Scary movies are supposed to, well, scare people — but how much is too much? These horror films found out when they crossed a line, and then walked it back.
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00:00Scary movies are supposed to, well, scare people. But how much is too much?
00:05These horror films found out when they crossed the line and then walked it back.
00:10What was Sigourney Weaver's one no-no on the Nostromo? If Weaver hadn't put her foot down,
00:15there might have been more than aliens bumping around in the dark. By the time the credits
00:18rolled on 1986's Aliens, Ellen Ripley had been firmly established as the de facto face of the
00:23franchise and the most badass sci-fi lead of all time.
00:26Get away from her, you b----.
00:30But that wasn't always the plan. In fact, one of the wildest things about the Alien franchise
00:35is just how much of its success seems to have come about by improvisation.
00:38In the original script for 1979's Alien, her character wasn't even supposed to be a woman.
00:43Even after Ripley's gender was flipped, the decision to let her survive had little to
00:47do with feminism or making Ripley into a franchise lead. Weaver said in a 2006 interview with Total
00:52No one on that film was a feminist. Everyone thought,
00:55who will ever think a woman is going to be the survivor? So it was just one big gag.
00:58Weaver echoed those comments during a 2022 interview with Marc Maron for his WTF podcast.
01:03As the writers saw it, everyone would have expected someone like John Hurt's
01:07character to make it to the end, so they tried to subvert that expectation.
01:11We'll just make the girl the survivor because no one in their wildest dreams will think,
01:16it's going to end up being the girl.
01:18That kind of thinking illustrates just how much rewriting and recutting
01:21happened throughout production. At one point, there was even a sex scene in the
01:24script between Ripley and Captain Dallas. According to Roger Luckhurst's book on Alien,
01:29the point of it was to give them a brief moment of relief after Kane's gory death,
01:33but Weaver herself wasn't impressed by it. As she recounted to Maron, from a story perspective,
01:38she didn't think the sex scene made any sense, and she told Ridley Scott that during their first
01:42meeting.
01:42I don't know about this love scene. Would you really get it on while this thing was running?
01:47Anyway, we had a good talk.
01:49Although the scene was reportedly one of Scott's favorites, he eventually cut it.
01:52There are a lot of explanations for why cutting the sex scene made for a wise decision,
01:56but the main result is that Ripley really does feel like a character whose gender is
01:59essentially irrelevant to the story. She starts the movie off as third in command,
02:02and it's only after Dallas's death that she rises as the main authority figure in the group.
02:07In the version of the movie we got, the apparent affection we get from Ripley and Dallas can also
02:11simply be explained as platonic respect, nothing more. One potential downside to cutting the scene,
02:15however, is just that it takes away another opportunity for us to get to
02:19know the characters better before the xenomorph kills off 90% of them.
02:26Alien is a great movie with a fun, atmospheric plot, but one side effect of the bold dwindling
02:31of its cast is that most of the characters don't stick out as much as they probably should have.
02:35Is Dallas or Kane really anyone's favorite Alien character? They get a few good character-building
02:39moments for fans to pick up on during rewatches, but for casual viewers, they're both gone too soon
02:44to properly make an impression. Dallas didn't need a sex scene with Ripley to have a bigger
02:48impact on the franchise, but an extra scene or two of him before his death would have gone a
02:52long way. That said, we can't complain too much, because Weaver was right. A scene with those two
02:56bumping uglies wasn't at all necessary to the plot. And in the end, the only character who
03:01really mattered was the one originally set up to be, in her words, one big gag.
03:06This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo. Signing off."
03:14How could a film about a cocaine-raging bear possibly go too far with a death scene?
03:19And what other experiences with bears has the actor portraying Olaf had?
03:24Keep watching to find out.
03:25Cocaine Bear is a bit of a strange movie, but you probably expected that going in. The film
03:30certainly does get gleefully violent at times, something that arguably gets hampered due to
03:35its uses of CGI in combination with practical effects. But whether you love Cokey the Bear
03:40or not, you can still walk away appreciating how a mid-budget studio feature can get away
03:45with the types of kills featured here. One of the most intriguing was the sudden and off-screen
03:49death of Olaf, a tourist who loses his fiancée Elsa to the bear at the start of the movie,
03:55and returns at the end only to be killed off himself. Towards the end of the film,
03:59we hear Olaf scream, and find out a few minutes later that he was mauled to death.
04:04It's hard to make out any details, since the cutaway is very quick and obscured in darkness,
04:08and according to director Elizabeth Banks, that's for a good reason.
04:12Olaf's death was apparently a little too gruesome. Banks told Entertainment Weekly,
04:17"...we had some incredible prosthetics of him. They ripped off his whole face,
04:22and we had a close-up of it that is no longer in the movie."
04:24Maybe in the director's cut, we'll get some of that back in.
04:28While it's unclear whether an unrated cut of Cocaine Bear will ever surface,
04:32you can see some of the extreme gore that Banks teased. Fangoria included an uncensored photo of
04:37the Olaf prosthetics on the cover of their latest issue. Though it doesn't get center
04:41stage on the cover, we get to see just what the bear did to that poor hiker, and man, is it gnarly.
04:47How do we know for certain that this is the corpse that was cut from the movie?
04:50The answer is Olaf's red bandana, which the hiker sports throughout the film.
04:55Surprisingly, Olaf's mauling might not have been cut due to studio or MPAA interference.
05:00As Banks suggests in the Entertainment Weekly interview,
05:03these cuts may have been made to simply improve the story. She explained,
05:08"...at the very end of the process, we ended up cutting back on a few shots of gore in the
05:11third act of the film. I just felt at that point the audience was on more of an emotional journey,
05:16and I didn't want to distract from it."
05:18That's not to say that Cocaine Bear is free of gory deaths. There are plenty that were left in.
05:24Esteemed character actress Margot Martindale gets mauled a couple of times by the bear,
05:28before finally coming to a brutal end when she's thrown out of the back of
05:31an ambulance while strapped to a gurney and hits the road face-first.
05:36Meanwhile, the late, great Ray Liotta plays a drug dealer called Sid,
05:39who gets disemboweled and dies watching some coked-up bear cubs eating his intestines.
05:44The scene is both disgusting and oddly adorable.
05:48Christopher Havu is best known for his role as Tormund Giantsbane in Game of Thrones,
05:52who had considerably better luck than Olaf, both in general and specifically with bears.
05:58In season four, Tormund brags that he once made love to a female bear called Sheila,
06:02and he has fond memories of their encounter. He recalls,
06:06"...I'd had a good bit to drink. Her fangs were sharp, but she knew how to use them."
06:11There are no other witnesses to this supposed event,
06:13besides Sheila, of course, and Ygritte dismisses Tormund as a liar.
06:17But the tale of the bear and the wildling fair made a comeback when the cast were filming the
06:21season seven episode, Beyond the Wall, in which Tormund and a group of other heroes
06:26run into a polar bear that's been raised from the dead by the White Walkers. Havu revealed,
06:31"...when we shot it, we joked a lot that Sheila had turned.
06:34There was a line that was cut. When they first see the bear, Tormund says,
06:37I've danced with plenty of bears."
06:40Tormund survived his encounter with the undead flaming polar bear,
06:43so he probably wouldn't have had any trouble with a cocaine bear.
06:46Like Sheila, Cokie is a she-bear, so he could have just used his powers of seduction again.
06:51Unfortunately, while Olaf is definitely a nature-loving character,
06:55nature doesn't seem to love him back.
06:58Barbarian is a horror movie that's making people squirm.
07:02But if things had gone a little differently, we would have all lost our lunch.
07:07Barbarian features a number of scenes best described as disturbing.
07:11Even if you haven't seen it yet, it's painfully obvious from the trailers
07:15alone that the movie was made to distress even the most stalwart of horror fans.
07:20That being said, writer-director Zack Krager did decide to scrap one particularly gnarly scene
07:26that would have had loads of people in the audience audibly yelping and squirming in their seats.
07:31While it would have contributed greatly to the gross-out factor of Barbarian,
07:35it was a bridge too far that didn't need to be crossed.
07:38You cannot get upset."
07:40Those who have seen the film are familiar with the scene in which Justin Long's
07:44disgraced, egomaniacal actor-character AJ refuses to drink from the baby bottle from Mother.
07:50She then takes him and attempts to breastfeed him directly.
07:54That is already outrageous enough.
07:56But originally, that scene was meant to go in a slightly different direction.
08:01Mother was going to utilize a different tactic to feed AJ, and it didn't involve milk.
08:06There are other ways that mothers in nature feed their children.
08:10As humans, we are quite familiar with breastfeeding.
08:12But what about birds?
08:14Well, mother birds have a method of chewing up food for baby birds and
08:18depositing that food directly into their child's beak from their own.
08:22If you were to see a human being do this for another human being,
08:26you would be rightfully disgusted.
08:28Well, that's exactly what Mother was going to do to AJ in Barbarian.
08:32At a Q&A for The Picture at Fright Fest,
08:35Zack Krager detailed the moment, saying,
08:37We cut a scene where he refuses to latch, and so she snatches up a rat,
08:42chews it up, and baby birds him.
08:44We filmed it perfectly.
08:45Justin was such a good sport.
08:47Matthew, who plays the mother, really masticated the prosciutto
08:51and dropped it direct bullseye into his mouth.
08:55It was pretty gross."
08:56In a film filled with moments designed to make you writhe around in discomfort,
09:00this scene would have ranked high, if not at the very top.
09:05Food regurgitation on its own is enough to whip an audience into a frenzy.
09:09But when that regurgitation goes into another person's mouth,
09:13that defies so many ideas of health and hygiene.
09:16You might be regurgitating yourself in the theater if you see something like that.
09:20However, Zack Krager cut the scene.
09:22While this spares the audience from something gross,
09:25it also helps keep the tension and the unknown the top priorities.
09:30"...Hello?"
09:32For as monstrous and seemingly otherworldly Mother is,
09:36she's still very much a human being, which the third act hammers home.
09:40This is a person born into an unimaginably horrific circumstance,
09:44a person who fundamentally does not understand how she is affecting the
09:48lives of the people who find themselves coming into that secret underground lair.
09:52Having her feed AJ as if she were a bird would completely break her humanity,
09:57and probably make audiences just get up and leave.
10:00Zack Krager also said that he didn't want to oversaturate Barbarian with appearances from
10:05Mother. He took that lesson from Jaws, which is famous for how little it actually shows the
10:10killer shark that serves as the film's monster. He goes on to say in that Fright Fest Q&A,
10:16"...we realized that it couldn't stay in the movie because you don't want to see the shark too much,
10:21and there's no way to show that without getting really up close. And it was just
10:24not appropriate yet, so it had to go."
10:26The more you see Matthew Patrick Davis covered head-to-toe in old woman prosthetics,
10:31the less likely you are to be scared of that character. At a certain point, it becomes silly,
10:36and you need the constant tension of Mother for Barbarian to be effective.
10:40Cutting the baby birding scene was absolutely the right move. The scene may have gotten a
10:45wild audience reaction and added to the film's mystique of being a crazy time in the theater,
10:49but dramatically speaking, it wouldn't have added much,
10:53and for some viewers, it probably would have been too much to swallow.
10:58The original R-rated version of The Meg included a scene with a talking, decapitated head,
11:03the thought of which would surely delight horror fans. So why did the director leave
11:07gory stuff like this out from the final cut? Here's what he had to say.
11:11Bigger isn't always better, and gorier isn't always scarier. That's a discovery that director
11:16John Turtletaub made in the midst of directing the giant killer shark movie The Meg, starring
11:21Jason Statham. Originally intending The Meg to teeter the line between a hard PG-13 and a soft
11:26R-rated blood feast, there were a lot of chunks of flesh that ended up on the cutting room floor.
11:31From the jump, The Meg was always going to be refreshingly self-aware,
11:35and not afraid to make fun of itself. Why else would you cast Statham, an action superstar who
11:40has never shied away from a knowing nod or wink to the camera? But to the dismay of horror fans
11:44looking for a hefty dose of bloodshed, The Meg left much to be desired as far as graphic violence
11:49was concerned when it hit theaters in August of 2018. The real reason why The Meg didn't have
11:54the certain quota of monster mayhem many expected came down to dollars and cents. That said, it was
12:00a stark financial reality that kept Turtletaub and crew from turning the film into a full-on gore
12:04fest. Turtletaub lamented the fact that they had to pull back on some of the flesh-chomping,
12:08telling Bloody Disgusting,
12:10We shot or even did a lot of visual effects for gory scenes. We just realized there's no way we're
12:15keeping this PG-13 if we show this. I was very hesitant to cut out a lot of blood and gore.
12:20I wouldn't have if I thought it was wrecking the story, but it wasn't. It still looked okay."
12:25One scene in particular that sounds like it would have been an instant crowd-pleaser
12:28ended up raising too many eyebrows for being overly ghastly. Turtletaub told the outlet,
12:33There was a death in the movie of one of the leading characters, where he thought he was still
12:37alive. And he realized it was only his head. Then the reveal that that was all that was left
12:42was awesome. But needless to say, quite a few people told us it was creepy, and I had to cut it.
12:47Now with Meg 2 The Trench, the PG-13 formula that the original took advantage of is obviously
12:52paying off.
12:53That's the biggest Meg I've ever seen.
12:56Biggest Meg anyone's ever seen.
12:58The trailer shows Jason Statham fighting three more giant sharks,
13:01in addition to the visual of a megalodon eating a T-Rex. Meg 2 is clearly going more in the
13:06direction of Jurassic Park than Jaws, opting for spectacle over straight-up terror. The move
13:11to more mammal-on-dinosaur violence begs the question of whether or not The Meg or The Meg 2
13:16ever needed an R rating in the first place. There's a common misconception that a film
13:20like The Meg is beholden to the rating system dictated by the MPA, but that's not really the
13:24case. The Meg and its sequel were already intended to be PG-13 from the start, with little wiggle
13:30room to work with. That, coupled with the fact that the effects work needed to render more graphic
13:34kill scenes is just too pricey to justify, means that an R-rated cut of either film will never see
13:39the light of day. Since the age of physical media is coming to an end, there's simply no reason for
13:44a studio to invest more money to make an already successful PG-13 blockbuster into an R-rated
13:49feature, Turtletop told Bloody Disgusting back in 2018. The problem nowadays with those unrated
13:54DVDs is you used to have a bunch of scenes that were easy to either shoot or leave on the cutting
13:58room floor. Now, to finish a scene costs millions of VFX. No one's going to be spending millions of
14:04dollars just to have a little extra bonus footage. There's nothing like an old-fashioned tale of
14:09technology running amok, and 2022's Megan definitely scratches, or rather, slashes that
14:15itch. But if the horror flick's brand of biting social commentary and brutal kills weren't enough
14:20for you, well, there's always the unrated version. If you thought the PG-13 version of Megan was
14:26mouthy, you might want to cover your ears for the unrated cuts. Shortly after the surprisingly
14:31touching horror-comedy hit theaters, director Gerard Johnstone and screenwriter Akayla Cooper
14:36both made it known that the original script was gorier than what was shown in theaters,
14:40and teased the possibility of an unrated cut as much of the original gore was already filmed,
14:44but edited out for a PG-13 release. Luckily, Blumhouse and Universal Pictures made the
14:50brilliant decision to release the gorier cut of Megan, which is now available to stream.
14:55Holy s**t, this is exciting. PG-13 movies are allocated a single F-bomb,
15:00and the theatrical release of Megan really made it count. Rather than let Megan, or even a
15:05terrified Allison Williams, drop the ultimate swear, the honor was instead given to the
15:09incel and training Brandon, the awful pre-teen bully that triggers Megan's killing spree.
15:15In the unrated cut, there are eight F-bombs dropped. Brandon still gets his time in the
15:20sweary sun, but Gemma's boss David is the source of six more. Don't get us wrong, his whole vibe
15:26was hugely effective in the theatrical cut, but giving him the chance to pop off some more
15:30expletives really hammers home what a monstrous boss he can be. But the best F-bomb comes from
15:35Megan herself, as she lets one fly during her massive showdown during the film's climax.
15:41We're not going to spoil where exactly the F-bomb drops, because everyone deserves the chance to be
15:46able to throw their head back to cackle in delight when it happens. Just know that Megan's
15:50timing is always right. Some viewers were surprised by the lack of gore in the theatrical release of
15:56Megan, with many hoping for an unrated cut to really let the AI killer doll unleash unbridled
16:01chaos. Fortunately, those wishes were received, as the new cut really lets Megan go hard in the
16:06name of killing. The first major change deals with the death of Brandon. Megan still pulls off his
16:12ear after he bullies Katie and attacks Megan, but the footage of the ear-rip is absolutely brutal.
16:18Megan could easily pull off his ear quickly, but she revels in his pain. She straight up
16:23mutilates this kid, before chasing him down the hill, putting him in the direct path of being hit
16:27by a car. Megan means business, and it's almost shocking to see the film really go there and kill
16:33a kid with such ferocity. You know what happens to bad boys that don't mind their manners?
16:39They grow up to be bad men. When Megan finally has her face off with Gemma's neighbor Celia,
16:45she attacks her with a power washer, nailing her directly in the face and shredding off her
16:50cheek flesh with the pressure of the hose. It's far more graphic than the cutaway scene in the
16:54theatrical release, and a disgustingly awesome use of special effects. For those concerned about
17:00whether or not the death of Dewey the dog is more graphic, take solace in knowing the scene is still
17:04implied off-screen. Even the unrated version was wise enough to not kill a dog before the audience's
17:10eyes. The instantly viral teaser trailer for Megan featured her dancing in a red hallway,
17:15which turned out to be the start of her reign of terror within the walls of the Funky Corporation.
17:19When she chases down David to kill him with the blade of an industrial paper cutter,
17:23the results are far more graphic than before. David's blood sprays all over his assistant,
17:28Kurt, in the elevator, which makes Megan's monologue explaining how she's going to frame
17:32him for all of the murders all the more terrifying.
17:42When she finally slices his throat, blood erupts like a geyser, spraying all over the back walls
17:48of the elevator. The moment is still pretty quick, like the theatrical cut, but that little bit of
17:52extra gore really elevates the scene. It's incredible to see what a difference just a
17:57second and a half of footage can make, but the unrated cut of Megan feels like the definitive
18:01version of who this character is and just what she's capable of.
18:06A real-life crime that derailed an entire movie. Even the most intense horror movies have to draw
18:11the line somewhere. George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead is one of the greatest zombie movies ever
18:16made. Full of gory deaths, sick social commentary, and plenty of undead tension, the film continues
18:22to influence zombie cinema to this day. While Night of the Living Dead kindled the fire,
18:27Dawn of the Dead ignited it. In Dawn of the Dead, survivors of a zombie outbreak barricade
18:32themselves in a shopping mall, taking on both consumerism and the undead as they endeavor to
18:37survive for as long as possible. In the filmed ending, Peter and Fran successfully escape the
18:42mall by helicopter. As outlined by Little White Lies, Romero originally scripted a much darker
18:47conclusion that would have seen Peter taking his own life off-screen. Fran, now without hope,
18:52would have thrust her head into the helicopter's spinning blades. Speculatively, Romero was said
18:57to be so attached to the characters by the time they began to film the end that he couldn't in
19:01good conscience have them killed so brutally. Disparate accounts exist as to whether the
19:06ending was shot, though as it stands, Fran and Peter survive and fly off into an uncertain,
19:11zombie-filled future. The King Kong cinematic universe is no stranger to deleted scenes.
19:17Peter Jackson's 2005 revitalization of the iconic fantasy features a lengthy deleted scene that
19:22sees the core cast battling a monstrous, piranha-like creature in the rivers of Skull Island.
19:27The scene is available on YouTube, with close-to-finished audio and visuals,
19:31though the sequence was unfortunately excised from the theatrical cut. Perhaps most infamous,
19:36however, is the missing spider pit from Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shosak's 1933 original.
19:42While Jackson would pay homage to the sequence almost a century later, the original scene remains
19:46the subject of intense scrutiny and speculation. For the uninitiated, the original 1933 film had
19:52planned a spider pit sequence that would see Jack Driscoll and company falling into a pit
19:56of arachnoid creatures after King Kong shakes them from a log. In the release cut, the film
20:01seamlessly transitions to Jack's escape from the pit, with the other sailors presumably dying from
20:06the fall. The plan, however, was to have them devoured by spiders living at the bottom of the
20:11pit. Some speculate the scene was scrapped before filming, while others contend footage does exist,
20:16though it was scrapped after test audiences deemed it too brutal.
20:19Whether it exists or not, it's definitely interesting that, at some point,
20:23the 1933 Fay Wray masterpiece might well have been considerably more bloodthirsty.
20:29Slender Man certainly had its 15 minutes. But much like the creepypasta phenomenon itself,
20:34the ghoulish monster is a mid-aughts artifact, a digital specter of online urban legends and
20:39chatroom spook shows. It would have made a lot of sense for studios to capitalize on the craze
20:44when Slender Man was in the zeitgeist, with web series like Marble Hornets and The Slender Game
20:48to propel its momentum. However, that didn't happen, and the Slender Man feature arrived
20:53too little too late, with the added controversy of releasing in an environment where Slender Man
20:58was in the news for very different reasons. According to Bloody Disgusting, Screen Gems
21:02also radically reworked Slender Man. First, in order to gain a more teen-friendly tone,
21:07David Burke's screenplay was rewritten, scrapping any more mature content for more accessible PG-13
21:13blood and gore. Compounding the problems was a real-life case of a Slender Man stabbing.
21:18Both Sony and Screen Gems opted to cut several key scenes, including a few glimpsed in Slender
21:23Man's trailer, to sidestep the controversy of ostensibly exploiting a real-life crime.
21:28As Bloody Disgusting contends, the combination of script changes and scene cuts results in a
21:33movie that doesn't feel much like a movie at all. Whatever Slender Man's legacy should have been,
21:37this is certainly not it.
21:40Horror movies are designed to push the boundaries of good taste, but sometimes skittish censors,
21:44light-headed audiences, and flesh-eating predators force certain cuts to be made.
21:49In the 1986 version of The Fly, eccentric scientist Seth Brundle is applying the
21:53finishing touches to a pair of teleportation pods in his industrial apartment. One evening,
21:58after an argument with his new girlfriend Ronnie, a drunken Seth teleports himself on a whim
22:03and emerges unscathed, but he didn't notice the housefly in the pod's window.
22:08He gradually realizes that his DNA has been spliced with the insects, and soon enough,
22:12he gradually morphs into a hideous mutant hybrid creature.
22:15Directed by David Cronenberg, The Fly is a powerful story about love and disease
22:20that reached a mainstream audience without compromising Cronenberg's signature body
22:23horror style. In fact, it features some of the most grotesque imagery of his career,
22:28from rashes and abnormal body air to exploding eyeballs and a ripped-off jaw.
22:32However, there was one scene that proved too much for test audiences.
22:35The scene eventually showed up on home video releases. It depicted an increasingly deformed
22:40Seth using the telepods to fuse a cat with a baboon, creating a monstrous entity that's
22:45one part feline and one part primate. Disgusted by what he's done, Seth struggles with the ferocious
22:50mutant before bludgeoning it to death with a metal pipe. There are two obvious problems with this
22:54scene. First, it's jarringly unsympathetic, even if Seth is losing his mind. Second,
23:00the animatronics fail to rise to the occasion, as the creature looks like a bit of a shag carpet.
23:05Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival
23:13on September 24, 1986, almost two months after the sixth installment of the Friday the 13th series.
23:19Moviegoers at the time could have been forgiven for seeing it as just another slasher film.
23:23But Henry actually had little in common with Friday the 13th, or any other schlocky franchise
23:28for that matter. As director John McNaughton explained in a 1999 interview,
23:32Our chief device was removing fantasy, because as long as you have the buffer of fantasy,
23:36then you have a level of comfort and distance. Indeed, there's certainly no comfort or distance
23:41in Henry, as it features scenes of sexual assault, torture, and murder in a cold and realist style.
23:46One could argue that this is an appropriate manner of depiction compared to its more
23:50frivolous slasher contemporaries, but the censors had other concerns. The British Board of Film
23:54Classification cut 62 seconds from the theatrical release, and a further 51 seconds for the video
24:00release. Four seconds were cut from a stabbing scene, 38 seconds from a bloody aftermath
24:05involving a bottle in a woman's face, and 71 seconds from a disturbing home invasion.
24:10Where are we gonna go now? We'll find a place.
24:15French filmmaker Alexandre Aja had to cut 10 seconds of violence from his 2008 film Mirrors
24:20to secure an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Later in Britain,
24:25the BBFC gave the film an 18 rating, owing to its strong gory content. 20th Century Fox
24:30wanted a more commercial 15 rating, so they agreed to cuts in four instances. The first
24:35cuts were made to a scene in which a security guard slits his own throat with a glass shard,
24:39causing blood to spray from the deep wound. Then there was the sight of a horrifically
24:43burned woman screaming in pain. Cuts also came to perhaps the film's goriest moment,
24:48in which a woman's mouth is torn apart in grotesque detail. Finally, frames were removed
24:52from another throat-slashing scene towards the end of the film. These cuts pertain only
24:56to the theatrical version, as Mirrors was ultimately uncut for its home video releases.
25:01Legendary film critic Roger Ebert had a memorably strong reaction to the first
25:05Wolf Creek movie back in 2005. As he put it,
25:08What the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty?
25:12If anyone you know says this is the one they want to see, my advice is,
25:15don't know that person no more. A majority of critics struck a similar tone,
25:19but that didn't stop the eventual release of a sequel,
25:22as Wolf Creek 2 delivered another 100-plus minutes of Australian outback brutality.
25:26The Australian Classification Board gave Wolf Creek 2 an R-18-plus rating,
25:31meaning that no one below the age of 18 could view it in theaters. As the board explained
25:35in their decision, It is episodic and realistic, resulting in copious, realistic blood-and-gore
25:40effects, and includes decapitation and dismemberment. The movie's distributor,
25:48Roadshow Films, wasn't satisfied with this appraisal, but what did they expect?
25:52Wolf Creek 2 revels in the destruction of human anatomy, and the many ways in which it can be done.
25:57Australian horror fans surely would have cried foul if it had received anything less. But according
26:01to screenwriter Aaron Stearns, the distributors were looking for an audience wider than just
26:05the most hardcore horror enthusiasts. So several cuts were made to a revolting headshot, a
26:10decapitation, a full-body dismemberment, and bloody wounds to one character's face and another's
26:15fingers. The 2003 version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was never outright banned like the 1974
26:22original, but the Motion Picture Association of America did request two cuts to avoid an NC-17
26:27rating. First was a suicide by gunshot, as director Marcus Nispel had to reduce the blood and remove
26:32the sight of a separate ear. He claimed that he was satisfied with this shot despite the cut.
26:37As he put it, In the actual cut, the blood is less red, which I think is actually much
26:41scarier in a way. I like that it's dark, and I never like blood that looks like syrup or ketchup
26:46or whatever. However, Nispel was less enthusiastic about the cuts to a scene in which the villain
26:50Leatherface hangs a victim from a dusty old chandelier, pulls the cord of his chainsaw,
26:54and cuts him in half from the groin upwards. The censors took their mop and bucket to this scene,
26:59removing all the mess and leaving Leatherface's terrible act to viewers' imaginations.
27:04As Nispel put it, two shots had to go out, which really don't show you all that much,
27:08but somehow it leaves me wondering what had really happened to him by removing them.
27:12Released in 1987, the original Hellraiser combined sex with violence in a way that
27:17troubled the ratings board. As writer-director Clive Barker recalled,
27:20We did a version which had some spanking in it, and the MPAA was not very appreciative of that.
27:25They also told me I was allowed two consecutive buttock thrusts, but a third would be deemed
27:29obscene. Cuts were also made to a murder scene with a hammer, as the number of strikes were
27:35reduced, much like the buttock thrusts. Also left out were images of one character's hand
27:39and an open, bloody abdomen. Barker's most regretful cut occurred during the finale,
27:43in which the character of Frank is torn apart by hooks and chains, as the ratings board took
27:48issue with how Frank licked his lips in an odd, masochistic manner. As Barker explained,
27:52It was a much longer shot. Body pieces went everyplace. In another life,
27:56I would have let that run slightly longer, as it looked slightly truncated.
28:01Mystery surrounds a scene involving a bloody piranha attack in the 1980 found-footage film
28:05Cannibal Holocaust. The moment was set to depict tribesmen tying an enemy to a log
28:10and lowering him into a piranha-infested river, stripping everything below the waterline to the
28:14bone. A still of this scene was used to market the film, but the full sequence proved to be elusive.
28:19In 2021, Dread Central spoke to Callum Waddell, author of the book Cannibal Holocaust,
28:24Devil's Advocates. Waddell quoted Colombian actor Renaldo Blanca, who said,
28:28I was there for that scene. Director Ruggiero Diodato definitely shot it. He called action,
28:33and he called cut, and some of us had gathered around to watch it and we all applauded.
28:37It was a brilliant effect. This isn't the only moment that was cut from Cannibal Holocaust.
28:42The film was so shocking that Italian authorities arrested Diodato for the murder of his actors,
28:46an accusation he disproved by inviting the very much alive cast to court.
28:51The movie was banned in 40 countries and remains prohibited or censored to this day,
28:55primarily because of its scenes of real animal slaughter.
28:59Gory cult-favorite Event Horizon was almost even gorier than what was shown in theaters.
29:03The original cut ran over two hours long, thanks in part to reels of bloody imagery that were so
29:08visceral that some test audience members fainted. As director Paul W.S. Anderson admitted on the
29:13DVD commentary, I was just enjoying the gruesomeness of it so much. I just probably
29:18put way too much in that. According to the film's effects supervisor, Anderson's early
29:22cut gave a more detailed account of the Event Horizon massacre, as it featured graphic mutilation
29:27of teeth, legs, and breasts. As Anderson also noted in the commentary track, you can't underestimate
29:32the kind of shock this movie had. People were really, really upset by it. If we'd had more time
29:37to work on it, we could have kept a lot of the more gruesome aspects. Ultimately, the Event
29:41Horizon that reached theaters was a much shorter 96-minute version that passed the ratings board's
29:46approval without incident. The first paranormal activity ends with a demon-possessed Katie
29:51hurling her boyfriend Mika at the camera, but this wasn't the only possible conclusion. In fact,
29:56director Oren Peli weighed up three other endings, and two of them were quite brutal.
30:00In the least violent one, a neighbor calls the cops, who arrive at the house and corner the
30:04possessed Katie. Their presence appears to sober her, but then a sudden door slam startles a cop
30:09who shoots her dead. The other two endings are even more unsettling. Technical concerns stop
30:14Peli from filming a scene in which Katie takes the camera and bludgeons Mika to death in a
30:18point-of-view style. It's hard to know whether audiences would have laughed or screamed at that.
30:22However, Peli fully understood the intense reaction to the conclusion in which Katie
30:26kills Mika downstairs, then enters the bedroom and slits her throat in front of the camera.
30:31He chose the endings shown in theaters based in part on Steven Spielberg's suggestion.