Thanx very much for your gracious comments! I'm just lucky enough to have early copies of some (unfortunately, only SOME) of the older classics with which to compare the newer versions. Speaking of which, I should have the VCA DVD of "Pamela Mann" some time late next week. I'll do a "scene-by-scene" on it as soon as I can.

Sorry to be of little help, but I've never seen or owned a copy of "Filthy Rich" (sorry -- not a Vanessa fan, what can I say?). But I can make an educated guess that the rape scene won't be there on the DVD (rape still being one of the "no-nos" these days), especially since it was already cut on the VHS.

As a matter of fact, I'm expecting the same thing to be true of "Pamela Mann" for the same reasons! There was an entire sequence in that film where Barbara Bourbon (Pamela) is abducted and (orally) raped at gunpoint by Jamie Gillis and Darby Lloyd Rains. It has been missing on VHS copies for years and, when I asked Wit of VCA about it as they were preparing the DVD, he specifically stated that no such scene appeared on their Master. Here's the thread.

Consequently, I hold out little hope for either rape scene to survive in either DVD release! Maybe, in your case, I'll be proven wrong -- I sure hope so, 'cause I hate it when cuts like that happen!

Edited by - greybeard on Sep 22 2001

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You're right about the "rape" being a fantasy fulfilled, a pre-arranged event with Pamela's driver (Gillis) and maid (Rains). I just didn't mention it in my last post. The problem is that, from the viewer's perspective at the time the "rape" scene takes place in the film, it actually is a rape! As you point out, only later do we discover it's one of Pamela's pre-arranged adventures. With that in mind, the scene was probably cut because of its initial implications ("if it looks like, walks like, quacks like a duck, etc.").

As far as VCA's masters are concerned, I'm sure they originally had masters of the complete films at one time. The only problem, as I mentioned in the "Pamela Mann Will Be Edited" thread to which you contributed, they had to make "Edited Masters" from the originals, in order to produce and release the edited VHS versions. As such, these Edited Masters became their "current" Masters. Time passes and, guess what? Nobody can find the original, unedited Masters of some of the titles! Blame it on carelessness and/or laxity in the edit suite and/or the archives! Also blame it on some studios being cheap when it comes to archiving and storing old materials! The big film studios did it, too, trashing tons of stuff instead of paying for it to be safely stored. Their loss is ... our loss!

Edited by - greybeard on Sep 23 2001

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