicant - is a valid reading of the film. His reading that the film being about Deckard's slow return to humanity is a valid one, a point that has plenty of thematic evidence in the narrative. If Deckard was a replicant, the character arc is somewhat rendered moot because his sense of humanity is totally artificial; the film ceases to be a "human" story and instead a clinical study of manufactured morality played out by pawns.

Now, I'm not saying that's not also a valid reading of the film: Blade Runner opens itself to a myriad of interpretations, beyond whether the protagonist is actually what he hunts or not. What I find fascinating is the willingness to completely ignore a perfectly valid reading of the film based on the last part of one sentence. Darabont rejects Deckard-as-replicant, and therefore several people I know summarily reject his argument, not on the grounds of the argument itself but because Darabont makes a sweeping claim on personal grounds.

It's fine to disagree with Frank Darabont that the "theme" of Blade Runner might not be the emerging humanity of its protagonist, or even that the idea Deckard might be a replicant undermines that, but to simply disagree with his point simply because he disagrees with one reading of the film is actually performing the exact kind of sweeping claim he closes the argument with. He rejects the "Deckard replicant" argument, ergo you reject his argument; the baby out with the bath water. It doesn't matter that he might have a point (or that "Deckard is a replicant" proponents might have a case), because you disagree with his disagreement, everything is nullified. In a manner of speaking, the whole dialectic collapses for almost comical reasons: I disagree with your disagreement, therefore you are wrong, regardless of your evidence.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but this is an academic equivalent of internet "comment wars" between two opposing sides: your valid claim and argument is eradicated because you misspelled one word in your argument, therefore I am correct. While that may sound ridiculous taken out of context, consider that many people are ignoring the almost everything Darabont says in order to focus on the word "reject" in order to invalidate his position entirely.

He's taken not on the grounds of his argument, but the perceived imprecision of his closing, coupled with what I will concede are sweeping claims about the sophistication of the theme, which can either be applied to Darabont himself or to the editor who chose this particular thirty second clip from the entirety of an interview. Regardless, the contention I've found almost never stems from the "theme" argument, but from the word "reject." I'm not going to reject your rejection, but I will say that it confounds me that spirited academic (or cinematic) debates collapse so easily.




* Contained in quotations because the 1992 re-issue was not overseen by director Ridley Scott, who was filming Thelma and Louise during its construction, thus necessitating his "Final Cut" in 2007.

Retro Review: Dawn of the Dead (Extended Edition)

Welcome back to Retro Reviews: after that Night of the Living Dead anniversary hack job last week, the Cap'n needed a palate cleanser, preferably with zombies. I watched Shaun of the Dead (with the Edgar Wright / Simon Pegg commentary on, because I'm the kind of person who listens to commentaries, thank you very much), but I realized what I really wanted to watch was Dawn of the Dead. The last three times I saw the film, however, I had seen the theatrical cut, so it seemed high time to shake things up. It was time for the longer, zombie-er-er "extended" cut!

While I will cover aspects of the film, this review will also cover the history of the "extended" cut. Accordingly, I won't recap Dawn of the Dead for readers unfamiliar with the film, and will more than likely include spoilers.

Unlike the mangled, pointless Night of the Living Dead 30th Anniversary edition, Dawn of the Dead's history of alternate versions goes back almost to the film's release. There are a number of different cuts (many of which were bootlegs in the era of VHS) in different countries, but Anchor Bay settled on three versions for its Ultimate Edition: the theatrical cut (127 minutes), the "extended" version (139 minutes), and the "European" cut (121 minutes).

The Ultimate Edition is, in many ways, a combining of earlier (albeit bare bones) releases of the films: in the early days of DVD, Anchor Bay released the "extended" version as the "Director's Cut," a disc so early in the medium's existence that Dual Layer technology had not yet been implemented, meaning that you had to flip the disc halfway through the film*. Romero was quick to point out that he preferred the shorter, theatrical version, so when releasing the Ultimate Edition, it was given the "extended" moniker and suggested as producer Richard Rubenstein's preferred cut. The European Cut, also known as Zombi, was re-edited by Dario Argento for foreign audiences; this version is shorter, removes much of the humor, and adds a few smaller character moments.

And that is, in a nutshell, your brief recap of the different versions of Dawn of the Dead. For the purposes of today's Retro Review, the Cap'n is setting the wayback machine to the version I've had the most contact with, the "Director's" or "extended" cut. Over the years I've had multiple copies of the longer version on VHS and DVD, and while the Blu Ray release is the theatrical cut, the version I've seen as often (if not more often) is the longer cut.

Young cinephiles are always excited to find something they didn't know existed, especially "alternate" cuts of films they love. I had seen Dawn of the Dead, maybe made a copy on VHS, and knew the film well by the time I first saw the two tape "Original Director's Cut" at, of all places, a used Record Store. Assuming that the Dawn of the Dead I knew was merely a charade, some censored version, I paid eight dollars (or whatever the price was) to see the "true" Dawn of the Dead, and to show it to all the other zombie fanatics I knew, as I would with so many other films over the years. Despite the fact that this was something mass produced - not to mention something someone already bought and sold - we thought we had the inside track on movie secrets!

I confess that I owned the "flipper" disc of the "Director's Cut" as well as the later Theatrical cut (which wasn't a flipper), and more than likely owned the re-release that preceded the four disc Ultimate Edition (which I still have). The holy grail until the Ultimate Edition was Zombi, the Argento cut, but aside from stripping away much of the social commentary and the underlying humor that sold it, Argento's version (disc three) isn't much more than a footnote best remembered for allowing Lucio Fulci to make Zombi 2 (or, as it's known in the U.S., Zombie). Let's take a look at what makes the "extended" cut so, well, extended.

The chief difference between the "extended" cut (disc two) and the theatrical version (disc one) of the set is that there's more of just about everything: more mall, more interview footage with the scientists, more ransacking, more mall shopping montage, and more chaos at the beginning, both in the WGON news station and in the housing project. With twelve extra minutes, there's actually less zombie carnage and more time spent developing the relationships between Roger, Stephen, Francine, and Peter. The additions are spread out over the film, usually in little chunks rather than a noticeably different sequence. Over the years the 127 and 139 minute versions bled together so much that I don't notice when minor additions are missing or present.

In fact, the only scene I can directly point to is early in the film: an extended encounter between the protagonists and police officers escaping by boat. In the theatrical version, most of the conversation is limited to the conversation about escaping to an island ("any island") and the cop asking for cigarettes. In the "extended" cut, there's a longer standoff between the two groups, and a cameo that I found interesting with respect to Romero's last three "dead" films.

Visitors to the Blogorium (and no doubt many other pages) have periodically dropped in my Survival of the Dead review because Alan Van Sprang appears in Land, Diary, and Survival of the Dead, playing what may or may not be the same character (Brubaker, Colonel, and Sarge, respectively). Since Land takes place after Diary and Survival, it is entirely possible that Van Sprang is playing the same soldier, but it turns out Romero also cast an actor in Dawn of the Dead for a minor part only to use him in a lead role in his next "dead" film. Joe Pilato, who plays Captain Rhodes in Day of the Dead, is one of the escaping officers in Dawn of the Dead. The "extended" cut expands his cameo by giving him the most interaction with Stephen and Francine, and he's listed in the credits. It's almost certain that Pilato is not playing the same role; the Van Sprang connection remains to be seen.

Other than that minor trivia tidbit, the "extended" cut of Dawn of the Dead does feel a little padded at times. Oh sure, it's nice to spend more time in the mall, to see more of Roger before he "turns," and feel the sense of time as the Monroeville Mall shifts from dream to nightmare, but in other ways the additions hurt the film. The film's opening at WGON is interminably long, and while it conveys a sense of chaos as the world tries to explain what's happening, the urgency of Francine needing to escape diminishes with every cut back to George Romero's cameo, or to the longer argument on-camera about the nature of the dead. The cumulative effect actually lessens the immediacy of "getting away," in part because the audience is now mired in the minute details of keeping the station operational.

It also takes twice as long to introduce Ken Foree's Peter and Scott Reiniger's Roger during the apartment complex raid. The sequence is adversely affected as a result: while the raid itself doesn't appear to be any longer than in the theatrical version, it certainly feels longer because the WGON sequence dragged the pace of Dawn of the Dead to a crawl, and by the time the foursome leaves in the helicopter it feels like the film may never find momentum. Romero's theatrical cut allows the film to have a sense of urgency, of desperation, before the film slows down in the middle, then to pick up again during the biker raid near the end.

With respect to pacing issues, I will say that there's no great harm done to Dawn of the Dead as a whole in the "extended" cut. It's hardly a mangled version of the film and, at times, benefits from a more languid pace. At two hours and twenty minutes, you're going to get more Dawn than you ever knew you needed, but for fans who wore out their shorter versions, it's a nice break from the norm.

Join the Cap'n next week when I continue "March of the Dead" by reviewing, um... Day of the Dead? Maybe? Return of the Living Dead part 2? We'll see when we get there.



* Early DVD adopters might also remember this from Goodfellas and Sleepers discs as well.

News and Notes

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I really do have to stress that this fall / winter has and will be a very good season for Blu-Ray adopters. It's been a nice combination of new titles and studios dipping into their back-catalogs for some really impressive releases. Yes, every now and then you'll hit a hot mess like Fox's Predator double-dip (so digitally mucked with that most of the actors look like wax dolls), or a mixed bag like The Man with No Name Trilogy, but more often than not, we've been seeing some quality product since September. For example:

Forbidden Planet, Seven, The Twilight Zone, King Kong, The Exorcist, The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Alien Anthology, The Sound of Music, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Back to the Future, Three Kings, Psycho, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Metropolis, Apocalypse Now, Hamlet, The Evil Dead, The Mutiny on the Bounty, Spirits of the Dead, Delicatessen, and some bare-bones but worth checking out Troll 2, Return of the Living Dead, and Escape from New York.

Criterion started their Blu Rays strong, and have been getting better and better this year with titles like The Thin Red Line, Seven Samurai, House, The Darjeeling Limited, Breathless, Magician, Paths of Glory, Charade, 8 1/2, Black Orpheus, Crumb, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, Vivre Sa Vie, and the forthcoming Modern Times and The Night of the Hunter. Oh, and every film they've announced for January is simultaneously being released on DVD and Blu-Ray.

I haven't seen all of the BD's listed above, but I have sampled Apocalypse Now, Rocky Horror, Back to the Future, The Evil Dead, House, The Thin Red Line, and the massive Alien Anthology. The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Goonies, The Sound of Music, and a lot of Criterion titles are in the "to watch" pile, and I have to say that so far I've been very pleased with what I've seen. Blu-Ray has (fortunately) been embraced by many studios as more than a way to sell brand new releases (which also look very good, by the way), and the older titles have looked as good or better than some of the newer ones.

While it's important to note that nobody is paying me to say this, as the prices on HDTV's are dropping and Blu-Rays are getting cheaper (seriously, some of the TV series cost less than their DVD equivalents), I really do recommend making the move. While some bristle at the "perfect picture / perfect sound," it really is a huge difference when the disc is treated correctly by the studio.

---

Finally, I have a general question to ask you, the readers: I've made it fairly clear that I have no interest in seeing Avatar (which is getting a - shocker - extended edition on DVD and Blu-Ray next week), but should I see it?

I don't mean should I see it on some kind of "is it worth seeing basis" - most of you that have seen it made it clear that Avatar is at least worth seeing in 3-D - but as the #1 Box Office ranked film of all time, do I have some obligation to watch Avatar if I want to seriously consider film criticism, study, or history? To qualify this, I refer you to the All Time Box Office numbers, world-wide, from IMDB (Please take a look and then join up in the next paragraph).

It's not a matter of the old "Box Office" validation that the Cap'n has joked about in the past, but more the fact that I've seen most of the movies in any of the "all time" box office lists. In fact, of the top 25, there are only 5 I haven't seen - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Shrek 2, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and the number two and number one entries: Titanic and Avatar*.

Again, I must stress that I don't want to watch Avatar (or Titanic), and I probably won't; I've never been interested in either film, which several attribute to a personal dislike of James Cameron's body of work. On the other hand, as someone who has worked their way through many of the AFI lists, the Criterion Collection, seen most of the highest regarded films of all time - and has most certainly seen the other "juggernauts" of American cinema (not limited to The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, and Casablanca) and tried to hit the "must see"'s of World Cinema, leaving out two of the most watched films of all time seems... strange.

So what do you think? In a theoretical sense, do I "owe" it to myself to see two films that clearly had a massive cultural impact, both in the U.S. and world-wide, particularly when I've seen most of the others, or is it much ado about nothing? Don't let your personal opinion of either film influence the answer too much (if possible), because I'm not looking for a "merit" based argument on the films themselves. This is purely an academic argument about the field I would like to enter.

* If you push it to the top 50, the number jumps to 13, and top 100 to 26.

Five Movies: Five Theatrical Cuts I prefer over the Director's Cut

Apologies for that mouthful of a title, but sometimes cutting it down can be a little tricky. I'm returning to Five Movies to pick up on an older column reposted a few Tuesdays ago. Since Aliens is clearly a movie I prefer the shorter, theatrical cut, of, I'll simply include the link in this list. The other four films are movies that I think benefited from studio involvement in one way or the other, which sounds a little weird. Allow the Cap'n to make his case.

Normally speaking, I side with the writer / director / creative team when it comes to a film: ultimately, their vision should be on the screen and not some watered down compromise designed to appeal to larger audiences. A film can, under varying circumstances, find its audience without dumbing things down or spelling things out. There are plenty of examples where a "complete" version came out that made a considerable difference in viewers' reactions to the film: Brazil, Kingdom of Heaven, Blade Runner, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Touch of Evil, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Almost Famous, Once Upon a Time in America, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The New World, Alien 3, Payback, The Big Red One, Major Dundee, and Leon: The Professional*.

In other instances, there are alternate versions of films where I feel nothing is particularly gained or lost (Apocalypse Now: Redux springs to mind, or the "extended" cut of Alien Resurrection), and then there are the "Unrated" cuts so prevalent today that add anywhere from one to thirty-five minutes of footage back into the narrative (Hot Tub Time Machine and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story respectively), some of which is negligible unless directly compared. Every now and then, a director's cut will be shorter, like the Coen brothers' Blood Simple.

That being said, sometimes that extra studio input comes in handy. Sometimes (at least in five instances listed below), a mandated "studio cut" turns out to benefit the narrative and provides a better viewing experience than the subsequent extended director's cut that follows in DVD or Blu-Ray (and, periodically, in a theatrical re-release). I've said before that this is a subjective system, but for my money, the following films work better under the duress of "studio interference" and compromise, and when the "pure" vision came out, I wasn't as impressed. Feel free to agree or disagree.


THX 1138: The George Lucas Director's Cut - It's tempting to beat up on Lucas' tinkering with the Star Wars trilogy, but the unaltered cuts are at least available (albeit in non-remastered, chucked out DVD versions), whereas his first film, THX 1138 exists on DVD and Blu-Ray only in a 2004 "director's cut" form. The imposition of new special effects, an extended car chase, cgi monsters, and a number of deletions drastically alters the claustrophobic tone of the original THX 1138, substituting instead a noisy, digitally cluttered version of the film that Lucas "always wanted to make." That's fine, but since the original version hasn't (and won't) see the light of day again, we're instead stuck with a film that replaces the ingenuity of budget limitations with a cut that undermines the tone and story of the original cut. (for a very comprehensive list of exactly what's different, check out the side-by-side comparison here.)


Donnie Darko - Sometimes a director strikes gold without realizing it, and then goes back and messes things up by giving the audience more of something they don't need. Donnie Darko is such a case. Like many people in the Cult of Donnie Darko, I was immensely curious when the word came out that writer / director Richard Kelly had another cut of his first film, one that delved deeper into the philosophy of time travel and fleshed out the family dynamic (flashes of which were apparent in the "Deleted Scenes" section of the Donnie Darko DVD), but when his "Extended Director's Remix" arrived on DVD, I was underwhelmed to say the least.

The longer Director's Cut removed all of the ambiguity from the theatrical version of Donnie Darko, replacing implications and conjecture with obvious, awkwardly inserted "passages" from The Philosophy of Time Travel that spelled out exactly what was going on in the story. Suddenly the mystery of the film vanished, replaced by explanations that made any discussion of the film feel stupid and unnecessary. Does it really help to have the film explain what the "manipulated dead" do? That Donnie's medication was a placebo? How "time arrows" work? All of the magic of Donnie Darko evaporated, and it was coupled with a disastrous commentary track where it became clear that Kelly didn't have any idea what it was that worked about the film and why it attracted the rabid fanbase it did.


Aliens - While I'm including the link to the Four Reasons article, might I add that this is generally how I feel about the director's cut versions of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Abyss as well. I feel the additions add nothing particularly interesting to the story, and at times unnecessarily pad the films in ways that dull their impact.






The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen - It bears mentioning that this is more of a "Writer's Cut" than a Director's Cut, although William Friedkin ultimately signed off on the theatrical re-release of this longer, less effective version of The Exorcist. What once was a relentlessly creepy, tension building film about demonic possession returned to theatres in 2000 as an unintentionally goofy, padded cut, including one genuinely good effect (the "spider-walk" sequence, which despite looking cool doesn't add anything to the film), an unfortunate subplot near the beginning, and the "Casablanca" ending that writer William Peter Blatty preferred to the original cut.

I had an opportunity to see The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen a few times with audiences (the Cap'n was working as a projectionist when the film opened), and rather than squirm, most audiences howled with laughter during the film. This was due, considerably, to the inclusion of a pre-openly possessed Regan (Linda Blair) being erroneously prescribed Ritalin by her doctor. At the time, Generation Y was having a field day with the ADD / ADHD craze and Ritalin was the prescription drug du jour, meaning that this "old' movie was hitting on their buzzword, rendering the establishing plot immediately comical.

The inclusion of the Pazuzu "flashes" during scenes didn't help anything, as the frozen demon face popping up in shadows elicited chuckles rather than generate suspense or foreboding. The "spider-walk" scene failed to unnerve audiences, and many who had been exposed to the over-the-top gags in Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, responded by laughing at the clear effect. At this point, nobody in the audience was taking The Exorcist seriously, and in the ensuing year or so, I had a number of arguments about whether the film had ever been "good" or "scary," a direct result of this unneeded "Version You'd Never Seen." That this cut has become the "norm," to the point that it - and not the original cut - will be playing this year in theatres is unfortunate to say the least.


Bad Santa: The Director's Cut - The Cap'n may be alone on this one, but as much as I like Terry Zwigoff's other films (particularly Louie Bluie, Crumb, and Ghost World), the truth is that the Weinstein-mandated recut of Bad Santa works better for me than the subsequently released Director's Cut (not to be mistaken for Badder Santa: Unrated, which came out simultaneously with the theatrical version on DVD). Having seen all three cuts, the "Badder Santa" version is probably my preferred cut.

By saying that, I'm sure that the Cap'n is now the enemy of die-hard Zwigoff supporters (and the director himself) because I settled for - and laughed at - the "watered down, studio version" that replaces his original vision with lowbrow yuks for the cheap seats. Well, here's the truth: the Director's Cut doesn't work. The significantly shorter cut has a less fluid plot structure (the immediate jump from Willie's first robbery to the second gives us no indication of why Marcus really needs him instead of finding a more reliable crook), and I'm going to be honest, the removal of Thornton's narration at the outset replaces any sympathy for the character with a sense of "why should we care about this pathetic drunk?"

Honestly, I understand that Zwigoff was more likely interested in exploring the less appealing side of Willie Stokes and giving the audience a protagonist that was in no way likable (much like his follow-up, Art School Confidential), but what works about the earlier (and in my opinion, more successful) Ghost World is that despite the fact all of his characters exist on the margins of "civilized" society, there's something about Enid and Seymour that's worth sticking around for. Zwigoff's cut of Bad Santa left a bad taste in my mouth, whereas the crass, studio involved theatrical cut at least generated some guilty chuckles.


So there you have it: five movies where the creative forces clashed with the studio and the end result turned out to be more successful. For the Cap'n, anyway. Feel free to disagree in the comments below, or add examples of films you think work better one way or the other.


* It is important to note that in the case of Touch of Evil, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Major Dundee, The Big Red One, and the not mentioned Mr. Arkadin, that the "director's cuts" were made without the participation of the director, who had passed on.

Four Reasons the Theatrical Cut of Aliens is Superior

On Monday, while disagreeing with James Cameron's unnecessarily harsh comments towards Piranha 3-D (which, upon discussion with Professor Murder, would be better directed at My Bloody Valentine 3-D), the Cap'n went looking for older entries detailing my long history of not being the world's biggest JC fan. It was only then that I realized none of them made the jump from the old blog to the new one.

In the interest of rectifying this for readers who wondered what exactly not going "back to the well of 'Things I Don't Like About James Cameron'" meant, here is the first ever Four Reasons, a segment that pops up periodically in the Blogorium. Since none of the early "Four Reasons" appear to be in the archives, I'll try to dole them out over the next few Tuesdays. In the meantime, please enjoy a blast from the past:

For the inaugural edition, it seems fitting to begin with one of the earliest versions of a "director's cut" available to home video markets: Aliens.

Four Reasons the Theatrical version of Aliens is superior to the Director's Cut.

Preamble

James Cameron's Aliens, released in 1986, is by now recognized as one of the rare "sequels that equal" the original, in this case Ridley Scott's Alien. When Aliens arrived on laserdisc, film aficionados (and anyone who could afford to rent a laserdisc player) were introduced to Cameron's preferred cut of the film, one that added 17 minutes of footage and reinstated three major subplots into the film.

For some time following the Laserdisc, the Director's Cut was the only version available on VHS and dvd; in fact, until the Alien Quadrilogy, there was no way to see the Theatrical version of Aliens at all. Generally speaking, fans of the series tend to prefer the Director's Cut of Aliens to the Theatrical, citing the depth of reinstated subplots and the restoration of Cameron's original vision.

I, on the other hand, prefer the Theatrical Cut, even if it represents a concession on Cameron's part to Twentieth Century Fox. Sometimes a Director's Cut is an improvement over the conventionally released version, but Aliens is one of the rare examples where I believe the inclusion of seventeen minutes hinder the film rather than improve it.

Allow me to lay out four points where the Theatrical Cut benefits from scenes left out of the Director's Cut:

1. Ripley's Daughter - the revelation that Ripley's daughter is now dead, admitted to be actress Sigourney Weaver's favorite moment in the series, adds a level of depth to her character but is entirely out of place in the pacing of Aliens. Yes, it creates the situation of an echo when she encounters Newt, but in the first half of the film, Ripley's struggle is with adjusting to the events of Alien, not what happened while she was away.

The theatrical version transitions from Ripley's "chest burster" dream to the hearing over her actions in the first film, and the inability to convince beauracracy that her nightmare in space was real. Dramatically speaking, the impetus to put Ripley aboard the Marine ship is linked to her failure to readjust to life on Earth, coupled with her nightmares. If Ripley is to face her fears and return to the planet, the spartan storytelling of the Theatrical Cut is preferrable to the Director's Cut, which adds an emotionally interesting digression that fails to serve the narrative of act one.

2. Newt's Family, The Colony, and the Ship - this addition, above all other changes to the film Aliens, is the most serious misstep on Cameron's part. There is no reason to show us Newt, her family, or more importantly, the colony on Acheron (aka LV-426) before the Marines arrive.

The juxtaposition of Colony before alien infestation and after is not only unnecessary, but it ruins a crucial element of surprise for the audience. Aliens is Ripley's story, and secondarily the Marines; when they arrive on Acheron, they have no idea what to expect. They don't know the layout of the colony or where to begin looking for survivors. By adding this sequence introducing Newt, and more problematically, explaining how the aliens found the colony, the audience is already familiar with the structure of the buildings, where Newt hides, and has an advantage over the protagonists.

What's lost in the Director's Cut is a sense of mystery about the colony, partly because we already know what it looks like, and partly because this cut has explained too much about the aliens. In the Theatrical Version, we experience Acheron with our main characters, and we know as much as they do, which creates a greater sense of unease at each discovery.

The last two points are minor changes in the film, but changes which I feel rob the film of clever moments created by removing the footage:

3. The Sentry Guns - Cut entirely from the Theatrical Cut is any mention of the Smart Guns that Hicks (Michael Biehn) brings into the main building of the colony after the marines barricade themselves in. The inclusion of the Smart Guns is not essential to either cut, but what their removal does is give the Aliens a greater sense of stealth.

It is assumed in the Director's Cut that the aliens will head down the main corridor towards the facility, so two guns which fire automatically at a moving target are placed in front of the welded entrance. The aliens approach, are shot at, and retreat. They later come in through the ceiling, showing adaptability, which is impressive, but consider this possibility:

In the Theatrical Cut, without the Smart Guns, it is implied the aliens always came in through the ceiling, preserving the element of surprise even when the colonists were not expecting them. Instead of taking the direct route and adapting, this suggests the aliens outsmarted their prey from the first moment, sealing the fate of both the colonists and the marines.

The "motion sensor" sequence in the Theatrical Cut is considerably more suspenseful because we don't know where the aliens are coming from or how they could possibly be so close without opening the doors. The addition of Smart Guns adds nothing to the tension of the sequence precisely because it provides a hurdle the aliens could simply avoid in the first place.

4. Hudson's speech in the Drop Ship - One addition I actually like in the Director's Cut is the pep talk that Hudson gives Ripley as the Marines are approaching Acheron, although I admit it is wholly unnecessary.

Hudson's braggadoccio is already well established while the Marines are on the actual space ship, so his speech about how tough Ripley's escorts are is largely redundant, and the "laundry list" of weapons aboard the drop ship is mostly unimportant. By the time Hudson has his collapse in the now famous "Game over" scene, the bravado demonstrated aboard the drop ship has been undercut by Drake, Vasquez, and Hicks.

It's a nice speech, but it doesn't do anything scenes before and after it do with greater skill.


I don't mean to say that James Cameron's preferred cut of Aliens is bad; I simply believe that when choosing between his cut and 20th Century Fox's cut, I am more inclined to take the studio's. I feel it does everything his cut accomplishes in less time and doesn't feel as bloated with extraneous digressions and subplots.

Is this true of all Director's Cuts? No. Are there some Studio mandated versions I prefer? Yes, but it does not mean I defer in one direction or the other.

Watching films is an intensely subjective process, so I expect that some of you might disagree with me, as you have every right to. I welcome a discussion of the relative merits of both cuts of Aliens. You know where I stand, and your insight would be most helpful.

In future installments of Four Reasons, I hope to discuss why I feel Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are the weakest films in the respective series, a frank comparison between the studio cut and Director's "remix" of Donnie Darko, and perhaps even another go at the Steven Soderbergh debate*.

* Okay, a lot of those didn't happen, although I'm willing to deal specifically with the Donnie Darko issue in a broader discussion of "Director's Cuts" this weekend. I"m not entirely certain what I mean by "Steven Soderbergh debate."

Ah, Forever Young Film Preservation...

I had considered writing up a formal review of Blood Simple, but as time just isn't what it used to be, the Cap'n decided to focus on one particular aspect of the DVD, which happens to be a semi-running gag with the Coen Brothers: Forever Young Film Preservation.

Provided you haven't seen the Universal Blood Simple disc or the 10th Anniversary disc for The Big Lebowski, I can imagine this little joke is lost on you. Ever the sneaky DVD extra tricksters, the Coens created a wholly fictional film preservation society in order to mock the "restoration" process, which was - and still is - in vogue when the discs were released.

Blood Simple opens with an introduction from "Kenneth Loring" of Forever Film Preservation, who promises this all new digital version of the film uses the highest quality digital restoration with all the sound restored and remixed and all the "boring parts" cut out. The Coens are making a savvy crack at the "director's cut" craze by shortening their own film, and to top it off they make up a fake preservation society to oversell the gag. "Kenneth Loring" also appears on a commentary track, reporting misleading and at times patently false information in a scholarly and authoritative tone. Take that, Criterion.

Of course, that's not the only appearance Forever Young Film Preservation makes. For the anniversary edition of The Big Lebowski, "Mortimer Young" introduces the movie with even more flagrant lies. Since there's no edit of the film, "Young" claims that "The Grand Lebowski" had to be meticulously restored from an Eastern European print with a missing soundtrack. In order to save the movie, a John Goodman sound-alike was brought in to voice Walter. There's no commentary track, but you get the idea.

It's a rather dirty trick to play on DVD newbies, or people who have a hard time distinguishing sarcasm, even in such an obvious way. I tried to find you the video files so you could see for yourself, but apparently no one on YouTube thought the jokes were that funny. Too bad, as it reinforces in many ways just how carefully the Coen brothers work to undercut pompous DVD "extras" and what a wicked sense of humor they really have.

Now if only Forever Young Film Preservation could explain what happened on The Ladykillers...


---

Side Note: Avatar is apparently now the highest grossing movie ever made (if not adjusted for inflation), knocking out Titanic. Congratulations nerds; now James Cameron has the two highest grossing films of all time, but the blue cat thing is better than the boat movie. The nerds win.

My Favorite DVD Misnomer: "UNRATED!"

Today, while feeling wonky and woozy, the Cap'n got to thinking about one of my favorite lies perpetrated by marketing departments: that any movie slapped with an "UNRATED" automatically means that a normally lackluster film is suddenly scandalous.

The lie is hidden in plain sight on almost every dvd cover. If you look at the bottom of every "special features" box, you'll notice a disclaimer that says "special features have not been rated." And the reason why is that the studios don't have to; MPAA submission is only required for films entering theatrical distribution. Because they're counting on you not knowing that, it's easy to trick people into thinking that releasing an "unrated" version of the film is something totally forbidden.

And sometimes they aren't totally lying. Frequently horror movies released in "unrated" cuts (say Land of the Dead) do restore some violence and gore. This is not always the norm, of course. Sometimes, the horror films pull a fast one on you too: the "unrated" director's cuts of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, 1408, and A Haunting in Connecticut don't actually add any scares to the movies. 1408 changes the film to a much darker ending, but the first 80 minutes are exactly the same.

On the other hand, the studios got a little too excited about this and would slap the "unrated" tag on movies that don't make sense, like Remember the Titans. Worse still, they'll wildly mislead people with movies like Coyote Ugly, which are "unrated" because two or three minutes of character development were re-inserted. Of course, marketing is counting on people assuming (not unreasonably) that "unrated" = nudity.

Running time can often cue you into just how "unrated" these cuts are. Judd Apatow and Apatow-related comedies tend to reincorporate significant footage into the film, although it's questionable how risque the extra fifteen minutes are. For the most part, "unrated" cuts of movies are usually two to five minutes longer and impact the story in no way.

My favorite, however, are the Saw films. If you've looked at the "unrated" versions of Saw, Saw II, and I believe Saw III, all of the cuts are actually shorter than the theatrical versions. Whether they just removed some cut-aways from gore or wisely cut some of the terrible acting out, I don't know.

At any rate, many of you are wise to this already, but it frequently drives me crazy to see movies marketed as "unrated" when you could make that argument about ANY film on dvd (studios usually just keep the rating on there out of courtesy). If "unrated" meant what studio marketing wanted us to think it did, I'm willing to bet more retail outlets would refuse to carry those discs. That's why NC-17 and "UNRATED" have the reputation they do theatrically: most of the time, no theatre will play those movies. Don't get duped into believing just any old movie in an "Extended, Unrated" cut is anything more than technically accurate. What it actually means and what you think it means are two very different things.

Phantasm II review followup: Region 1 release

I've noticed that a lot of folks have been directed to the Blogorium in search of a proper review of Phantasm II. Odds are you were looking for a review of the newly arrived Region 1 disc (out today), and my review of the Region 2 disc was less than helpful.

Let it be known that the Cap'n took your concerns to heart and decided to check out Universal's release of Phantasm II, and I will be happy to let you know what $14.99 will get you in order to complete the collection.

The first thing you should know is that since Universal released this disc, and not Anchor Bay, you're not getting any extras with the movie. Notice that they dumped it the same day as repackaged editions of Wes Craven and John Carpenter Universal releases (including They Live, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Shocker, Village of the Damned, and The People Under the Stairs). For some reason, if the movie isn't The Thing or one of the Universal Classic Monster movies, it's not going to get much more than the trailer. Phantasm II is no exception.

Accordingly, nothing from the region 2 disc (the commentary, convention footage, or TV spots) are on this disc. However, if you're just looking for Phantasm II itself, you're in pretty good shape. Universal released an anamorphic widescreen transfer (1.85:1) of the movie, and while it's hard to do an apples to apples comparison between a region free player and an upconverted PS3 picture, I didn't notice too many radical differences.

There's some really heavy grain near the beginning, especially when the Tall Man's hearse pulls up to Michael's house, but things settle down and the movie looks pretty good, considering that there was likely no remastering done here. Phantasm II is still perfectly watchable, and I'm not going to complain about having a copy I can show at anybody's house.

Still, I'm not parting ways with my Region 2 disc any time soon. The commentary track with Don Coscarelli, Reggie Bannister, and Angus Scrimm is sorely missed on the Region 1 disc. On the other hand, for most people, this is as good as you're going to get Phantasm II stateside, and at least now you'll have all four films together. The price isn't unreasonable (after all, that's what I, III, and IV cost to buy) and I'm sure you can get it for around $10 online.

I hope that's helpful. As long as you know you're getting what Universal considers to be a "lesser" title, and to not expect much more than the movie, then Phantasm II is worth picking up. If you've never seen it, this is ideally the way for you to watch the film, and cheaper than importing a UK disc.

---

When I say Universal's "lesser" titles, I mean in comparison to the comparably packed An American Werewolf in London: Full Moon Edition dvd or Blu Ray. For obvious reasons I picked up the BD and while the image can frequently be "Ghostbusters" level grainy, it does look much better than the older dvd. I haven't dived into the 97 minute documentary about the movie, but I'll let you know when I have.

Universal kinda half-assed it with the Army of Darkness "Screwhead" Edition on Blu-Ray, including a U-Control picture-in-picture that consists of "Production Photos." The only thing that really separates it from the HD-DVD version is the inclusion of a new interview with KNB's Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger that's a variation on "The Men Who Made the Army" featurette from the old Anchor Bay disc. Still, it is in high definition and there is some new information. They were also kind enough to include the trailer and the "Alternate Ending" (but not the Director's Cut or any of the deleted scenes), so you're getting a mixed bag, dvd and BD-wise.

Now that Universal has the rights again, I'm sure there's another Army of Darkness disc looming in the wings, considering that Anchor Bay's Boomstick Edition and the Bootleg Cut are out of print. So unless you just want a nice looking copy of the theatrical cut of Army of Darkness (which is what most people prefer, I realize), you might want to wait and see what's coming in a year or so.

Finally, who would have thought that Child's Play would look so good on Blu Ray? And if that's not enough, even though the BD disc has all of the extras, MGM/Fox kindly included a dvd copy of the Chucky's 20th Birthday Edition so that you can watch that with a regular player. This bucks their trend of putting BD/dvd combos out where the Blu Ray disc has jack shit on it and the dvd has all of the extras (like Walking Tall, The Graduate, and Road House).


Oh, the new poll is up. I think you have until Thursday night.

You Can't Beat the Price

Since the Cap'n now has one of those X-thingy mathingy 360's with the Fancy Schmancy but already rendered obsolete drives (HD-DVD) I might as well dig up some movies that aren't on Blu Ray and check out their comparably fancy schmancy alternatives.

There are two things that I found to be true after some cursory searches for HD DVDs online:

1) There are a number of good movies with pretty high marks visually that aren't on BD yet, or anytime soon.

2) HD-DVD's are REAAAAALLY cheap.

How cheap? Let's look at it this way; the most expensive HD-DVD I ordered was 6 bucks with shipping included. Most of them were around $3 a pop, compared to the (at best) $14-40 cost of their eventual Blu Ray counterpart. For most of the HD-DVDs I ordered, shipping was free. There's nothing wrong with the discs, and if you have a player it's not going to stop working any time soon just because they've been discontinued. So, for about 30 bucks (with shipping), I got the following HD discs:

The Deer Hunter
The Game
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Being John Malkovich
Army of Darkness
Seed of Chucky
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Dune
The Frighteners

None of which are available on Blu Ray or have been announced and all of which were much cheaper. Based on the limited amount I could get from work (it consisted of Miami Vice and Hollywoodland plus the King Kong that came with the HD-DVD drive) the picture is comparable to Blu Ray so the only drop is in price of disc. Not too shabby.

They haven't arrived yet, but I'll be sure to give you an update when they do. I'm particularly interested in The Frighteners. Dune got some high marks online, and one review indicated it's the best the film has looked on home video yet (and considering how many different region coded discs he compared it to, I'm inclined to believe him). Also, most of them have all the extras of their fancy dvd counterparts, including the 4 hour Frighteners "making of".

In fact, the only HD-DVD disc I couldn't find for dirt cheap was Forbidden Planet, which was hovering right around $12. It's still not super expensive, I guess, and there's no indicator that or if a Blu Ray is on the horizon, but I'd like to keep spending on this dead format to less than $10. On the other hand, if any of you see it out there for a reasonable price, pick it up and I'll be happy to pay you for it.

Since I've got this drive, I might as well use it, and I have all the incentive in the world to build up a small collection of this already obsolete medium. More than half of them are "flippers", which means that one side is high definition and the other is a regular dvd, so they'll still work even if the drive peters out. If anyone knows how (or where or if) I can locate firmware updates for the drive, drop the Cap'n a line.

Off to work shortly, but I did end up getting The State. Even in the awkward first episode, it's still funnier than most sketch comedy on tv today. Just saying...