Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

All I can say is that I've watched movies that I got from Blockbuster which were missing scenes (often graphic or explicit scenes) that I'd seen in other versions of the film.

Now, this was decades ago, so I don't remember which films they were, much less which scenes were cut. But I have talked to other people who've echoed my experience. I've also read articles in the past which admit this censorship happened.

A cursory web search just now came up with some mentions of said censorship:

"As mentioned before the movie opened with an NC-17 rating but Verhoeven himself edited an R-Rated version for rental chains like Blockbuster Video."[1]

"As is often the case in the USA that besides the usual Unrated releases of DTV productions there are also Restricted versions especially for rental purposes (Blockbuster Video) or being used in supermarket chains (Walmart)."[2]

"Portuguese rental video version seems to be the one made for Blockbuster video. For retail the alleged mistake was corrected, though some censored tapes were still seen on sale. The cut scenes are as follows:..."[3]

[1] - https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=1932233

[2] - https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=5899077

[3] - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/alternateversions

Blockbuster never "censored" or "cut" videos as you said. Blockbuster chose not to carry NC-17 or x-rated movies. There are alternate cuts of just about all movies and TV shows for different venues. I see people complain about Netflix having a different version than the one they remember. Some SNL episodes on Netflix run only about 30 minutes. It's not Netflix or Blockbuster doing any editing, they just buy what's available, probably the cheapest version or they take what they're given by default.

Outside of their choice not to carry "adult" programming the casual censorship you're accusing Blockbuster of doesn't exist.

Even with films that were originally R-rated, the Blockbuster versions had scenes that were missing. I don't know if Blockbuster did the editing themselves or just bought alternate versions, but the fact is that they had cuts, while the versions in other, independent video stores did not.

I watched almost no X-rated or NC-17 movies at all, so the movies that I saw that had cuts were R-rated.

Indeed. The one example I recall was in Tank Girl, R rated - the copy I rented from Blockbuster had one line blanked out, just as she discovers where exactly the Rippers are hiding out. The normal release has a voiceover line "See hell, go to hell." - in the Blockbuster copy, this line was missing.

There may have been other edits, but that's the one which tripped my memory when watching the laserdisc copy I bought soon afterward.

Your fuzzy memories from decades ago don't amount to evidence. A cursory search tells you this wouldn't even be legal for Blockbuster to do.

The studios have alternate versions of movies and some of the TV edits may have gotten into the Blockbuster stock but your portrayal of Blockbuster as being the originator for reasons of censorship are wrong.

Many companies do illegal things all the time. Often they get away with it, or just eat the bad PR and fines when they're caught. So just because it might have been illegal doesn't mean Blockbuster didn't do it.

Also, media companies censor all the time. Take a look at youtube, which will not allow porn, ostensibly because it'll affect their brand and image. Blockbuster was probably trying to do the same thing to keep its "family" video store image. They certainly did not allow hardcore XXX porn in the store because of that, and may very well have stocked censored videos for the same reason.

Finally, you don't have to rely on just my memories. There are others discussing Blockbuster's practices of at least stocking censored films. Whether they cut the scenes out of those movies themselves or just bought censored films is immaterial. The fact is that their customers had to watch censored films. That is a fact supported not just by my memories but the other people who talk about this happening, some of which I linked to in my previous post.

If you are really interested in getting to the bottom of whether they censored or not, you could probably find and contact some former Blockbuster employees and others in the industry who can give you a more authoritative account of what happened.

It is not immaterial who is producing the different editions; at the very least, it tells you to whom you should be directing your anger.

Blockbuster was almost certainly not doing any editing itself, simply for the cost of running a VHS/DVD production workshop at that scale. Doing its own editing without permission of the video owner would have been outright copyright infringement, and they would have had the pockets and visibility to be sued for doing so.

Another thing worth pointing out: rental editions are generally produced and released before retail editions. It's very possible that mistakes identified in a rental edition could have been rectified for the retail edition, and Blockbuster in particular is unlikely to have replaced its rental edition stock with retail edition stock if such changes were made. Just because a change exists doesn't mean that one copy was intentionally censored.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com