One of the grisly moments long missing from prints of THE SEVERED ARM, restored to a Code Red DVD quickly withdrawn from the market.
nowhere near as wearying as the participation of David “BAYWATCH” Hasselhoff as Chet’s “celebrity life- guard” (“Welcome to rock bot- tom,” indeed). Not content with the simple but genuine amusement that could be afforded by such a cameo (cf., Micky Dolenz in MEGA PYTHON VS. GATOROID), the filmmakers relentlessly flog the presence of “The Hoff” from his first appearance all the way through the end credits (10m worth of gag footage and outtakes to pad out the barely feature-length feature). One can all-too-easily imagine Gulager and company laughing it up in the planning stages, confi- dent that viewers would delight in their antics and scream, shout, laugh and cheer in all the right places, as the actual film clearly takes that audience for granted. Still, those who simply must
experience PIRANHA 3DD at its full potential will find everything they want in Anchor Bay’s 3-disc set (3-D and 2-D Blu-ray, stan- dard DVD and digital copy), in- cluding commentary by Gulager,
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Soisson and Dunstan; extra pro- motional snippets with Koechner, Busey and (of course) Hassel- hoff; minimal deleted scenes; an 8m making-of and the point- less short film “A Lesson With John McEnroe” (3:42; viewable for free online and apparently included simply because director Michael Ratner also helmed the “Don’t Sneak Into PIRANHA 3DD” promo). This set costs only slightly more than the single-disc DVD (available separately as PI- RANHA DD for $24.98 but con- taining all of the same extras), making it the better bargain in the long run, but please don’t confuse consumer advice with an actual recommendation.
THE SEVERED ARM / SO SAD ABOUT GLORIA
1973/1975, Code Red, $12.99, 83m 48s/88m 41s, DVD By Nathaniel Thompson
A proto-slasher film blatantly inspired by the infamous 1972 Andres flight disaster which led
to 16 survivors resorting to can- nibalism, THE SEVERED ARM is a textbook example of a film whose reputation was almost entirely destroyed by home video. Originally, the feature was a drive-in slot-filler for Me- dia Cinema Group, a short-lived outfit behind such other 1973 films as THE KILLING KIND and LEMORA: A CHILD’S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL, but its or- phaned status after the company’s dissolution led to a bizarre video history in which its public domain status led to many, many re- leases, none of which came close to doing it justice.
This time, the premise doesn’t involve snowbound soccer play- ers but rather a group of subur- ban Southern California men who head off to the hills for a week- end (all seen in flashback), which leads to a spelunking expedition into an abandoned mine, a cave- in, and a two-week ordeal in which they draw straws to decide who will lose a limb to feed the rest. The loser, Ted (THE CORPSE
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