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Okay, well, along with Howard the Duck widescreen and some of the Thief and the Cobbler/Roger Rabbit stuff, this is ANOTHER thing Ben (Tequila Mockingbird) has but hasn’t transferred yet. He’s a busy guy, but he’ll transfer his PAL copy of this eventually.
I thought this deserved its own thread. I DO have a copy of this material that I got from Guillermo Gomez, but I just have the individual deleted bits, and they’re in pretty bad quality and probably missing stuff at the beginning/end of the clips. Presumably Ben will transfer this whole version of the movie in good quality. Or at least the deleted bits.
Here’s the deal: There is an extended version of The Muppet Movie. I think it was only released in England on VHS tape. It’s pretty rare. It has an extended version of Rowlf’s song, and most notably it has a funnier and I think far superior ending.
It’s a pan & scan transfer, but it’s pretty close to full frame and could be cropped to widescreen without losing much I think.
My copy of this material shows up at the end of a DVD with two episodes of The Jim Henson Hour (probably my favorite Henson series) on it.
I don’t have a copy of the normal Muppet Movie on hand to compare, but I’ll assume that the bits that Guillermo specifically copied for me are the deleted bits. So here’s what they seem to be.
- More of Fozzie’s unsuccessful comedy onstage when he and Kermit meet.
- Longer commercial for Doc Hopper’s Frog Legs and he and Kermit meet.
- Fozzie hands Dr. Teeth the script and he reads it and recaps the entire movie at length. I presume this is in the movie but shorter?
- Longer (I guess) chase scene as Doc Hopper follows the “rainbow colored Studebaker.”
- Longer version of the Rowlf/Kermit duet, “I Hope That Something Better Comes Along”
- Longer version of the giant Animal scaring Doc Hopper et al away.
- At the end, before Kermit sings “Life’s like a movie …” there’s a long (I assume longer) sequence of explosions going off to blow the roof open.
- Here’s the real gem of this version … the Muppets all talk over the credits, talking to each other in the theater. Fozzie and Miss Piggy want desperately to be told that they were good in the movie. Kermit is nice and tells everyone they were great. He tells Lew Zealand he can be in “the next one.” Janice and Floyd snuggle up - Janice runs from Animal - “Woman!” Rowlf tries to converse with Beaker. “Yeah, whatever.”
I’d like to check this against the real version to see if the ending there is actually the same without the audio of the Muppets talking. I know some of it is the same as the real version visually, so I’m curious if they just muted all the audio of what everyone was saying for the released version. If so, all you’d have to change there would be the audio.
Also, Dr. Teeth’s recap of the film uses footage from the rest of the film, so that could be cut in in good quality also.
