10 Deleted Scenes That Made Movies Way Darker
6. The Tannen Gang Kills Marshal Strickland - Back To The Future Part III
Back to the Future Part III may be a rootin' tootin' western, but director Robert Zemeckis may have gone a little too far in this surprisingly nasty deleted scene.
The scene in question shows Biff's great-grandfather Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) coming to blows with Marshal James Strickland (James Tolkan), himself the grandfather of future Hill Valley High School Principal Strickland.
The scene culminates with Tannen murdering Strickland in cold blood, shooting him in the back and riding off while Strickland's son watches his father die.
Though the scene explains Strickland's absence for the rest of the film and also implies why Principal Strickland went on to become such an authoritarian - in his dying words, Marshal Strickland tells his son, Principal Strickland's father, to remember the word "discipline" - it's just too grim for the breezier tone the movie's otherwise aiming for.
Considering how few viewers have ever anguished over Marshal Strickland's sudden departure from the narrative, it was most certainly a smart cut.