Jack Cardiff's 1973 film THE FREAKMAKER (aka THE MUTATIONS), starring Donald Pleasance, was recently published on DVD by Subversive Cinema. There are two commentary tracks on the disc, with the other having Stanley interviewing the director... well, sort of.

"The film has two commentary tracks: One is with DVD producer Norm Hill moderating with Weinbach and Harris, and the other is...well, the other one is strange. Apparently Dust Devil director Richard Stanley interviewed Jack Cardiff for this track, but Stanley’s voice had to be removed due to technical reasons. In his place is Hill, asking the questions that were answered by Cardiff when Stanley asked them. Like I said, it’s a bit odd but worth a listen because Cardiff’s recollection is great, though you should be warned that it’s far more sporadic than the other track. For behind-the-scenes entertainment value, the track with Hill, Harris, and Weinbach if far more on the money, and there’s hardly ever a break in their conversation." - Dread Central

I'll see if I can contact someone over at Subversive to check this one out.

What was THAT all about? That's just plain weird, especially given the fact that there have been audio commentaries done through a phone line. (Easy Rider)

Yes, that doesn't make any sense ... "technical reasons?" It would be "technically" a lot harder to cut Stanley out, and paste in someone else's dialoge. Sounds a little less like a "technical" problem, and more like a "personal" problem that someone somewhere had, to go to those lengths ...

I agree - if there were simply some tech problems and they needed to cut away the track, they would have called back Stanley and done the recording again.

Who knows? Maybe Stanley's words were going backwards when played

What happened was simple. It took us one year to get Jack to finally agree to do the supplements for Freakmaker. He is 91, after all. Richard is a personal friend and fan of the Powell films so I contacted him and asked him to record the session. He happily agreed and hired for us a cameraman to do it. However, when Richard and the cameraman recorded the track...for some reason, he did not mic Richard. Richard ended up not even a mumble in the background. On top of that, he had very poorly mic'ed Jack, outside in blowing wind. We did not get the tapes until THREE WEEKS before the release (another screw up) and when we got them, after all that waiting, they were a wreck. So I called Richard and said we were still going to make a go of it, because it was never going to happen again given Jack's age and how long we had already waited, but I would have to sit in for him becuase he did not exist on the tape. He agreed...and that is what we got. I spent all night in a studio repairing the audio and trying to recreate the questions as I could not hear what Richard was saying, even in the studio! It ended up because of his age, Jack could not do more than 30 mins or so of speaking without stopping, so it is likely that is all we would have gotten regardless but I would have certainly preferred to have kept Richard on the track.

Norm Hill
www.subversivecinema.com