In case you hadn’t noticed I’m gong through an Indiana Jones phase at the moment, so I’m sure you’re bored of me talking about it… I know my brother is (sorry Ed).
Temple of Doom is much more than a simple adventure story; instead, it is a thrilling horror movie that explores the darker side of Indiana Jones’ world.
It wasn’t until last night when I saw Temple of Doom in its uncut form for the first time; I’d only ever known it from my DVD collection and even VHS back in the day. The movie is on Disney+ so I wanted to revisit it and was surprised at the scene that had been cut to ribbons in the UK.
We all know what scene I’m talking about – the infamous heart-ripping where the villain Mola Ram (played by Amrish Puri – who is the best villain of the franchise) and his Thugee cult are performing a human sacrifice to their god Kali.
In the version I’ve only ever seen up until now when Mola removes his victim’s heart it cuts away and we don’t see any more but in the full uncut version (which apparently everyone else has seen but me) we see his hand go into the man’s chest, rip his heart out and then the chest heals over. Then the poor victim is lowered into the flames and lava below.
Now, for this scene you only saw him lowered and it would then cut away but in this full version he screams longer and we see him catch fire while Mola Ram laughs as the man’s heart bursts into flames. Check out the full uncut scene below.
Has anyone else not seen this version before? Then we get a sequence where Short Round is getting whipped and Indy shouts “Leave him alone, you bastards!”; I had only ever seen these moments in deleted scenes, so it was frankly awesome to see this in its fully uncut glory.
For someone who claims to be a huge fan of Indiana Jones I really should hang my head in shame that I had never seen this full uncut version before; it really feels more like a genuine horror picture and I’m surprised it managed to avoid an R rating.
