Revenge

(Unrated director's cut)

Let me refresh your memory a second. Revenge is the Tony Scott film about a love triangle between a hot-shot Navy flyboy (Kevin Costner), an elderly Mexican crime boss (Anthony Quinn), and the Mexican's beautiful young wife (Madeleine Stowe). When the old man figures out what is going on, he exacts terrible revenge on the cheating couple. (Original review here, if you want to get caught up.)

When I heard that Tony Scott was planning to do an unrated director's cut of this film, I was stoked to see it, for reasons both aesthetic and erotic. On the artistic side, it has always seemed to me that this film was a near-miss, a mediocre film with a good film buried somewhere inside of it. On the erotic side, both Scott and Madeleine Stowe have discussed the fact that he filmed some "explicit" erotica for this film that he could never use because the studio simply would not let him make the film he wanted to make. The theatrical release had some steamy clutches, but the nudity was coy.

Alas, all my hopes were dashed. This unrated director's cut is not the film a young Tony Scott wanted to make in 1990, but simply the film he now prefers. If there truly was some very explicit erotica filmed back then, it does not appear in new director's cut. There are slightly longer versions of three sex scenes, but they don't add nudity. One of the sex scenes, the first encounter between Costner and Stowe in a cloakroom, is rendered somewhat confusing by a few seconds of additional footage in which Stowe gets angry and slaps Costner, whereupon Costner gets angry in turn, knocks over some clothing, flings some coats, then goes back to Stowe and kisses her violently. It's never really clear why any of that is happening, or what the characters might be thinking.

Setting aside the sex and nudity, I don't believe that the changes made the film better. Scott did add ten minutes of footage which had never been seen before, but in the process of doing that he chopped twenty minutes off the running time, which means he eliminated thirty minutes of old footage. That's a lot to cut. He justifies it in the name of pacing. In the extra features, Scott admits that he's a guy who likes to get down to business quickly and to strip things down to the bare essentials. In doing so here, however, he eliminated a lot of the characters' essential motivation. Watching through the director's cut without referring back to the theatrical release, I was not able to understand why Stowe was unhappy with her husband, or why Costner was so quick to betray a man who was supposed to be a dear friend. Those elements were much clearer in the previous cut. The cuts also eliminated one of the best scenes in the film, a scene in which a post-beating Costner bonds with a local played by John Leguizamo. Losing that scene was bad enough by itself, but in context its removal also reduced Leguizamo's role to a cameo. I'm not even sure I would have recognized him.

I could continue to enumerate loose ends created and characters left undeveloped by the removal of thirty minutes of the film, but I think you all understand that thirty minutes is a very large amount of film, and the excision of so much footage two decades after a film's release will inevitably cause some problems.

That sad thing to me is that there were several other scenes which could have been eliminated if Scott wanted to improve the pacing of the film and reduce its running time. There is a long prologue in which Costner's risk-taking personality is established by some hot-dogging aerial maneuvers in his jet. None of that had any real bearing on the central story. To make matters worse, Tony Scott muddled up that sequence with some unnecessary and confusing symbolic foreshadowing, in which the hotshot aviator Costner flies carelessly over the Mexican desert, while a forlorn, post-beating Costner crawls half-dead beneath him. (At that time it makes no sense at all.) After the flight, Costner attends his farewell party (his Navy hitch is up), and that scene also could have been shortened or even cut entirely if necessary without losing anything crucial to the film.

After I watched the director's cut, I re-read my review of the theatrical release and noticed that I had complimented the musical score of unusual and new-to-me Mexican folk and ranchero music. For reasons unclear to me, the director's cut seems to have a re-tooled sound track, and I never really noticed the music at all.

All in all, the "director's cut" is a major disappointment. In fact, I believe strongly that the film was better as it was! If you are interested in the film, get the R-rated theatrical release, which also includes a full screen version to go with the widescreen theatrical aspect ratio.

 

Madeleine Stowe (film clip)

 

Nach Fünf im Urwald

Nach Fünf im Urwald (1995), or After Five in the Jungle, is a German comedy staring Franka Potente (Run, Lola, Run) in her first film

Anna turns 17, and her parents leave the house and allow her to throw a party. The only stated restriction is that they must keep the party downstairs. When her parents return in the morning, they are not pleased. There are hungover teenagers, empty bottles, and trash strewn all over the house, there is a horseradish in the fridge carved into a huge dildo, and there's a small box of hash on the floor. Worst of all, daddy's favorite record, a very rare Thelonius Monk album, is broken. Dad goes postal, and Anna reacts by hitchhiking to Munich. She is picked up by a young man who is also leaving home and who has a huge crush on her.

Meanwhile, all four parents meet in a disco trying to find the kids and they eventually retire to Anna's house, where they recall their own misspent youth, get drunk, and smoke the hash.

In Munich, Anna wants to win a role in a commercial impersonating Janis Joplin, but she and the boy basically just have various misadventures. Anna is talked into a midnight swim by the young man, and strips to her panties. Then his real intentions become known, which is when she decides to return home. Anna finds another copy of the broken record, and returns home to find the house in nearly the same condition as it was after her own party, with all four parents passed out in the living room.

The story is told through the eyes of Anna's little sister, who keeps a journal.

Unfortunately, this film is only available from Germany and is in German with no subtitles, but if you have the language skills, I recommend this one. Not only is it Franka Potente's first role, and a nude one, but it has much to say about the fact that age and maturity are not necessarily the same. And this may be your only chance to see someone scrub and then blow dry a dead rabbit.

This is a C+.

IMDb readers say 7.3, and it won several awards.

As always, if you are interested in acquiring a region-free DVD player, Rare Licensed DVDs has an offer for you.

Franka Potente

 

The Inconfessable Orgies of Emmanuelle

Yesterday we had the Time Machine in 1982 for Swamp Thing, so it was easy to stay there to catch a Jesus Franco Film.

Leading off is Asunción Calero with some full frontal action.

Then Muriel Montossé & Carmen Carrión are topless.

Then the star Muriel Montossé lets us enjoy all of her lovely body.

Choses Secretes

It's a story about two young chicks with hot bods, Sandrine (Sabrina Seyvecou) and Nathalie (Coralie Revel), who get bounced by the pig owner of the strip club for not prostituting themselves for his customers in addition to their regular jobs.

Nathalie educates Sandrine in the ways of teasing and tormenting men, later, the two take office jobs and play with their bosses' desires, until they meet their match, Christophe (Fabrice Deville), a fearless woman-eater.