Savage Popcorn

Wes Craven’s 1972 film, The Last House on the Left has had a chequered history on the UK, to say the least, starting with an outright ban in 1974 when the film was first submitted for a BBFC rating. With the rise of home video in the 1980s, the film made it – briefly – to UK shores until the “video nasties” moral panic started to bite and the film was banned again by the 1984 Video Recordings Act.

The film had built a reputation for itself and, as the 1980s became the 1990s, critics had started to laud the film as an important piece of work. This led, in 2000, to the film being submitted to the BBFC for certification yet again and, once again, being refused.

In 2002, Blue Underground submitted the film and were told that they had to make 16 seconds worth of cuts in order to achieve an 18 certificate. The video distributor appealed and, as part of the appeal, called in Mark Kermode to make a case for the film’s historical importance. Famously, the Video Appeals Committee not only upheld the original cuts, but doubled them.

Finally, on 17th March 2008, the BBFC classified the film, uncut, for video release. And now, as Twitch reports, Metrodome Distribution have uncovered a further 5 minutes and 27 seconds of previously unseen footage which is included on the 3 Disc Ultimate Edition, released on Monday 20th October.

Crack open a bottle of Krug while you watch the original trailer.

About a year ago I saw Last of the Scottish Wildcats, a documentary about Britain’s biggest and most impressive predator. There are only 400 of these animals left and the film shows the animal in action and what is being done to conserve it - and what you can do to help.

The reason I’m mentioning this a year later is that the film is finally available on DVD and I can’t recommend it strongly enough. 50% of all profits from the film will be donated to the Scottish Wildcat Association, the only charity dedicated to conserving the Scottish wildcat and if you want to know more, I have a review here and a trailer here.

I’ve linked to Pat Condell a few times in the past and will almost certainly do so again in the future. His online rants about politics and religion – and the points where they intersect – are invariably topical, outraged, pointed and very, very funny.

And now the Richard Dawkins Foundation has compiled (via) the first 35 of his videos onto a single three hour DVD. This is one to go right next to the Bill Hicks collection.

If you click on the image to the left, you will find a pretty good spoof of The Four Horsemen DVD, which is currently available from RichardDawkins.net.

The DVD is an unmoderated two hour conversation between Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens in which they discuss the tough questions about religion that face the world today, and propose new strategies for going forward.

All proceeds from the sale of this DVD will go to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust.

Taking its cue from the hugely successful Masters of Horror,Masters of Science Fiction is a six episode TV series of standalone films, each one based on the SF genre’s most celebrated short stories.

Introduced by none other than Professor Stephen Hawking, the films include Harlan Ellison’s The Discarded – a story of despised minorities forever adrift in the darkness of outer space. Also in the line-up is Robert A. Heinlein’s Jerry Was A Man which raises potential issues atound civil liberties and genetic engineering.

Although it’s an American series, the joy of DVD means that we will be able to see it on this side of the pond on Monday. Go check it out.

With Álex de la Iglesia finally starting to gain some well deserved mainstream attention with the upcomming release of The Oxford Murders, Metrodome have realised that some of his earlier films are long overdue for a UK DVD release.

So, on 26th december, Accion Mutante and 800 Bullets will both be hitting the DVD shelves. Both are available for pre-order from Amazon, here and here, so get your credit cards out and see what you’ve been missing.

(Thanks to Twitch for the heads-up)

According to Cinematical, Curtis Johnson’s documentary Your Mommy Kills Animals - which takes a look at the animal rights movement - has been pulled by “several” retailers, including Amazon.com, in advance of its scheduled release yesterday.

The statement quotes an unnamed retailer who claims that this is “due to legal threats from a well-known Washington lobbyist who represents major corporations in the tobacco and food industries.” Matt Pizzolo, President of Halo-8 Entertainment, stated: “Our understanding is that there is no legal restriction on the film whatsoever and some retailers are buckling under threats that have no legal basis.”

According to Patty Smith, Director of Corporate Communications for Amazon.com: “Our understanding is the film is subject to active litigation between the parties, and as a result we removed it from our catalog as per our usual practice when we receive notice of an allegation of copyright violation. We are in the process of investigating whether in fact, that dispute still exists. If the matter has been resolved, and the seller has been given the rights to sell the title, we’ll happily list it on our site.”

Your Mommy Kills Animals played the festival circuit and was picked up for distribution by Halo-8 after selling out screenings at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal. It is still available for direct order from Halo-8.

On the blog for Taking Liberties (which was released on DVD on October 15th), Chris Atkins highlights a few of the authoritarian stores that have annoyed him recently.

These range from the frightening – a GPS enabled jacket that will allow anyone to keep tabs on your kids; through the disgusting – Britain’s very own torture facility; to the downright bonkers – Sir Ian Blair.

Click here to read the full story.

Huge thanks are owed to Lisa Rullsenberg for letting me know that a DVD boxed set of the whole of Sapphire And Steel is on the way.

As for AnnaWaits question regarding the series’ watchability - I’ve pre-ordered it already.

If you want to hear more about this really rather original science fiction series, you could do a lot worse than give the relevant British Invaders episode a listen.

Following on from my last post, it appears that Paramount are also getting in on the idea of releasing trailers for TV series.

The series, in this case, is Twin Peaks which is being released as a “Definitive Gold Box Edition” in the US on October 30th. Hopefully a Region 2 release will follow shortly, but I have to say that the trailers really don’t do the series justice.

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