Heather sexually on her wedding night. Despite all the nudity and mayhem permitted onscreen, a kiss between Norman and Ivan remains spliced out of action at 69:49. At 23:38, camera opera- tor Milligan can be heard cough- ing twice. The disc includes no extras except somewhat choppy trailers for the three Milligan films in this set, which are in- cluded on all three discs: TOR- TURE DUNGEON (1m 59s), BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (2m 15s) and THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS (2m 46s). The other two features in this bundle were shot in Great Brit- ain with combinations of English and American actors. BLOOD- THIRSTY BUTCHERS [reviewed VW 53:40], a retelling of the Sweeney Todd saga, piles an im- pressive number of incidental char- acters onto a flimsy narrative held together by little more than its own familiarity. There is a clear line of connection between it and TOR- TURE DUNGEON, including shared lines of dialogue (“I don’t
like it like it was”) and more scenes of characters spitting into
other characters’ faces or mouths than you’ll find in the work of any
other auteur. The packaging re- ports that the disc is a “Brand New HD Transfer From 35mm Dupe Negatives,” which reflect the condition the film was in after the original negative was cut in re- sponse to the MPAA’s initial X-rat- ing. Midnight Video’s original VHS release ran 78m, more complete than a subsequent DVD release from Video Kart, so Code Red’s Blu-ray runs almost a full minute longer and does include a rumored disembowelment image not seen in previous issues. However, the film remains splicy as-is and one sees frequent evidence of immi- nent bloodletting and dismember- ment that never transpires—for instance, at 72:34, where the arched foot of an obvious wooden
mannikin’s leg is shown tucked into a trouser leg as one charac- ter is being chopped up. It’s hard to believe that anything so bla- tantly phony could have upset the MPAA. There is also a brief rem- nant of actual Exit Music. The disc includes a 16m 59s interview with the film’s American star, John Miranda (who died on February 3rd of this year), who recalls his meeting with Andy Milligan, his abrupt invitation to go to London to shoot the film (budgeted at $12,000), the upbeat spirit of the acting troupe (“people were happy to be working, even in a crappy thing by Andy Milligan”), and his own admitted inability to sustain a proper accent. In the course of describing the end of Milligan’s life, he mentions that it was Andy’s preference to be cremated, but since “it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for crema-
tion” [sic], he was put into “a mass grave of unknown people.” Of the three films, THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS [VW 53:42] gains the most from its vault into high definition. The title suggests something more hyperbolic, but
this is in fact a coyly attributed adaptation of THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE (“based on a story by Robert Louis
Stephenson,” [sic]) that is other- wise remarkably subversive for its time, particularly given its PG rat- ing. This “Brand New HD Master from a 35mm Found In Mishkin’s Vault” adds only 18s to the earlier Midnight Video release (and 14s to Something Weird’s issue) but these snippets—the disembowel- ment of a Ripper victim, more lin- gering imagery in the hallucinatory orgy sequence—add conspicu- ously to the film’s power, as does this presentation’s more attentive preservation of Denis De Marne’s central performances. In effect, by being the first of the Jekyll/ Hyde films since Hammer’s BBFC pre-censored THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1961) to introduce frankly Sadean ten- dencies and erotic indulgences to the (here nameless) Hyde char- acter, this film points the way to how this story would be told in films over the next twenty years by filmmakers like Walerian Borowczyk and Gérard Kikoïne.
Denis De Marne dallies with a prostitute showgirl in Andy Milligan’s version of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS.
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