10 Famous Movies Test Audiences Improved With Their Criticism

7. Christmas Vacation

The third Vacation movie nearly lost one of its best gags because of executives worried about pet abuse. The scene in question is when the cat chews through the electric wires of the Christmas lights and gets electrocuted. Executives were worried that killing the cat in such a traumatic way was crossing the line of decency. Keep in mind this is a franchise that featured the family inadvertently dragging a dog to death when they forget that it was tied to the back of the car, tying an elderly aunt's corpse to the car's roof, and a joke about a daughter making out with her dad... and that's just in the first movie. Apparently those executives must€™ve really liked cats to think the electrocution scene was worse than those scenes. Producer Matty Simmons fought with executives to keep the scene, and his efforts were validated when the first test screening audience scored it as the funniest scene in the film.