Big Boss 100% uncut?

[Guest robinbolt]

the big boss...... i am a big fan of bruce lee films... he is fantastic .. i learn from his movies and try to practice the stunts...

[monkeygift]

[Drunken Cat]

Wow, will somebody please kill this thread? ...and make it quick and painful as possible. Seriously, somebody should be charged with thread necrophilia (as in digging this up and having their way with it).

[Omni Dragon]

The Alexander Fu Sheng thread was locked because of an argument but now people(including some of our most valued & regular members) are begging for it to be locked the mods aren't taking action.

[HAZ]

I would lock it, but then another thread would just come up in a month or two! How's about this - I'll move all Big Boss uncut questions, proclamations, and speculation into this thread, making the rest of the board 100% Big Boss 100% uncut free. Does this sound good? I'll even retitle the thread "The Big Boss Sinkhole"!

[johnoverall]

We all know there are things out there that remain unseen or take an inordinate amount of time to reach their core audience or fanbase, a good case in point is Metropolis. While The Big Boss might not be as weighty, meaningful or as important to cinema elitists it nonetheless carries this baggage of expectancy and the missing bits will or will not, as the old cliche goes, arrive in the fullness of time. Tiresome as the politics and cartoonish machinations of those 'in the know' may be, the thread (consolidated sinkhole or otherwise) should remain as is and be updated as and when. In my view anyway.

[shukocarl]

Hear, hear!

[66 Mantis]

Back in the early 80s, I owned a PD vhs. It had a textless intro (no title, no credits) and different opening credit images (actually image as in singular since the only shot for the duration of the credits was Bruce doing his flying kick). The thing that stood out about this print was it DID contain a few extra seconds of gore! The early "circular saw" scene did indeed last longer. It did NOT stop when it reached the dead man's back, but went on to saw him all the way through in REALLY graphically gory detail. Plus there was an extra shot of the bodies being grinded up. It actually nauseated me when I first watched it (unprepared for that level of gore).

Think there was more but I'm going on a 25-plus year memory. The print was lousy so when CBS/Fox put out their vhs, I tossed the PD copy out. At the time, I didn't mind that some of that incredibly bloody stuff was cut. Now of course, I'm cursing myself out daily for having tossed what has turned out to be a very rare print. Haven't found that particular print again (naturally) and am starting to doubt I will ever see it again.

My advice is to seek out the really early, PD vhs copies of Fists of Fury. You just may get lucky.

[Karlos]

Very intriguing post, 66!

I heard a whisper a long time that there was indeed more to the "bodies" scene in the ice factory, and this certainly backs that up!

[shukocarl]

Which PD versions are they? I thought the first U.S. video versions were from VIDEO GEMS - surely licenced not PD?

[66 Mantis]

Karlos - Here's a rare trailer that features several missing sequences including one in the ice factory that features a face that definately is NOT in any print available (for the record, it looks like it might be one of the two cousins killed near the beginning).

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7cu6e_bande-annonce-2-uncut-big-boss-fist_shortfilms

shukocarl - I wish I could say. Again, I'm going on a 25 year old memory. To make matters worse, I may not even know for sure what the cover was! Why? because at the time, I was working at my friend's dad's video store and he carried several copies of it, each a different PD company and each with it's own cover and each different than the PD copy I bought in a dump bin! We're talking as many as four different covers swimming around in my subconcious (as it were). I do remember what two of them looked like. One incorrectly featured Bruce posing from Enter the Dragon. The other was orange colored and featured the poster art of Bruce in his white T-shirt doing a flying kick at the top while the rest of the cast recoil underneath. It could be one of those two... or not.

If it helps, you CAN'T be more frustrated about this than I am! Which reminds me, I haven't banged my head against the wall about this all day...

[daisho2004]

Well that Nude Scene where Bruce throws the girl on the bed I never seen before, but I do remember seeing the faces in the Ice on VHS many Moons ago.

[tangshandaxiong]

Here`s the original source of that trailer in better quality

But I doubt that on that PD tape were extended graphical scenes. I actually own ALL released and bootleg versions of the movie and only some snippets of extra dialoge are present in some verions. It is confirmed by people who were present at the convention that indeed the circular saw scene lasted around 1 minute including one foreman kicking a head into the freezer but this was only included in the original reels before the censorship took place..

[Hsu Chien]

I've heard similar stories before, of people seeing longer versions on video in the 70s and early 80s, and for some reason, it's usually this scene that gets mentioned - it doesn't even feature Bruce Lee! The question still remains: where is the evidence??? If some old video copies on Philips V2000 or whatever did somehow contain extra footage (which is extremely unlikely), surely we'd have seen it by now?

[Karlos]

Thanks, 66 & Tang!

Yeah, 3:12 - 3:17 are new to me!

[ShaOW!linDude]

Wow! Yeah, I certainly don't remember naked chicks or Bruce stripping down for a booty call in "The Big Boobs".....I mean "The Big Boss".

But I'm pretty sure I remember seeing the scene where he discovers the corpses encased in ice before. I think that's been in any version I've seen.

[66 Mantis]

Wow! Yeah, I certainly don't remember naked chicks or Bruce stripping down for a booty call in "The Big Boobs".....I mean "The Big Boss".

But I'm pretty sure I remember seeing the scene where he discovers the corpses encased in ice before. I think that's been in any version I've seen.

Watch the movie again and then watch the trailer. That was a different face in the ice in the trailer. As legend goes, Bruce originally came accross four bodies in ice as opposed to two.

[ShaOW!linDude]

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. Okay.

[OldPangYau]

No offense to anyone believing otherwise, but I HIGHLY doubt any public domain release titled "Fists of Fury" contained any rare footage. Every one that I've seen has come from the same National General Pictures print. Same old English dub, same old US edit (right down to missing the complete death of "The Boss").

Really only any prints circa '71/'72 would have anything. Meanwhile, the more I read about movies like Metropolis and, more recently, 2001: A Space Odyssey having deleted footage discovered, the more I get urked about footage for The Big Boss still "lost in the vaults".

[shukocarl]

No offense to anyone believing otherwise, but I HIGHLY doubt any public domain release titled "Fists of Fury" contained any rare footage. Every one that I've seen has come from the same National General Pictures print. Same old English dub, same old US edit (right down to missing the complete death of "The Boss").

Really only any prints circa '71/'72 would have anything. Meanwhile, the more I read about movies like Metropolis and, more recently, 2001: A Space Odyssey having deleted footage discovered, the more I get urked about footage for The Big Boss still "lost in the vaults".

Whoa! What's all this about deleted footage from 2001?!

[Karlos]

http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/12/17/17-minutes-of-lost-footage-from-2001-a-space-odyssey-found/

http://www.slashfilm.com/17-minutes-lost-2001-space-odyssey-footage/

Alas, none of it seems to include the missing "monolith in the head" scene.

[mpm74]

No offense to anyone believing otherwise, but I HIGHLY doubt any public domain release titled "Fists of Fury" contained any rare footage. Every one that I've seen has come from the same National General Pictures print. Same old English dub, same old US edit (right down to missing the complete death of "The Boss").

ACTUALLY... I used to have VHS version of the NGP and there was more footage of Bruce, Maria Yi and the cops walking off... (before the credits kicked in, in fact, I don't even think this one had credits. I think just the words "the end"...) I'd say it went on for a good 10 seconds longer.

Anyone else notice this?

[Cactus]

I had this image in my archives. No idea where I got it from.

[mpm74]

Looks like a knock-off sleeve.

[OldPangYau]

ACTUALLY... I used to have VHS version of the NGP and there was more footage of Bruce, Maria Yi and the cops walking off... (before the credits kicked in, in fact, I don't even think this one had credits. I think just the words "the end"...) I'd say it went on for a good 10 seconds longer.

Anyone else notice this?

Yeah, the National General Pictures releases never had any opening or ending credits. The end just had the high wide shot of the cops taking Lee away, then cutting to the "A National General Pictures Release" screen.

I had this image in my archives. No idea where I got it from.

Oh yeah, that's without a doubt a bootleg. My guess? A VHS copy of the Universe Laser VCD. The image in the top left corner is taken straight from that VCD, plus the runtime is 91 minutes... which is about the same as the Universe Laser release. Basically, the Universe Laser VCD was already at PAL speed (which would put the film at 95 min), and then over three minutes were cut (the biggest chunk being the full meeting between the manager and Chan and Wong, in which only the shot of them leaving his office is where the scene begins... thus giving no real explanation as to why they're killed).

So yes, at just shy of 92 minutes, this VHS is 99% likely to be the Universe Laser VCD cut.

I keep saying it, we need to somehow do research for any print released prior to 1973 (or perhaps fall '72... whenever HK films were getting a pinch more censored).