Film release date May 1975
Original runtime 100 minutes
Fanedit release date August 2011
New runtime 83 minutes
Amount of time cut/added 25 min cut
INTENTION:
Hollywood lore says that Warner execs were fearful that a serious depiction of a pulp hero would not play to audiences in the mid-â70s, and that they insisted the film be given a âcampâ approach, akin to the 1960s TV series âBatmanâ. Rumor has it that a âstraightâ cut of the film does exist, somewhere in Warnerâs vault. The idea of this edit was to try to extricate as much of the cringe-inducing âcampâ as possible from this film â in effect, imagining what that âstraightâ cut might have been like.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS
When my first fanedit of this film â titled âDoc SaLvageD, The Fan-edit of Bronze!â â was released four years ago, a lot of fans felt I hadnât gone far enough. They were right.
This new version is not content to simply change a handful of music cues and remove a few minutes of the most egregious moments in this legendary dud. This version represents a substantial re-edit aimed at paring ALL of the âcringeworthinessâ from the movie, and involved techniques such as traveling mattes, overlays of new elements, hand-redrawn frames, re-sequencing, foley soundtrack reconstruction, beginning-to-end color correction, the creation of a new ânewsreelâ introductory sequence, and the removal of nearly one-quarter of the running time!
This more-radical revision has been three years in the making, off-and-on, with much of that time spent brainstorming with my âadvisory teamâ on the fanedit.org forums. Although no amount of effort was ever going to make this a âgreatâ film, I believe the result is worth the time spent. If youâre a fan of Doc Savage or pulp heroes or filmmaker George Pal, youâre probably going to want to check out this fanedit.
EDITING DETAILS & CUTLIST:
Needless to say, a fanedit that takes THREE YEARS to complete is going to have a lot of âEdit Detailsâ â it seems less-than-practical to imagine a comprehensive list here. Suffice it to say that this is, as my friend and key advisor on this project, Imp, put it: âa head-to-toe re-editâ. For the record, the fanedit includes a running âtext commentaryâ â on the second subtitle track â that goes into much of the âEdit Detailsâ
CUTLIST:
Likewise, the âcut-listâ is rather extensive, and is not easily described in terms of scenes/lines cut. (Weâd be here into next week.) Perhaps the best way to get a feel for the âcut-listâ is to view the âFragments from the Faneditorâs Floorâ section of the disc, a ½-hour of UNEDITED clips from the original film, provided for comparison. The âFragmentsâ section is liberally peppered with wiseass captions that are pretty funny. (But then again, of course I think so â I wrote them.)
SPECIAL THANKS
I would like to thank my âadvisorsâ on the fanedit.org forums: Gantz101, Monroville, Jorge, Spence, ImperialFighter, JMB, Blackhawk, Bleujayone, MonkandHam, Dwight Fry, Ray Zell, Ripplin, Hebrides, and imp_ardnfi. And I would like to thank all the past and present administrators of fanedit.org for providing a site that inspires and facilitates all this.
There is a much more extensive list of thanks in the crawl that follows the movie, but I would like to single out Mr. Ron Ely â to whom I have dedicated this fanedit â for a wonderful performance that made all the time spent on this project bearable!
Technical Info
NTSC single-layer DVD
Movie:
Video: 6000 kbps (variable), Anamorphic
Audio: 384 kbps, Mono
Trailers, Featurette:
Video: 6000 kbps (constant)
Audio: 384 kbps, Mono
âFragments from the Faneditorâs Floorâ:
Video: 1150 kbps (constant), low-resolution âHalf-D1â format
Audio: 128 kbps, Mono
This video for this edit was created via AviSynth scripts, using VirtualDubMod and AvsPMod as tools. Many thanks to the developers of these tools, and all of the many filters that were also employed.
Release information
Single Layer DVD
Special Features
Full Subtitles
Faneditor's (Text) Commentary
"Fragments from the Faneditor's Floor" Cut Footage Section (featuring special "wiseass" captions)
Reconstructed Featurette
2 Trailers
DVD_ROM folder including unfilmed sequel script