I have a con­fes­sion to make. This may anger some peo­ple, but I have to get it off my chest. I actu­al­ly like the Har­ri­son Ford voiceover in the 1983 the­atri­cal release of Blade Run­ner, though I do revile the hokey, hap­py end­ing. I guess I’m in pret­ty good com­pa­ny. Even the movie’s screen­writer, Hamp­ton Fanch­er, went on record to say “the old voiceover in the first ver­sion I sort of like bet­ter than all the rest of them.” In this regard, Fanch­er and I exist in what Col­in Mar­shall called “a curi­ous minor­i­ty” in a recent post on yet anoth­er recut of Blade Run­ner, a defin­i­tive ref­er­ence for almost every android/robot/AI movie made since.

It’s okay to like the the­atri­cal cut, or the 1992 director’s cut, or the 2007 “final cut”—let a thou­sand Blade Run­ner fan­doms bloom, I say, as long as the film remains a crit­i­cal ref­er­ence for sci-fi cin­e­ma for many years to come. But part of the rea­son for all these lat­er ver­sions, besides that tacked-on end­ing, is the voiceover, which direc­tor Rid­ley Scott hat­ed, and Har­ri­son Ford hat­ed, and even the stu­dio exec­u­tives, who forced him to record it, hat­ed. The stu­dio hat­ed almost every­thing about the movie, and the crit­ics were most­ly unim­pressed. Siskel called it “a waste of time”; Ebert gave it an unen­thu­si­as­tic thumbs up. (Philip K. Dick, on the oth­er hand, made some prophet­ic pre­dic­tions based on the lit­tle he saw of the film.)

Audi­ences didn’t cozy up to Blade Run­ner either. They went to see E.T. instead. Blade Run­ner opened at the box office with a dis­ap­point­ing $6 mil­lion week­end. Sens­ing all this trou­ble even before the film’s release, exec­u­tives com­mis­sioned M.K. Pro­duc­tions to shoot the pro­mo­tion­al film above, a behind-the-scenes short doc­u­men­tary that cir­cu­lat­ed at hor­ror and sci-fi con­ven­tions in 1982. Intro­duced by a bored-look­ing Rid­ley Scott (and some cheesy sev­en­ties funk), the 16mm short gave poten­tial fans a glimpse of Blade Run­ner’s heav­i­ly Tokyo-accent­ed future Los Ange­les, its clas­sic noir plot ele­ments, and its visu­al effects by mas­ter­minds Syd Mead and Dou­glas Trum­bull, both of whom appear here.

Those of us fans now liv­ing in the future may find the footage of the movie’s pro­duc­tion and the detailed expla­na­tions of its set design fas­ci­nat­ing. It’s hard to know what the orig­i­nal view­ers of this extend­ed trailer/promotional vehi­cle might have thought, though it clear­ly did­n’t move enough of them to fill the the­ater seats. I can imag­ine, though, that many a sci­ence fic­tion lover and Blade Run­ner fan who missed the movie’s first run might regret it now. Voiceover, sap­py end­ing and all, it would have been a treat to be one of the first to see this now ubiquitous—and deserved­ly so—sci-fi detec­tive sto­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Blade Runner’s Minia­ture Props Revealed in 142 Behind-the-Scenes Pho­tos

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

It just goes to show that, put in the right hands, you can root, or shed a tear, for any pro­tag­o­nist — even if it’s a plas­tic bag. Shot in 2009 by Ramin Bahrani (who Roger Ebert called the “new great Amer­i­can direc­tor”) this 18-minute film “traces the epic, exis­ten­tial jour­ney of a plas­tic bag search­ing for its lost mak­er, the woman who took it home from the store and even­tu­al­ly dis­card­ed it.” Adding a spe­cial touch, Wern­er Her­zog nar­rates the inner thoughts of the bag as it “encoun­ters strange crea­tures, expe­ri­ences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved mak­er, and tries to grasp its pur­pose in the world.”

Plas­tic Bag was one of 11 films released in the Inter­net Tele­vi­sion Ser­vice’s “Futurestates” film series explor­ing “what life might look like in an Amer­i­ca of the future.” Upon its release, Her­zog told The Guardian, ‘I’m so glad this is not an agen­da movie or I would run like mad and get away from here. I mean, we can talk about sus­tain­abil­i­ty issues, about plas­tic, about the Earth, but the movie’s about some­thing else, some­thing more … it’s about a jour­ney.” An emo­tion­al, exis­ten­tial one, indeed.

You can find Plas­tic Bag in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing & Life Advice

Wern­er Her­zog Picks His 5 Top Films

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel report­ed­ly car­ried rocks in their pock­ets dur­ing the pre­miere of their first film Un Chien andalou, antic­i­pat­ing a vio­lent reac­tion from the audi­ence.

It was a fair con­cern. The movie might be almost 90 years old but it still has the pow­er to pro­voke – the film fea­tures a shot of a woman get­ting her eye slashed open with a straight razor after all. As it turned out, rocks weren’t need­ed. The audi­ence, filled with such avant-garde lumi­nar­ies as Pablo Picas­so and André Bre­ton liked the film. A dis­ap­point­ed Dalí lat­er report­ed that the night was “less excit­ing” than he had hoped.

Un Chien andalou fea­tured many of Dalí’s visu­al obses­sions – eye­balls, ants crawl­ing out of ori­fices and rot­ting ani­mals. Dalí delight­ed in shock­ing and incit­ing peo­ple with his gor­geous, dis­turb­ing images. And he loved grandiose spec­ta­cles like a riot at a movie the­ater.

Dalí and Buñuel’s next movie, the caus­tic L’Age d’or, exposed the dif­fer­ences between the two artists and their cre­ative part­ner­ship implod­ed in pre-pro­duc­tion. Buñuel went on to make a string of sub­ver­sive mas­ter­pieces like Land With­out Bread, Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel and The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geois; Dalí large­ly quit film in favor of his beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed paint­ings.

Then Hol­ly­wood came call­ing.

Alfred Hitch­cock hired Dalí to cre­ate a dream sequence for his 1945 movie Spell­bound. Dalí craft­ed over 20 min­utes of footage of which rough­ly four and a half min­utes made it into the movie. “I want­ed to con­vey the dream with great visu­al sharp­ness and clarity–sharper than film itself,” Hitch­cock explained to Fran­cois Truf­faut in 1962. The sequence, which you can see imme­di­ate­ly above, is filled with all sorts of Daliesque motifs – slashed eye­balls, naked women and phan­tas­magoric land­scapes. It is also the most mem­o­rable part of an oth­er­wise minor work by Hitch­cock.

Dalí’s fol­low up film work was for, of all things, the Vin­cente Min­nel­li com­e­dy Father of the Bride (1950). Spencer Tra­cy plays Stan­ley Banks whose beau­ti­ful daugh­ter (Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, no less) is get­ting mar­ried. As Stanley’s anx­i­ety over the impend­ing nup­tials spi­rals, he has one very weird night­mare. Cue Dalí. Stan­ley is late to the wed­ding. As he rush­es down the aisle, his clothes mys­te­ri­ous­ly get shred­ded by the tiled floor that bounces and con­torts like a piece of flesh.

This dream sequence, which you can see at the top of the arti­cle, has few of the visu­al flour­ish­es of Spell­bound, but it still has plen­ty of Dalí’s trade­mark weird­ness. Those float­ing accusato­ry eyes. The way that Tracy’s leg seems to stretch. That floor.

Father of the Bride marked the end of Dalí’s work in Hol­ly­wood, though there were a cou­ple poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tions that would have been amaz­ing had they actu­al­ly hap­pened. Dalí had an idea for a movie with the Marx Broth­ers called Giraffes on Horse­back Sal­ad. The movie would have “includ­ed a scene of giraffes wear­ing gas masks and one of Chico sport­ing a deep-div­ing suit while play­ing the piano.” Though Har­po was report­ed­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the pro­posed idea, Grou­cho wasn’t and the idea sad­ly came to noth­ing.

Lat­er in life, Dalí became a fix­ture on the talk show cir­cuit. On the Dick Cavett Show in 1970, he flung an anteater at Lil­lian Gish.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.