R rated version is HEAVILY censored & runs only 80 minutes sloppily editing out all the gore & most of the nudity to avoid an NC-17 rating. Unrated version with all sex/nudity & gore intact runs 85 minutes. This version is available in Canada from Alliance Releasing. All known U.S. releases from Columbia/Tristar are the heavily censored R version. Scenes severely cut in order to avoid an NC-17 include:
More graphic footage of the inside of Officer Joe Vickers car during the credits with severed body parts & grue smeared all over.
The night watchman getting his eye gouged with a pencil.
Longer & more explicit striptease sequence with the three strippers
A couple having sex in a copy room. This sequence is missing in the R version & picks up later on as they are getting dressed.
The couple from the copy room getting impaled together on a wall. Vicker's shoves the pole through the guy with graphic shots of it protruding out his back & then into the women.
Larry getting shot in the head, showing the back of his head bursting open in a flood of brain & grue which splatter on wall behind him The R version cuts just as Vicker pulls the trigger & shows Brians reaction, as they all bolt down the hall to escape.
Guy on the roof as he gets shot in the head, blood pours out of his mouth as the camera lingers for a few seconds before falling down. Vickers then kicks his body a few times in up close shot. Much of that is missing in the R version & just goes to the infamous postmortem Miranda Rights speech where Vicker's reads him his rights with a twist.
Stripper being shot in the head in the stairway is extremely gruesome. Much like Larry's death..this shows the back of her head explode in grue which splatter's a HUGE mess on the wall.
Vickers getting axed: while not extremely gruesome, the impact is left onscreen, rather than cutting from the ax swinging, then all of a sudden sticking out of his stomach in the R version.
Brian getting axed in the back is onscreen as he winces in pain for a few seconds as you see Vicke's enjoy his suffering,laughing .The R version abruptly cuts to Brian stumbling into the lobby with ax in back
Vickers beating at the end is much longer in the unrated version.