Has anyone ever seen Journey to the 7th Planet in it's original directors cut? When AIP got ahold of it, they replaced the puppet spider used in the cave sequence with footage of replacing the spider from AIP's Earth Vs. the Spider...aka: The Spider. I'd love to see that original footage, but I'm sure its lost.
shareIf you check the links,(external reviews) you will find mention of photo cards which show scenes cut from the film. I remember that when I saw this film at the matinee, we got there just in time. Upon exiting the theatre after the show, we took time to look at the poster and its accompanying B&W photo cards. One of them showed a spaceman with the bones of his legs protruding fron the burned & ripped legs of his space suit. We all were upset because we KNEW that this scene wasn't in the movie. This particular photo was mentioned by the film historian writing one of the articles about this film. Sorry can't remember which link.
shareI spent too much time in trying to find the picture online in the external links.......then it hit me, in the early 90's I special ordered Journey to the 7th planet from a video dealer....it was in his catalog, but he didn't know if it was available or not, so he ordered it anyway and it came....It was from Congress Video on vhs, and on the back of the box it has that same picture. Thats wierd that it was never in the movie and there is no mention of it anywhere, or even how the spider puppet scene was replaced by AIP earth vs the spider footage......thanks for the info...i'm in the process of burning my entire vhs library over to dvd, what a chore this is!
shareWeird...I was just reading about this last night, by chance, and thought I'd check out this site....Anyway, AIP was indeed unimpressed by the quality of most of the Danish effects and actually arranged to have new ones made, although they still didn't provide enough money for a top-notch job. The one-eyed lizard/rat creature that attacks them was made by Projects Unlimited to substitute for some apparently bad Danish monster, and they tried a few variations -- using a live kinkajou that they squirted with freon to try to make it move as they wanted (where were the animal rights people?), then a furry animated creature AIP deemed too cute. The final one was basically the same as this last model but with the fur stripped off it. The astronaut with his dissolved legs (from stepping into some slime) was cut because it was supposed to look fake, but it sounds at least as good as what they came up with in Hollywood. The spider footage from EARTH VS. THE SPIDER was a cheap substitute for what author Bill Warren termed (on the basis of a still he saw) "what may be the phoniest monster in screen history....It looks like a second-rate parade float from a small-town festival." A crummy-looking spider of some sort, although when it gets crushed and oozes blood that's apparently the Danish original. Effects aside, I clearly remember seeing as a kid still photos of the girls the men meet in the cave, and all of them were wearing either tight one-piece swimsuits or very small (for 1961) bikinis. Nothing like that in the US release, and I suspect this was also footage excised from the Danish version. A pretty bad movie all in all, but it would be interesting to see the original for comparison. I wonder if the Danes have a sappy closing title song on their edition? I never saw the VHS of this but when it was on cable in the 90s I noticed they didn't have that song, only the music, and I was disappointed because I remember its being so lousy. But it's restored on DVD. Only RIDERS TO THE STARS (1954) has a worse, more inapt song attached to it.
share