the movie would have been SO much better if they had retained the original ending, but the stupid wussy “focus groups” didn’t like it, so they dropped in a mediocre, formulaic, pap, “Hollywood” ending to the movie, destroying the dark, menacing undertones of Audrey II’s bid for world domination
I also forgot how cool a villan A2 was, right up there with Darth Vader (the Unhappy Ending A2, that is), in fact, i could see Vader owning an Audrey II and feeding it crewmembers that “dissapointed” him…
IIRC, in the “Special Edition” of ROTJ, the Sarlacc had a very A2-esque “beak” added in, in fact, when i saw it in the theatres, my first response to the re-edited Sarlacc was to say “FEEED MEEEEEE!” in a plaintive, Levi Stubbs-esque voice…
A2 was one of the great, forgotten Henson animatronics for sure
The original ending to Suspicion had Cary Grant character killing Joan Fontaine with a poisoned glass of milk. Too bad the test audiences didn’t like Grant as a killer.
What I assume was the original ending of Freebie and the Bean was better than the actual one used.
It’s a buddy movie about two cops. One of them is killed at the end of the movie. It’s clear from the movie that this is something that happened. But apparently, somebody decided they didn’t want the movie to have a downbeat ending because there’s a final scene in the coroner’s wagon where the surviving cop is sitting with his dead friend’s body and suddenly the dead guy sits up and it’s revealed he’s actually alive - he had survived being shot and we were supposed to accept that nobody noticed for several hours that he was actually alive.
The original ending for Fatal Attraction had Glenn Close committing suicide and Michael Douglas being arrested for murder. Test audiences didn’t like it so they sht the conventional, pop-up killer ending instead.
I heard that in Pretty in Pink, Molly Ringwald’s character was supposed to end up with Ducky (Jon Cryer’s character, who played her best friend who carried a torch for her) instead of Andrew McCarthy’s rich popular-guy character. This ending didn’t test well with viewers, so they changed it around. I always thought it ended wrong.
A Clockwork Orange. The British version of the book had a different ending than the American version, and I wish the movie had used that one. It changed the entire moral.
I read once where Rosemary’s Baby’s original ending was Mia Farrow takes the offspring at the end and runs into a chruch, setting up a battle between God and the Devil. Not sure how far they would have taken it, and the original ending is pretty good, but this may have been interesting. Although given Polanski’s distaste for happy endings at the time, I’m sure Satan would have won out anyway.
I’m was aware of the books having different endings between countries. But then, I’ve only read my Easton Press copy. I poked around briefly however, and found that the original American publication was indeed different. The book has 21 chapters. There are three ‘sections’ of seven chapters each. Some people saw Chapter 21 as a ‘sell out’. I don’t think it is.
As for bad endings, I nominate AI. Although the short story upon which it was based was only a couple of pages long, I liked the film up until the ‘ending’. But then it went on for another 45 minutes! It should have ended underwater.
Burgess’ original novel has one more chapter in it after “I was cured, all right” where it jumps forward a year or so and Alex begins to soften up and start going straight on his own. He turns himself around by his own volition. The end.
In my opinion, that ending does seem kind of forced and contrived. The tone of the chapter dpen’t really fit with the rest of the book.
The film Hannibal should have ended the way the book did, with Clarice running off with Dr. Lecter to enjoy a life of luxury, elegance, and occasional ritual cannibalism. But I knew, when I heard a film was being made, that nobody in any position of power in Hollywood could possibly have that kind of nads.
The reason it wasn’t was because Kubrick was reading the American Version of the book and didn’t know about the british version until after the film had been made. Apparently he said that if he had known about Chapter 21, he would have filmed that ending instead.