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It always makes Your Humble Reviewer smile when an obscure cult title gets the spe­cial edi­tion treat­ment on DVD.  It’s all the sweeter when it’s the kind of VHS-rental-store or cable-t.v. sta­ple that no one imag­ined would ever receive this sort of ret­ro­spec­tive love.  Loose Screws is exactly that kind of film and Severin Films has put together an expan­sive spe­cial edi­tion for it.  The film may be silly but the result­ing DVD is def­i­nitely not.

To start with, the film has got­ten a nice, pro­fes­sional anamor­phic 1.78:1 trans­fer of its U.S. cut (the pre­ferred ver­sion for the direc­tor and the film’s fans).  It ben­e­fits from a hand­some remas­ter­ing job that shows off how skill­fully shot the film actu­ally is.  Colors are vivid and the details are crisp, thus allow­ing the viewer to savor every bare boob as it jig­gles past on the screen.  The audio por­tion of the trans­fer sticks with the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal mix and it sounds solid, with dia­logue, sound effects and all the amus­ingly trashy new wave song sound­track com­ing through loud and clear.

This disc also fea­tures a longer cut of the film used in other ter­ri­to­ries.  It’s a few steps down in terms of visual qual­ity because it was taken from a fuzzy-looking video mas­ter but it is pre­sented in an anamor­phic “window-boxed” pre­sen­ta­tion for the ben­e­fit of widescreen t.v. own­ers.  Fans should note that this alter­na­tive cut doesn’t have any major dif­fer­ences in terms of plot or con­tent: it’s merely a longer ver­sion of the U.S. cut with sev­eral scenes extended.  Chances are that most view­ers will stick with the supe­rior U.S. cut but it is nice to have this ver­sion for the sake of comparison.

There is also a worth­while slate of extras on the disc. The first is a com­men­tary track pair­ing direc­tor Rafal Zielinski with com­men­ta­tor John Cregan.  Zielinski tends to wax pre­ten­tious about the film, which he wanted to be a more sophisticated/less car­toon­ish response to the pre­vi­ous film.  Normally, this would be annoy­ing but Zielinski goes so far over the top that it’s unex­pect­edly enter­tain­ing (at one point, he com­pares his four heroes to the four wheels of a Tibetan Buddhist cir­cle!).  His point of view becomes eas­ier to under­stand as the com­men­tary pro­gresses because he reveals how this was his “rebound” film after he lost out on direct­ing a long­time pet project.  Cregan keeps Zielinski on task with plen­ti­ful ques­tions plus he also makes some obser­va­tions of his own.  Overall, the two make a solid team.

This disc also includes two inter­views, one with pro­duc­tion man­ager Ken Gord and pro­ducer Maurice Smith.  Both are short — Gord’s runs about 5 min­utes, Smith’s, around ten — but both are fun to watch because they are excep­tion­ally frank.  Gord doesn’t try to dis­guise his con­tempt for Loose Screws, insis­tently refer­ring to it as “prod­uct” and claim­ing the best thing he learned from work­ing on the film was to take a lunch break(!).  Smith is more fond of the film but is refresh­ingly hon­est in how he admits that it and Screwballs were com­pletely inspired by a fer­vent desire to cash in on Porky’s.

In short, this DVD ver­sion of Loose Screws is bet­ter than even its fans might have expected, offer­ing a sleek pre­sen­ta­tion of its fea­ture and some wor­thy extras that take the viewer into the why’s and where­fores of its exploita­tive whims.  If you’re a seri­ous stu­dent of the 1980’s teen sex com­edy, it’s well worth your time.

LOOSE SCREWS “Aerobics” — FilmDrunk Exclusive from Severin Films on Vimeo.