10 Movies Saved By One Single Cut

Back to the Future is about as close to perfect as movies get - its plot is ambitiously yet elegantly structured, it's technically sublime, and brilliantly acted to boot.

But this was the result of director Robert Zemeckis making pretty much all the right choices along the way, including cutting this iffy dialogue between Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd).

The scene in question sees Marty explaining to Doc his anxieties about hitting on his own mother, particularly that tinkering with the space-time continuum so intimately could result in him turning gay of all things.

Marty says, "This is the kind of thing that could screw me up permanently. What if I go back to the future and I end up being...gay?"

It goes without saying that the '80s weren't a particularly sympathetic time for the plight of gay people, and this sort of casual homophobia was extremely commonplace in both media and society.

And so, while countless '80s movies have survived including casual gay panic, in a movie of Back to the Future's extremely high esteem, it would've placed an ugly asterisk over its brilliance when viewed today. Thankfully, Zemeckis had the good sense to cut the line out.