Thankfully David Lynch was contractually obligated to deliver a film that ran no more two hours in length. It's actually two hours and one minute. I was eager to see this footage that had long believed lost and thought it might contain some gems. This was excruciating to sit through. Even at just under an hour it feels twice as long. Those gems never materialized and all I could think was how the inclusion of these scenes would have destroyed the film. Sometimes a director needs to be kept on a leash and not allow his impulses run wild. We'd see this in several of his later films. Had this footage been included the tone of the film would have radically different and some of ambiguities would have lost. In one scene Jeffrey is at college and watches as a male student is on the verge of assaulting a female student and only when they hear someone calling for them from the party on the next floor does Jeffrey stop it. This ruins a key line later in the film. Sandy says to Jeffrey: I don't know whether you're a detective or a pervert. That earlier scene has already answered this question. We already understand his penchant for voyeurism from his time trapped in the closet in Dorothy Vallen's apartment and witnesses her treatment by Frank Booth. The scene at the college becomes redundant. There is a very long sequence at the nightclub while Sandy and Jeffrey wait for Dorothy. It's a talent contest. It feels like something that would have been more at home in the second season of Twin Peaks. It's good that this footage has been found and people can watch it, but I doubt that it'll inspire anyone to want to see a director's cut with all these scenes reinstated. I doubt that I'll ever watch this again.
