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Fast forwarding to the good parts has become a universal obsession with the proliferation of DVDs into the marketplace. Not only has nearly every movie, regardless of how extreme or obscure, managed to be pressed to disc, but those movies are overflowing with an abundance of extras, uncut versions, and Easter eggs that can leave one's trigger finger bandaged from abuse.
That's where Peter M. Bracke comes in. As editor-in-chief of dvdfile.com he has viewed and reviewed thousands of DVDs. His in-depth reportage on quality and added value has become an industry standard, like Consumer Affairs for the home-entertainment junkie. His reviews and news are syndicated on Yahoo! (http://movies.yahoo.com/dvd), and now he's published his first book, Ultimate DVD: The Essential Guide to Building Your DVD Collection (Berkley Trade Paperback).
Bracke took his bloodshot eyes off the TV screen for a moment to sit with Mr. Skin and focus his formidable understanding of the medium onto that dark corner in which Skin Central thrives: nudity. With his scholarly research and our unmatched library of lust, readers will never have to waste time with skinless bonus features again.
As a fellow cyber movie maven, what do you think of Mr. Skin?
I've always been interested in gratuitous nudity. I might have heard the name. Then I poked around. Now I know you.
There are different kinds of nudity; I mean, anyone can go rent a porno and see whatever you want. But for me the fun of nudity in mainstream movies is seeing people that you wouldn't think would do nudity, some famous person. If you want to see someone you've never heard of you can go out and rent porn, but it's more fun to go out and try to find some big, famous star who did nudity ten years ago. That's always more interesting for me, myself, but everyone is different.
After researching your book, what are some of the sexiest extras you've seen that may surprise us?
It was about a year ago, Artisan, which is now defunct, they've become Lion's Gate, they started this thing where they'd try to sell crappy movies by filling them with new gratuitous extras. It started with National Lampoon's Van Wilder; the big promotion was that the menus contained new nudity. They went out and hired actresses to pose nude and say stupid things and they created menus around naked women [laughs].
They also did that with Boat Trip (Picture: 1 - 2), which I thought was hilarious. It's a movie about Cuba Gooding Jr. on a gay cruise and they totally resell the DVD. The menus are hilarious; you get to see these women just sun-tanning themselves with oil. It goes on for ten minutes. The menus are far better than the film itself, especially since it's completely the wrong audience they're marketing this to.
What about nude extras, like deleted scenes, documentaries, that sort of thing?
There really isn't too much. The way studios are these days legal departments are really strict and anything approaching nudity from someone famous usually gets snipped. Like there was a recent release, the Alien box, with Sigourney Weaver, in her screen test to help win the role she took her top off in the audition roll, and they have footage of it. They weren't allowed to use it in the DVD. I would love to see that.
Then this Friday the 13th box set, Paramount's collecting the first eight films, and there was this gag reel they had for part eight. The guy who plays Jason, his name is Kane Hodder, in a couple scenes he attached a giant fake dildo to his Jason costume and was showing it to the camera, and that got cut out, totally exorcised from the extras.
The Real Cancun, you know that really bad reality movie, that had a lot of footage of people letting it all hang out and I was told kind of on the sly that all that stuff got snipped out. They put a little bit of extra naughty footage on the DVD, but the really good stuff never made it.
Now this is all rumor, but I've heard that awful movie by Madonna, Body of Evidence, the unrated cut of that, there was a call that it shouldn't go out, but the studio put it out. It was already out on video anyway. There have been some stars that wanted to suppress things.
The movie Species, which is famous for Natasha Henstridge being naked throughout for no reason other than to be naked [laughs]. There were some outtakes there that never made it to the DVD as well.
What about the choice cuts that made it to DVD--any favorites?
There are unrated movies like by this great director named Todd Phillips. He went back and inserted more nudity in his movies Old School (Picture: 1 - 2) and Road Trip (Picture: 1 - 2). Those all have gratuitous nudity inserted just for the sake of having gratuitous nudity and having an unrated cut.
American Pie (Picture: 1 - 2) movies are another example where the directors ahead of time have told me that they shot more stuff kind of knowing it wouldn't make it for the R-rated cut and then they'd go back knowing it would be on the DVD. That's kind of cool.
There are a lot of foreign films you see unrated on DVD. There really aren't that many DVDs that have extra nudity put into it aside from adult stuff. It's just not a huge thing the studios have been pushing. There are legal clearances; most of the time nudity is very much in the contract. Only this can be shown and only for this scene. It's never cleared for a DVD. You're not going to see much of that unfortunately.
Then of the ones you've seen, which are the hottest?
Basic Instinct, the unrated cut of that, is great. It's so ridiculous. The movie is infamous for Sharon Stone's (Picture: 1 - 2) famous scene where she's being interrogated and she opens her legs and you see . . . bush, for lack of a better word [laughs].
I'm going to seem like a total pervert, but the funny thing was they talk about it a little bit on the DVD. In film things are darker, so when they transfer the film it looks so good sometimes that you see a lot more than you originally saw [laughs]. So, there were great pains taken to make sure the transfer didn't show too much. They obviously couldn't cut out the scene because it was part of the film.
They also added a whole new sex scene between her and Michael Douglas, which is ridiculous that it's almost like acrobatics. The sex is so over the top, it's very Showgirls-like, and that was never in the theatrical cut. That's in the DVD. It's a lot of fun if you're a Sharon Stone fan.
It's not that graphic, but you know the movie Dressed to Kill that Brian De Palma did? There's a really cool thing they did on that DVD. The movie was cut heavily for theatrical release and they put the unrated cut on DVD. When they did it, Laurent Bouzereau [director of some of the DVD extras] did a comparison of the TV version, the R version, and the uncut version. It's just hysterical to see how it gets worse and worse as it's bastardized.
There's a whole scene at the beginning with Angie Dickinson (Picture: 1), it's really graphic, full-on full-frontal nudity.
I don't know if you're familiar with a lot of the younger WB actors like Alyssa Milano from Who's the Boss, she did a movie called Embrace of the Vampire (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3), which she won't talk about now. They released a version of that on DVD and there's lots of nudity and sex in that one.
Poison Ivy is another one, with Drew Barrymore (Picture: 1); she did that to get her feet back in Hollywood after her drug addiction at twelve. There's some extra nudity on that too. Usually it's always the star that's trying to become famous again or on the way down, that's usually when they take their clothes off [laughs]. That's what I've been able to find. The biggest thing on DVD is deleted scenes, but that's usually boring crap.
Are there any Easter eggs that deserve to be cracked open?
There's profanity, but there're no Easter eggs I know of that have any hidden boob shots in a mainstream movie--not a single one. It's our culture. Look what happened with Janet Jackson and her infamous boob. I can't believe that it went on for weeks.
The studios are so afraid of being sued by talent and making talent look bad. You're not going to potentially piss off your biggest stars by showing them doing something they don't want people to see and ruining your relationship with them.
You see more nudity with unrated cuts like There's Something About Mary, but it's so tame compared to what you can see. It's just some more nudity.
What about B-movie DVDs and their extras?
European exploitation movies, like stuff by Dario Argento that have more nudity in the uncut versions. Anchor Bay puts a lot of that stuff out. There are some cannibal movies, one that they finally put out uncut for the first time in America called Make Them Die Slowly [a.k.a. Cannibal ferox] (Picture: 1). They fully reinserted the scene where the woman gets the hooks through her boobs. I was like, "This is pleasant."
There's a movie called The Prowler (Picture: 1 - 2) by Joesph Zito, who went on to make Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Invasion U.S.A., and it's uncut on DVD for the first time. It has a pretty graphic scene of a girl in the shower naked.
There's a movie called The Toolbox Murders, which is hilarious, it's uncut on DVD. There's a whole scene with Kelly Nichols (Picture: 1 - 2), who became a porn star, Stephen King said it's his favorite murder scene ever. She masturbates in a bathtub for like ten minutes, for no reason, and then gets killed [laughs]. And that was all reinserted into the DVD, if you're into that sort of thing.
It wasn't in the theatrical cut?
Not in the U.S., R-rated version; it was heavily cut. Maybe you see prints in Times Square floating around, but stuff is lost for years. That's the great thing about DVD, lots of the foreign stuff and the slasher stuff shows up uncut on DVD finally, and there's usually a little more nudity. The major studios are pretty loathe to touch it I'm afraid.
Who does the best job repackaging these lost classics?
Blue Underground is amazing. The unfortunate thing is they have to acquire titles, so they don't have a huge selection. Anchor Bay is really good; they've done a lot of great stuff. Criterion still does a lot of great European stuff; they don't do horror movies. They did a movie called In the Realm of the Senses (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4) and they just released I Am Curious (Yellow) (Picture: - - - ) and I Am Curious (Blue) (Picture: - - - ). Those films were notorious. They were imported in the early '70s when the porn boom started happening, porn chic I think they called it. They tried to ban them. There's some historical relevance. Those were the first two quote unquote adult movies that were imported into America.
Any nice extras?
There's a little. The films themselves are as they were originally. They were not R rated anyway, so they're uncut. There's no extra sexy footage, but there's some good analysis by the director on the whole controversy.
You've done a lot of interviews for the book; do any stand out?
John Waters. We talked a lot about his early films. There was sex with a chicken in Pink Flamingos (Picture: 1 - 2). We talked about censorship in general and how it isn't any easier today. New Line has been pretty supportive. They let him put some extra scenes on the DVD for Pink Flamingos, more sick jokes. There's one scene that has some nudity and, in my opinion, the actors in those movies aren't very attractive so I don't want to see them naked [laughs].
If you're a fan of Mink Stole (Picture: 1) you'll get to see a little more nudity. There's a humorous scene where she's having sex with a guy who has blue hair and she has red hair and then they also dye their pubic hair the same color [laughs]. It's an unusual sight to see: copulation with pubic hair. [Waters] is always trying to push the envelope a little bit. He's still having trouble. His new movie A Dirty Shame is supposed to be unrated or got slapped with an NC-17.
I look forward to seeing what they do with the DVD.
Yeah. It's disappointing. I remember growing up with movies like Blue Lagoon and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, back then you didn't have cable and you couldn't rent porn at every street corner, not like you can now. I think nudity was a selling point for studios, like with slasher movies. I remember Blue Lagoon being advertised like take your kids to see this movie, it's educational. The only reason we were going to see it was to see Brooke Shields (Picture: 1) and Christopher Atkins naked. But now I think the studios have lost that to porn.
Mainstream stuff is getting tamer. That's why people like Todd Phillips actively shoot a movie knowing they can get an unrated cut on DVD and put a little more nudity in there. It's really cool to see. But very few people are embracing that unfortunately. You're not going to see Steven Spielberg doing that [laughs]!
That's where Peter M. Bracke comes in. As editor-in-chief of dvdfile.com he has viewed and reviewed thousands of DVDs. His in-depth reportage on quality and added value has become an industry standard, like Consumer Affairs for the home-entertainment junkie. His reviews and news are syndicated on Yahoo! (http://movies.yahoo.com/dvd), and now he's published his first book, Ultimate DVD: The Essential Guide to Building Your DVD Collection (Berkley Trade Paperback).
Bracke took his bloodshot eyes off the TV screen for a moment to sit with Mr. Skin and focus his formidable understanding of the medium onto that dark corner in which Skin Central thrives: nudity. With his scholarly research and our unmatched library of lust, readers will never have to waste time with skinless bonus features again.
As a fellow cyber movie maven, what do you think of Mr. Skin?
I've always been interested in gratuitous nudity. I might have heard the name. Then I poked around. Now I know you.
There are different kinds of nudity; I mean, anyone can go rent a porno and see whatever you want. But for me the fun of nudity in mainstream movies is seeing people that you wouldn't think would do nudity, some famous person. If you want to see someone you've never heard of you can go out and rent porn, but it's more fun to go out and try to find some big, famous star who did nudity ten years ago. That's always more interesting for me, myself, but everyone is different.
After researching your book, what are some of the sexiest extras you've seen that may surprise us?
It was about a year ago, Artisan, which is now defunct, they've become Lion's Gate, they started this thing where they'd try to sell crappy movies by filling them with new gratuitous extras. It started with National Lampoon's Van Wilder; the big promotion was that the menus contained new nudity. They went out and hired actresses to pose nude and say stupid things and they created menus around naked women [laughs].
They also did that with Boat Trip (Picture: 1 - 2), which I thought was hilarious. It's a movie about Cuba Gooding Jr. on a gay cruise and they totally resell the DVD. The menus are hilarious; you get to see these women just sun-tanning themselves with oil. It goes on for ten minutes. The menus are far better than the film itself, especially since it's completely the wrong audience they're marketing this to.
What about nude extras, like deleted scenes, documentaries, that sort of thing?
There really isn't too much. The way studios are these days legal departments are really strict and anything approaching nudity from someone famous usually gets snipped. Like there was a recent release, the Alien box, with Sigourney Weaver, in her screen test to help win the role she took her top off in the audition roll, and they have footage of it. They weren't allowed to use it in the DVD. I would love to see that.
Then this Friday the 13th box set, Paramount's collecting the first eight films, and there was this gag reel they had for part eight. The guy who plays Jason, his name is Kane Hodder, in a couple scenes he attached a giant fake dildo to his Jason costume and was showing it to the camera, and that got cut out, totally exorcised from the extras.
The Real Cancun, you know that really bad reality movie, that had a lot of footage of people letting it all hang out and I was told kind of on the sly that all that stuff got snipped out. They put a little bit of extra naughty footage on the DVD, but the really good stuff never made it.
Now this is all rumor, but I've heard that awful movie by Madonna, Body of Evidence, the unrated cut of that, there was a call that it shouldn't go out, but the studio put it out. It was already out on video anyway. There have been some stars that wanted to suppress things.
The movie Species, which is famous for Natasha Henstridge being naked throughout for no reason other than to be naked [laughs]. There were some outtakes there that never made it to the DVD as well.
What about the choice cuts that made it to DVD--any favorites?
There are unrated movies like by this great director named Todd Phillips. He went back and inserted more nudity in his movies Old School (Picture: 1 - 2) and Road Trip (Picture: 1 - 2). Those all have gratuitous nudity inserted just for the sake of having gratuitous nudity and having an unrated cut.
American Pie (Picture: 1 - 2) movies are another example where the directors ahead of time have told me that they shot more stuff kind of knowing it wouldn't make it for the R-rated cut and then they'd go back knowing it would be on the DVD. That's kind of cool.
There are a lot of foreign films you see unrated on DVD. There really aren't that many DVDs that have extra nudity put into it aside from adult stuff. It's just not a huge thing the studios have been pushing. There are legal clearances; most of the time nudity is very much in the contract. Only this can be shown and only for this scene. It's never cleared for a DVD. You're not going to see much of that unfortunately.
Then of the ones you've seen, which are the hottest?
Basic Instinct, the unrated cut of that, is great. It's so ridiculous. The movie is infamous for Sharon Stone's (Picture: 1 - 2) famous scene where she's being interrogated and she opens her legs and you see . . . bush, for lack of a better word [laughs].
I'm going to seem like a total pervert, but the funny thing was they talk about it a little bit on the DVD. In film things are darker, so when they transfer the film it looks so good sometimes that you see a lot more than you originally saw [laughs]. So, there were great pains taken to make sure the transfer didn't show too much. They obviously couldn't cut out the scene because it was part of the film.
They also added a whole new sex scene between her and Michael Douglas, which is ridiculous that it's almost like acrobatics. The sex is so over the top, it's very Showgirls-like, and that was never in the theatrical cut. That's in the DVD. It's a lot of fun if you're a Sharon Stone fan.
It's not that graphic, but you know the movie Dressed to Kill that Brian De Palma did? There's a really cool thing they did on that DVD. The movie was cut heavily for theatrical release and they put the unrated cut on DVD. When they did it, Laurent Bouzereau [director of some of the DVD extras] did a comparison of the TV version, the R version, and the uncut version. It's just hysterical to see how it gets worse and worse as it's bastardized.
There's a whole scene at the beginning with Angie Dickinson (Picture: 1), it's really graphic, full-on full-frontal nudity.
I don't know if you're familiar with a lot of the younger WB actors like Alyssa Milano from Who's the Boss, she did a movie called Embrace of the Vampire (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3), which she won't talk about now. They released a version of that on DVD and there's lots of nudity and sex in that one.
Poison Ivy is another one, with Drew Barrymore (Picture: 1); she did that to get her feet back in Hollywood after her drug addiction at twelve. There's some extra nudity on that too. Usually it's always the star that's trying to become famous again or on the way down, that's usually when they take their clothes off [laughs]. That's what I've been able to find. The biggest thing on DVD is deleted scenes, but that's usually boring crap.
Are there any Easter eggs that deserve to be cracked open?
There's profanity, but there're no Easter eggs I know of that have any hidden boob shots in a mainstream movie--not a single one. It's our culture. Look what happened with Janet Jackson and her infamous boob. I can't believe that it went on for weeks.
The studios are so afraid of being sued by talent and making talent look bad. You're not going to potentially piss off your biggest stars by showing them doing something they don't want people to see and ruining your relationship with them.
You see more nudity with unrated cuts like There's Something About Mary, but it's so tame compared to what you can see. It's just some more nudity.
What about B-movie DVDs and their extras?
European exploitation movies, like stuff by Dario Argento that have more nudity in the uncut versions. Anchor Bay puts a lot of that stuff out. There are some cannibal movies, one that they finally put out uncut for the first time in America called Make Them Die Slowly [a.k.a. Cannibal ferox] (Picture: 1). They fully reinserted the scene where the woman gets the hooks through her boobs. I was like, "This is pleasant."
There's a movie called The Prowler (Picture: 1 - 2) by Joesph Zito, who went on to make Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Invasion U.S.A., and it's uncut on DVD for the first time. It has a pretty graphic scene of a girl in the shower naked.
There's a movie called The Toolbox Murders, which is hilarious, it's uncut on DVD. There's a whole scene with Kelly Nichols (Picture: 1 - 2), who became a porn star, Stephen King said it's his favorite murder scene ever. She masturbates in a bathtub for like ten minutes, for no reason, and then gets killed [laughs]. And that was all reinserted into the DVD, if you're into that sort of thing.
It wasn't in the theatrical cut?
Not in the U.S., R-rated version; it was heavily cut. Maybe you see prints in Times Square floating around, but stuff is lost for years. That's the great thing about DVD, lots of the foreign stuff and the slasher stuff shows up uncut on DVD finally, and there's usually a little more nudity. The major studios are pretty loathe to touch it I'm afraid.
Who does the best job repackaging these lost classics?
Blue Underground is amazing. The unfortunate thing is they have to acquire titles, so they don't have a huge selection. Anchor Bay is really good; they've done a lot of great stuff. Criterion still does a lot of great European stuff; they don't do horror movies. They did a movie called In the Realm of the Senses (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4) and they just released I Am Curious (Yellow) (Picture: - - - ) and I Am Curious (Blue) (Picture: - - - ). Those films were notorious. They were imported in the early '70s when the porn boom started happening, porn chic I think they called it. They tried to ban them. There's some historical relevance. Those were the first two quote unquote adult movies that were imported into America.
Any nice extras?
There's a little. The films themselves are as they were originally. They were not R rated anyway, so they're uncut. There's no extra sexy footage, but there's some good analysis by the director on the whole controversy.
You've done a lot of interviews for the book; do any stand out?
John Waters. We talked a lot about his early films. There was sex with a chicken in Pink Flamingos (Picture: 1 - 2). We talked about censorship in general and how it isn't any easier today. New Line has been pretty supportive. They let him put some extra scenes on the DVD for Pink Flamingos, more sick jokes. There's one scene that has some nudity and, in my opinion, the actors in those movies aren't very attractive so I don't want to see them naked [laughs].
If you're a fan of Mink Stole (Picture: 1) you'll get to see a little more nudity. There's a humorous scene where she's having sex with a guy who has blue hair and she has red hair and then they also dye their pubic hair the same color [laughs]. It's an unusual sight to see: copulation with pubic hair. [Waters] is always trying to push the envelope a little bit. He's still having trouble. His new movie A Dirty Shame is supposed to be unrated or got slapped with an NC-17.
I look forward to seeing what they do with the DVD.
Yeah. It's disappointing. I remember growing up with movies like Blue Lagoon and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, back then you didn't have cable and you couldn't rent porn at every street corner, not like you can now. I think nudity was a selling point for studios, like with slasher movies. I remember Blue Lagoon being advertised like take your kids to see this movie, it's educational. The only reason we were going to see it was to see Brooke Shields (Picture: 1) and Christopher Atkins naked. But now I think the studios have lost that to porn.
Mainstream stuff is getting tamer. That's why people like Todd Phillips actively shoot a movie knowing they can get an unrated cut on DVD and put a little more nudity in there. It's really cool to see. But very few people are embracing that unfortunately. You're not going to see Steven Spielberg doing that [laughs]!
