When Anchor
Bay announced their final stand-alone DVD release for Evil Dead
– the seminal Book of the Dead edition
– in 2002 the horror community wet their pants over the
prospect of witnessing the promised extra of Raimi’s “Within
the Woods”. A digitally cleaned image with a newly mastered
soundtrack was promised and indeed advertised in the run up to
it’s release, BUT almost inevitably an unseen forfce intervened:
there was a problem. What exactly that problem was remains a mystery
to anyone outside of AB or the legal team circles but more importantly
what this problem meant was that there probably wouldn’t
be a release EVER!
What
do we know?
ABUS chief Michael Fleisher posted this over at http://www.mhfv.net
, dated 15th January 2002. I’ve
abridged it slightly but all I’ve removed are the parts
which didn’t mention or refer to the situation:
“…..
on Monday, we were notified of an unexpected situation that
is going to prevent us from including WITHIN THE WOODS on our
DVD. I do not have further details on that. However, this is
not an attempt to hold the short back for another release of
EVIL DEAD down the line, or anything of that nature. Needless
to say this is disappointing for us as I am sure it will be
for the fans. As
a result of this, WITHIN THE WOODS is being removed from our
packaging and website details, and will not be mentioned in
any further ads or print material concerning our March 5th EVIL
DEAD promotion. Unfortunately a few advertisements were already
running that do mention WOODS, however at this stage we weren't
able to recall everything.…….In the end, we did
everything we could to make WITHIN THE WOODS happen, but, as
many other studios have experienced, sometimes last-minute roadblocks
can intervene when everything seems set in stone. We've never
had an occasion where a feature of a DVD had to be dropped at
such a late stage in the process, …..”
Obviously
this got a few responses (begging for clarification) so Mr F retorted
with this on 16th January 2002:
"Without
getting into specifics, here's what the situation is. The
music clearances WERE resolved and the situation had been put
to rest, however another legal issue came up out of the blue
and because of it, WITHIN
THE WOODS will most likely never see release on home video.
That's really all I can say about it. It's a unfortunate situation
in any case."
So the chances
are we will never see this one in a pristine release. We will
have to be content with the bootlegged edition doing the rounds
on the net. This has been discussed in the forum so head over
there if you fancy venting some steam about it. Incidentally the
unedited version of the main post is there as well.
