Not Particularly Good Films That I'd Like To See Re-Cut/Restored

[Republibot 3.0]

There's a lot of films that get chopped up quite a bit between the primary editing process and the theaters, and a jillion reasons for doing so: scenes were too long, actors didn't really nail the performance, the FX failed, it slowed the pacing of the movie, the script changed and a subplot was broken and abandoned without filming all of its constituent parts, simple gutslessness on the part of the studio, etc.

I was just thinking about some genre movies that I'd like to see recut and restored to put the deleted scenes back in, and the two that lept to the top of my mind were "Logan's Run" and "Saturn 3."

Neither are particularly good movies. In fact, Saturn 3 was crap, but I'd still like to see "The Original Vision" rather than the sanitized stuff we got. It'd probably still be not-very-good - most of this stuff gets cut for a legitimate reason - but I'd still like to see it.

Any movies you'd like to see 'fixed' like this?

 

[Jade Jaguar]

There are a lot of films that were released long, or meant to be released long, but cut just after, or just before, release. One is The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. I'd love to see the original cut of that, but I don't think it exists.

Although it is very imperfect, I still like David Lynch's Dune. I'd love to see a true director's cut of that, NOT the terrible "Alan Smithee" long version.

 

[GKarsEye]

Not only do I dislike (and I'm a huge Lynch fan otherwise), I just don't see how that story could be made into a decent film. But then I'm not that great a fan of the book either.

There's some I think would make interesting remakes in the hands of good directors and producers, like Fahenheit 451, but I know that's not that point of this thread.

Remember when we all desperately wanted to see the "real" version of Blade Runner, and there were like 5 different cuts? Yikes.

I dunno, as I get older and lose patience for unnecessary nonsense, I've become a great fan of cutting, editing, and brevity. The only scene in any movie that was cut that shouldn't have been that I can come up with now is in Amadeus when Mozart's wife offers herself to Salieri to get Mozart a job, just because (and no it's not 'cause there's boobies) it explains why she's so mean to him at the end of the movie when he's at Mozart's death bed.

 

[hypatia]

I know that if films don't sell, they are flops. But I still wish we had "The Magnificent Amberson"'s real ending. I think there have been some horrible cuts, but I'm interested in restored versions. Most of the time if it's adding depth, it seems worth adding to a DVD.

Live films are another story. I just hope now that there is a market for both we won't see scenes that are lost and gone forever.

 

[Demonn]

They're redoing Total Recall with Colin Farrell... I liked the first one so we'll have to wait and see if the new one is better or worse. Colin Farrell is normally either hit of miss.

 

[Jade Jaguar]

I know that if films don't sell, they are flops. But I still wish we had "The Magnificent Amberson"'s real ending. I think there have been some horrible cuts,...

It's not just the ending. The entire film was grossly recut to be VERY different from Welles' original cut. It's supposed to be a very bleak film about the family, and the recut did what it could to make it into a light, funny sort of film, just the opposite from what Welles intended. Sadly, they destroyed all the other footage. The closest to Welles' original vision was done on laser disc, by Criterion. They took the existing footage, the shooting script, and replaced the missing parts of the film with the script, and stills. This has not been released on DVD.