9 Films That Forced You To See The Wrong Version In The Cinema

8. They Lost Twenty Minutes Of Footage - The Wicker Man

In the days of double features (where a big budget movie was habitually preceded with a smaller B-Movie), you couldn't get a much better pairing than The Wicker Man and Don't Look Now. Released together in 1973, the pairing contains two of the best British horror films ever made. The former, however, could have been even better. The Wicker Man sure went through a lot of strife. Originally wanting to have an ending where rain stopped the burning of the titular effigy, the studio settled for director Robin Hardy to shorten his original cut by twenty minutes. It was subsequently cut further without Hardy's involvement so it would serve as a B-Movie. Once it proved a hit, Hardy was keen to track down his original, unbastardised cut, which he eventually found it in the hands of Hollywood legend Roger Corman, who still had a copy he'd been sent pre-release. There's lots of cuts of The Wicker Man made at various points and as a small film many of those have been lost. The most complete and closest to Hardy's original vision was the copy Corman had, which contained everything except the original twenty minutes of cuts. It now looks unlikely anything more complete will ever turn up, although the film is still pretty great as it is.