In the early ’80s I was the managing editor of The Film Journal, and as such was occasionally invited to long-lead screenings. The Warner guys let me see an early cut of The Shining, for example…a cut that included the famous hospital visitation scene between Barry Nelson and Shelley Duvall.
I was also invited by Team Paramount to see an early cut of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and it contained footage of Harrison Ford‘s Indiana Jones hanging on to the side of a Nazi submarine as it travels to the Aegean Sea island where the big finale occurs.
In this version Indy didn’t slip inside the sub by pretending to be a German, mind. He hung on to it like Gregory Peck‘s Captain Ahab hangs on to the scarred, harpooned white whale in Moby Dick. When the sub reaches the island the implication is that Indy rode it like a human barnacle for hundreds of miles.
Yeah, I didn’t believe it either but I saw this footage with my own two eyes.
Here’s a paragraph from a Wiki synopsis that dodges an explanation of how Jones manages to get to the island without the bad guys getting wise. Key line: “Jones covertly boards the U-boat.”
