8 Lost Scenes That Were Found Years Later
The deleted scenes we thought we'd never see.
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00:00In filmmaking it's always better to have more footage than you need, so that when you're in
00:04that editing suite you have plenty of options when it comes to the hard decisions on that final cut.
00:09In the halcyon days of the DVD format's youth, deleted scenes were some of the most exciting
00:14words you could see on a box, and special features like this drove many of us to repurchase films to
00:18witness footage we'd never seen before. As such, the following deleted scenes from
00:23films were the ones we thought would never see the light of day.
00:26I'm Sy from WhatCulture.com and these are 8 lost movie scenes that were found years later.
00:328. Ghostbusters – Fort Detmering
00:36As wonderful as the original Ghostbusters film is, there was always a scene in it that just
00:40seemed to come out of nowhere. There's no other way to describe it other than Ray's ghost blowjob
00:45scene where, during the montage at the midpoint of the movie, Dan Aykroyd dreams of receiving
00:49pleasure from a ghostly figure. Whatever you're into, I suppose. It turns out that that's because
00:54it was part of a longer sequence that was eventually cut out of the film for pace.
00:58In the ensuing years, crew on the film would mention that it came from a scene where Ray
01:03and fellow Ghostbuster Winston would visit the haunted Fort Detmering military post.
01:08Ghost heads, as they're affectionately known, wondered about the full sequence for years.
01:12In 2017, a whole 33 years after the movie was released, Ghost Corps, Sony's division for
01:18Ghostbusters projects, announced that they had found the tape containing the scene.
01:22It was later released for the 35th anniversary release.
01:25It's immediately clear why it was cut, being a slow and shallow sequence that doesn't really
01:30feel as though it belongs. As nice as it is to see these classic characters in new footage,
01:35director Ivan Reitman choosing to splice a portion of it into the final film's
01:38montage as a quick gag, rather than a whole sequence, turned out to be a stroke of genius.
01:447. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – Tuco's Bandits
01:48Sergio Leone's 1966 spaghetti western is a great tale of tensions between three men,
01:53all trying to get by in the American West during the Civil War, sometimes working together and
01:58sometimes standing off against each other to unearth a confederate gold stash.
02:02In the final version, Tuco is chasing his formal criminal partner Blondie across the state.
02:07One attempt at his life includes an attack from a group of bandits that Tuco has on his side,
02:11but they're never really given any explanation,
02:13they just kinda show up to give Clint Eastwood some goons to shoot at.
02:17The 2004 special edition DVD gave us plenty of unseen moments,
02:21one of which shed a little light on this scene.
02:24On his hunt for Blondie, Tuco stops off in a cave and speaks out loud,
02:27essentially putting a price on Blondie's head and saying he'll split the reward for all ways.
02:32His bandit buddies descend into the cave and Tuco utters a seriously underrated line,
02:36I'm alive, you bastards, and I always will be. As such, we now have our bandits.
02:42What makes this scene even more special is that the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
02:45was filmed in such a way that every scene had to be dubbed for every regional theatrical release.
02:50The unusable original sound was no different in these reclaimed, deleted scenes,
02:54and so the original cast had to return one last time to bring these moments back to life.
02:596. Super Mario Bros. The Movie – Political Rap
03:04Super Mario Bros. is a prime example of a movie that shook so hard during its shooting that
03:08nearly every nut and bolt just about flew off the thing and it almost fell apart entirely.
03:13Its editors did what they could to take their wrenches to it, get it, plumbing jokes,
03:17and tighten it up and as such many scenes were cast to the wayside.
03:21Whilst usually pointed and laughed at, there is a cult following for the 93 film
03:26adaption of Nintendo's most famous mascot that can find the fun in the ridiculousness of it all.
03:31Those people, which may include myself, were elated then that in 2019 the Super Mario
03:36Bros. The Movie archive announced that they had found a tape with 15 more minutes of footage.
03:41This tape confirmed a lot of rumours about what the film's directors Rocky
03:44Morton and Annabelle Jankel had shot that had been cut by interfering studio heads.
03:49Most important out of all of it was that it finally unearthed a scene that gives further
03:53reason and depth to the out of nowhere twist that the villainous King Koopa's underlings Spike and
03:57Iggy would turn on their leader. That scene? A 90s as all heck trade-off rap performance.
04:04Likely cut due to its political commentary, yes really, essentially the two characters
04:08are performing a political rally, it's an awkward but still good-hearted comedic moment
04:13that matches the general tone of the rest of the movie. Further moments found on the tape
04:17certainly back up the more political tones that were discarded, but the rap scene was
04:21certainly the centrepiece of it all. 5. Alien. Overmorphing
04:27The internet gives us instant access to so much information that makes finding out about deleted
04:32scenes and cut material from our favourite movies very easy. If you were an Alien fan in 1979,
04:38you may not have known about its most wanted deleted scene for some time. That is unless you
04:43picked up the movie's novelisation which included a sequence now referred to as the ovomorphing
04:48scene. Whilst escaping the Nostromo as its self-destruct sequence counts down, Ripley
04:53comes across the bodies of two of her former crewmates Brett and Dallas in the belly of the
04:57ship. They're encased in some strange matter that looks similar to the egg that the face hugger had
05:02previously sprung forth from, and Dallas begs Ripley to kill him. It's the kind of harrowing
05:08tragedy that you would expect from this geiger-driven horror flick.
05:11Director Ridley Scott cut the scene because Ripley needed to keep moving with the self-destruction
05:16bearing down on her, but fans were passionate about the scene that hit the cutting room floor.
05:21Sure, it may have slowed down the pacing, but hardcore Alien lore nerds felt that it explained
05:25a gap in the Alien's biology. The scene was finally shown 13 years later in 1992 on a laser
05:31disc release and, due to fan demand, was inserted back into Alien as part of the director's cut in
05:372003, making it not just found, but canon.
05:424. Election – Alternate Ending
05:451999's Election, if you've never heard of it before, sounds like the most quintessential 90s
05:50movie. A black comedy starring Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon doing emotional damage to
05:55each other over the process of a student body election. Unfortunately for all of its successes,
06:00it gets lost among all the other great films that were released around the turn of the millennium.
06:05An appropriate segue then into the fact that the film had an alternate ending shot that is
06:10closer to the Tom Perotta novel it was based upon that also got very much lost. Precisely who found
06:15it isn't exactly clear, but the important thing is whoever it was picked up the right VHS at a
06:20yard sale one day in 2011. Yep, the alternate ending for Election was discovered in a box
06:26on somebody's front garden. The original ending ends on a much more touching note,
06:30with Broderick's Jim and Witherspoon's Tracy meeting a few years later by chance and putting
06:34the past behind them. It's interesting to see, but another case where the decision to cut it was
06:39correct. The film's final, much more spiteful ending, with Broderick throwing a drink at
06:43Witherspoon's car in a fit of rage, fits the tone far more appropriately. Still, maybe don't
06:49throw your extra footage into a box in the attic, eh directors? Yeah?
06:533. Once Upon a Time in America – The Mausoleum
06:56Sergio Leone's crime drama Once Upon a Time in America has a long history of having its
07:00runtime butchered. The Lad Company feared that the film's 269 minute runtime needed to be shorter,
07:07cutting it to a comparably paltry 139 minutes. Over the years since Leone's death, his children
07:13have taken to restoring the film to its original state and beyond, using more and more discovered,
07:18unused footage. As it stands, the film starts with gangster Noodles laying wasted in a Chinese
07:24opium den after his friends have been shot down by the police. Once Upon a Time then retells the
07:29events of the past that led to that moment and then continues onwards to the future.
07:34One of these deleted sequences is the surreal cemetery scene where Noodles visits the Riverdale
07:38Mausoleum after being informed that the remains of his friends have been moved there. Within,
07:43he discovers a plaque that inexplicably claims that he paid for the mausoleum,
07:47despite the fact that he was living in hiding after their deaths. The general tone really amps
07:52up Noodles' feelings of guilt and serves to add credence to the theory that some of the story
07:57is protagonist Noodles' drug-addled dream. Still sitting in the opium den,
08:02Noodles is supposedly picturing the future. When played alongside the other scenes,
08:06such as love interest and wannabe singer Debra performing on Broadway with no context around it,
08:11it certainly adds some depth and intrigue to that potential interpretation.
08:162. Blue Velvet – Alternate Introduction
08:19David Lynch's Blue Velvet is dark, uncomfortable and full of interesting,
08:23unspoken subtexts. The story is essentially a noir film with the detective in question being
08:28college student Jeffrey Beaumont who, one day, discovers a severed ear. This leads him into a
08:33strange underbelly in his idyllic town where he becomes involved with a woman named Dorothy
08:38and her abuser Frank. But Jeffrey lucking upon the ear wasn't how the film originally started
08:43and considering that Blue Velvet was basically cut in half before it was released to the public,
08:48it's not all that surprising to hear it. Still, it was assumed that all of this footage was gone
08:52forever until one studio hand found it in a warehouse in Seattle 25 years after its release.
08:58Packaged in the eventual Blu-ray release, we get a spattering of scenes but the most integral is
09:03the original opening that starkly begins with Jeffrey chanting upon a rape in the basement
09:07of his college. He watches for a few moments before finally interrupting.
09:12Jeffrey's journey throughout the movie into the seedy criminal underworld of his town feels
09:16framed as one of curiosity and voyeurism and thus this is an appropriately unnerving way to start.
09:22It gives a deeper sense of meaning to the later scene where Jeffrey watches Frank rape Dorothy
09:27from a nearby closet. During the film, Jeffrey's love interest Sandy asks him if he's a pervert
09:32or a detective. This original opening certainly skews the line on that one.
09:371. The Exorcist – Spider Walk When The Exorcist was released in 1973,
09:43it was billed as the scariest film you would ever see. Sensibilities were different then and,
09:48sure enough, there were reports that the movie led audience members to faint from fright.
09:52What's remarkable is that one of the most chilling shots wasn't in the original cut.
09:56If you've somehow never seen it, well, first of all, fix that. But also,
10:00The Exorcist tells the story of Regan, a small child who seemingly becomes possessed by the devil.
10:06In the process of expelling the evil from her body, we are treated to some of
10:10the most shocking and state-of-the-art effects that were made in film at that time.
10:15Regan, running down the stairs bent over backwards, is one of the most iconic moments
10:18in horror history and was inspired by a similar scene in the book. When it came to the theatrical
10:23edit of the film, it was left out, with director William Friedkin citing that its planned placement
10:29didn't work and interrupted the otherwise slow build to Regan's demonic takeover.
10:34Fans of the book missed its inclusion and rumours about it swelled for decades.
10:38In 2000, however, The Exorcist returned to cinemas with a director's cut,
10:42promising a version you've never seen before. And 27 years later,
10:46The Exorcist was the topic of terrified debate because of Regan's horrifying gymnastics.
10:51The scene drove audiences in their thousands to see the classic once more,
10:55making The Exorcist the highest-grossing horror film for many, many years to come.
11:00And that's the list. Let us know what you thought down in the comments below,
11:04and whilst you're down there, let us know what other movie scenes you know
11:07about that went missing for a very long time that we can now all see and enjoy.
11:11Speaking of enjoy, don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't,
11:15and also hit the notification bell. I'm Sy for whatculture.com, and have a good week.