Flasz On Film

Look, I wasn’t going to write this because I thought the matter was settled. In fact, I have been working on something completely different, which I now had to pause. 

Because I’m pissed. 

Like… pissed-pissed.  

P-I-S-S-E-D Pissed.  

Why? 

Glad you asked. Look, the notion of following what has now been years of dubious news alerts about the upcoming™ physical media releases of The Abyss and True Lies has become a joke over the years. In fact, I may have personally lost my marbles a good handful of times over this, especially having learned that a re-release of remastered Avatar would get priority over remastering two movies from decades ago, neither of which had ever received a respectable high-definition release in the first place. But a few months ago, the shroud was lifted when it was announced that The Abyss, True Lies and Aliens (for good measure, I suppose) would receive brand new 4k restorations accompanied by UHD and Blu-Ray releases.  

Praise Jesus! Finally! 

However, nothing’s ever as good as it would seem. And that’s because not all those movies are heading to the UK. In fact, I couldn’t quite work out why I wasn’t able to even see the new-and-improved mega-amazing release of The Abyss as a pre-order item at all. I could find True Lies and Aliens just fine, but The Abyss was missing in action. And now I understand why that was.  

As it turns out, multiple sources have recently reported that the BBFC (the British Board of Film Classification) have held back on rating The Abyss for the UK release because of the now infamous scene involving a rat submerged in the oxygenated liquid. Now, for those who don’t know, it was a key piece of functional exposition showing off a piece of technology Ed Harris’ character would later use in the final act of the movie. Problem was that the scene was done “for real” with an actual rat submerged in actual oxygenated liquid, which is why it looks so realistic… Because it was real.  

Now, I’m not exactly sure what happened on the set of the film, so don’t quote me on that. After all, I don’t have a nice making-of documentary to hand which would have been a great bonus feature to include in a physical release that took thirty-five years to materialize, but my understanding is that the rat was submerged in the liquid, it may have defecated in the little tank (which is why the camera briefly cuts away) and that was it. From what I gather, the rat was fine. In fact, it died of natural causes a few weeks before the movie opened theatrically.  

Nevertheless, the issue of animal cruelty persists and apparently has been a long-standing problem with classifying the James Cameron movie for a longer while. The BBFC issued a response to Disney (who owns the movie originally produced by Fox) and asked them to remove a few seconds of footage in order to meet their stringent criteria. According to the multiple sources reporting on this, the cut of what I believe is a few seconds in length was non-negotiable because of BBFC’s commitment to curtailing depictions of animal cruelty. Which is totally understandable and, in fact, commendable. 

However! 

I seem to remember a certain acclaimed movie titled Apocalypse Now where a bull was violently dismembered in a climactic sequence towards the end of the film. Look, I’m not trying to be petty here because everyone but the UK is going to have the opportunity to own The Abyss on UHD and Blu-Ray after literally decades of moaning and groaning about it. What I’m trying to articulate is the seemingly arbitrary way certain decisions are made in the offices of the BBFC. Which, by the way, is perhaps a topic for a separate session of bitch-moan-and-complaining because to this day movies like Mikey have been left in legal limbo as a result of a moral panic in the aftermath of the gruesome murder of James Bulger.  

In any case, I think you’ll find ample examples of BBFC happily rating movies with scenes depicting what elsewhere is then deemed a breach of the criminal law. Oldboy, anyone? Or are we now about to start splitting hairs over a hypothetical question if squids feel pain? I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that the squid in question did not survive and then led a happy life until dying from natural causes. And of course, there’s the infamous Cannibal Holocaust which has been rated for UK release by 88 Films a little while back. Admittedly, cuts had to be made for it to clear the board. However – and I have seen this movie a while back – the newly rated version is 95 minutes long (as opposed to the Region 0 Uncut version which runs for 96 minutes), which is much longer than the originally rated version from 2001 where only 86 minutes were allowed to stand. I can only infer that the older version was cut severely enough to remove all instances of animal cruelty, which really shouldn’t have been in the movie to begin with. You’d know what I mean by that if you watched it. It’s truly unnecessary and gruesomely exploitative. Still, a 95-minute cut is available for purchase today and I don’t think removing a single minute of footage is enough to excise all those protracted scenes of unnecessary animal violence set to music, like some kind of deranged pornography.  

In any case, it is BBFC’s right to question the content of movies they are supposed to rate and therefore it was within their remit, however removed from any degree of fairness it might have been, to issue a demand for cuts to be made to the UHD release of The Abyss.  

Or maybe a part of the thinking is the potential damage to the society at large… After all, only a handful of gorehounds (relatively speaking) is going to purchase the 95-minute collector’s edition of an Italian exploitation movie. Similarly, the market for Park Chan Wook’s Oldboy is rather limited, I can imagine. You might think it’s a popular movie, especially if you see yourself as a cinephile, but the public at large probably doesn’t care to see a heavily stylized Korean revenge thriller anywhere near as much as they would want to see The Abyss on Disney Plus (which is where I presume it would have been made available eventually as well). So maybe that’s what’s in play here. 

But that’s neither here nor there because Disney, after passing these demands to Lightstorm and Jim Cameron himself, decided to immediately shelve the release of the film, presumably because Jim Cameron refused to make the necessary cuts. Three seconds-worth of footage, by the way. So not only do we not get to see The Abyss in the UK because the BBFC has thrown the book at the movie despite refusing to apply the same rules to a number of other films, but it is also because the filmmaker whom we all have begged for countless years to do us a solid and finally release it has effectively thrown a tantrum. He’s taken his toys and he’s on his way home to tell his mum that the BBFC have been mean to him.

Really? 

Really??? 

At this point, I don’t care nearly enough about the three seconds of the rat scene, which could maybe end up included in an unrated version released at a later date, or something. I just want the movie. But yet again, the gods have conspired against us movie nerds who have been holding out hope and kept an empty slot in the A-section of our film collections for that long-anticipated release of The Abyss. Once more, we won’t get to see Ed Harris submerge his entire arm in a toilet filled with a blue gel in stunningly crisp high definition, the way it was intended to be seen. And it’s all because grown men either can’t decide how to apply the rules they devised in a fair way, or how to accept they may not be seen as “the king of the world” by others, despite having exclaimed to such effect on broadcast television.  

Back to writing petitions we go.