What might be missing from the U.S. version

There has been a lot of puzzlement on this board about the 110 minute version and missing footage, sparking my curiosity, so I decided to do a little digging, no pun intended.

Here is what I found out: On February 16, 1971, the British Board of Film Classification screened The Road Builder and awarded it with an "X" certificate, basically equivalent of the "R" rating here in America. It clocked in at exactly 100 minutes and 5 seconds, and passed with no cuts. This can be verified by searching their online archives.

When the film was released in May of 1971 in the United States, it had shrunk slightly to 97 minutes and 38 seconds. This is not surprising as the current head of MGM at the time, James T. Aubrey, was fond of re-editing just about every film completed under his reign, the most tragically altered include "Night of Dark Shadows," "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," "Chandler," "Going Home," and many others.

Although many sources suggest The Road Builder originally ran 110 minutes, the BBFC records show otherwise.

The good news here is, (unlike many of the films mentioned above), the original version still survives intact in one part of the world.

TCM U.K. has been showing the original version, THE ROAD BUILDER, for years, (supposedly uncut) so I was excited when that version showed up on TCM here several years ago. For some batty reason, though, heavily edited. Why would they go to all the trouble to show the complete version only to scissor it down below what remains in the U.S. theatrical version when just months prior they showed an uncut version of THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW which has a far more graphic, vicious rape/murder than anything currently in the THE NIGHT DIGGER.

Following an intuitive hunch where the edit/s might be, I compared the Mary Wingate sequence in TCM's print with the "Uncut" version released by Warner Archive. Very interesting: The Road Builder print ends just before Mary Wingate screams, whereas the Night Digger ends in mid-scream. There would be no reason for the folks at TCM to edit out half an un-graphic scream unless, in The Road Builder print, there was (and probably is) more graphic footage on the other end of that scream -- the missing 2 and a half minutes. Maybe an examination of Roald Dahl's screenplay might yield an answer.

Enter James T. Aubrey: Rumor was he didn't like the film, and considered it a tax write off, hence the title change. So he may have cut the rest of the sequence because it showed the murder, the rape, or both. Or the MPAA might have slapped the original version with an "X" so maybe Aubrey was forced to excise the footage to maintain an R rating. Reportedly, Patricia Neal saw the original version and thought it was "pornographic." At any rate, I don't think Warner Archive knew about the missing footage, or they would have released the complete British version. They're really good about this. Then again, maybe they simply didn't have access to it.