Hello,

I was just thinking about the extended TV cuts of the first three Superman films. I used to have multi-gen VHS dupes back in the days of tape trading (which I stupidly got rid of at some point), and I’ve noticed that while fan edits are out there, I’ve had little to no luck finding preservations of the TV cuts themselves.

I know that BLAKSVN/ANGRYSVN did preservations of I, III, and the 93-minute cut of IV, but none of them are on MySpleen, and there haven’t been any Usenet uploads within the last 4 years or however far back the longest newsreader retention periods go.

The Superman II “Restored International Cut” preservation recently resurfaced on a certain public tracker. There’s an AVI version of the first film there too (presumably derived from the BLAKSVN release), but a recent commenter said it only times out to 173 minutes. Even when you multiply that by 1.04 to account for PAL speedup, it still comes up 8 minutes shy of the full 188-minute running time, so either it comes from an edited broadcast or the AVI conversion was botched (I’m guessing the latter). The actual BLAKSVN preservation is out there, but there are no seeders, so it’s stuck at 57.3%.

And as far as III and IV go, I’ve had no luck finding preservations of the longer cuts anywhere. With tracker and file locker shutdowns, deletions and link expirations on surviving lockers, old torrents going unseeded, and old Usenet uploads falling off the back end of retention periods, I’d hate to see preservations like these vanish into the mists of time.

So is there any way the BLAKSVN Superman preservations could be exhumed from obscurity and made available again?

TServo2049 said:

Hello,

I was just thinking about the extended TV cuts of the first three Superman films. I used to have multi-gen VHS dupes back in the days of tape trading (which I stupidly got rid of at some point), and I've noticed that while fan edits are out there, I've had little to no luck finding preservations of the TV cuts themselves.

I know that BLAKSVN/ANGRYSVN did preservations of I, III, and the 93-minute cut of IV, but none of them are on MySpleen, and there haven't been any Usenet uploads within the last 4 years or however far back the longest newsreader retention periods go. 

The Superman II "Restored International Cut" preservation recently resurfaced on a certain public tracker. There's an AVI version of the first film there too (presumably derived from the BLAKSVN release), but a recent commenter said it only times out to 173 minutes. Even when you multiply that by 1.04 to account for PAL speedup, it still comes up 8 minutes shy of the full 188-minute running time, so either it comes from an edited broadcast or the AVI conversion was botched (I'm guessing the latter). The actual BLAKSVN preservation is out there, but there are no seeders, so it's stuck at 57.3%.

And as far as III and IV go, I've had no luck finding preservations of the longer cuts anywhere. With tracker and file locker shutdowns, deletions and link expirations on surviving lockers, old torrents going unseeded, and old Usenet uploads falling off the back end of retention periods, I'd hate to see preservations like these vanish into the mists of time.

So is there any way the BLAKSVN Superman preservations could be exhumed from obscurity and made available again?

I'd LOVE to see that "Restored International" Superman II preservation and the other extended releases.  For fans they are really great to have and it would be nice to see them resurface OR be redone to higher standards (if it's possible, of course) for everyone to enjoy.  I've never seen ANY of these yet so it would be cool.

Correction about that AVI version of BLAKSVN's preservation of the extended cut of the first film: The missing 15 minutes (173 min. vs. 188 min.) is not because it's missing any scenes, nor was it due to some screwup in the conversion. I had forgotten that it was missing the end credits. If you take 188 minutes, subtract almost 8 minutes of credits, and then factor in the 4% PAL speedup, you get about 173 minutes.

Still, I'd love to see the full-sized DVD preservation rather than just an AVI conversion.

i have them too found em before they were gone, thankfully. all burned to 2 dvd-r's each.

mine are burned to dvd-r sky

Which ones do you have, sky? Again, I found II already, still trying to find I and III (and the Japanese laserdisc rip of IV, if anybody has that one).

a friend uploaded I isc in 2 dvd iso's that i had uploaded for him to rs but my account is now free and can't afford rapidpro. i also have III international cut. what's diff about the japanese laserdisc version of IV?

It the two extra scenes that were not in the American cut, both of them during the Superman/Nuclear Man fight around the world. One of them is in Moscow, the other involves a tornado in Kansas.

is it in english though? would u like to me PM u the links for superman the movie isc 2-dvd iso's to u?

The Japanese laserdisc was in English with Japanese subtitles.

Sure, you can PM me the link.

the dvd-r's i have of the extended tv cuts for superman 1-3 play just fine for me but since they're PAL they won't play on my blu-ray player only my computers. if i could convert them to ntsc then they would play on there, but i haven't gotten around to it.

If there is someone out there who has any of the extended cuts of the Superman films, could they please upload them (preferably to MySpleen)?

enjoyed your review. i’m also looking for the SUPERMAN II restored international cut. only if it’s the Richard Donner cut. i hated the R. Lester cut. he just ruined it. most of all i want the Superman - The Movie restored int’l cut along with SUPERMAN IV. originally if you heard in 2012 talks were planned to release the first Superman movie on DVD. now no word. it was supposed to be on Christopher Reeve’s 60th birthday.let’s hope that in 2018 warner brothers will re-release everrything again.

I’m also searching for the Restored International Cuts of S1 and S2. Looks like they circulated during the last decade, but no more (that I can find). I have found someone selling so-called “Salkind Cuts” of the first two films, but not sure those are the same as the much-lauded RICs.

Any pointers/help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Heads up for anyone in the New York state area. The Alamo Drafthouse theater in Yonkers is doing a 35mm screening of Superman next Wednesday:

https://drafthouse.com/yonkers/show/superman-1978

ICYMI…
Weird version of S2 on Vudu in HD:

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=12983449#post12983449