A lot of break-out filmmakers wind up imitating their initial successes. Think of David Cronenberg following up Shivers with Rabid, or George Romero presenting The Crazies like a re-imagining of Night Of the Living Dead. In fact, there's a lot of influence from all four of those films in Durston's Blood and Stigma pairing. Really, Stigma just has one key detail that separates it out from the pack: it's not a horror movie. There are a few moments laid out to instill tension or unease, and plenty designed to shock. And, just by virtue of retreading so much of I Drink Your Blood's structure, it retains some of the trappings of a horror film. But really, this is not a scary film - or a film trying and failing to be scary - and it's not a body count film. It's absolutely an exploitation film, and I stand by my claim that if you really like I Drink Your Blood you're bound to like Stigma. Just don't come in expecting horror or you're honestly going to bummed out.
So, if it's not horror, what is it? Well, again like Blood, it's a genre-bending "something of everything" kind of flick. It often gets lumped in with blaxploitation films, and it's certainly got some of that. Philip Michael Thomas, Tubbs of Miami Vice, is a big city doctor who takes over a practice in a small, racist town, where everybody, including a very Boss Hog-like sheriff, is against him. So there's a lot of that element. But nearly as soon as he arrives, a powerful strain of syphilis breaks out, and much like the rabies in Blood, it starts making everybody in town go crazy... just a little less homicidal. So Thomas has to investigate, who's spreading it and who's covering it up? The crazy old lighthouse keeper? The veteran just back home from the war? The madam and her brothel? The crooked cops or the hippy teens with their unbridled free love? So that gives us sexploitation, action, melodrama... the film even stops to show us an educational film strip with gross-out medical photos. Several members of the supporting cast of Blood and all of the wacky sensibilities Durston displayed in that film are on hand here, just with less of a violent edge.
2011 US Code Red DVD on top; 2016 US Code Red blu-ray underneath. |
^See how the DVD crops chins and blows out the reds of skin tones? |
Audio-wise, things aren't too different, but it sounds like the background hiss on the DVD has been reduced for the blu. Both disc's tracks are reasonably clean and robust, though. And of course, neither have subtitle options.
But one of the most exciting aspects of Code Red's restoration of Stigma is the fact he's given it a special edition in collaboration with David Durston. If you watched either of Grindhouse's I Drink Your Blood releases, you know that he's quite a character. And while he doesn't go quite so far as to sing an impromptu song about thrilling audiences as a horror director, he certainly comes off as a charmingly eccentric personality here, helpfully explaining things like, "you are born with so many female hormones, and so many male hormones. And if it's a little over the top on the female hormones, you become a homosexual." He provides a very fun and genuinely informative on-camera interview that's just under twenty minutes long, and a fun audio commentary track where he chuckles along with moderator Jeff McKay. The DVD also included two trailers, a TV spot, and some bonus trailers. The blu-ray retained everything except one of the trailers, the TV spot and the bonus trailers (despite still listing them on the back of the case). It's no crushing loss, but it seems like an arbitrary disappointment to drop off the TV spot and second trailer. What for? Oh well. It's a minor nitpick; we're just talking about secondary trailers.
Stigma is certainly not for everybody, including horror purists. It's downright goofy and you can find its picture in the dictionary next to the word "dated." But there's an audience out there for this picture, and they should really know about it. And in particular, they should know about the excellent treatment Code Red's given it.
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