This scene occurs at around 46 minutes into the film - right after the scene where Marisa Mell unsuccessfully confronts Lara Wendel, and before the scene where Lara finds her burned doll. So what's the difference? Well, I'll tell you: the Belgian VHS release includes an extra scene that runs 3 minutes and 14 seconds. Now, this is where my comparison of the Midnight Video version and the Belgian release really gets interesting because the Belgian version is actually longer at 87 minutes Thanks to Marc, we also know that the Italian Cinehollywood release runs 84 minutes too, and I'm assuming that this is also the running time on the Greek Cinehollywood tape. According to Sweet Cosy Video, that is also the running time on the Swedish and Danish VHS releases: The running time on the Finnish release is 84 minutes. Here are a few comparison screenshots from the Belgian VHS and MV's Finnish-sourced release: The colors on the MV version are a bit washed out and there are some rather pale skin colors in the brighter scenes but it's still a major improvement and the dark scenes look wonderful. The MV version is much better and it's finally possible to actually see what is going on during the darker moments such as the coven scenes, Marisa Mell confronting Lara Wendel, the exorcism and the nude mother-daughter fight. Not only in the night scenes, which are almost impossible to make out, but it's also frustratingly dark during the day scenes. I guess this was the norm with all Belgian VHS releases.Īnyway, the quality of the Finnish version that Midnight Video uses really blows the Belgian release out of the water. If you look at the screenshots below, you'll see that the upper subs are in French-Belgian, while the lower is in Flemish. As a result, the VHS is actually subtitled in two different languages as well. This is because Belgium has both French-Belgian and Flemish as official languages. Notice how it has two titles: LES VIERGES DAMNEES and DE DUIVELSE MAAGDEN. Earlier I referred to this as a Belgian Cinehollywood release because that's what I thought it was but I was incorrect - this release isn't from Cinehollywood at all. Prior to today, I had only watched this film through a DVD-R of a Belgian video release. I'm pretty sure it's the one from Walters/Harley that Marc refers to. The source for MV's version is a Finnish VHS release. I've finally had the time to fully watch Midnight Video's version of RING OF DARKNESS and I thought it looked quite impressive.
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