Incense for the damned. This is on BBC2 tonight. Once again we appear to have a shortened or 'cut' version from 'Auntie.' Their screening is 80 mins, yet IMDb have it at 87. The film was made 38 years ago yet it appears that we are not adult enough to see all of it. Anyone from the Beeb care to comment?
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I seem to recall that films shown on television always experience a degree of "shrinkage" in terms of running times too because of a difference in frame rates between film cameras / projectors and the television transmission process? Or have I swallowed some urban myth hook, line and sinker?
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aha! I have found this article on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine
so it looks as if I was right. Although a 4% increase wouldn't account for a loss of 7 minutes, but then television companies tend to speed up / cut credits at the end of a film too nowadays. </edit>
The print screened by the BBC is basically the UK theatrical version which should run 83m. The BBC print runs 79m as it is transmitted at 25 frames per second whereas the cinema prints are 24 frames per second. However, the BBC print runs about 1m or so shorter than the UK theatrical print - most of this is the 40s end credit role which was missing entirely (this is present in the Bloodsuckers DVD released on R1 by Redemption). It was sent to the UK BBFC at 87m but I don't believe it was ever released at that length although it was cut by the BBFC, probably by about 1m or so.
The longest available version of this film is the Redemption R1 DVD which is 83m. There is also the Soemthing Weird R1 DVD called Bloodsuckers but the print is actually titled Freedom Seeker. This runs 80m and has an alternate, much shorter, version of the orgy sequence, which has a number of different shots that don't appear in the other prints (some of these were cut by the BBFC from the UK theatrical print).
I've just picked up the dvd on the Prism label and they have the running time at 73 mins! Where the *beep* have the other ten minutes disappeared to?
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