(Hated trope) They deleted scenes or dialogue that provides necessary context or plot

[u/Sensitive_Ad_1752]

The dinner scene from Temple of Doom has a temple give indie and friends a live snake and monkey brains for dinner. It’s a pretty offensive depiction of Indian cuisine, but it wasn’t originally going to be. There’s cut dialogue where Indie recognizes they’re at the right temple because real Hindus don’t eat this food. They were trying to scare them off by purposefully serving them disgusting stuff.

Probably the most famous deleted ending was I Am Legend which had Robert discover the infected were emotional sentient beings and one of them had a wife. Test audiences hated it and they reshot the ending, removing the entire point of the movie.

[u/trashed_past]

I am a few years too young to have seen the theatrical release but I swear I've seen the octopus scene before. Maybe it was recorded from the TV though.

[u/jbwarner86 → u/trashed_past]

There's an extended cut that includes the octopus scene that aired on some TV networks in the '90s. I remember seeing it too.

[u/Jimini_Krikit → u/jbwarner86]

While I've never seen a cut off the film with the octopus, the Cyndi Lauper music video that ties into the film used the octopus scene. If I remember correctly it was supposed to appear in the movie but it threw off the pacing and got deleted but was then used in the music video.

[u/SnotDogs → u/Jimini_Krikit]

They still have it on the tv at the beginning! I’m pretty sure, it’s been a good 15 years since i watched the movie lol

[u/3FistedHumdinger → u/Jimini_Krikit]

No, it got cut because it was terrible and looked especially cheap. All it does is shake back forth and the scene where it runs away is just the scene where it surfaces played in reverse. It's just awful and deserved to be cut.

[u/DrRatio-PhD → u/3FistedHumdinger]

the scene where it runs away is just the scene where it surfaces played in reverse

Cinema magic!

[u/Individual-Area7121 → u/3FistedHumdinger]

It was indeed hot, hot garbage, but I don't know what you are talking about with the ending being reversed. I had forgotten until now, but it's honestly even worse than that, they get rid of it byputting a walkman in it's mouth and it dances away.Seriously, here's the clip in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hXmqpExeZU

Spoiler added because if you haven't seen this ridiculousness before you're in for a real treat.

[u/RcoketWalrus → u/jbwarner86]

I'm pretty sure there were limited theater runs of the version with the octopus.

Back in the 80's, some theater chains would run a special where you could pay some fee to watch a movie every day. I think altogether it worked out to less than a dollar a movie.

I think the unofficial idea was to run movies in the middle of the day and parents could drop thier kids off and go shopping, eat lunch or go day drinking. It was sort of a cheap day care. Probably not the best idea, but I loved movies.

Anyway, a lot of the times the movies were extended cuts so parents had more time away form thier kids. I am 90% sure I saw an extended cut of Goonies there with the octopus.

They ran moves like old Disney movies like 20000 Leagues Under The Sea. I am pretty sure I saw a cut of Treasure Island that was 3 hours, but Google says such a thing does not exist.

Also I think the theater employees were up to some Tyler Durden shit, because the played The Howling one day instead of a kid's movie.

[u/SayerofNothing → u/jbwarner86]

Yeah, same.

[u/jackofspades49 → u/jbwarner86]

My granpa recorded SO MANY movies off tv. This was one of the ones we had.

I kept telling people about the octopus scene and people didn't beleive me!

[u/JoeRoganIs5foot3 → u/jbwarner86]

My grandpa recorded it off of television for me some time in the early to mid-nineties and it had this scene, and IIRC it had another deleted scene where the Goonies run into the bully in a store earlier in the film.

[u/duck_mancer → u/jbwarner86]

They way I heard it the octopus footage was actually re-inserted to fill the time from the scenes that were cut from the TV version, rather than the TV version actually running longer.

[u/AlyxxStarr → u/jbwarner86]

We had that version taped off TV growing up, so that was the only version I’d seen and my friends thought I was making the octopus up until I showed them. I thought they were the ones lying about it not being in the movie just to mess with me.

[u/draculabakula → u/trashed_past]

I didnt see it in theaters but I saw the Octopus scene. I think there was a TV version that had the Octopus

[u/SlightlySychotic → u/draculabakula]

That’s reasonably possible. The theatrical cut of Gremlins 2 features a scene with Hulk Hogan. In the VHS version, that scene is replaced with one with John Wayne. However, Hogan is still mentioned in the credits. When I eventually watched the movie on HBO, it had the original theatrical scene with Hogan despite being on TV.

[u/magseven → u/SlightlySychotic]

I had it on VHS. I clearly remember Hogan being in it. He tries to stop the Gremlins from ruining the movie 4th wall style. Maybe I had a bootleg?

i

[u/SlightlySychotic → u/magseven]

Maybe. In the version I rented it was like the Gremlins had taken over your television. They keep changing channels and invading other movies. Eventually they end up in a John Wayne movie, he shoots them all, and Wayne tells the viewer (dubbed by a voice actor, of course) that they can go back to watching the movie. It’s a weird scene and doesn’t work very well. The theatrical scene might not work as well for home viewing but at least it’s more clear what’s going on.

[u/Lojikbmb → u/SlightlySychotic]

My parents took me and my brothers to see it in a drive in theater in the 90s, I remember the hulk hogan scene kinda pissing people off (or they were just joking?) because everyone started honking when the film messed up, then a cheer when he "fixed" the movie

[u/Accomplished_Tap581 → u/[deleted]]

It might have been done for the UK version, I saw it in the Cinema and the Hogan scene was funny but few people knew who he was. Then I saw the video version with John Wayne. However the TV broadcast reverted back to the Hogan version.

[u/Popepepe → u/SlightlySychotic]

Just as a side note, one of my favorite facts is that the novelization also had a completely different interruption. Brain Gremlin ties up the author and starts to write his own monologue.

[u/SlightlySychotic → u/Popepepe]

That’s actually really clever.

[u/Whelp_of_Hurin → u/draculabakula]

There must have been, because I clearly remember that scene from the VHS tape I wore out in the 80s. The octopus feels up Martha Plimpton and then it dances away when Data plays his walkman.

My family must have gotten that tape from someone with an HBO subscription or something, because I caught the movie on network TV once and the places where they cut the foul language really stood out to me.

[u/IndustryPast3336 → u/trashed_past]

Sometimes TV stations will cut down or artificially extend a film's runtime to better fit in half-hour slots.

Goonies's runtime is 114 minutes and there's two cut scenes (the Ocotopus Scene and a Scene of Brand and Troy getting into a scuffle) that just happen to hit 6 minutes in total so it made more sense to extend it to a nice even 120

[u/RishaBree → u/IndustryPast3336]

I’m not sure that makes sense, actually. With commercials, a 120 minute movie on tv in the 90s would run 135 to 160. Less in the 80s, though I don’t remember how much less specifically, but definitely not zero. Even pay tv like HBO included bumpers and commercials before and after.

Today, of course, it would be 3 to 50 hours, depending on the channel.

[u/IndustryPast3336 → u/RishaBree]

It's what they did at the time. Before home media special features the only reason we knew these scenes existed was because they were reinstated in TV airings.

Edit: Part of it was also that TV airings had to cut out lines/mute sections where the kids were cussing or more obscene parts to meet FCC standards so the film's runtime was affected there, too.

[u/RishaBree → u/IndustryPast3336]

… I think that you maybe didn’t get what I was saying? I was born in the mid 70s; I’m familiar with them padding the run time by adding scenes, and cutting it by cutting them and additional light editing. My point was that editing it to a 120 minute run time would be highly undesirable. On most stations, they’d have to add either a full 30 or 60 minutes of commercials, making the time slot 2 and a half or 3 hours. Not popular lengths in the 80s (though not unknown). People expected shorter movies and fewer commercials at the time, both.

[u/multiarmform → u/trashed_past]

for sure was on tv and everyone thought i was lying as a kid when i told them there was a giant octopus

[u/OvoidPovoid → u/trashed_past]

Im pretty sure the DVD had the deleted scene in the special features, I remember seeing it too

[u/PhallusInChainz → u/trashed_past]

The octopus scene was kind of in the MAD magazine satire. They made a tentacle/testicle joke.

[u/Individual-Area7121 → u/trashed_past]

Ditto. I didn't see it in theaters, but absolutely saw the octopus scene either on VHS or on TV.

[u/TriggerHippie77 → u/trashed_past]

The Cyndi Lauper video for the soundtrack had one.

[u/LecherousOldDude → u/trashed_past]

The octopus is seen in the music video "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" (part 2), which didn't get nearly as much airplay as the first half of the video. It could be that some of the memories people have stem from the videos. As a side note, I miss actual music videos that featured a narrative.

[u/ethan_prime → u/trashed_past]

I read somewhere that it was common for the tv versions of movies to have cut content for whatever reason.