APOCALYPSE NOW
Apocalypse Now is, in the
opinion
of many people,
the greatest film ever made (it is certainly the
greatest
WAR film) ... this is a list
of the rarities I have of this classic film,
including a 5 hour WORKPRINT
that
must be seen to be
believed ...
many of the scenes discussed below are in the new version of the
film:
" APOCALYPSE NOW R E D U X "
THE FIVE-HOUR WORKPRINT
A very early rough cut that
has
everything but the kitchen
sink in it (including the
French Plantation sequence)
...
many of the extra scenes are simply stunning:
The crew meets up with
the
Playboy Bunnies (after their chopper
runs out of gas), and Willard
offers to give them fuel in
exchange
for fulfilling the crew members' sexual fantasies ... Chef ends
up with one of them in the
helicopter,
attempting foreplay while
the girl's pet bird pecks at him!
Remember the scene (in the
release
print) where Chef wiggles his tongue at Clean, tauntingly
calling him "cherry boy"
(which
causes tensions to rise,
leading up to the sampan massacre)?
The reason Chef was
doing that
is because he got to have sex with a bunny and
Clean didnt!
Lance's playmate sojourn is
interrupted by the
accidental toppling of a coffin containing a dead
soldier.
The beach invasion is
different:
Kilgore places a wounded baby
aboard a Medevac chopper
(a scene that Duvall had
wanted left
in the film, since he felt that it humanized his gung-ho
character).
But the most amazing addition
is this: at the end of the long
sequence, the crew runs to the PBR
to escape from this lunacy,
and at the last minute, they steal Kilgore's prized surfboard!!
Then
they hide
out under some trees, while
Kilgore hovers above,
demanding his board back over a loudspeaker, and
Willard does a
mocking
impersonation
of JFK admonishing the crew for the theft.
This is followed immediately
by the "fucking tiger" sequence!
The infamous French
Plantation
sequence is here,
consisting of a long dinner party in which the
drunken
Frenchmen talk
passionately
about the twisted logic that still
keeps them there (a stubborn
refusal to give up their
"home").
After dinner, Willard and a comely French widow drink cognac
and smoke opium, followed by
dispassionate lovemaking.
In the afterglow of sex, she asks
Willard
why he fights, and he
answers
with a typical gung-ho John Milius line: "Because I like it."
There are MANY more
scenes
of Kurtz rambling in an attempt
to zombify Willard (and the audience),
and a much larger role for
Colby
(Scott Glenn), who barely made it into the release print at all.
And he shotguns the annoyingly
babbling photographer played
by Dennis Hopper (with the audience's
gratitude). During
the
final scenes, where Willard goes into the temple to
assassinate Kurtz,
a guard holds up a child to protect
himself,
and Willard stabs the kid with a spear!
There is no narration,
and
much of the music is different than
it was in the release print.
The Doors are used VERY
extensively
as temporary backing music, including the COMPLETE
version
of "The End" in the
opening Saigon Hotel scenes (with much
more drunken Sheen footage),
and the COMPLETE version of
"When the Music's Over" in the closing native celebration scenes.
And the river-surfing scene
(which, by the way, is done on
Kilgore's stolen board) is backed by the
Otis Redding version
of
"Satisfaction"
instead of the Stones version. The film has the
original dialogue
before the overdubs (which
there
were a
LOT of in the final print). Incredibly enough, in the
early
scene
where the brass briefs Willard
on his
mission, his target is NOT called Colonel Kurtz...
he is called Colonel LIDDY!!
The film is
letterboxed,
and is of surprisingly decent picture quality,
considering the rarity
of
the item
(the sound is a bit low, but
can
be enhanced somewhat by adjusting the EQ on your sound system).
Editing timer in the lower
right
hand side of the screen. T160 x 2.
For more information about
the
ROUGH CUT of
Apocalypse Now
click this link:
