WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
The Burning
When released in the UK, prior to its uncut release in 2002, at least three scenes from this film were altered. Let’s begin with the dead prostitute. The grossest part about when Cropsy stabs her with the scissors is that you visibly see him twist the blades but he doesn’t stab her repeatedly – at least not in the view of the camera. The final clip from this scene is of the cast-off over the mirror and to be completely honest, it looks more like tomato ketchup than blood but maybe that’s due to my millennial eyes being so used to the visual effects we have nowadays. What I find quite dark about the death of Karen, actually isn’t the way she’s killed (even though the blood actually looks more realistic by this point in the film) – it’s the way Cropsy lures her into the forest with her own clothes. By the time I reached the raft scene in this film, I got the feeling I may have only been able to find a cut-down version but it doesn’t make the scene any less uncomfortable. However, this isn’t because of the gore (as there’s not as much as I hoped) but because no one seems to fight back or try to swim away. He literally taking them out one by one in a small space. Obviously, these aren’t the only deaths in the film and I’ll be honest that I’m a little surprised that Glazer’s murder didn’t feature in the same list. He takes garden shears to the throat for God sake! And almost gets pinned to a tree.
Zombie Flesh Eaters
Success! I was lucky enough to get access to the uncut version of this film – the full 91 minutes. OK, only 1 minute and 45 seconds was cut when it when released over here in order to gain its X-rating back in the 80s but still. However, times change and so do the boundaries on film ratings which meant that in 2005 it was able to be released uncut and rated 18. Obviously in situations like this where you only know the amount of time that was removed but no specifics – you start to wonder if it’s one whole chunk or little bits here and there. Having watched the film, I think it may have been cut from different section of the film, as there are a few clips that may have been considered obscene when it was first released that we would take as normal nowadays (sounds crazy right?). Look at it this way, we wouldn’t shy away from a little bit of blood squirting out of someone’s neck (which happens twice mind you) but I wonder if this clip of the coast guard was cut in the original release and just left at the point of hearing him scream in agony. It’s the same for Doctor Maynard’s wife taking the a piece of a wooden door to the eye and the zombie ripping a chunk from the shark (the latter I could do without, as I’m never happy when an animal gets hurt). I think they definitely would have cut the sight of Mrs Maynard being eaten by the zombie – and maybe just focusing on their eyes and hearing the chewing sound could have made the scene a little more terrifying.
Tenebrae
Here is a film that has actually been claimed by some critics to have been mistakenly placed on the ‘video nasties’ list however they do seem to be able to pin out why it happened (seems a little contradictory to me). They believe it is either ‘the highly sexualized representation of the violent content’ (James Gracey 2011) or the higher than usual body count, at least for a Dario Argento film anyway. I’ll be honest, this is only the second of his films I’ve seen (the first being Deep Red) so I can’t really comment. However, the deaths that do occur are rather tame so it makes me wonder exactly what the Americans felt they needed to cut in order to show the film as they removed 10 minutes worth of content in comparison to the meer 4 seconds that was removed by the British. Clearly we felt that Jane’s arm spurted for a little too long. I have to admit though – hers is actually the worst death of the whole bunch.
A Bay Of Blood
This film was actually refused a cinema certificate when it was first released in America and was mainly shown in drive-ins and grindhouses across the country. By its re-release in 1994, possibly under its new and more common name Twitch of the Death Nerve, it had 43 seconds removed. Obviously, with the version I found only being 1 hour and 20 minutes it’s hard to tell if anything had actually been removed. However, I do want to comment on the fact that Hallmark Releasing proclaimed it to be The Second Film Rated ‘V’ for Violence (the first being Mark of the Devil and this isn’t a rating that exists), I genuinely expected there to be more violence and bloodshed. Tell me, how much extra violence could 43 seconds hold if it is the cut version that I’ve watched? The one thing I will say for this film though, is that it wouldn’t have been out of place in my Death by Sex article.
Island of Death
Like many films that feature on the DPP list, whether prosecuted or not, this film has had many names. One being Psychic Killer II under which it was refused a video certificate but was re-released in 2002 with 4 minutes and 9 seconds cut. There is about a minute and 17 seconds that if this was cut I genuinely would not be surprised as it seems to me that Christopher decides to have sex with a goat (after his wife has turned him down that morning, so someone must have been REALLY desperate) before stabbing it repeatedly. Outside of this however, there’s nothing I can clearly say ‘that scene should have been cut’. There’s a lot of irony to this film, as Christopher and Celia are killing people that they consider to be ‘perverted’ but they get off on what they’re doing – made obvious by the masturbation scene when they’re looking at the photos of them killing Paul and his fiancé. If that’s not a form of perversion, along with the raping of the goat, then I’m not sure what is. Now, this could be me looking at this film with millennial eyes but I don’t quite think it was the violence that got this film prosecuted – not on its own anyway because it’s not as violent as I expected. Now, paired with the gratuitous sex scenes and animal abuse however then the prosecution makes sense.
The Night of the Demon
This film was banned in the UK for 14 years until it was agreed that 1 minute and 41 seconds would be removed – resulting in all the violent scenes being trimmed down and two acts completely removed. By doing so, the film received an 18 rating in 1994. I’m going to assume that in the cut version, when the young couple are killed – all that is seen is the boyfriend’s hand on the windshield smattered with blood instead of watching his whole body slide downwards from the roof. One of the scenes that was completely cut was the manual emasculation of a biker who had stopped to urinate. I’ll be honest, you don’t actually see it ripped off but you see his penis followed by drops of blood hitting the grass before watching him stumble away bleeding from his crotch. Makes me wonder if it’s the violence or the frontal nudity that got it cut. The second scene is near to the end when Gary is disembowelled. It didn’t gross me out but that may be because I was too distracted by how realistic it looked. In truth, this is the case for most of the violence and bloodshed in this film so you wonder if it may have been mistaken for a snuff film when it was released. It surprises me, however, that the one scene that remained untouched was that of Wanda being raped by ‘Bigfoot’.
The Beast in Heat
This title is a literal translation of its Italian name Le Bestia en calore, but is better known as SS Hell Camp. I assumed that the version of this film I’ve found is the American edited release based on the dubbing – however part of me wonders if that is the case, how did so much of the opening rape scene make it passed the censors? He basically rapes the young woman to death! Maybe they felt they couldn’t remove it completely because they will lose some understanding of the main plot but did they need to leave so much? The irony of that however is that you only see this beast three times throughout the whole film – one of them being when he rapes his creator (literally the only upside). Along with this, how did they leave in the senseless shooting of a defenceless baby? There’s no surprise that this film was never released in the UK because you wonder if I’m right about what I have watched being the edited version, then the Italians must have left a lot more in as supposedly it passed the censors untouched in 1977. I do have to give this film credit for one thing at least – the full frontal nudity is actually pretty even between the sexes. By the time I reached the torture scene, I had genuine questions in my mind over which version I had been able to get hold of. The scene is borderline medieval in the acts that are committed and how images of a woman being electrocuted via her vagina and the ‘beast’ eating a woman’s pubic hair slipped through the net I do not know.
