Customer Reviews

Erik the Viking

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

It's a complete shame that they choose to release Erik the Viking here in the U.S. in this butchered down version of the movie (25% of it has ben removed in this "Director's Cut"). This wouldn't be so bad if they also included the Theatrical version as they are doing with the UK release. As it is there is no way I'm paying any money for this hacked up piece of a once great film.

It's worth noting that this is a *drastically edited* version of the original. The original was ~100 minutes, this one is ~75 - 25% of the movie has been removed and the remaining sections reordered/edited. So think carefully if you are going to purchase this expecting it to be the movie you remember.

This "Director's Son's" cut has been edited down significantly. Why? I have no idea.

This new release is NOT the movie my wife and I love. It is 25 minutes too short, and God knows what's been done to it. It was fine as it was. Those who purchase this abomination will be subjected to Bill Jones' "vision" of this movie. Forget it. We have the original on videotape, and will just have to be satisfied with that. Better that than encourage this sort of vandalism.

the 100 minute original US release deserves 5 stars, this one gets 0 (but amazon made me give at least one star). here's why: **SPOILER ALERT**

the rearranging of the first few scenes in the film kinda bothered me, but not that much. i guess i just wasn't used to it playing out that way. i gave it the benefit of the doubt at first, then....

the first thing that REALLY stood out as being a bad edit was the chunk of scene that was removed after the ship started sinking. he cut out when they hit the sea floor and noticed it was peculiarly shallow. in doing this, one of my favorite bits was removed "how deep IS the ocean?" "very deep....usually". that scene was essential. if you were in a panic about your ship sinking into the ocean, and all of a sudden it wasn't, you would comment on it, right?! it only got worse from there...

this was the worst part: he cut dialogue and left the scenes in! the second half of the edge of the world scene looked like helen keller edited it. the dialogue track was removed and you SEE the yelling back and forth of lines between tim and imogen, but only hear background noise. then the middle of one of her lines was crappily tacked on at the end. it was painfully obvious that it wasn't what she was actually saying. no effort was made to match it up. unacceptable. they really should have just re-released the original. i did appreciate the sharper picture and widescreen format on the dvd, but other than that, it should have been left as it was. in trying to make the story more concise, he hacked it to nonsensical peices.

Do not bother buying this movie it has scenes out of order, errors in the audio and 25% of the movie is gone leaving you wondering what the hell is going on.

I love this movie so i bought it for my daughter to watch on dvd,so she could retire her video,but instead i wasted my money on this movie because it is chopped up and no worth watching.The best thing is to keep watching the video if you own a copy or if not just buy the video.Really to rate this dvd is a zero not a one.I think MGM needs to start leaving the movies the they was made unstead of chopping it to pieces and they would not get bad remarks from people who love movies like this

...but they damn well ought to have prevented Terry Jones from hacking a fine film to pieces and repackaging it as a "director's cut".

The original 104-minute 'Erik' featured an impressive cast of solid actors and a surprisingly weighty story with plenty of laughs to keep things moving. Together with his son Bill, Jones has shortened scenes, limited our access to those fine performances, altered the running order of the film, botched the soundtrack (in several sections entire conversations have been removed, leaving characters' mouths moving with no sound at all coming from them), removed some of the better jokes, and on the whole pared down the film to 79 minutes.

You read me right - fully 25% of the film was chucked to the cutting-room floor for no good reason whatsoever.

The real catastrophe of this cut - aside of the shameless rape of one of my favorite childhood movies - is that there was no raw footage from which to assemble a new version. The Joneses had only a print of the original theatrical release to work with, thus they were only able to take parts out and shuffle them around rather than adding anything new. The result is that the entire first act is a chaotic muddle, the second act in Hy-Brasil feels overlong, and the Asgard sequence is a horribly rushed anticlimax with none of the impact of the original scene.

I'm completely mystified as to why this cut was made in the first place (let alone a cut by such an incredibly untalented editor as Jones), but I could accept it if they'd packaged the original version of the film with it. Inexplicably, they didn't - and it's not like they were hurting for space on this DVD. Don't buy it, don't buy it, don't buy it.

I watched the movie and felt like I was missing pieces, that scenes were shorter, even that entire scenes were missing, but it had been so long since I watched it I just thought I remembered the movie being better than it actually was. Then I watched the director's commentary. He took at least 15 minutes away from the movie. Most director's add to their movie when given a chance, not take away from it. The Director's Son created a disjointed, fragmentary movie very unlike the original in mood and plot.

After waiting years for the DVD release of Erik the Viking, I was extremely disappointed and a little angry at the way they treated one of my favorite movies. I hope to see the Theatrical Release available some time in the near future, as I don't think I'll be watching this Director's Son's Cut again, and I certainly won't be sharing this version of the movie with friends and family as I had originally planned.

The director's Son is an idiot for messing up one of my all-time favourite movies. The re-arrangement of scenes means the story no longer flows. Changing the visit with Freya gives the impression that it was her words that had the biggest influence on Erik not the death of the failed rape victim. Some of the best scenes (Vikings about to kill each other with swords rather than drown for one) are cut completely and there is even a key scene when they are about to go over the edge of the world and the key characters lips are moving but the sound is cut. Dreadful shame! I was very disappointed.