Anyone seen both UK and US release versions?

Joe Dante is entitled to his opinion, but I have both versions and I can honestly say that the American distributors, Paramount, totally ruined the film by cutting 40 minutes out of it...that's two whole reels or a third of the picture...severely affecting the narrative in the process, just so that it would fit on a double bill. Most of Sammy's journey down the White Nile and his scenes with the African chieftain went, as did most of Sammy's interactions with Cocky Wainwright and the river crossing on the ferry. Subsequently, the scene where Sammy tells Cocky about the raid that killed his parents and about him being an orphan...vital to the narrative...were removed, giving the impression to American audiences that Cocky never asks Sammy why he's walking from Port Said to Durban. On the plus side, Les Baxter's score is lush and romantic and suits the film.

I ran the film when it was new in 1963 when I was a cinema projectionist and the version I ran was the 128 minutes version. Sometime between 1963 and the film's first showing on television in 1970, someone cut nine or ten minutes out of it and this is the version that has survived. Originally, the scenes between Sammy and the Syrian were longer, including a scene where Sammy collapses from heat exhaustion in the desert and the Syrian revives him and puts an Arab head dress on him to prevent him getting sunstroke.

The film originally came in at over three and a quarter hours...longer than Spartacus...but Executive Producer Michael Balcon had it cut down to a more managable two hours and nine minutes (about a minute was cut out of this by the BBFC where the Syrian was clearly shown lusting after Sammy) and then the film, which had some disturbing scenes in it, was inexplicably passed with a "U" certificate. Today, it carries a PG rating, the modern equivalent of the "A" certificate it should have received in 1963.

The then head censor John Trevelyan said he also had a problem with the opening air raid scenes in “Sammy Going South” where the parents of young Sammy (Fergus McClelland) are killed. He thought these scenes were violent and upsetting and could distress a young person, but he balanced it with the rest of the film saying it was rather beautiful and compensated for it and so left them uncut. Some time later, he received a phone call from an irate mother in Edinburgh who complained that she had taken her young son to see the film and he was very distressed by the air raid scenes and the death of Sammy’s parents and as a result she had taken him out of the cinema.