Alternate Endings Actually Worth Watching - Page 2

Friday, October 13, 2006 | 12:00 AM

Fatal Attraction
Directed by Adrian Lyne

Glenn Close's seminal psycho was so loathed by 1987 test audiences for "Fatal Attraction" that the original ending, wherein she slits her own throat and frames Michael Douglas's character for murder, was just not godawful enough. Oh, she still had to die, but why not make killing Alex Forrest...a family affair? Hence, the over-the-top finale we all saw, with Michael and Glenn and the knife and the bathtub and the drowning, and the "oh snap!" and then the bullet from Anne Archer. Oddly, the movie was released with its suicide scenario intact in Japan, where I guess they really do like blondes, and when the Special Collector's Edition DVD was released in 2002, it included the original ending as an alternate ending. Original! (slap) Alternate! (slap) Original! (slap) Alternate! (slap) It's the original AND the alternate! (collapses)

Better ending: DVD. —Michelle Orange

Hell in the Pacific
Directed by John Boorman

Dripping testosterone from its every stunningly photographed frame, John Boorman's 1968 action-drama reteams the director with his two-fisted "Point Blank" star, Lee Marvin. WWII is underway, and a nameless U.S. Marine pilot (Marvin) has been shot down over a tiny tropical island in the titular ocean. With no volleyball for the white-haired castaway to growl at, the isle's only other occupant is a stranded Japanese naval officer ("Yojimbo" himself, Toshiro Mifune); the macho duo instantly size each other up for battle without any means of talking out their problems. Forgoing subtitles makes it almost a silent film and clearly an anti-war allegory, the latter illustrated when — after a few crafty captures and reversals — the two get tired of fighting and build a raft together, sail to another shore to find abandoned supplies and rations, shave their beards, toast sake to each other's company, then abruptly die when a bomb is dropped on their heads... The End. Far more caustic is the alternate DVD ending (what Boorman had originally intended), in which the drunken merriment is cut short after Mifune finds photos of dead Japanese soldiers in the pages of Life Magazine, and Marvin gets increasingly riled over his nemesis not answering why his people don't believe in God. Instead of dying, they both just storm away in a pissy huff.

Better ending: DVD. —Aaron Hillis

In the Mood For Love
Directed by Wong Kar Wai

"In the Mood For Love"'s whirling emotional undertow is stirred mainly by absences. The absence of Chow and Su's spouses, of physical contact, and of admissions of love open up huge swaths of red-hued blank space, which Wong Kar Wai fills up with glances, hesitations, and floral patterns. One such instance of addition by subtraction is the closing sequence in Angkor Wat, Cambodia, where Chow unburdens his secret desire for Su into a hole at a temple. The excellent Criterion DVD offers an extended version of this sequence where Chow meets her as a fellow tourist before his confession. They engage in rote small talk, until Chow asks her if she ever tried to call him after he left Hong Kong. Su calmly says she can't remember, and walks away. Wong holds a remarkable close-up of Tony Leung after this annihilating gesture, his face stoically crumbling. Fascinating on its own, it is a punctuation in a film of ellipses, and would have robbed the film of its luxuriant ambiguity.

Better ending: Theatrical. —R. Emmet Sweeney

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