Cosmo Valdemar

Dr Terror's House of Horrors is to be re-released by Odeon on March 22nd;

http://www.odeonent.co.uk/product.asp?cid=87&pid=2348

m35541

Will this be the German print released by Anchor Bay or a British print? (german print is also missing some brief footage from right at the end).

earlb

My DVD is issued by Anchor Bay and has the running time of 93 minutes. Curious to know what's missing from it at the end.

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

Dave Rattigan

Beautiful cover art.



I'd buy it just for that. ;)

I wonder if it'll have the same extras as the Anchor Bay DVD? It had two commentaries: one by Allen Bryce (good commentary, though it appears his reputation is in shards now) and the other by Freddie Francis, who could care less about the film and hardly seemed to remember anything about it anyway!

m35541

Its been a while but I think it is about 10s of footage. It somewhat reduces the impact of Shrek revealing who he is. I think it is missing because of the need to insert German end titles onto the German print.

My opinion of Francis went rock bottom after reading The Films of Freddie Francis by Wheeler Dixon. The meat of this is a long interview with The Man going through his career (the interview dates from the mid 1980s). He comes across as being incredibly arrogant and, of course, it's never his fault why so many of his films are poor or don't work. He also seems to have nothing but contempt for much of his output.

Its a pretty weird book. The second half is an analysis of Francis' films. Several get very little coverage but there is about 15 pages on Hysteria !!

I would add that you need a decent moderator for these commentaries long after the event. Once these guys get a proper prompt they usually start to remember things. Can't remember who the moderator is on this one off hand.

Dave Rattigan

Jonathan Southcott, I think.

Moderators on films of this type often come across to me as a bit obsequious, or at least timid about contradicting the interviewee. It diminishes the experience somewhat, since the interviewee is quite often either a bit arrogant (Christopher Lee) or rather forgetful (Jimmy Sangster, Freddie Francis).

smudge

I find that most moderators - whilst extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable - don't have the first idea how to constuct a good, solid interview; nor how to build on, or lead off from, particular recollections.

I often think that two recordings should be made - the first one from the subject's first view of the film, and then again in the 'formal' run where things may have come back to them after that initial screening. All too often the subjects are allowed to drift off into, "Oh look, there's so-and-so!" or, "Do you remeber him...? Now what WAS his name...?" Highly disappointing.

Smudge

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

Dave Rattigan

I think it's difficult enough for smaller companies to find the money to invest in commentaries at all; having a run-through would double the costs.

m35541

I agree - some of the moderators don't seem very well prepared. And don't seem to have discussed their agenda before hand with the filmmakers. Some of these films are very old and people need some prodding to remember about them.

Marcus Hearn is an example of a poor one - on Blood of the Vampire he is interviewing two very elderly guys (Jimmy Sangster and Robert Baker) who clearly can't remember much about the film on spec but once given sufficient prompts do start to come up with some interesting stuff. Unfortunately, the commentary seems to be the first time Hearn has questioned them so we are left with lots of pauses and, at one point, Sangster says he'll have to think up some examples of something but Hearn never comes back to him. The section in which he quizzes Baker on the film's censorship in particular shows that he has not researched this properly.

Bill Warren is much better prepared. In his interviews with Richard Gordon on the Criterion discs he quotes from the press book and novellisations and has clearly done his homework. He gets a lot out of Gordon as a result.

Dr Amicus

I'm sure it's the Dr Terror's Anchor Bay commentary when the moderator (Jonathan Sothcott?) repeatedly says that Freddie Francis directed the really-not-good Amicus SF film The Terrornauts....

... presumably confusing it with the really-not-good Amicus SF film They Came From Beyond Space, which came out about the same time and WAS directed by Francis.

I'd agree, the Dixon interview book is ... odd. Useful to my thesis, but undeniably odd. There's an amusing section part way in when Francis gets really stroppy for a few pages - IIRC in response to Dixon bringing up some of Milton Subotsky's 'I rescued the film with my brilliant editing'. The best book on Francis, if you can find it, is Paul Jensen's The Men Who Made the Monsters - also excellent chapters on Terrence Fisher, Ray Harryhausen, James Whale and Willis O'Brien.

markrgv

Why is his reputation in shards?

asiamiles

There's probably several starting off points for getting up to date about what happened. Here's one:

Dark Side accused of plagiarism (Continued) - Horror Film Books and Magazines - Classic Horror in Other Media - Classic Horror Film Board - Message Board Yuku

My excuse - for those I did in a past life - was that I was generally asked to do them the night before, giving me very little time for any prep, which would have been useful considering I wasn't all that clued up about all of the films, about which little info was generally avaialable. I'd like to think I might do a better job if asked again, though I'm out of the loop now so it's unlikely I will be.

m35541

This is on The Skull and relates to Milton Subotsky claiming in an earlier interview in the 1970s or late 1960s that he re-edited most of the last 20 mins from outtakes. Even Subotsky's defender, Philip Nuttman, agrees that this can't be true.

Another interesting bit in the Wheeler Dixon interview is when Francis slags off Curse of Frankenstein and in particularly the monster by comparison to his own Evil of Frankenstein. A couple of pages later in the interview it transpires that Francis hasn't even seen Curse and the dismissive slag-off was based on a couple of stills he'd seen of Lee as the creature. At least's Lee's creature doesn't have a large piece of cardboard for a forehead !

Dave Rattigan

As per the link from Asiamiles, plagiarism, basically.

Dr Amicus

Subotsky makes the same claim with The Psychopath - according to him, the killer was so obvious, he reedited the ending to change the killer! This is not terribly much more believable than his Skull claim - which I seem to remember being centred on the trial sequence half way through rather than the ending.