Like with so many movies that were shot in Taiwan with HK-actors, "The Beheaded 1000" was also released completely uncut in the land of origin Taiwan, whereas the runtime was heavily cut down to a "theater-friendly" length for the Hong Kong-release. This version was released in the rest of the world. The Taiwanese version seems to be the director's favored version, actually the movie's "Director's Cut". Numerous scenes were slightly cut in the Hong Kong-version, whereas complete story elements were removes sometimes. This is definetly a minus, because, as halfway attentive audiences will more than once ask themselves why characters do this or that or why people just show up here and there. The Taiwanese version appears to be much calmer and more logical, which confirms the fact that this is the version originally intended by the director.
This aside, the HK-theatrical cut also shows two effect scenes differently, which is likely to be traced back to a later editing, and finally the Taiwanese version also includes a few scenes of violence which were probably cut in favor of the Category II-rating from the HK-version - in the following report, they are marked red. |