Hammer film cuts

For any fan of Hammer horror movies there is a real fascination with the various cuts made to many of their output. Legendary tales of excised scenes of sex or violence have floated around for decades often turning out to be lies and/or exaggerations. At this LINK you will find Tim Rogerson’s carefully created list culled from Wayne Kinsey's book Hammer Films - The Elstree Years. With its exhaustive reproduction of BBFC correspondence with Hammer on their later films (which is where the heavy cuts were made) it appears to be the definitive piece laying out what was cut, if it has been restored and where to find the uncensored versions today.

Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain?

William Shatner explains STAR TREK V:THE FINAL FRONTIER- whether he knows it or not.

DEADLY FRIEND (1986)

I finally caught up with Wes Craven’s 1986 horror film DEADLY FRIEND recently and was stunned. I had heard for years that it was …. Well….I actually hadn’t heard that much about it. Other than chuckles over some scene that involved a basketball most veterans of the film just referred to it as a typical 80s misfire from Craven and moved on. That may be why it took so long for me to watch the damned thing.

Let me say right up front that it is a terrible movie. Awful, in fact. In a career that has produced such crappy movies as CURSED, SHOCKER, VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN, THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS and THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2 I would have to go to the mat for this on being the worst. Well- HILLS HAVE EYES 2 is probably worse technically but this thing really sucks. It has everything I learned to hate about movies in the 1980s. It has a cute and unbelievably advanced robot played as a ‘cute’ character; it has the obvious (for the 80s) child abuse subplot; it has the teenage scientific genius (known as Wesley Crusher syndrome); it has the quirky/crazy neighbor character who might just go too far and it has the hot girl (literally) next door that is way out of the main character’s romantic league. It’s a rolling cliché machine in movie form and for the first 20 minutes or so I could kind of enjoy it for the ‘trip down crappy movie memory lane’ that it is. But then the big stupid stuff starts to happen and it became completely terrible and sadly entertaining in the wrong ways. If you never watch this movie (and I’m suggesting you don’t) you should at least see the much talked about basketball scene. It’s the pinnacle of the film’s unintentional humor and shows perfectly what is so wrong-headed about the entire affair. Completely physically impossible and poorly done to boot it is a moment of guilty movie madness. Insane and ridiculous.


So, I don’t recommend this film to any but the most masochistic of horror movie aficionados and I’m sure you know who you are. It’s the kind of film that makes me regret my desire to see nearly every horror movie made. Almost.

WEREWOLF SHADOW (1971) trailer

It's so damned true!

Robert Culp RIP

I first knew Robert Culp because of the 1970s TV show THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. He was the irascible FBI agent who wished the super suit had been given to him rather than the wussy who owned it. I then spotted him in the single best Outer Limits episode ever made ‘Demon With A Glass Hand’. Then I learned of his brilliant 1960s TV show I, SPY. And after seeing him do all kinds of things on my television screen I realized one thing very clearly- I would believe anything Robert Culp said. Anything.

Mr. Culp died today and I wish he was still with us. I never met the man but I would have liked to shake his hand. I now have to step up my hunt for a copy of Hickey & Boggs, the film he directed and in which he played the lead. Its been a bad week for actors from my childhood but this passing hits me the hardest.

THE WICKER TREE is coming

I seems that Robin Hardy's decades delayed follow up to his classic THE WICKER MAN is slated to come out sometime later this year. Originally entitled COWBOYS FOR CHRIST it stars Christopher Lee reprising his role as Lord Summerisle and I'm intrigued by the inclusion of a character named Reverend Moriarty. The film may well suck but I'll be there opening weekend (if it gets an actual release). Follow this LINK to sign up for email updates as it winds its way to a screen of some sort near you.