The Diamond Solution

On a previous edition of what is now apparently the blog's defining mission to chronicle every oddity concerning the Diamond Brothers books and their film and TV adaptations, we looked (well, correspondent Simon Drake looked at it and I made some extra notes) at two different edits of the 1988 film Just Ask for Diamond -- a longer one, which was originally released on VHS in the UK, and a significantly truncated one that appears to be the only edit of the film available on DVD. Lacking information about what was originally shown theatrically or was available overseas, I couldn't determine exactly what the deal was with the two versions. But thanks to another reader, Giles Leigh, who carried out some research into home video releases of the film outside the UK, I think we can, at the very least, make a pretty educated guess about what happened. Much of what you are about to read is what he sent me, and I am enormously grateful to him for doing the work and giving me permission to reproduce it here.

Pictured above are the two US VHS releases of the film (as you can see, it was retitled Diamond's Edge there), taken from online sellers -- on the left is the original, and the second is a rarer re-release from the 1990s. And here, more significantly, are the backs of those videos.

(As Giles points out, the 1990s release has a URL for Lionsgate's website, which may narrow down when exactly it was released.) Both have the running time as 83 minutes -- meaning they must be the shorter version as available on DVD in the UK. It is also important to note that these are el cheapo releases in cardboard sleeves for reasons we'll get onto in a minute.

So: The only commercial release of the film in the US was the truncated edit, whereas initial home video releases in the UK were the full version without all the cuts the shorter edit has. Which seems like a pretty important fact to take into consideration when working out why the shorter edit exists, and where it was seen. But that wasn't all Giles had found.

This little baby is the original American VHS -- a screening copy only for rental shops, which was never released commercially. And, as evidenced by the label, it's the original, uncut version (PAL-to-NTSC running times would account for the extra couple of minutes). This isn't actually a proper, official release -- screening copies aren't for the general public.

So, here's Giles' theory on the matter:

So, here's what I think. I suspect that the 83-minute version was the straight-to-VHS - and more relevantly, straight to television version. Chopping the runtime is just to allow for adverts. No real way of proving this, but for the usage of cardboard video sleeves, which usually weren't used for films that had been given a major release in that jurisdiction. My money is on the film's originally being released with the full runtime, to not a great reception (there is little information on the film itself, least of all in America, so I presume that if it ever got a cinematic release it must have been a comparatively small one). As a result, a couple of years later (note the date on the cassette), when the film was planned to be released on home video, the screening copy was sent out to shops. It did not get a particularly enthusiastic reception, and accordingly, the film was recut to allow for its streaming on late night cable TV and the like, as well as a low-key VHS release.

And that, I think, is probably right -- the cuts were made for the US market, and that edit then accidentally found its way onto the UK DVD release. This still doesn't explain one thing from the original article covering all the differences between the two edits -- namely, the different screen for the song credits on the short version which omits the details for the title theme, despite it still being present on the opening titles. The short version on UK DVDs also still has Just Ask for Diamond as the movie's onscreen title, not Diamond's Edge -- this US trailer is the only thing I can find that uses the alternative title. So we still don't have all the answers... but I suspect we have most of them. (Although most of the removed voiceovers don't actually reduce the runtime, because the video is still the same, so it seems unlikely it was just for adverts; possibly some dissatisfaction with Colin Dale's performance?)

There are two other overseas VHS releases Giles found information about. One is from Germany:

And the other is from Australia:

If you look, you'll see the Australian release is the full version, whilst the German one is the shorter edit (the scan is blurry, but collector websites and amazon.de confirm it). Australia uses PAL, the same as the UK, whilst Germany uses NTSC, same as the US. So that surely explains why each country received the edit they did.

Enormous thanks once again to Giles and Simon