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Doctor Butcher, M.D.: 4-Disc Collector's Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Severin Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (12th December 2023). |
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The Film
 A series of grisly thefts of body parts and organs from cadavers at a New York teaching hospital is covered up by Dr. Drydock (Syndicate Sadists' Walter Patriarca) and his colleague Dr. Lori Ridgeway (The New York Ripper's Alexandra Delli Colli) until a heart is torn out of a living patient. When the culprit turns out to be orderly Toran and he commits suicide when caught, Ridgeway and Drydock learn that Dr. Peter Chandler (Contamination's Ian McCulloch) and his assistant George Happer (Peter O'Neal) of the Department of Health have been investigating a series of similar cannibalistic crimes in other parts of the country. Lori, also an anthropologist, notices that Toran and the body of another suspected cannibal share the same tattoo. She and Peter take that and Toran's dying words "Keto ordered it" to Lori's mentor Professor Stafford (The Arena's Romano Scandariato) who reveals that Keto was a god to whom primitive cannibal societies on a Southeast Asia chain of islands made blood sacrifices, including an island named after the god himself. Chandler recruits Lori to accompany himself, George, and the latter's ruthless reporter girlfriend Susan (What Have They Done to Our Daughters?'s Sherry Buchanan) on a trip to the islands under the guise of researching the primitive tribes. Although missionary doctor Obrero (Run, Man, Run!'s Donald O'Brien) warns them against going to Keto, he equips them with guide Molotto (Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals' Dakar) and porters to take them to the island. When the boat's motor overheats, they are forced to stop at a closer island but it seems that they may indeed have stumbled upon Keto as cannibals start thinning out their numbers and then the zombies show up. An atypical credit for prolific comedy director Marino Girolami (Violent Rome) under the pseudonym "Frank Martin" possibly contacted because his son Enzo Castellari (Escape From the Bronx) was offered direction of Zombie Doctor Butcher, M.D. actually gains much of its unintended comic value from Girolami's rather flat handling of the actors, some howlers delivered straight-faced like "I could easily kill you now, but I'm determined to have your brain!", and extended scenes of body mutilation as executed by Maurizio Trani (Dawn of the Mummy) and Rosario Prestopino (Dial: Help). Although the film's original Italian and English export title "Zombi Holocaust" suggests a combination of Lucio Fulci's film and Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust's film, the film recycled footage from the Fulci film and other elements from producers Fabrizio de Angelis' and Gianfranco Couyoumdjian's, and director Joe D'Amato's earlier production Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals including composer Nico Fidenco (or possibly arranger/conductor Giacomo dell'Orso) augmenting his score for the earlier film with synth cues and additional electronic effects as well as writer/assistant director Scandariato, his wife Silvana (Nightmare City) on costumes, and editor Alberto Moriani (Zombi 3), and production designer Patriarca on sets and onscreen. The cannibal scenes are fairly gruesome but, in trying to one up Zombie's scenes of carnage, actually allow the viewer to assess the techniques of sculpting latex, clay, and spilling bovine offal. While the Fulci film had the splintered eye as its setpiece, Doctor Butcher, M.D. has a bit of non-consensual brain surgery ("The patient's screaming disturbing me, performed removal of vocal chords"), more gruesome in its lead up than the actual reveal. The zombies as sculpted by Trani without the supervision of Giannetto de Rossi are more in line with Trani's Burial Ground designs, and leave the flesh-eating to the cannibals and have little to do other than one getting its head decimated by a hand-wielded outboard motor. Although the film was released unrated theatrically stateside by Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing where it gained the "Doctor Butcher, M.D." moniker, that version trimmed down some additional dialogue and transitions as well as inserting a grainy stock shot of a plane landing in place of the jeep ride through the village from Zombie and added a new title sequence based around footage from the aborted Roy Frumkes-supervised anthology Tales That Will Tear Your Heart Out as well as wiping Fidenco's score in favor of new keyboard cues and library music by Walter Sear of Sear Sound who also rescored Fulci's The Beyond for Aquarius' "7 Doors of Death" release. As a zombie film or a cannibal film, Doctor Butcher, M.D. is rather forgettable. As a grindhouse experience, on the other severed hand... 
Video
Following its U.S. theatrical release, the Doctor Butcher, M.D. went to VHS through Paragon in 1982 and was reissued as a Thriller Video big box edition in 1986 (one of the few unrated titles for which Elvira elected not to do host segments. While Japan could usually be depended upon to provide English-friendly, letterboxed, uncut versions of Italian horror on laserdisc and/or VHS, the Japanese laserdisc turned out to be the first letterboxed instance of the U.S. version (albeit with optical censorship of frontal nudity). When the film was released to DVD in the U.S. from Media Blasters and in the U.K. from Vipco, it turned out to be a transfer of the original Italian version (~84 minutes at 24fps) which was missing a five minute pit sequence that appeared in both the export version and the aforementioned "Doctor Butcher, M.D." Media Blasters' 2011 Blu-ray release was among their first problematic editions in the format, either being an upscale or just looking so soft due to excessive digital video noise reduction (Burial Ground and Beyond the Darkness fared even worse) while 88 Films' first go at the title as part of their initial Indiegogo restoration project in 2015 was sharper-looking but perhaps a bit too bright, blowing out skies and not doing away with a faint yellow tinge in the whites. Severin Films' 2016 Blu-ray opened up the frame on the bottom for a 1.78:1 framing, but it was also slight darker with more realistic-looking colors and better highlights. Fans of the U.S. version also got a reconstruction of that cut using the Italian master and film elements for the "Doctor Butcher, M.D." cut which also allowed them to restore "The Pit" sequence to the "Zombie Holocaust" version from film rather than video. Beating Severin Films' UHD/Blu-ray combo to the market was 88 Films' region free two-disc set which featured a Dolby Vision presentation (along with a single-disc Blu-ray edition). Severin Films may possibly have worked from the same raw scan, but their four-disc set two UHDs featuring separate encodes of the export version and the U.S. version and two Blu-rays with those versions and extras but their 2160p24 HEVC 1.85:1 widescreen 4K UltraHD/1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen encodes (with DolbyVision dynamic HDR layer on the former) are definitely a separate restoration and grading job. Whereas the 88 Films transfer assaults the eye with near vintage Xerox-level saturated reds and rich blues from the title sequence onward, Severin Films' grading is more conservative, a shade darker with more naturalistic colors. Severin has also left some of the archival damage intact including some white scratches and near-transparent vertical scratches. The Severin grading leans more towards the reds while 88 leans towards the greens and blues. While I liked the florid 88 Films look given the film's Grindhouse aura, the Severin is probably more accurate and the Dolby Vision UHD 4K version not only offers improvements in contrast and color rendition for the zombie make-ups and gut-rippings but perhaps could be said to make those bits of archival damage seem more "Grindhouse-y." Both new presentations feature the export version's credits in Italian; however, 88 Films' titles are in red like previous releases while Severin's are white but the same fonts and content.  The film will always look rough given that the use of footage from Zombie necessitated shooting in the 2-perf Techniscope format before a 1.85:1 image was then extracted from the center (as was also the case with Fulci's City of the Living Dead), the decision presumably necessitated by the use of footage from Zombie. Night exteriors look grainy and a few telephoto shots in the New York scenes even look a tad fuzzy in motion. On the other hand, the pigskin of both the dead and unwilling living medical subjects is more obvious as well as latex heads and limbs, but the spill of deep red guts in the 88 Films grade enriches the illusion as never before while the Severin gives it a queasier look of offal that is starting to turn when exposed to air and heat for a long period. One panning shot of Lori and Peter walking to a car after meeting with Professor Stafford that has always looked soft is revealed to be just out of focus the entire time. The restored pit sequence looks like it comes from an inferior source (although just how much it does not look like the rest of the film in terms of continuity is more evident). Drizzle is distinguished from grain and lens flare is also more evident in handheld shots. This is actually quite pleasing in some of the New York scenes with the combination of wet streets and the sun giving a nice glow to a couple sequences of Lori walking around New York on the 88 Films and more overcast on the Severin. The U.S. version makes use of the same master for the body of the film while the "Doctor Butcher, M.D." footage has been sourced from Aquarius Releasing's internegative as it had been on the earlier Severin Blu-ray. The "Takes That Will Tear Your Heart Out" footage looks as grainy, dark, and indistinct as it always has with some of the lit shots of tombstones looking a tad sharper and more colorful while the newer opticals and the title card not an optical but a piece of artwork with real smoke blown in front of it actually look better since they were shot on flat 4-perf 35mm without the 2-perf extraction of the feature.
Audio
The "Doctor Butcher, M.D." version includes an English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track in which it seems that not only did Aquarius replace much of the Fidenco score and deploy what it kept in other areas this works to preserve the grim mood while some of Fidenco's and dell'Orso's choices ruinously "lighten" the tone but also seems to have exaggerated the volume of some of the squishy mutilation sound effects to Fulcian degrees while they sound a bit more recessed in the mix on the "Zombie Holocaust" version's English and Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono tracks where the music cue used to introduce the island arrival sequence make it sound less like an eighties gore film than an older jungle adventure. Optional English SDH subtitles are also included for the English tracks on both versions while the "Zombie Holocaust" version also includes optional English subtitles for the Italian track. The subtitles reveal that mad doctor is called "O'Brien" on the Italian version as opposed to "Obrero" on the English dub. 
Extras
While the first UHD disc features only the "Doctor Butcher, M.D." version and the U.S. theatrical trailer (2:48), the video release trailer (1:16) recreated from the H.D. master, and the TV spot (0:34), the Blu-ray copy includes these and the bulk of the disc's new and old extras. In "Butchery & Ballyhoo" (31:17), Aquarius Releasing's Terry Levine discusses how he got into the movie business through nepotism with his parents owning a chain of theaters in London before being bought out and setting up shop in Buffalo, New York. He discusses the company's popularity with independent producers because they could ensure playdates on 42nd Street and in the boroughs. He discusses the company's experiences with softcore and hardcore films like He and She , and the Northeast rights for Deep Throat before the film's supposed real backers seized the film, as well its popular martial arts (Bruce Lee Fights Back From the Grave) and women-in-prison pickups (Barbed Wire Dolls) before discussing the ballyhoo used to promote Doctor Butcher, M.D. and "Make Them Die Slowly" (the U.S. theatrical retitling for the otherwise unmolested cut of Cannibal Ferox) while ribbing Severin about wanting to remaster any of them in HD. He also discusses the process of coming up with ad campaigns (United Negro College Fund voice actor Adolph Caesar narrated the Doctor Butcher, M.D. trailer as he had for the likes of Blacula and Dawn of the Dead). He also notes that he despised Joe D'Amato's Beyond the Darkness which he was "bullied" into buying by an Italian sales agent. Although he performed the bare minimum in promoting the film as "Buried Alive" with just a monochrome one-sheet and newspaper ads, it ended up doing very well. He also discusses 42nd Street as it once was and suggests that Giuliani's clean-up effort had more to do with capitalizing on real estate taxes for the large area than moral outrage. "The Four Boroughs of Blood" (46:01) is an appreciated but overlong piece in which Rue Morgue's Michael Gingold tours New York locations utilized in Italian horror films of the late seventies and early eighties including the likes of Doctor Butcher, M.D., Zombie, New York Ripper, Cannibal Ferox, Cannibal Holocaust clips of which are curiously matted to 2.35:1 Eaten Alive!, Contamination, Murder-Rock, and Inferno among others. While it is thorough and makes the effort to try to recreate camera angles and movements as it cuts between the clips and the locations as they look now, it becomes monotonous and Gingold makes little commentary beyond the introduction and some short remarks here and there. "Down On The Deuce: Nostalgic Tour of 42nd Street" (21:55) is a rather absorbing discussion of the area as it once was by Frumkes and Temple Of Shocks Chris Poggiali. As passersby gawk at them and react to snippets of their discussion, the two walk down 42nd street pointing out the locations of earlier theaters intercut with the films that once played there and trash like Frozen and Lord of the Dance that play there now. They also discuss their youthful experiences in the Grindhouses where they were the weirdos because they actually went there to see the shows rather than looking for places to sleep, hook up, or get hooked on. "Tales That Tore Our Heart Out" (18:17) is a Zoom interview with filmmakers Frank Farel and Brendan Faulkner who recall taking a film appreciation class taught by Frumkes at SUNY Purchase when he got the idea to produce an anthology film with segments directed by established filmmakers and promising students with the aim of a theatrical release which would be easier for students to shop than individual short films. They discuss the framing story and the plots of their sequences, one of which featured Frumkes as a zombified serial killer who appears in the Doctor Butcher, M.D. credits as well as an episode penned by Ted Bonnitt (Mau Mau Sex Sex), one by Wes Craven post-Last House on the Left/pre-The Hills Have Eyes and one scripted by DeWitt Bodeen (Cat People). The project fell apart with the college not being behind it, an inadvertent grave robbing, and Frumkes bringing James Glickenhaus for a set visit where he poached Farel and Faulkner among others to crew The Astrologer, and they did not learn that Frumkes had reused their footage in Doctor Butcher, M.D. until the film's release. Farel and Faulkner would go on to produce another unfinished feature in "Twisted Souls" which was combined with new footage and re-edited into Spookies. The featurette labeled "Frumkes' Segment from the Unfinished Anthology Film Tales That Will Tear Your Heart Out" (8:07) is actually a series of outtakes from the film including the three minutes used in Doctor Butcher, M.D.'s title sequence featuring Frumkes himself along with a few other excerpts including Craven's bit with a zombie cowboy walking down 42nd Street and the resurrection of punk rocker Snuff Maximus. "The Butcher Mobile" (12:33) is an interview with Gore Gazette editor Rick Sullivan who discusses the fanzine scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s that consisted of himself, arch enemy Bill Landis of Sleazoid Express, and professional Michael J. Weldon of Psychotronic. Sullivan discusses his involvement with The Butcher Mobile on which Sullivan was the barker while nurses took the blood pressure of passersby and a doctor stabbed a male patient repeatedly and how his decision to sell videos through his gazette got him in trouble when someone requested the adult videos Traci Lords made when she was supposedly underage. In "Cutting Doctor Butcher" (10:12), editor Jim Markovic (Forced Entry) discusses Levene's methods for making some of the foreign pickups seem more American along with himself and credited "executive producer" Ron Harvey. He recalls cutting the film down along with its dialogue-only track and then sending it off to Sear Sound for scoring and sound effects. He also has some amusing anecdotes about carrying a lead pipe and taking self-defense lessons from Ron Van Clief (Black Dragon's Revenge) just to walk down 42nd Street to get his paycheck from Levene. Also included on the first disc are "Experiments with a Male Caucasian Brain ( and other memories of 42nd Street)", an essay by Gary Hertz (the victim on the Doctor Butcher Mobile).  The "Zombie Holocaust" UHD includes the film in 4K and the same odd theatrical trailer (4:17) with Italian text, only music and effects for the first few moments and then some English dialogue towards the end, while the Blu-ray copy includes these and all of the extras that accompanied this version on the previous Severin Blu-ray starting with "Voodoo Man" (8:14), an interview with McColluch which is short because he has never seen the full version of the film. He discusses his early acting roles, glossing over a number of credits but conveying how a role in Colditz netted him a bigger role in Survivors which brought him to the attention of the Zombie's producers. He regards Doctor Butcher, M.D. as the more enjoyable shooting experience and regards Contamination as the silliest. He also briefly touches upon his role in Freddie Francis' The Ghoul in which he got to look dashing in a dinner jacket through most of the film before a gory end. In "Blood of the Zombies" (23:02), late effects artist Prestopino discusses the film and gets a few details wrong (citing McCulloch as an American actor who had a hand in Girolami's directorial decisions) but goes into detail about the mechanics of the effects, including Giannetto de Rossi's patented throat slashing effect replicated in the film as well as the brain surgery sequence (along with O'Brien's trepidation over performing the cuts with a saw even though it was not actually running). Whereas Shriek Show's interview with make-up artist Trani found him sounding a little put off discussing the title, "Neurosurgery Italian Style" (4:36) finds him discussing the brain surgery effects sequence and fondly remembering Prestopino as a creative and serious technician. In "Filmmaker Enzo Castellari Remembers His Father Director Marino Girolami" (7:46), Castellari (Escape trom the Bronx) recalls how his father was a boxer who retired at twenty with a European championship before going to study cinema at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. He got onto a set as a professional masseuse hired by Anna Magnani for her polio-stricken son, and gave the actress the story for the film that would become The Peddler and the Lady by Mario Bonnard. Girolami would serve as assistant director on a handful of films including American co-productions like The Thief of Venice and direct Sidney Salkow's Fugitive Lady uncredited. Castellari mentions that his father favored the comedy genre directing a long string of them in the 1950s and he was not aware that his father was directing Doctor Butcher, M.D. at the time because he was working on his own projects. Most welcome is "Sherry Holocaust" (24:04), in which actress Buchanan reveals that she was born in Mississippi and grew up in Louisiana, although she speaks Italian here either due to the interviewer or perhaps because the interview was initially intended for an Italian release. She was just out of high school when a location manager friend of her mother's asked her to fill in for a local production secretary on the New Orleans unit of Tonino Valerii's My Name is Nobody since she spoke French and Spanish. She was asked to continue working on the film when production moved to Spain and then would go on to Rome where actor Giancarlo Giannini helped her get into modeling. She then discusses her various roles starting with What Have They Done to Our Daughters? through Doctor Butcher, M.D. which she found difficult for the film's infamous effects scene. She left filmmaking after she learned that hardcore inserts had been added to Emanuelle and Joanna and that she was now getting offers for porn films (although she did some bit parts in Crawlspace and Tinto Brass' Capriccio). The "New York Filming Locations Then vs. Now" (3:03) featurette compares the locations now to the way they appear in the film and attempts to replicate the camera movements (albeit, without the heft of the 35mm camera). Before his acting career took off, McCulloch cut a folk single in 1964 called "Down by the River" (2:40), and it is included here over a still gallery of the actor. 
Packaging
The four discs are packaged in a keep case with a Doctor Butcher, M.D. barf bag and a slipcover with both "Doctor Butcher, M.D." and "Zombie Holocaust" artwork (we have gone wiht the former title since that is how it is listed at retail sites.
Overall
As a zombie film or a cannibal film, Doctor Butcher, M.D. is rather forgettable. As a Grindhouse experience, on the other severed hand...
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