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What are some truly odd, stupid, inexplicable, or outright bizarre edits you've seen done to theatrical movies that air on TV? Here's a good example of what I mean: Jurassic Park came on AMC the other night, and midway through there was the strangest edit. In the theatrical cut of the film, Tim scares Lex with the bug-eyed night-vision goggles by popping up and going "Boo!". Gennaro, the lawyer, tells him to put them back where he got them, and then Lex hits him (Tim I mean) with her hat and tells him "Don't scare me!"

The AMC airing of the film includes the bit with Gennaro scolding Tim, and Lex saying "Don't scare me!" but completely omits the part before this where he actually does the scaring. No doubt leaving the handful of people who are seeing the movie for the first time utterly confused about how/when Tim "scared" her.

I thoroughly despise the practice of editing films to allow for more ad time or any editing at all to be honest. Our native Canadian channels, excepting Global :hatred: , tend to treat the material far better than that for the most part I'm happy to say.

This isn't really "bizarre," but I remember seeing THE WILD BUNCH on television many years ago (it was probably somewhere between 1974 and 1977).  The gunfight scenes were so heavily edited that I couldn't figure out what was going on, who was shooting at who, and who even ended up getting killed.  It was an incoherent mess.

They leave the fate of Lucy's husband hanging in the TV cut of The Frighteners. The also cut my favorite part of Fright Night! The part where Billy melts (this is odd, because the first time I saw it (on AMC, not SciFi if this makes the difference) it was intact!)

One of the most egregious Edits-for-Television that I have seen, and this has stuck with me over the years, was for 48 HOURS.  Now, to get 48 HOURS to be shown on TV, they had to cut, what, about 98% of the dialog?  So, what did they do?  They cut in footage that was not in the theatrical release.  The worse part about this is that it was stuff that was cut for a REASON! It was not germane to the plot and a waste of filmstock.

It was footage of Jack (Nick Nolte) and his girlfriend (Annette O'Toole) trying to patch up their relationship.

Utterly.  Bleeping.  Stupid.

What I find REALLY ODD is that movies that were cut YEARS ago,and what is accepted now on TV,such as swear words,are still omitted! I've heard Cartman on that stupid cartoon say stuff that  you would rarley hear outside a hard R movie in the past!

To be fair, Cartman is on a Cable network which doesn't have to worry about the FCC.  A lot of what he says wouldn't be let onto network TV, except perhaps after safe haven hours.



My favorite is still probably from my The Big Lebowski.  "This is what happens when you meet in a stranger in the alps!" instead of "this is what happens when you f**k a stranger in the ass!".  Pretty funny.

The TV edit of Robocop is my absolute favorite(?) of all time.

"Why me!  WHY ME! WHY ME!"   :tongueout:

Did anyone else see the Fox TV edit of Basic Instinct that aired about 8 years ago?

Talk about butchering a movie.  They've actually got some of the looped TV dialogue as an extra on the special edition unrated DVD.   :teddyr:

"Witches leave!" dubbed in, most of Miguel Ferrer's coke and fondle fest cut out. Also the impacts of Clarence shooting him in the legs cut out also.

The TV version of Flash Gordon on some channels used to lop out most of the segment in the Prince's realm and cut to the Hawkmen's floating city right as Flash and the Prince begin their fight. Must have been a time cut, but so odd to take out one huge segment so badly.

One of the advantages of living in Spain is that there's no censorship. Present laws were passed during the first socialist administration, and are specially relaxed, even when compared to other European countries.

Basically, all movies are shown uncut, both in theatrical and domestical releases, and only porn is forbidden for minors of 18. The rest of the movies maintain a classification (for all audiences, for above 7, 13 and 18 years old), but they only exist as a tool for concerned parents.

This said, I was unlucky enough to stumble into a censored copy of "Re-animator", and it had one of the most abrupt cuts I've ever seen near the end. If you've seen the movie, you'll remember the infamous scene were a reanimated head licks the vary naked body of Barbara Crampton, who is tied to an autopsy stretcher. The final seconds of the scene feature the head going in between Crampton's legs, and then the voice of Herbert West interrupts the proceedings.

In the censored version, the scene abruptly comes to an end way before the head goes towards Crampton¡s groin. Instead, there's a nasty cut to black (not even a fade to black) and with still a black screen (!) we hear part of Herbert West's dialogue, which then cuts back to the rest of the footage.

My personal favorite TV edit would be Mallrats, which I was upset wasn't a bonus on the 10th Anniversary DVD.  In my mind, it'sa different movie.  It has different dialogue, alternate scenes, cropped scenes, different gags,

The FX cut of Daredevil is probably the best cut out there.  It's kind of an amalgam of the theatrical version and the director's cut.

I forget what channel its on, But in the theatrical version of Dumb and Dumber this is the exchange:

Harry- "You just tell me where to sign, bub."

Loyd- "Right on my ASS after you kiss it!!"


now this is the for tv edit.


Harry- "You just tell me where to sign, bub."
Loyd- "Right on my SANDWITCH after you kiss it!!"

Back in the days when airplanes showed movies to all the passengers simultaneously, rather than through those individual TV screen things, someone I knew saw an airplane edit version of Glengarry Glen Ross.  They might as well have dubbed it into Japanese for all the sense it must have made.

Halloween II.  One guy apparently swears a lot, and they replace it all with the most utterly ludicrous nonsensep that vaguely matches his mouth movements.  It would almost be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

The cut of RoboCop I've seen on TV has the most hilarious dialogue edit.  When Clarence is yelling at Bobby for burning the money in the armored van, someone changed the dialogue to this:

"It's as good as lard now, you assHEAD!  You stupid, stupid assHEAD!"

Yes, they changed "a***ole" to "asshead".  Since he's still saying "ass-", which is what you'd figure censors would be worried about, I'm not sure what the point was.

And, speaking of Halloween 2, in a TV edit I've seen, they don't show Michael stabbing the one nurse in the neck and picking her up.  So, it looks like he just picks her up and drops her.  Someone even dubbed in a female voice going, "oohhh ..." to make it seem even more like she survived!

Apparently on TV the word "ass" gets a double naughty word score when "-hole" is added to the end of it.

It's like the old George Carlin line about how you can say "p**sed off" on TV but not "p**sed on". You can only say half the sentence, "I'm p**sed off because you p**sed on me!"

Yes! Brian De Palma's "Scarface" edited for content:

http://webcam2tv.com/web/smash-up/scarface-short-version/

(notice I didn't mention which content is edited)  :teddyr:

Another one that makes me chuckle is when somebody says "god damn" and they edit out god but leave the damn. 

Here in Germany I saw Fortress withou the Ending, the whole truck scene and everything afterwards was cut out.
It was slashed vividly before.
Also I have the grace of a TV programme Magazine which sometimes comments on the lengths of the cuts.
And to make matters worse a friend gave me a dvd-box as a gift where you can read on the backside how muchsome films where cut because the restored uncut german version switches to english for the scenes which were left out in the transition. REcord is The last House on the left a film that in german is only 64 Minutes long and should be 84 or original cut 91 Minutes.

The TV edit for The Hard Way, a recurring phrase is "slug-in-a-ditch".

The Dumb and Dumber one has always been a favorite

I also agree with Mallrats... however better than that was watching CLERKS on fox

The scene when Randal orders the porns was left in... just no dialogue at all for 2 minutes.

I remembered hearing a rumor that Kevin Smith requests editing his movies for TV because he likes to see how badly he can edit them... I don't know how true that is but I wouldn't put it past the guy... he's kind of the anti-hero for cinema (or at least was in the 90s)

You'd think they'd lop off the "god" instead (some TV edits of stuff I've seen do it that way), since invoking the name is what draws the ire in the first place. Among religious people I know, saying "damn" on its own is nothing compared to saying "goddamn" or variations.

Someone mentioned The Wild Bunch earlier, I remember the edit on the Turner channels that in the opening shootout during the temperance parade they reused the same footage of windows being shot out and members of the gang quick firing their pump shotguns over and over and over. The scene appeared to be roughly the same length and they left the audio untouched, I think.

My all time favorite has to be The People Under the Stairs when I caught it on TNT some time back.  The part where the kid yells, "I'm gonna kick your ass!" Instead he says: "I'm gonna kick your a-BUTT!"  I was just about rolling on the floor. 

Other than that, there's the TV edit of Robin Hood: Men in Tights.  I sh*t you not, they didn't edit the racey stuff, just all the punchlines.  I still cringe when they deleted Ulman saying , "Yeah, it used to be Sh*thouse!" In effect, it came out as:

Prince: You mean you changed your name to Latrene?
Latrene: Yeah.

And that was it.  The bang was completely gone.  It hurt so much watching the flick...

ITV showed a version of Smokey And The Bandit some years ago and replaced the Jackie Gleason swearing with scum bum.

Many a moon ago (probably late '70s early '80s) WOR (channel 9 in NY City) showed Uptown Saturday Night.  In the scene where the club gets robbed, (IIRC) the robbers make everyone take off their clothes -- stipping down to their underwear.  One young woman said that she didn't wear underwear -- they still made her take her dress off.  Sure enough, she wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing.  Full frontal nudity on broadcast tv! :cheers:  The censor must have been distracted at the moment, it was purely gratuitous -- not that I had any objection.

I guess this is a bizarre non edit.

I think that version makes the rounds on cable over here as well. Most of Gleason's best lines (all the swearing) are dubbed by someone who sounds more like Fred Flinstone than Gleason's Buford T. Justice. It's a nice attempt but noticeable enough to be distracting.

Now I remember the worst cut I witnessed ever, in Ghostbusters when Bill Murray starts (I know it only from german so this is only translated),
well perhaps we misjudged this Marshmallow Man he is new in town, he is Sailor , we should organize something to shag for him and he will be happy" they cut it to well perhaps we misjudged this Marshmallow Man.

My favorite, and the one I can remember is when Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) and Kevin are in the car listening to some headbanging music, and she says: "How do you rate the music?"--And he says: "I'm not really into headbanging." And then she says: "Are you into any sort of banging." And when they showed this on television, they bleeped out the entire conversation. But, to make the edit even stranger, the same broadcast on television, left in most of the nudity and violence in "Lair of the White Worm."

Television censorship really doesn't make alot of sense alot of the time.

"whered'ya get that scar? eatin pineapple?"

Die Hard 3- Die Hard With A Vengeance on F/X:

Original scene:

Bruce Willis (John McClane) hands Samuel L. Jackson (Zeus) a machine gun

Willis: Here take this!

Jackson: what am I supposed to do with this?

Willis: I thought you'd know how to use this.

Jackson: Why? Cause I'm black? You racist mother-F*cker!

Edited For F/X:

Bruce Willis (John McClane) hands Samuel L. Jackson (Zeus) a machine gun

Willis: Here take this!

Jackson: what am I supposed to do with this?

Willis: I thought you'd know how to use this.

Jackson: Why? Cause I'm black? You racist melon farmer!

Now that is a funny edit.  I love it when they do ones like that.

Welcome aboard.

The TV edit of Pulp Fiction is beyond awful.

They just had to completely drop out the sound in certain scenes instead of trying to overdub dialogue over top of it that was suitable for TV.

Also, they completely edited around The Gimp in the infamous Pawn Shop sequence.   

There's an even better change in the english version they released for broadcast. There's a scene where EPA guy Peck, the Mayor and the Ghostbusters are arguing over whose fault it is that all the ghosts that were captured just got released. A great line playing off Peck's name got removed and replaced with a longer line comparing him to a rat. What's weird is that they still made a penis joke of a sort (or is that just my dirty mind?), they just didn't follow through with it.

[original, paraphrasing]
Ray: Everything was going fine until dickless here shut off the power.
Mayor: Is this true?
Peter: Yes, it's true... this man has no dick.

For the sanitized version, replace dickless with 'willywick' and the second half of Peter's line with 'this man is some kind of rodent, we're not sure what kind'.

My personal favorite came when I was watching "The Matrix" on one of the main channels like NBC or CBS.  Neo is talking to the agent:

Neo:  "Why don't I give you the finger, and you give me my phone call?" (Neo flips the agent the bird)

Edited version:

Neo:  "Why don't I give you the flipper, and you give me my phone call?" (Neo holds up a fist, in which the finger has been blanked out)

I also enjoy the edit of "The Client", where the kid says this:

Kid:  "I don't give a f*****g s**t!"

Edited version:

Kid:  "I don't give a flying sack!"

God, there are so many stupid edits on movies these days you could almost build an entire collection on some due to various edited "versions"...

I always liked the scene in "Cuffs" where the two guys are cursing in the car and random words are censored... then finally one slips out and they both stare at each other.

Another Robocop reference...

Dick Jones: I remember having fun with the Old Man...calling him names like "Iron Butt"..."Boner"...once I even called him..."a***ole"

TV edit....

Dick Jones: ...Once I even called him..."Airhead"


Also, in "Die Hard With A Vengeance" there's a scene where Bruce Willis is forced to go around wearing a sign that says "I HATE n****rS" in a black neighborhood.  In the TV edit, the sign reads "I HATE EVERYBODY" instead.