Movies from the 1980s

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

The Indiana Jones are full of Star Wars references: one of the more noticeable is the name of the nightclub in Temple of Doom.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones needs to cut a stick to the right length in order to create The Staff of Ra, a doodad that will tell him the secret location of the Ark of the Covenant. Those dastardly Nazis are building their own staff with the help of evil archaeologist Belloq, but when the heroes make their calculations using clues on the staff’s headpiece, Jones realises that the bad guys have got it wrong:

Omar: (Reading the headpiece.) This means six kaddam high.

Sallah: About 72 inches.

Omar: Wait! (Omar turns the headpiece over.) … and take back one kaddam to honour the Hebrew God whose Ark this is.

Indiana Jones: You said their headpiece only had markings on one side, are you absolutely sure? Belloq’s staff is too long. They’re digging in the wrong place!

So if six kaddams make about 72 inches, one kaddam must be 12 inches, or a foot. Therefore, the correct length for the staff is 60 inches, and this makes it only around five feet tall.

However, when we later see Jones carrying it (see the screenshot above), it’s a good foot taller than him, which means that either Indiana Jones is only four foot tall, or somebody in the props department wasn’t reading the script very closely…

(People have tried surprisingly hard to find justifications for the apparent discrepancy: see also the lengthy discussions of the problem on fansite Raider.net.)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

There’s a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indiana and his father are trying to escape from Nazi Germany. Indiana buys tickets on the first flight out of the country, and we see that it’s an airship.

I saw the film in the cinema on its release in 1989, and I distinctly remember that when the airship is revealed, it’s identified as the Hindenburg. (Either you saw a mooring post with the name, or it was painted on the airship itself.) There was also a dramatic, doom-laden music cue that played at that moment.

On all subsequent releases, the name of the airship has been removed, although the music is still there (and now seems a little OTT without the visual “uh-oh!” gag).

Perhaps they cut the name because the Hindenburg crashed in 1937 and the film is set in 1938, or perhaps the filmmakers wanted to remove the potentially insensitive joke. (This is actually plausible: after the initial theatrical distribution, they also removed the word “Jewish” from the line “donated by the finest *Jewish* families in all of Germany”, so there was clearly a point where they were removing some of the film’s politically rougher edges.)

Or perhaps I’m misremembering it, and the name was never there. Perhaps somebody in the cinema said “It’s the Hindenburg,” when the airship is revealed, and my memory recorded that visually instead of aurally. But it’s listed in the alternative versions section of IMDb, and now the Wikipedia entry for the Hindenburg cites the mention on IMDb… so if it wasn’t true to start with, it is now.

The Shining (1980)

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” must be one of the best known lines in horror cinema. Not bad, given that it’s only ever shown on screen, and not spoken.

When Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining was first distributed to cinemas, the prints varied slightly by country: the close-ups of the manuscript had been filmed several times, substituting manuscripts in different languages.

The Italians got “Il mattino ha l’oro in bocca.” (The morning has gold in its mouth)

The Germans got “Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen.” (Never put off till tomorrow what may be done today)

The Spanish got “No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano.” (No matter how early you get up, you can’t make the sun rise any sooner).

The French got “Un Tiens vaut mieux que deux Tu l’auras.” (What you have is worth much more than what you’ll have).

All the current DVD releases seem to feature the English language manuscript, and only the English language manuscript. It’s a shame really, as it’s a moment made for the “alternate angle” feature on DVDs: press the angle key now to select the language in which Jack Torrance goes crazy…