I saw the movie when it was released. This version deletes the scene towards the end where Power bites the head off the chicken. It's the thing he detests at the beginning of the movie. Why can't the film owners leave it alone. It was a shock then to see him do it I know. The 2 film historians who comment on the DVD do not even mention it. Guess they aren't really historians. Too bad. Tyrone Power was proud of that film.
sharePETA would have gone nuts probably.
shareThank you, this information was very valuable; how interesting that such a graphic scene was filmed, adding further weight to the "no-compromise" attitude of the production (and how disappointing, albeit unsurprising, that the scene was censored), and for fans of the film, the scene is important to be aware of. It is a scene that evidently few know about (it would certainly be something for a film historian to bring up), an obscure fact for a fittingly near-obscure film.
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I remember this scene when this movie was shown on local tv in the 1980's.I recently saw this film on a cable movie channel and this scene was deleted.I thought I had confused this movie with others about carnival people, mystics ,etc. It's good to know someone else thinks that scene was in this movie.
shareI'm glad I read this before I finished watching this movie.
I remembered watching it on TV years ago and that scene was the only thing I remembered from the movie. Time Warner has been giving away the endings of movies in their summaries (unbelievable and quite annoying) so I knew that this was the movie I had once seen. It's odd to me that this isn't even listed as an alternate version. I would be interested in finding out why the scene was deleted and if in fact real chickens were used in the geek scenes. When I originally saw this movie on TV I was very young and did not have the capacity to understand how cruel that would have been...perhaps it is better that the ending was changed.
<<perhaps it is better that the ending was changed>>
Please! I don't mean to be unkind, but be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
I too saw this on tv way back in the 70's, at least twice, and I too remember a scene that showed Power going into his geek routine. A lot of times film companies search for the best print they can find. Sometimes it may come from a foreign print where certain scenes have been deleted for censorship reasons. Sometimes the foreign version has EXTRA scenes or shots that were cut out of USA releases (Natalie Wood running out of the bathtub in mid-breakdown in SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS). I suspect this is what happened with NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Also: recently caught CAGED and could have sworn there were more scenes involving the cruel prison matron. I know she is stabbed one or two more times than is now shown. So too in THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH during the train robbery sequence when one of the conductors is hit over the head. This now contains only one blow, but it is so obvious edited because the film doesn't cut to another shot which would disguise the edit (the way it does in CAGED). The odd thing is these films were shown uncut for DECADES on television.
shareTime plays tricks with the mind. Power never bites the head off a chicken, at least on screen. At best, it's implied due to the degraded nature of his character towards the end of the film. The film that is available now on DVd is the same film shown in 1947.
I didn't care that much for the DVD commentary, but that doesn't detract from the fact that these guys know their film noir.
I agree with legalrcrtr. There was NO way they would have shown that in a film in 1947. The Production Code had an iron grip on Hollywood back then and that scene would have never made it past the censors. It's implied that Power did it but u don't see it.
shareAgree. Would have been cut by the Hayes office, and I don't remember it at all. I have a DVD of it, and there's no mention, nor is it in the film. The horror of it is from Power's character realizing he's fallen so far he's the person he used to pity and scorn - the geek.
Sometimes life is like asking strangers for directions to the Susquehanna Hat Company.
I've never seen the movie, but I just finished reading the book. Amazing book, and now I'm anxious to see how well they did with the film. But the book ends with the carnival agent telling Stan what he first heard at the beginning of the book about geeks. Paraphrasing: "You can fill in until we get a real geek." The book ends before he actually becomes a geek.
But I can see how in cinematic terms it would be more powerful to SEE the image of Stan as the geek (whether he is actually shown biting the head off a chicken or not). In the book it's the words and their echoing back to the same words in the first chapter that give the ending its power and pathos.
Time does indeed play tricks on the mind. Many people who saw "Psycho" claim they saw the knife entering Janet Leigh's body, but you never actually do.
Many critics mentioned that when shown on television, "Rosemary's Baby" cut out shots of a horrific baby at the end, but such shots never existed outside of the viewer's imagination.
Stan's degradation is so complete at the end of "Nightmare Alley," and the scene in which he interviews for a position in the carnival and is clearly going to become a geek so harrowing, that I'm sure many viewers have false memories of him biting the head off a chicken ... but as someone mentioned above, the suggestion is stronger than if the actual scene were in the film.
Anyway, Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation has confirmed that no such scene existed in the original shooting script, or in the source novel, and that it would have been ridiculous for Hollywood to add the scene to a book that they already sanitized.
http://ocdviewer.com
Sorry, but I saw it when it came out, and the scene described WAS there...and it wasn't.
The penultimate scene in the original was Power on the carny stage, in full degradation, with live chicken in hand, about to do the geek thing. The actual biting was of course not shown, but the camera cut away just before that action was to occur.
Nevertheless, it was grisly and vividly affecting, especially to the 7 1/2 year old I was at the time. Undoubtedly it was modified quickly, due to objections, box office remarks, who knows? The original may not even exist any more. But the last scene, of Stan's insane raving, is only explained by the fact that he's done the 'performance.'
(If you want to read other contemporary viewings of mine, notably of the opening night of Psycho, see that movie's comments.)
I just re-watched this last night. And I thought that scene was missing too. I remember seeing it a few years ago, and I'm not sure if he actually bites the heads off chickens or not, but I definitely remember a more shocking vision of him as the geek at the end of the movie. In the version I saw last night, it is kind of only suggested - they show him getting the job as the geek and the next thing you see is him running around where Molly finds him. I definitely remember last time I saw it you actually saw him as the geek in the pit and it was quite shocking.
shareWhile I agree that memories are tricky, I believe I recall from seeing the picture on TV at least 25 years ago, a Geek scene not in the DVD. But it was just a flurry of feathers coming up from the Geek cage with the camera on horrified spectators. This in the opening scene when Power is merely watching the performance and repeated near the end when he is the performing Geek. Maybe there were also some chicken-squawking sound effects as well.
If such scenes ever existed and were deleted, it must be for the reason the Duchess stated. Even such suggestive visual and audio stimuli would be too much for the tender sensibilities of the animal activist crowd. May we expect in the future to see scenes of people eating steak deleted?
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He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good... St. Matthew 5:45
What Mr. Brando describes above is what I just saw.
I thought it abrupt for him to go from hired to raving mad on a rampage. The film was so well developed up 'til then.
For a film during code days, I was also surprised the well-named "Lilith" didn't receive a comeuppance.
I'd have ended the film with a close-up of Powers' crazed face after he utters the line "I was born for it."
Fade out. The End.
I saw the film in the mid 50's and the geek scene at the end was the ONLY thing I remembered, and when I watched it on TV last night I was waiting for it so I could shut my eyes. We did not actually see Stan bit the head off a live chicken, but he was in the cage holding a chicken, then the scene cut to the grimacing spectators as feathers flew in the air. The scene more effectively showed the total degradation to which Stan had fallen.
share[deleted]
When I was a kid, I must have seen the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" a million times. And had you asked me, before I got the DVD a few years ago, I would have sworn there was a flashback where we saw Eddie standing over the crushed piano dropped on his brother, and the scene panning up to show the red eyes. I can still see it clearly. But no such scene ever existed. Others remember it too. Memory is a funny thing.
shareI am sure this scene existed, though I have never seen it myself. My mother was a HUGE Tyrone Power fan in the 40s, and she adored him. When she saw this film, she was horrified and never quite got over it. It somewhat ruined her idealized concept of Tyrone as a romantic lead, and she talked about for many years later on! I never saw the movie at all until I was well into adulthood.
As it seems to be cut for TV viewing anyhow, I suspect the scene mimicked a chicken being decapitated -- I cannot imagine anything that bloody or violent being done in the prudish films of the 40s. The implication was apparently bad enough it affected my mom for 30 years! Also, Tyrone Power was a huge star, and I can't imagine he would have actually bitten off the head of a chicken.
Film as an art form, shows the power of suggestion all the time anyways. What we imagine is so very much worse than anything they could show us.
There is a geek scene at the beginning of the film, not at the end. And while you see two chickens thrown into the geek's cage and the screaming of the crowd and the agony of the chickens, you do not actually see the chicken heads bitten off by the geek.
According to a history I read of the film, Fox executives (including George Jessel) insisted upon the happy ending. Everyone else wanted the film to end when Tyrone Powers says about becoming a geek himself, "Mister, I was made for it." (That certainly would have been a better ending and more true to the film.)
Everyone else wanted the film to end when Tyrone Powers says about becoming a geek himself, "Mister, I was made for it." (That certainly would have been a better ending and more true to the film.)
I agree that would have been a far better ending.
I also find it hard to believe that an American '40s film would include anything as graphic as someone (especially such a big star as Tyrone Power) biting the head off a chicken.
Peter, is your social worker in that horse?