@reelswap.bsky.socialFor the television version of Blue Velvet an editor spent ten weeks cropping and remixing, and Dennis Hopper came in and rerecorded 58 lines of dialogue in a single day. The result ran only sixty seconds shorter than the real film. 40 years today.
@reelswap.bsky.socialHellraiser was passed uncut for British cinemas in 1987, then cut for British video in 1988. Six and a half seconds across four shots, because the Video Recordings Act made tape a separate certificate and the board was harder on what you could pause at home.
@reelswap.bsky.socialNew World Video shipped Elvira: Mistress of the Dark to video stores in early 1989 at $89.95 a tape, with a poster and a cardboard standee, and it hit number 13 on the rental chart. Cassandra Peterson turns 75 today.
@reelswap.bsky.socialNatural Born Killers reached number three on Billboard's videocassette rental chart in March 1995. In Britain its video release was cancelled after Dunblane and no legal tape existed until 2001. Stone and Tommy Lee Jones both turn 80 today.
@reelswap.bsky.socialFreddy's Dead turns 35 today. Its 3-D final act was stripped out of American videocassettes and out of the TV version, but the British and French rental tapes kept it, and so did the laserdisc. Which shop you walked into decided which ending you got.