DONALD CAMMELL'S WILD SIDE 
  the Director's Cut
"The restored version of Donald Cammell's swansong is so imaginative,
 so vibrant, so impossibly daring...The movie's energy transforms film noir into an adrenaline rush...It is what cinema is meant to do -
 disturb, stimulate and excite."
                                                                                                     Angus Wolfe Murray

Producer of The Director's Cut: Hamish McAlpine, Nick Jones, Frank Mazzola
Director: Donald Cammell
Screenplay: Donald Cammell, China Kong
Director of Photography: Saed Mutarevic
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Editor/Post Production Supervisor: Frank Mazzola

Cast: Christopher Walken, Joan Chen, Steven Bauer & Anne Heche as 'Alex'
         Alan Garfield, Adam Novak

Distributor UK: Metro Tartan Distribution
Screenplay available through screenpress.co.uk 

REVIEWS      "A CUT ABOVE"
"I cannot think of two such radically different films being produced from the same raw footage..."
                                                                     Brian Pendreigh/THE GUARDIAN Jan.14, 2000

"Scottish-born filmmaker, Donald Cammell (Performance, Demon Seed, White Of The Eye) committed suicide in 1996, after completing his last film WILD SIDE.  Except, he never really completed that last movie.  Denied final cut by Wild Side's producers, NU Image, Cammell...(was fired along with his editor)...and had his name removed from the film, which was subsequently rough cut into a trashy exploitation flick and released straight to video."  
                                                                                        Miles Fielder/THE LIST Aug. 1999

"The battle over Wild Side might have ended there were it not for Hamish McAlpine, head of Metro Tartan Distributors in London.  McAlpine successfully negotiated with NU Image for the UK rights to Wild Side, and gave Frank Mazzola an opportunity to reconstruct the film...the editor set about what must rank as one of the most intricate and thorough restoration jobs in cinema history"
                                                                                            Steven Applebaum/THE STANDARD June, 2000

"Perhaps the most remarkable event of the festival has been WILD SIDE...presented in a radically new director's cut...by editor and long-time Cammell associate Frank Mazzola...Under Mazzola's microsurgery it emerges as classic cinema, an entirely different film, richer and more complex with a superb, eccentric performance by Christopher Walken..."
                                                                                                   Peter Bradshaw/ THE GUARDIAN/ Aug. 1999

"The director's cut (pieced together by the Editor after the director's suicide) is an outstanding piece of cinema.  Not a frame wasted.  The opening sequence shocks you into an awareness that this movie will be very different from anything you've seen before.  Chris Walken gives the best performance of his career.  This is exciting, original cinema that riveted my attention in every moment of its two hour authorized version...The tenacity and integrity of the Editor and scriptwriter that saw it through to completion is a monument to the industry."
                                                                                                         Chris Docker/Edinburgh/imdb comments 

WILD SIDE - The Director's Cut premiered in London on June 30th, 2000 with a beautiful new score by Ryuichi Sakamoto.  The reception was outstanding.

"DONALD CAMMELL'S WILD SIDE...one of the most extraordinary, bizarre and uproarious films that you can see this year...I can only say that with WILD SIDE a cult classic has been reborn"
THE GUARDIAN/Film Of The Week/Peter Bradshaw/"MENACE A TROIS"/June 30,  2000

"After Cammell shot himself in 1996, Mazzola (started) a restoration job on WILD SIDE to bring it closer in line with its Director's vision, with the help of British Producers Hamish McAlpine and Nick Jones... Using his rough cut, his memory and Cammell's extensive notes, Mazzola turned WILD SIDE into the sensual, cerebral, challenging work that it was meant to be."
DAILY EXPRESS/Ryan Gilbey/"THE DIRECTOR'S FINAL CUT"/July 1, 2000

"...Metro Tartan combined forces with Cammell's longtime editor Frank Mazzola and England's Channel 4, raising funds to go back and see that justice is finally served. Using Cammell's notes, storyboards, a rough video cut and his memory of the film's production, Mazzola recut the film back into its original, complex glory...the final version of WILD SIDE is a tense, introspective and strangely hilarious. It is an intricate revelation of a raging talent whose day had tragically never been fully granted."
FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL/Mitch Davis/July, 2000

This version is only available (to date)

     on DVD/region 2 encoding       or           VHS/PAL only
                               
                         (Europe ,Middle East, Japan)

OTHER ARTICLES ON DONALD CAMMELL'S WILD SIDE

SIGHT AND SOUND/Mark Kermode/"WILD SIDE"/movie reviews pg.59/Aug. 2000

LIBERATION (Paris)/Philippe Garnier/"La Redemption De Wild Side"/Aug. 18, 2000

THE INDEPENDENT/Tom Dewe Mathews/"Epitaph for the wild at heart"/June 30, 2000

SIGHT AND SOUND/Geoffrey Macnab/"HOOKER"S MAGIC"/pg.26/Aug. 1999