Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort was initially released in 2014 and ended up being completely recalled due to a massive oversight by the editing team, but was eventually re-released.
The Wrong Turn franchise is known for churning out relatively quick, direct-to-video movies after the first film was the only one to obtain a theatrical release. The second film, Wrong Turn: Dead End, did a brief film festival circuit in 2007, and got decent reviews. The franchise experienced a slight decline from there, focusing more on sex, blood, and guts than plot or acting, but as this has never been a high point of the series, it was no worse for wear. Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort, which initially released in 2014, was structured a little differently. It was intended to be an origin story about the West Virginia cannibal clan instead of connecting to the previous movies.
However, its release hit a critical failure when it was discovered that one scene included a family photo on a missing persons board in the background. The shots in question include said bulletin board and the aforementioned photo a handful of times, which wouldn’t normally be a big deal, except for the fact that the crew associated with the film didn’t do their due diligence and inadvertently ended up mixed up in a lawsuit for using a real person’s image without their consent.
Wrong Turn 6 Featured A Real-Life Missing Person
Where most missing persons photos are manufactured for film, one real poster escaped director Valeri Milev. Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort included an image of Stacia Purcell, a real-life missing person. Purcell was declared missing on October 30, 2013, but was found dead several days later after her body washed up in a nearby river. Even worse, Purcell’s picture was portrayed as an 81-year-old man in the film, with the actual poster only slightly altered. In reality, she was a woman in her 60s. Her family discovered that her likeness was used in a film without their consent and filed a lawsuit in Ireland, claiming damages as well as pain and suffering for seeing her portrayed in such a light. Because of this pending legal suit, 20th Century Fox had to pull all existing copies of the film from shelves. Some copies that were already distributed ended up being sold on the Internet with a rather high price tag, going as high as $45 for a single copy once news of the scandal broke.
For a while, there was no news whether or not the film would be re-released, as much of Wrong Turn 6‘s future depended on the outcome of the court case. The film’s initial release was met with mixed reviews from critics and audiences, with many saying that it wasn’t the worst in the franchise, falling somewhere in the middle, and others saying it was one of the better entries. It might have been an easier pill for those involved to swallow if the film had been universally panned, but since it wasn’t an abject failure, the recall was a definite set-back. Eventually, Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort fixed their error by editing the photo out of the film entirely, and it was re-released. The initial cut with Purcell’s photo is considered to be a rare collector’s item amongst franchise fans.
