10 Movies Which Were Completely Changed After Test Screenings

4. Sunset Boulevard

Like Orson Welles, Billy Wilder is another of the great American directors whose body of work suggests a level of complete control usually found in auteur film-making. Like Welles, he too had to make considerable changes to one of his films after the reaction from members of the audience at a test screening. A body lies floating in a swimming pool as the deceased narrator begins to recount the events which led to his death. It's hard to imagine Sunset Boulevard - Wilder's satirical masterpiece about Hollywood and fading stardom - beginning in any other way. But the original version actually kicked off with a whole host of corpses lined up in a morgue talking about their demise, resulting in one brave woman telling Wilder, "I never saw such a pile of s**t in all my life." Given that the scene had prompted laughter from other audience members (not the reaction he was going for) he re-shot the scene and changed the ending. In this case, it's fair to say that an anonymous woman was inadvertently responsible for one of the most iconic scenes in movie history.