erri_wan said:
I tried to look for old reviews and for some reason I stumbled upon the New York Magazine ( http://www.google.com/search?q=thx-1138&hl=it&safe=off&tbs=bks:1,bkms:1168684103302643781&ei=xJD6TP7RGIqZOr6b7NQK&start=20&sa=N ) which wasn't too kind on it. However I found a later issue (1987) that describe THX as 1h28min long, so 88 minutes. Isn't that 2 mins longer than the original cut?
http://books.google.com/books?id=IeUCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA69&dq=thx-1138&hl=it&ei=05D6TMj4KIPpOZaO5NQK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBTgU#v=onepage&q=thx-1138&f=false
Yes, it's a little odd but these runtimes seems to be listed wrong all the time, at least we know for sure how long the original cut is and by knowing that we also know how long the 1971 theatrical cut is, more or less 4 min cut or round up to 5 min as in the DVD-doc etc. It's often that the lenght differ on video covers also, I don't know if they take commercials or trailers into acount when they list it or if they just type it wrong. The Italian home video covers I mentioned earlier could also have it wrong of course, but we don't know that for sure until we can check it for ourself. In the end I'm mostly excited to just have a watchable copy of the original cut preserved, though these alternatives are very interesting. :)
Edit: Another thing I thought was interesting, where the american studio removed some of Lucas' bizarre humour, the Italian added their own. ;)