The original:
The Descent is one of approximately nine thousand “attractive people are trapped in an enclosed space with extremely nearsighted monsters” movies. However, this film had the distinction of being a well-made, tense thriller with competent direction and elaborately constructed sets and makeup effects. It also had the distinction of being so scary that it made us curl up into the nearest corner and cry for several days. This film freaked us out so much that we still get goosebumps every time we wind up trapped in a collapsing cave swarming with monsters.
The original ending revealed that our main character, who had seemingly escaped, was actually imagining her escape and was still trapped inside. This use of the inventive “the monster is still after you” twist is probably the most effective horror since it turned out that the monster was still after the hero at the end of Halloween. Or when it turned out that the monster was still after the hero at the end of Nightmare on Elm Street. Or when it turned out that the monster was still after the hero at the end of Friday the Thirteenth. Or when it turned out that the monster was still after the hero at the end of Zombiegeddon IV: The Rebloodening. Or…
The “improved” version:
American distributors opted to cut one minute from the ending in order to give the film a happy ending. God knows that people go to horror movies in order to make sure that everything turns out okay in the end. Because the director had written multiple endings, the studio did the logical thing and used none of them, opting to end the film in the middle of the David Lynch like dream sequence.
Director Neil Marshall, who approved the change, half-heartedly defended the alternate ending by comparing it to the open-ended conclusion of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. You just know that your movie is in trouble when you have to convince the audience that your film is on the same artistic level as a movie about a cannibalistic redneck who wears human skin.
How you can find the original:
The US “unrated” DVD contains many scenes that were deemed too gruesome for the theatrical cut. Among these scenes are the original disturbing ending, more graphic shots of the protagonists being slaughtered, and perhaps most terrifyingly, more interminable establishment of generic characters that gives the impression that someone recorded their home videos of a slumber party over a copy of Aliens.
Metropolis
The original:
No, it’s not a Smallville spinoff. We’ll get to Superman later. Metropolis is Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 silent film. Lang’s original cut devoted more time to plotting and character development, adding realism and depth to his depictions of social conflict, the technological dehumanization of society, and naked lady-robots
Guess which aspect of it the internet chooses to remember.
The “improved” version:
When the film was released to American audiences, studio executives cut many key sequences, such as the engaging conflict between Rotwang and Fredersen and Freder's haunting dream sequence, focusing more on the special effects and set pieces than on the storyline. Quite frankly, we feel that the whole idea was ridiculous. Who in their right mind would want to see a science fiction film that serves as a special effects demo reel, rather than focusing on the story and characters?
Oh, right.
Anyway, to further shorten the film, the studio sped up the footage to twenty-six frames per second instead of the usual sixteen. The result? One of the most revered science-fiction films of all time now resembled an episode of Benny Hill.
How you can find the original:
With a time machine. A digitally restored version was released in 2002, but since American studios scrapped much of the footage, only the original audience in Berlin saw the film the way that Lang intended. For now, we can only hope that the United States will one day grant its citizens the same freedom of speech that was enjoyed in early twentieth century Berlin.
Brazil
The original:
Terry Gilliam, who you may recall is referred to as “the weird one” in Monty Python, brings us Brazil, a combination between George Orwell’s 1984 and Gilliam’s absurdist comedy origins that somehow manages to be even more nightmarishly surreal than it sounds.
The “improved” version:
The American release of the film famously ended the film early in order to give it a happy ending. In a decision that leaves us wondering if they had even seen the film, studio executives decided to end the film in the midst of Sam’s final dream before the final shot revealing that it was, in fact, a dream. Given that the sequence preceding the abrupt ending was extremely bizarre, the new ending leaves the audience in a state of Nightmare on Elm Street style confusion over whether or not what they just saw was a dream, rendering the previous two hours completely pointless. This decision implies that the studio’s only issue with a Terry Gilliam film is that it wasn’t strange enough.
How you can find the original:
An uncut version of the film has been released as part of the Criterion Collection, a series of DVDs intended to showcase great works of cinema. We for one are glad that a film in which a man is nearly drowned in raw sewage can now be considered high art.
