#retitle

Title change is weird -- the initial one remains in the comic books, but the title change only happens in the "Kids Jokes" book. Kids need to be steered clear of "nut".

I associate this bit premise with baseball and single panels -- though its initial one is probably in judging a beauty contest. I guess it just as well can cover any sport or contest, but baseball (and softball) offers a visual of home plate collision.

A beautiful poster by Maco Comedies for a 1920’s reissue and retitle of Keystone’s “Mabel’s Married Life”.

It only took almost fourteen years for this to happen! ⌛

Earlier this month, Canadian Stitch! fan @aurorabarenzu discovered that English subtitles have finally been provided for the original Japanese version of the anime spin-off series on Disney+, allowing English-speaking Lilo & Stitch fans to watch the show as it was originally made and understand it.

After he shared this info with me and other Lilo & Stitch fans, I checked Disney+ to see if this was true and, lo and behold...

It was.

Note that Disney+ prevents users from taking screenshots of its video content, hence why the video appears black here. This screenshot was taken about 1:25 into the show's first episode, during the opening scene of Stitch escaping the United Galactic Federation's police and Dr. Jumba Jookiba. Infamously, the English dub of this scene had Jumba mentioning Stitch getting "all washed up" with Lilo as she grew older and got a new boyfriend (which was later proven false in the third season). Here, Jumba just gets mad at Stitch for taking his new space scooter, which has an unstable engine since he was still developing it.

Still, it's interesting to see the whole show finally get subbed by Disney themselves almost fourteen years after it debuted. This also means that the one episode that was never dubbed in English (the season two episode known as "Stitch Power", its official title translated from Japanese on Disney+ as "Stitch gets the greatest power in the universe?") can now be understood by English speakers. The same goes for the first post-series special Stitch and the Planet of Sand, which somehow lost its English dub to the depths of the Disney Vault.

However, there is a catch to this; Disney+ still refuses to let non-Japanese fans watch this series. So fans in the Anglosphere will still need to either fly to Japan or use a VPN if they want to watch this show. As Gantu would say...

(Above image by Jeff Grey on Redbubble.)

In related but more minor news, Disney+ decided to redo the official English titles for a few episodes for whatever reason.

So Reuben's name is now inexplicably misspelled in the title of "Reuben's Rice Balls", "Angel's Flight" is now "Loveable Angel", "Felix Redux" is retitled as "Spring Cleaning", "Foxy Beige" now uses the titular yokai's original Japanese name in the title as "Foxy Dolores", and "Neither Rain Nor Sleet" is now completely changed to "Stitch's Runaway Trolley".

Judy Blume: Deenie

Oh, gosh.  Now this is a subject that I know much about, as it’s something that was pretty common throughout horror during the 80′s–particularly Italian horror, as Italian filmmakers realized that there was a greater market for horror films in Italy if the public there believed them to be American-made (this trend actually plays a MAJOR part in jump-starting the film career of horror maestro Mario Bava–and the rise of horror and sci-fi films in Italy–but that’s a story for another day).

For example, let’s start with the late George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).  In Italy, it was known as Zombi.  Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979) was created to profit off of the popularity of Romero’s film, and was marketed overseas as Zombi 2.  Zombi 3 later came about in 1988, and was co-directed by Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei.

Here’s where it gets weird: 

Sometimes Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980) is credited as being Zombi 3 (it was also sometimes marketed as Cannibal Holocaust 2 to ride the success of Ruggero Deodato’s “found footage” horror), as is Andrea Bianchi’s controversial Burial Ground (1981).  Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974) and Zombie Holocaust (aka Dr. Butcher, M.D.) (1980) have both been marketed at some point as being Zombi 3.

Jean Rollin’s A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973) is often referred to as Zombi 4, as is the 1988 film After Death (which many consider the “real” sequel).  Panic (1982) is known as Zombi 4 in Greece.

Jess Franco’s Revenge in the House of Usher(1982) has been marketed as Zombi 5 in America, but it’s Joe D’Amato’s Killing Birds(1988) that’s widely considered to be Zombi 5.

Joe D’Amato’s Absurd (1981) has previously been marketed as Zombi 6, when–in actuality–it is the sequel to D’Amato’s own Anthropophagus (1980).

And, it is Anthropophagus that has been marketed as Zombi 7, even though it came before Absurd.  Andreas Schnaas’ Zombie ‘90: Extreme Pestilence (1991) has also occasionally been sold as Zombi 7.

Confused yet?  Let’s try an easier one.

Let’s talk about House (1986):

Not to be confused with the Japanese House, later renamed Hausu (1977).

House was followed by House II: The Second Story (1987), which did not follow the previous film’s storyline whatsoever.  It was also known as La Casa 6 in Italy, but I’ll get to that…

Overseas, the supernatural slasher The Horror Show (1989) was sold as House III (and La Casa 7).

House IV (1992) is the official third entry in the series, as it actually shares a character with the original film.

So what’s La Casa?  Hmm…I guess this one wasn’t much “easier” to understand after all:

La Casa is what Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) was titled in Italy.

La Casa 2 is Raimi’s sequel, Evil Dead II (1987).

La Casa 3 is actually an Umberto Lenzi film, originally titled Ghosthouse.

La Casa 4 is the sequel to Ghosthouse, and originally known as Witchery (1988).  Neither have anything to do with Raimi’s films.

La Casa 5 is really just a film called Beyond Darkness (not to be confused with Joe D’Amato’s controversial Beyond the Darkness (1979), also known as Buio Omega and Blue Holocaust), and was directed by Claudio Fragrasso, who brought the world Troll II (which was originally titled Goblin, and also has nothing whatsoever to do with the movie it’s allegedly a sequel for!).

As mentioned before, La Casa 6 is what we know as House II: The Second Story (still no relation to The Evil Dead).

La Casa 7 is just The Horror Show.  I guess House IV wasn’t good enough to be La Casa 8.

Ever heard of the Curse series?  Well…it isn’t a series:  The Curse (1987), Curse II: The Bite (1989), Curse III: Blood Sacrifice (1991), and Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice (1993) are four films that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. 

The original film is an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space (this same story was the inspiration for 1965′s Die, Monster, Die!, and partially inspired “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill” from the 1982 horror anthology Creepshow).

Curse II: The Bite is about a man being bitten by a radioactive snake, and spawning other snakelike creatures.

Curse III: Blood Sacrifice was originally called Panga, and is about a tribal magician in Africa summoning a demon.

Curse IV: The Ultimate Sacrifice is actually a film from 1988 called Catacombs that’s about a monastery haunted by a demon.  The film wasn’t released for five years after its completion due to the financial downfall and seizure of Charles Band’s Empire Pictures by a credit company (which later led to Band forming Full Moon Features).  Columbia TriStar slapped the new title on it to try to pass it off as another entry in a series that was never a series to begin with.

How about Demons (aka Dèmoni)?

Lamberto Bava (with Dario Argento producing) brought the original film to the world in 1985, with great commercial success.

Dèmoni 2(1986) is a legitimate sequel from the same people.

Dèmoni 3?  Well, that could be a few films, including Lamberto’s own The Ogre (1988), Michele Soavi’s The Church (1989) (coincidentally, Soavi played a part in the original Demons), or Umberto Lenzi’s Black Demons (1991) (which is commonly considered the “official” third installment).

Soavi’s The Devil’s Daughter (1991) was marketed as Demons 4: The Sect.

Bava’s La maschera del demonio(1989) was marketed as Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil.

Luigi Cozzi’s adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” was retitled to Demons 6: De Profundis (1989).

Soavi’s Cemetery Man (aka Dellamorte Dellamore) (1994) was occasionally marketed as Demons ‘95.

Only the first two were intentionally linked.  The rest were renamed when convenient for the sake of sales.  Did anyone notice the frequency with which certain names have been appearing here?  The Italian filmmaking industry was some wild shit.

Other examples that I can think of (at least at the moment):

Meng Hua Ho’s supernatural shocker The Rape After (1986) is sometimes re-titled Devil Fetus 2, after the original film by Hung-Chuen Lau.

Izô Hashimoto’s Lucky Sky Diamond (1990) is occasionally falsely associated with the infamous Japanese Guinea Pig film franchise (due to sharing similar themes of cruel experimentation), but is a separate, unrelated v-cinema release.

Sometimes it’s just the packaging that tries to pass something off as something it’s not.  Check out this Japanese box art for Andreas Schnaas’ Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom (1999).

If this titling nonsense isn’t bad enough, poster artists also ripped each other off right and left during the 80′s.

Bombings were actually pretty common in 1972 United States (quickee Internet search result on topic to put a number to it) but society was a tad blase about it.

In a single eighteen-month period during 1971 and 1972 the FBI counted an amazing 2,500 bombings on American soil, almost five a day. Because they were typically detonated late at night, few caused serious injury, leading to a kind of grudging public acceptance.