Quote:
Originally Posted by logan5
5 hours??? I thought I had seen the full version and it only ran about 3 hours, I guess I need to re-look into this.
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The 3.5 hour version is the (extended) director's cut of the movie that was produced for release into theaters back in the 90s. The original theatrical release from 1981 was about 1 hour shorter IIRC.
The 5.5 hour cut is the miniseries version that ran on TV in Europe. It's available on DVD and is billed as the "uncut" version of
Das Boot.
http://www.amazon.com/Das-Boot-Origi.../dp/B0001XAOLQ
The original production was always intended to provide both a theatrical "one part" movie version of the story, and an episodic miniseries version to run on television. So they filmed enough to do both, and then cut together both versions. But the original movie version was cut *way* down in order to shorten the running time and emphasize the more action-oriented parts of the story. The director's cut remedied that when it came to the movie version... but the uncut version is another thing altogether.
And holy cow it's available for only $9.50 now on Amazon.com... I seem to remember paying at least three times that when I bought it, and that was within the last couple of years. I wonder if the price drop is recent, and could it possibly herald the eventual release of an uncut Blu-ray? Because that would be awesome.