Comparison between the cut German DVD from MIB (identical to the UK DVD from Momentum Asia and the DVDs in USA & France) and the uncut UK Blu-ray from 88 Films.

- One cut
- Duration: 24.4 sec [in 24fps / equivalent to 23.3 sec in 25fps or PAL]


Human Lanterns, one of the most notorious but also most beautiful movies by the Shaw Studios, was released by IVL in 2003 in good quality but a heavily cut version. In 2005 Momentum Asia released the movie in England. The same Celestial remaster was used, however, this version had a longer runtime with 3 additional minutes of gory bits. This longer cut of the movie was subsequently also released in Germany (and e.g. the US or France).

Back then in international forums there were lots of discussions about whether this version was actually uncut after all. This was primarily based on assumptions of scenes which have been cut for the very first theatrical release. Mostly bad transitions between scenes had to serve as a basis, but these often seem very bumbling with the Shaw Brothers anyway. Apparently no one noticed that the question about the completeness of the British DVD was also quite easy to answer: The HK DVD already had one scene (skin ripping) that was missing in England/Germany.

These two versions were the only ones available for years. The 2017 German Blu-ray was also based on the master of the German/British DVD with said one censorship cut. The UK Blu-ray, available from 88 Films since May 16, 2022, finally closes this chapter. For the first time in the world (at least on a digital medium), the film is available here uncut. To that end, the one missing scene from the old British/German version has been spliced in from another image source. We took this uncut premiere as an opportunity to split our old "cut-cut" report between the Hong Kong and German DVDs cleanly into two comparisons with fresh screenshots.


Runtimes are arranged according to
German DVD in PAL / UK Blu-ray

The introductory Celestial logo differs.

German DVD	UK Blu-ray

24:21 / 25:23-25:48

In the middle of the shot, the picture source changes here on the British Blu-ray, as can be noticed from the different colors - see the frames before and at the beginning of this cut:

Now Chun Fang continues pulling of the skin in a close-up and walks around Yen-chu.

24.4 sec


The end credit is also different. After that, we see the different Celestial logo again.

German DVD	UK Blu-ray