Hello!

Associate-researcher Gary Teetzel re-viewed the old Image DVD of the Riccardo Freda/Mario Bava I Vampiri and then went snooping around online for what can be found on the show today.

He came up with this extended trailer for the German release, Der Vampir von Notre Dame. In Gary’s words,

“It includes an excerpt from the deleted opening sequence in which a criminal is sent to the guillotine. The film’s mad doctor was later to sew the criminal’s head back on and bring him back to life. This explains a prominent neck scar seen much later in the film, when the criminal is confessing all to the police.”

The trailer also includes a big piece of Gianna Maria Canale’s on-screen transformation, accomplished with the old red filter trick. An encoding of the U.S. version The Devil’s Commandment is available online, for some reason mostly redubbed in German. Added scenes feature the American comic Al Lewis, doubling for the mad doctor’s assistant. The deleted footage starts at the 2:05 mark. You can’t miss it — the lighting changes dramatically.

Both Film Masters and ClassicFlix announced new vintage titles this week. I don’t think ‘new vintage’ is an oxymoron in this particular usage.

Film Masters has restored the 1934 version of The Scarlet Letter, starring Colleen Moore, Hardie Albright, Henry B. Walthall, Cora Sue Collins and Alan Hale. It’s an unusual independent production. The executive producer Larry Darmour also made The Vampire Bat and The Sin of Nora Moran, both with Phil Goldstone.

The ClassicFlix project is a Kickstarter item called Aesop’s Fables The 1920s Vol.1, silent animated films by Paul Terry. The planned disc of at least fifteen shorts will end with a synchronized sound cartoon that is claimed to have beaten Disney’s Steamboat Willie into theaters. The disc producer is Thad Komorowski, for a new disc label, Cartoon Logic.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson