THE HOWLING AND THE MOANING
Thought you might be inter- ested in some of the activity with the BBFC here in the UK at the moment.
An addendum to your review
of MGM’s THE HOWLING “Special Edition” [VW 102:56]: Momentum seem to be releasing a Special Edition in the UK, and an extra has just gone through the BBFC which is not on the MGM R1 disc. Unfortunately, it’s
been rejected! Called “THE HOWLING—Fake Porn Movie” (3m 51s), it is the full uncut “porn” movie footage as glimpsed during Dee Wallace’s visit to the porn shop. The footage is seen briefly in one of the featurettes on the MGM disc. The BBFC banned it with the following jus- tification: “THE HOWLING—Fake Porn Movie’ is a bonus feature in- tended for use on the DVD release of THE HOWLING. It consists of two silent sequences showing women being sexually assaulted. Brief extracts from these se- quences, avoiding the most ex- plicit and graphic elements,
were employed in the film THE HOWLING during a scene set in a sex shop. In the context of the film, the clips served to illustrate the degenerate nature of one of the characters. The sequences (which were specially created for the film) are presented here in their entirety and divorced from their original context. In the first sequence, a woman is assaulted by three men on top of a car bonnet. In the second sequence, a woman is tied to a bed, stripped and raped by one of the men and sexually as- saulted with a wooden handle. Both sequences exploit sexual violence in a titillatory and por- nographic fashion.
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“The Board’s classification Guidelines clearly set out our serious concerns about the por- trayal of sexual violence in films and videos and highlight the unacceptability of portrayals which eroticize sexual assault. The bonus feature was therefore rejected.”
Neil Roberts Birmingham, England
It may interest our readers to know that Kinowelt has also re- leased THE HOWLING on DVD in Germany with interesting re- sults. The “fake porn” footage— some of which, Joe tells us, was shot in his own garage on the “bonnet” of the actress’ own car!—was likewise rejected by the German censors... but due to an authoring mishap, it was accidentally included in the company’s first disc pressing of 3000 copies! Reportedly, word was leaked on the Internet and the edition sold out in only two days! Kinowelt are now reauthoring/repressing the disc without the controversial material. Collectors alert!
WHEN SHE REIGNS, IT POURS
I just received VW 107 and
turned straight to Kim Newman’s QUEEN KONG review [107:57]. I have been researching this in- famous movie for a couple of years now and was eager to see what Kim’s take on it was. I must just pull him up on one misconception which he perpetu- ates—that Dino De Laurentiis
“took legal action to ‘protect’ his KING KONG.” In fact, the legal action was taken jointly by De Laurentiis and RKO and was a straightforward accusation of (a) plagiarism and (b) passing off, in relation to the 1933 KONG as much as the in-production 1976
film. After a few months, during which time the trade papers had great fun with headlines about “monkey business” and “gorilla warfare,” the case was settled out of court in early 1977, as part of which Frank Agrama agreed not to distribute his film (although he did cheekily show it in cinemas in Italy).
Agrama kept the film on his shelf for the next 24 years be- fore shopping it around the AFM where it was bought for theat- rical distribution by a Japa- nese company. Sadly, a big release—billboard advertising, toy Queenies, soundtrack CD— was somewhat scuppered by a release date of 14th September 2001, a week when even the Japanese weren’t in the mood to see famous landmarks trashed by monsters.
I’m pleased to report that, on 1st November last year, a mere
27 years after it was made, QUEEN KONG finally received its domestic premiere at the Phoe- nix Arts Cinema in Leicester. It is, if anything, even worse on the big screen.
MJ Simpson Leicester, England SLIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH
In his letter regarding the ALICE IN WONDERLAND disc,
Joe Dante suggests that the SONG OF THE SOUTH excerpts represented the first time that “anything” from this film has ever surfaced on home video. I hate to be a stickler, but Disney’s line of “Sing-Along-Songs” VHS re- leases featured a volume high- lighting (and named for) the entire “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” number. This passed without controversy in the 1980s—but yes, it’s been an awfully long time.
Shane M. Dallmann Marina CA .
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