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Despite their new­ness as a label, the American branch of Raro Video has done a fine job thus far of sup­ply­ing Eurocult fans with hand­some edi­tions of Italian genre clas­sics that have never been prop­erly avail­able on these shores.  They’ve put out another fine release in this vein with their new edi­tion of To Be Twenty: this swell 2-disc set not only unearths a pre­vi­ously rare shocker, it also pro­vides the viewer with a crash-course in how the edit­ing process can affect a film at all levels.

The first disc offers an uncut, anamor­phic pre­sen­ta­tion of the director’s cut of To Be Twenty.  The result has an appro­pri­ately earthy, col­or­ful look to it and looks very nice for a stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion pre­sen­ta­tion.  It uses the orig­i­nal Italian mono sound­track, with optional English sub­ti­tles pro­vided.  The sec­ond disc fea­tures an anamor­phic pre­sen­ta­tion (also stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion) of the re-edited producer’s cut that was used for a reis­sue when the director’s cut scared away audi­ences.  This ver­sion fea­tures a mono English dub sound­track and it sounds fine.

This sec­ond ver­sion is so unusual that it deserves a lit­tle extra dis­cus­sion. Not only does this ver­sion drop the shocker end­ing of the orig­i­nal ver­sion, it also rad­i­cally restruc­tures the film, adds some pre­vi­ously unseen footage, uses sev­eral dif­fer­ent sound­track cues and changes the dia­logue (via redub­bing) to change the film into a happy-go-lucky com­edy.  Though it is a betrayal of Fernando DiLeo’s vision, it is worth watch­ing to see how edit­ing can com­pletely trans­form a film in mean­ing and intent.

There’s only one real extra here but it’s a must-watch for any­one inter­ested in the film.  It is a fea­turette enti­tled “Twenty Years For A Massacre” and it’s a pretty com­pre­hen­sive half-hour piece that inter­views DiLeo as well as a few actors (includ­ing Ray Lovelock).  DiLeo is the anchor of the piece, pro­vid­ing a lively and good-humored dis­cus­sion of his oft-misunderstood film as he cov­ers his views on sex­ism, his feel­ings about his lead actresses and why the film failed to find suc­cess at the Italian box office.  There’s also a fas­ci­nat­ing bit with a pro­ducer who dis­cusses how and why the film was re-edited, which leads into side-by-side com­par­isons of scenes from the two ver­sions of the film.  If you have any inter­est in the film at all, it’s essen­tial viewing.

The pack­age is rounded out with a brief image gallery and a text biog­ra­phy and fil­mog­ra­phy for DiLeo.  All in all, this is a thought­ful, gen­er­ous pack­age for fans of Italian genre fare and is highly rec­om­mended to that fanbase.

[Buyer’s Note: the ini­tial release of this set had some tech­ni­cal prob­lems that caused a freeze-up on the first disc of the set.  Raro has since issued a cor­rected ver­sion of the disc: that was the one watched for this review and it worked fine.  If you hap­pen to get one of the ini­tial prob­lem­atic sets, just con­tact RaroVideo U.S.A. about a replacement.]

A VERY N.S.F.W. TRAILER: