10 Movies That Were Massively Improved By A Director's Cut

3. The Big Red One (1980)

The Big Red One Sam Fuller Mark Hamill
Warner Bros.

Samuel Fuller's World War II movie is based partly on his own experiences fighting on the front-line, so you could only imagine the writer/director's disappointment when it was heavily edited by the studio and released to theaters as a watered-down version of his original vision.

24 years later The Big Red One: The Reconstruction premiered at Cannes, running 49 minutes longer than the theatrical version, with the extended cut turning a great movie into an incredible one. The theatrical release of The Big Red One remains an impressive entry in the war movie genre, but the disjointed and often confusing nature of the story bore the hallmarks of heavy studio interference, with Fuller distancing himself from the project right up until his death in 1997. Critic and historian Gene Schickel worked from the director's own production notes in mounting this reconstruction, and the difference in quality is nothing short of staggering.

Adding over a dozen new scenes and extending numerous others, the 162 minute version offers a much more focused movie that vastly improves the plot, character and battle scenes, turning the uneven tone of the theatrical release into a relentlessly-paced epic that now sits comfortably with the greats of the genre.

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