8 Horror Movies With Different Endings In Different Countries
Different countries got different endings to these horror films.
It's so, so important for filmmakers to know how to end a movie - get it right and you've got the audience in the palm of your hand, but get it wrong and it can taint viewers' memories of the whole experience forever more.
And while it's not uncommon for directors to shoot numerous endings for their films - many of which end up materialising later on home video - sometimes different countries around the world end up seeing different endings on the big screen.
This can be for a multitude of reasons, most often that test screenings indicate a certain ending won't fly in a certain country, and so something else is served up for that market instead, whether already shot or filmed specifically for that purpose.
And that's absolutely the case with these eight horror films - some of them classics, some of them not - each of which had different endings on initial release depending on where in the world you were situated.
Thankfully the various endings have all been made available around the world courtesy of the Internet, providing a unique window into one of the strangest facets of film distribution...
8. Black Christmas (2006)
Anyone who saw 2006's Black Christmas remake in cinemas in the UK got not merely a different ending but a massively reworked version of the whole movie, including numerous different, gorier death scenes missing in the version of the film released in the US and elsewhere.
Most prominently, the film's hospital-set climax ends quite differently, with killer Billy Lenz (Robert Mann) dying from burns sustained in a fire as the hospital's staff attempts in vain to revive him.
In the more fist-pumping US ending, however, Billy is killed when protagonist Kelli (Katie Cassidy) pushes him over a railing, causing him to be impaled on the inexplicably sharp tip of a Christmas tree, because why the hell not?
Granted, neither ending can salvage what's a fundamentally poor remake, though in this case it's at least easy to appreciate why the decision was made to serve up a more exciting ending for the US market which leaned a little more eagerly into the film's generally schlocky vibe.