St Elmo's Fire

The centrepiece of these extras is writer/director Joel Schumacher's commentary, but the man who brought us Batman Forever, Tigerland and Phone Booth has surprisingly little to say over the course of an hour and 40 minutes.

He tells us St Elmo's Fire was co-written with a young intern, Carl Kurlander, in the early Eighties, at a time when "Donald Trump and Leona Helmsley and Ivan Boesky and Mike Milken were lionised and set up as great role models for young people. Money had become God."

That's all the background we get, however, and Schumacher spends the rest of the commentary telling us that Rob Lowe is a "wonderful human being" and Judd Nelson is "very educated". Even blink-and-you-miss-them bit part players are "wonderful character actors" and "very talented."

Only once, explaining why he was refused permission to shoot the film at the Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington, DC, does Schumacher let loose. A few years earlier, The Exorcist was filmed there, featuring a pre-pubescent Linda Blair masturbating with a crucifix while shouting "your mother sucks cocks in hell." Schumacher, meanwhile, was turned down because St Elmo's included references to - wait for it - pre-marital sex. The reason for the about-turn? God ultimately wins over against the devil in The Exorcist, but not in St Elmo's.

Schumacher is still sore, even after all these years, but at least he now sees the funny side.