Bullet in the Head Superres upscale + Uncut reconstruction

[spoRv]

Elmo, maybe you could be entitled to be a new project maker, after all...

[IcePrick]

I don't know if it's useful, but there's a composite cut of BITH that I put together several years ago. You can find it on a torrent site that begins with Cinema and ends with the name of a Michael Bay movie about an asteroid.

I included the piss drinking scene and used the boardroom ending. I re-wrote all of the subtitles, though the HKL DVD was the original source of said subtitles.

Thanks, I'll check it out, although I'm about 80% done with my project. I'm interested in your subtitles, I find the HKL subs not concise enough a lot of the time.

Just a small update, I probably won't bother with the audio from the HK laserdisc. It doesn't actually sound that good. MrBrown was kind enough to have his French LD shipped to SpoRv to rip the audio from that. Hopefully, the quality is better.

Something else, I noticed on the English dub track that all the Vietnamese dialogue is left unchanged, even plot important dialogue. I'm wondering if these are supposed to be subbed. Does anybody know how the English dubbed version was presented theatrically or on video?

[IcePrick]

Does anybody know if Taiwanese prints were longer than the HK version, like with The Killer and Hard Boiled? The Mandarin mono tracks I've come across sound like they're edited down from a longer version.

[CSchmidlapp]

The only other cut I know of is the 'Festival Cut'.
Would be great if there is an extended cut.
Does the audio have noticable jumps or something?

[IcePrick]

The only other cut I know of is the 'Festival Cut'.
Would be great if there is an extended cut.
Does the audio have noticable jumps or something?

The Mandarin audio has the same musical arrangement as the Festival Cut, and there are jumps in the audio where the extended footage would be. It makes me wonder if Mandarin prints were the same as the Festival Cut or something similar.

Here's a comparison of different versions based on my research:

136m Festival Cut; Longest version available. It's never been officially released on home video (aside from Joy Sales' crude reconstruction via seamless branching). Only source is a bootleg tape. Despite having more footage than the standard version, it's missing three short scenes: two scenes of Jacky Cheung comforting Yolinda Yam and a scene of Simon Yam and his team running through the jungle. Different musical arrangement.

130m Standard Cut; What's on pretty much every DVD release.

Hong Kong Premiere; This screening included the Car Chase Ending. Probably the 136 minute version.

Hong Kong Theatrical Cut; Running at roughly 120 minutes, this is the version seen during the films theatrical run in Hong Kong. It has the alternate Boardroom Ending. According to interviews with Waise Lee and Patrick Leung, the car chase ending was John Woo's original intended ending. They had to shoot an alternate ending (Boardroom Ending) in order to meet the distributor's demand for shorter run time. Additionally, this version probably has the same edits as the 130m version.

Hong Kong Laserdisc Cut; The Car Chase Ending has been restored, but 10 minutes of footage has been edited out in order to fit the movie on one disc. This version also showed up on the Tai Seng VHS.

Mei Ah VCD; This version has the alternate Boardroom Ending. It does have most of the edits of the 130m version, but oddly enough, the edits seem to have been made directly to the film print itself, with the audio jumping half a second later. It has the same musical arrangement and audio mix as the Festival Cut. It has further edits, a scene of the friends contemplating a shooting they just witnessed, and some bickering between Waise Lee and Jacky Cheung on the beach, as well as some censorship cuts. It's possible that this represents the Hong Kong theatrical version. Although a couple of the edits look like they were done on the video transfer.

There's also a 90 minute version released in territories like Singapore with much of the political aspect removed. The initial German release was heavily censored for violence. This person describes having seen a print the includes both the "piss drinking scene" AND the boardroom ending.

Suffice to say, the release history of this movie is pretty complicated and not well documented.

[CSchmidlapp]

Wow. i just thought the theatrical cut is what we all had, with the 'festival cut' being an earlier unrefined version.
I was also under the impression for a long time that the 'boardroom' scene was the original intention with the 'car duel' patched on when audiences found the original underwhelming.
To be fair ive not really studied this film at great depth, even tho im a John Woo nut. There are a considerable amount of his work ive not seen, or simply watched once because his name is on it!
Thanks for the information and im really looking forward to watching your preservation.

[PDB]

Good read. Thanks for the info Iceprick

[IcePrick]

Wow. i just thought the theatrical cut is what we all had, with the 'festival cut' being an earlier unrefined version.
I was also under the impression for a long time that the 'boardroom' scene was the original intention with the 'car duel' patched on when audiences found the original underwhelming.

There are conflicting reports on the ending. Like I said, the impression I got from the Waise Lee and Patrick Leung interviews is that the car duel was the original ending, but was cut due to time constraints. Terence Chang, however, claims the opposite; that the boardroom ending was the original, but the distributors wanted a bigger finale. Annoyingly, I can't find any word on this from John Woo himself. I'm not sure he even likes talking about this movie. I guess it's also possible that both endings were in circulation, but who the hell knows?

[CSchmidlapp]

Yes he seldom mentions this movie, yet Im sure when he has, he says it's his most personal.
Is there any truth in that this was originaly planned for A Better Tomorrow 3, but Woo and Tsui Hark parted ways?

[IcePrick]

I've heard that it was planned as a prequel to A Better Tomorrow, but I don't know really know anything about it beyond that. It hasn't been mentioned in the interviews I've come across.