Comparison between the Director's Cut and the Roadshow version, both included on the German Blu-ray by Plaion Pictures

- One discrepancy
- Duration: 68.4 sec (= 1:08 min)

In the report on the theatrical cut of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, we already explained that the Blu-ray box set “Peckinpah's West”, released by Plaion Pictures on February 27, 2025, is an absolute must for fans of the legendary director, mainly because of this film. The classic The Wild Bunch is included as well and it also has a little surprise on board in terms of versions. You can select the film as the “Roadshow Version” in the menu.

On the one hand, there is the version known since 1995, which is also referred to as the “Director's Cut” because the first US theatrical release was trimmed by some of the plot. Our report on the German VHS gives an idea of the scenes that were missing from many releases worldwide. Censorship cuts were added exclusively in Germany, and similiarly there were also cuts in Great Britain, for example, where the BBFC rated a cut version. In any case, it was known that the reconstruction of Sam Peckinpah's “Director's Cut”, which has been available since 1995, didn't have the intermission in the middle of the film, directly before the attack on the train, which still occurred during 70mm screenings.

Peckinpah superfan Mike Siegel was already responsible for a number of documentaries (see his “Passion & Poetry” contributions on various Peckinpah Blu-rays) and other bonus material, and he also made collaborated on the set of Plaion. Siegel commented in the Blu-ray.com forum that the intermission could be saved from an old 35mm scan. For the German 2025 Blu-ray, this was integrated into the restored version of the film as a bonus via playlists (or seamless branching). Otherwise, there are no differences between the two film versions, and probably because the normal HD master was used as the basis, the actual soft transition between the two landscape shots during the black fade-out/fade-in was shortened at this point.

Either way, the “new” roadshow version is mainly a nice little extra for purists. Apart from that, it can be said that although basically the same master was used as for the Warner Blu-ray, this was zoomed in a bit to cover the small flicker strip at the top and bottom. Furthermore, the compression at Plaion is a tad better than at Warner. Not a big difference, anyway, as you can see in a picture comparison posted by user Bogi in the Movieside thread. Unfortunately, there is no 4K scan of this movie yet, but the Plaion release is probably the best option until then.

Runtime information is organized according to the scheme
Director's Cut on Plaion Blu-ray in 23.976fps / Roadshow Version on Plaion Blu-ray in 23.976fps