Andy,
appreciate your insight as always.
Swarzc seemed like an efficient and very amenable person who was highly collaborative and, coming out of TV, was experienced working within a budget and "getting the job done." Doesn't surprise me with the turnaround he performed on JAWS 2 and the Salkinds having the problems with Donner's budget overruns on SUPERMAN they wanted someone like him on SUPERGIRL. Obviously he did a good job because they brought him back for SANTA CLAUS right afterwards (and SUPERGIRL's issues weren't his problem).
I know because I was on this for international sales (not my normal by the way) that this film was literally pushed through as fast as possible, I only ever saw 1 cut of the film which I think is considered as the "international" cut & to the best of my knowledge that was shown throughout Europe, no idea what what the USA had, but I do know the 125 minute version went to Australia & New Zealand. IMDB writes of an EMI "short" version, but I never saw that, I am aware of trying to push for more shows, so that may of been the case? 2 hours means a definite 3 shows a day & 4 for a late night showing, but I never saw a shorter cut.
The US theatrical cut was short -- 105 minutes in fact. I rented the USA Home Video VHS back in the day and it ran that length. I believe Tri-Star cut it down after they picked up the distribution a few months prior -- Warner deciding at the "last minute" they didn't want the movie was always a weird thing, seeing a movie switch studios like that (even though I assume Warner was just a distributor and didn't put much into the budget?) was not a usual occurrence.
There was (and still seems to be) some misinformation on the running time because Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide listed 114 minutes for the US version and, for years, that was always the "Movie Bible" people would cite as a source in the pre-internet days. Even when Silva Screen did their CD, they quoted the wrong running time for the U.S. -- that "Tri-Star US cut" was
20 minutes shorter than the International Version, not 10 (and it would make sense, because Tri-Star had a habit of that kind of thing, similarly trimming LIFEFORCE a few months later).
But you can find the actual US running time in the newspaper reviews of the movie. Here's the NY Times review stating 105 minutes so I know I'm on the right track there
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/22/movi ... rgirl.html
Took your advice and ordered it from jpc, first time I have used them & added the Dune set as well as you advised in the other posting the "extended cuts" were worth a look. Thanks again for the advice.
Great! I hope it goes well but I've had good success with JPC. I've switched to them for German titles (occasionally I use Grooves for some German releases, plus FNAC for French titles) as the European Amazons are too expensive now.
One other Blu-Ray I picked up was the upcoming METEOR, which I am hoping might be the Warner Bros international master with the proper stereo soundtrack of the movie. The Kino Lorber USA release was mono and also derived from the (US) MGM AIP master which has terribly distorted audio in the end credits...that disc was also set at an incorrect gamma level (one of those things KL has been "correcting" lately with these reissues of their earlier titles).
I realize it's ridiculous but I like the score:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/movie/detail/- ... m/11683086