AntcuFaalb said:
My knowledge of this film isn't great. What evidence do we have of the 81min cut being released in the US besides word-of-mouth?
It's definitely not a word-of-mouth thing, it is well known that WB took the film and cut 4-5 minutes. The issues young Lucas faced with the studio system has been covered in tons of interviews, documentaries and books over the years. But exactly what Warner did and what was excised has gone undocumented as far as I know.
A few examples mentioned in the links in one of my earlier posts...
An upset Lucas in the documentary Maker of Films from '71:
"Walter Murch did most of the sound work, montages, what have you. The one problem is, that's one of the things Warner Brothers altered considerably, it was much more abstract and much more musical. The film was designed as a kind of opera you know, kind of a musical science fiction film. And the soundtrack was composed under purely musical concepts and they didn't quite understand that, they thought they all had to tell the story. So essentially the biggest change is that they have injected more story, what they thought was the story, that's the story of... they took out all of the humor and the happiness and people laughing and stuff because they didn't..." (the interviewer interrupts him)
^ I recommend it, I think it is still available on the Spleen. It's worth it just to see a young and skinny nerd before his real breakthrough.
In the book Skywalking by Dale Pollock, he writes on p.97 (first printing) how Warner turned the film over to in-house editor Rudi Fehr:
"Fehr cut only four minutes from THX, mostly scenes in the White Limbo and some of George's bizarre attempts at humor."
It's nothing concrete though.
poita said:
The 16mm and the 35mm IB have Buck Rogers at the start, the reviews from '71 I can find say it was Buck Rogers, I'd like to see if the review in Rolling Stone Issue 81, which I used to own, but now can't find, mentions it as well.
Good to hear Buck Rogers is there. I'm really surprised that 1971 35mm IB Tech prints were even struck, the studio hated the film, it wasn't a hit with audiences, and IB Techs were expensive to produce. I could understand if Lucas had a few prints struck around the same time as Star Wars in late '77, but '71? That is awesome. This 16mm print is apparently dated '71 and it's the unmolested cut, so I guess I should stop being surprised.
Also, great job on the scan, Poita! I've only seen a small sized 720p re-encode but even that is beautiful. If only there was a good cure for the fading.
