I'm currently profiling all the films in the Al Adamson boxset. One of them is Smashing The Crime Syndicate from 1968. It has original songs. No problem there.

The film didn't do well, so two years later Adamson shot new footage with a biker gang and recut the movie, calling it Hell's Bloody Devils. It has the same songs. But ... are they still original songs?

I haven't watched the movies, just the credit sequences, but I would think that they are in the same scenes. And there are no other songs credited in the second movie.

Well, with the new scenes turning it into a biker movie, I wouldn't say that it's the same movie.

Complicating things further, the imdb treats the two movies as the same, so it might even be hard to get consensus from people familiar with the movies on if they're the same or not. Most sources online claim that Smashing the Crime Syndicate wasn't released until 1970. Is it possible that it never even managed to get a release at all until it was reworked as Hell's Bloody Devils? If in the days before home video, HBD was the only actual theatrical release, that would almost for sure make them original songs.

Quoting GSyren:

Quote:

Was Smashing ever released theatrically? Maybe not. But does it matter? The boxset contains both movies. Can the same songs be original in both of them?

I'd say in matters in the sense that if the earlier version was not released until years later, then the newer version would be the first time the songs were released to the public, which to me would make them original songs.

Sorry to throw this spanner into the works.

Look at the BBFC link for "Smashing the Crime Syndicate":
https://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/smashing-crime-syndicate

It shows the film was classified in 1974 for the UK release by Ember Films, that's four years after "Hell's Bloody Devils" release in the US.

I always thought that "Operation M" was the working title and "The Faker$" was the unreleased original title of the finished film before it was shelved (because they could not find a distributor). The 1968 copyright was for this film and should not be construed as a release date.

In 1970, Al Adamson and partners formed there own distribution company called "Independent-International Pictures Corporation", and following the success of the first film distributed, "Satan's Sadists", they began to look at some of their shelved/unfinished films.  "Hell's Bloody Devils" was created by deleting scenes and adding biker gang scenes to their shelved "The Faker$" film, ostensibly for the drive-in market.

My thinking is the film was produced by an American film company, so original title (as per DVDP rules) is the one used in the country of origin, namely, "Hell's Bloody Devils".

As "Hell's Bloody Devils" was the first released version of the film, any original song credits are valid for that film.

Any other subsequent released version I would consider to be a different cut of the original version ("Hell's Bloody Devils"), so including the original song writing credits would be valid as long as you had:

Title:  Smashing the Crime Syndicate/The Faker$
Original Title: Hell's Bloody Devils


Just my thoughts on how to solve the convoluted filmography of Al Adamson.

Sorry, but that film was released as Hell's Bloody Devils, it utilised the same original camera negative, just with some modifications.

I don't see this differently than any other recut, edited cut, extended cut, director's cut etc released after the original cut, sometimes with added footage that was filmed later. The film title has changed but that's the only difference, it's still versions of the same movie imho.

(One could maybe argue that if more than 50% of the film was reshot then it's a different movie but that doesn't seem to be the case here.)