I know a major pain at times is padding (hello, shorts!) or worse maybe, cuttng down films that are too good to pass up but need an unkind cut to fit into time-slots.
In the case of Per Asper Ad Astra (Humanoid Woman of Experiments back in the K days…) nearly an hour was Moviola and Steenbecked (And it is secretly a film that I hope gets a re-visit in the Gizmoplex)
Anyone been curious enough to source (not always easy) unedited vers of ‘Per’ or others? Any more egregious examples of hack/slash for time?
I was definitely curious about Humanoid Woman. So much of it was cut that I didn’t really follow the story very well and I feel like the story is an interesting one.
They cut some important expository scenes out of Moon Zero Two. I bought the movie and have watched and enjoyed it. They cut a scene that establishes his relationship with the skull cap lady (and she has purple hair!) and how precarious his situation is. Plus, there’s a scene that discusses how having that much sapphire at once wouldn’t ruin the market. It doesn’t necessarily interfere with the movie as a whole but some plot points are cut for time there.
I’ve seen Per Asper Ad Astra uncut, but there are a couple of versions/edits of the film, I can’t remember which cut I saw - but honestly, it felt like the same movie. There was a nude scene or two they had to cut. The humanoid woman also nearly kills an annoying young female Earthling, but is stopped (and I also can’t remember if this was in the MST version or not) due to the scientist figuring out that she can be mind-controlled.
But even losing all that time didn’t really change a lot. Maybe fleshed out the politics, the backstory. Made it clearer.
They also had to cut a lot of good riffable material from Teenagers From Outer Space, including a scene they reference during a host segment.
In the case of PAAA, yeah a nude scene and the political doctrine are some of the first to go, but I’m curious how much that funks with the overall- not from a riff perspetive but in ‘getting’ the film. Above is interesting to read, esp on the clarity, jibes with what I was thinking. Indifferent about ideology, but at the same time, as a cultural artifact…
Not really prime for MST3K there, though. Interested to see what is out there on it.
Any others that folks can think of? Didn’t know that about Teenagers!
They used an edited-for-TV cut of Mitchell (the major giveaway is that in the original version, he gets “bastard” rather than “jerk” written on his windshield), which removed John Saxon’s death. For a while this got them unfairly accused of mocking the result of their own edit before things got cleared up.
One of the weirder and more noticeable ones: the print they got of Mr. B Natural was clearly not in the best shape and just jumps directly into Buzz asking Mr. B “But where did you come from?” without our actually seeing Mr. B introduce themselves. Luckily, Rifftrax was able to get a complete copy that lets us see it.