IMHO, the original ending where the bomb exploding is the end of the film is significantly better and darker than the one which is included on the DVD (the man and women standing on the beach). If I remember correctly, they edited that in as the official 'lost ending'?
shareFrankly, I like the ending with Mike and Velda standing on the beach better, myself. It ties up any loose ends, while the other ending simply ends with the house burning down. You never know what happens to the hero, which is too open-ended for my tastes. Plus, Mike Hammer is so damn cool, he should never die. Period. :-)
Bryan
I saw the longer ending. I didn't like it much. I think I would have liked the more cynical ending better.
Support the troops; Don't hang them out to die in a fruitless war.
I've just watched the dvd and can't see any way on how to watch the original ending. The only option is to play, which contains the full restored ending. Is this some trick or an error in the DVD? Or is the disk cover wrong or something. Let me know.
shareIf I could help, I would.
I'm not the talented with DVD's I'm afraid.
My DVD is the MGM Vintage Classics release, which as far as I know is the only release of this film on DVD. The alternate ending is located under the Special Features menu. If you don't have a Special Features menu item, you have some other copy of the film, probably a bootleg copy.
If you read the article link posted earlier in this thread, you'll find that the current release has the original and intended ending of this film, with Mike Hammer and Velda staggering in the surf. The alternate ending never shows them escaping the beach house before it's destruction and the article explains why this ending may have wound up as the version many viewers saw after the film's initial release.
Thanks
Not any more fruitless than WWII or the Cold War, Contact.
The original ending (with the house burning it all) is SO much better and powerful. It takes courage to slap your viewers in the face with a non-happy ending, and it is so rare (I just saw 'The Great Silence', an other rare and amazing movie ending) that the new one just frustrated me out.
They should have put the original ending as the main feature, and that crappy happy one as the extra.
The "happy crappy" ending IS the original.
The crudely edited one, where they cut out the actual ending, is the one you prefer.
The brief ending is better. With Mike and his girl safely away, the message seems to be that somehow they've overcome his obsessive drive to use the 'great whatsit' as an excuse for violent action and are now to be a romantic couple (where previously he shows indifference and even cruelty toward her). His desire to rescue her is not about her. It's about his ego. It's what's doomed him all along, and he should be DOOMED.
"Byron couldn't have put it more graciously."
The longer ending just looks better. I caught the final scene on TCM one night. I had never seen any of the movie before. (I have since then rented it) By itself the final scene looked almost like something out of David Lynch. The woman transfixed and horrified by the terrible power inside the box bursts into flames, the light emanating from the lone stilted beach house etc. Is the long ending really just a "happier ending?" Instead of running away down the sandy beach they stagger in the water as if caught. Hammer looks lost and humbled.
Besides it does look like they escape in the short ending anyway. I like the imagery of the longer ending better.
"By itself the final scene looked almost like something out of David Lynch. "--sscorbett
That's because Lynch totally ripped it off in Lost Highway. Then he freeze framed it and rewound it and did every imaginable thing to it in that same movie. I get the feeling he was profoundly affected by the originally released ending(as seen by audiences, not as the director intended). I doubt Lynch had seen the happy ending.
I prefer the one where Hammer dies in the fiery explosion myself. That ranks it up there with the ending to Edmond O'Brien thriller "D.O.A." in my book. Having Hammer survive the explosion is more like the Dennis Quaid version of D.O.A.
Yeah, I'll admit the editing IS choppy in the darker ending, but I simply LOVE the idea they were going for. Namely, "everyone dies."
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Whether Hammer died in the explosion or not is somewhat irrelevant...the radiation burn he received when he opened the box in the locker would have--more than likely--killed him soon enough!
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"I thought I smelled gin and regret!"
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I've never seen the shorter version without the escape-to-the-surf scene, but I'd imagine that it would be better. Mike Hammer is not a psychologically healthy guy, he is too obsessed with the "mysterious whatsit" and not a "giver" in his relationships. The whole-world-explodes ending seems like the only logical way to end this after all the other characters' speechifying about Hammer's issues. The surf ending seems to me like it was an addition forced onto the film by Hayes Code watchdogs (ie. the evil are killed or imprisoned and the good (or relatively good, in Velda and Hammer's case) must triumph/live).
I watched KMD on Turner Classic Movies today, and one of the hosts refered to the shorter ending as coming from the "European version" of the film. I wonder what that's about? It makes sense from a movies-were-allowed-to-be-tragic-in-Europe-in-the-'50's (but not in America) kind of way.
J7e77, as to the impossibility of Hammer surviving his nuclear wrist burn-- well, it was the '50's, after all. Schoolchildren were taught that hiding under their desks could save them from nuclear fallout. Hammer's *tiny* little nuclear exposure has nothing on Duck and Cover. ;-)
I was thinking about this question just last night, and I came to the conclusion that I would have preferred to see the shorter, more cynical ending first.
If one of the major themes of this film can be taken as the Pandora's Box metaphor of rampant nuclear weaponry, then the ending version which kills all of the remaining characters in the beachhouse seems to be more fitting and appropriate.
It's sort of like saying, "By the way, folks, once you let that stuff get loose in the world, you know, everyone is completely doomed."
Plus, I'm seem to be getting the feeling that our nuclear worries have only just begun...
Please stop referring to the shorter ending as the original ending, it is not (the director himself said so). It may be the ending you have seen first or for many years but it is not the original.
It also is complete nonsense that the shorter version is coming from Europe. Europe always had the longer version, the US audiences got the shorter censored ending.
And as for the theory of the "forced happy ending", it was the other way around. Hammer and Velda were seen as amoral characters (which they are) so their survival, even if they are heavily inflicted by nuclear poisoning, was seen as an affront. So they cut the film to show them die in the house to "atone for their sins". It's only a theory, but more convincing than the "accident in the projection room" theory.
It is also obvious in the cuts that the shorter ending has been changed after the fact.
Your theory occurred to me too as I watched the censored ending on the DVD, and I think you're right. The shorter ending makes it clear that Hammer and Velda are punished for their amorality, which fits the movie code of the time.
shareInitially, I would've thought the censored ending was darker, more realistic, and therefore better. But, especially knowing what we know about radiation (which the screenwriter knew), the longer ending is way darker, and more realistic.
sharethe brief ending was terrible.....the original ending made more sense and of course was very powerful.
share