Merry 10th to The Bodysnatcher Collection

[Stephen R. Fletcher]

This time 10 years ago, The Bodysnatcher Collection was released! Still remember the release date quite well. I was anxious and worried that Royal Mail and Play.co.uk (back when it existed) would screw me over since it didn’t arrive the Saturday before like most of the pre-orders I got from Play.co.uk would. I was waiting what felt like forever and worried it wouldn’t even get posted on the release date. Thankfully it did and I immediately put on the Series I & II doccos first :o)

Such a shame it’s so hard to come by now, but what a bloody great DVD boxset it was!

Topic

[crunch]

I’ll repost this from a previous Bodysnatcher Topic. This is for a “Region 4” version of the Bodysnatcher Collection:

libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 5.0.3
libdvdnav: DVD Title: BBCDVD2346
libdvdnav: DVD Serial Number: 375258ea
libdvdnav: DVD Title (Alternative):
libdvdnav: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00f50000. Regions: 2 4

In other words, the version available throughout Australasia should be just fine in any well behaving Region 2 device. (I haven’t checked but this may well be true for many other BBC releases over the years. It’s certainly much cheaper to produce one disk for as many territories as possible.)

[Dave]

Region 4 releases are often coded for Region 2 as well, I’m not sure why. I remember picking up the Australian version of Attack of the Clones when it first came out, to get an uncensored version that would work in a Region 2 player.

[Ben Saunders]

What on earth would they censor from Attack of the Clones?

[(deleted)]

Obi-Wan having a big old wank and shoving a lightsaber up his arse. Or have you not seen the Region 4 version? Sorry, spoilers.

[Flap Jack]

The bit where Anakin cuts down defenseless women and children with his lightsaber while screaming “Die, Space Arabs, die!”.

[Ben Saunders]

Did they cut the word beginning with N that Anakin says in his “I hate sand n******” speech? That was a defining character moment.

[Dave]

The real and boring answer is that there’s a short shot of a headbutt between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan that would have pushed the certificate up to a 12 if it had been left in.

http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/bbfc_defends_head_butt_removal_66745.asp

Of course, the best thing to come out of all this is the existence of a news story that begins “Darth Scourge complained most vociferously to the BBFC”.

[Ben Saunders]

Oh I remember that, actually

[Nick R]

The BBFC really had a thing against headbutts at that time. Even The Matrix (a 15 certificate) had one edited out. (Which AFAIK affected the soundtrack and was the reason the commentary wasn’t on the Region 2 release.)

Although IIRC there’s one in one of the Lord of the Rings films (possibly the PG-rated Fellowship of the Ring?) that somehow made it through unedited at around the same time.

[Dave]

Yes, I think they’ve cooled on it in recent years.

To be honest though, there was lots of stuff in the first LotR that I think pushed the boundaries of PG.

[cwickham]

There was definitely a case of a Simpsons episode that should have been rated 12, but the distributors ‘persuaded’ the BBFC to pass it with a PG because they were worried the higher rating would prohibit sales (there will be an article about this on my blog at some point in the not-too-distant future, incidentally). Possibly a similar thing with LOTR?

[Dave]

Or possibly LotR’s literary credentials helping sway them? I dunno.

[Warbodog]

A puppet being headbutted was supposedly the reason why one Farscape episode (‘Home on the Remains’), and thus the entire season 2 boxset, was bumped up to an 18.

[Moonlight]

I know us Americans are bizarrely stingy about sex when it comes to our ratings, but you Brits are equally bizarrely stingy about very specific kinds of violence when it comes to your ratings.

[Dave]

Generally I think it relates to whether the violence is likely to be imitated by young viewers, which I think is fair enough really. The BBFC definitely does seem to have oddly specific hangups about certain things though.

[Lily]

>violence is likely to be imitated by young viewers

Ah yes, like the spate of perforated eardrums across the country when kids went out copying the Tango advert and slapping their mates in the head.

[Ben Saunders]

My mum had to stop me and my brothers from watching Power Rangers because we’d fight each other like they did all the time. Children are idiots

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

My mum tried to stop me watching Power Rangers, but I used to just watch it on a Saturday morning before she woke up anyway. Now I co-host a Power Rangers podcast, so jokes on her really … or me. I’m not quite sure.

[Ben Saunders]

I actually remember being extremely young and watching Red Dwarf on the downlow when I wasn’t supposed to – my brother’s video player used to be able to be picked up on my television on the other side of the wall for whatever reason, and I remember watching Series VIII at the same time as him without anybody noticing. The bit I remember watching, specifically, was the Blue Midget Dance. I quite enjoyed it, then.

[Author]

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