Temple of Doom deleted scene question..
 

OK so there's something that's bothered me for the last twenty years about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There was a deleted scene where Short Round views a guard getting burned by lava and being "released" from the spell that drinking the blood puts you under. That's how he knows how to free Indy. As it is in the movie, he just randomly burns him. WTF???

Why did they ever cut this scene? Without it, the Short Round scene makes no sense. It makes it look like luck. If there was ever a deleted scene that was put back in, I wish this were it.

Are you sure you are not remembering the comic book version instead? I read the Marvel Comics version before seeing the movie, and it explained pain brought you out of the trance. However, this idea was not fully explained in the actual movie. Having seen the movie multiple times in 1984 as well as home video, I can tell you I've never seen this "lava" scene. I do, however, remember when I watched it for the first time (on opening weekend) I instantly noticed how the two stories differed on this plot point.

I'm about 99 percent sure that never happened in the movie.

Of course it never happened...hence it being a DELETED SCENE. But it was filmed. I'm questioning why it was cut in the first place.

Hey, what about that scene in Ferris Buellers Day Off where Chandler sees Sloan in her underwear? Anybody remember that? Its not on the DVD release. ;)

Oh my god. I'm not saying it was EVER seen. But it was filmed and deleted before release. There are pictures of it in all the storybooks and the trading cards as well. I've never seen it. It's not the same case...so that joke doesn't really fit here.

Yeah, but that one really exists. I recorded it on VHS late one night and loaned it to my sister's roommate's boss. But he lost it so I can't post a screenshot.

Perhaps it was to help make that scene all the more hopeless. Willie is being lowered into the lava, Indy is a slave to Kali-Ma, and now all that's left is a little kid. The kid is crying, the imagery is all red, there's skulls everywhere - pretty bleak situation. Perhaps in making his last-ditch effort to "wake up" Indy with the torch is supposed to be just that, a desperate act in desperate times.

I think Indy's transformation back works, although I will say that if all it takes to be converted back from the Blood of the Kali is to be burned by a little old fire, brother, they picked the wrong place to work!

Agreed. You'd think the place would be on a total fire ban.

The deletion of this scene also seems to keep in line with the deletion of the scene in Raiders where an old wise dude tells Indy about the mysteries of the Ark and not to look at it when it's opened. In the final movie, he just knows to keep his eyes closed.

You know that always bothered me as a kid; how the heck did he know to close his eyes??

Well...it is explained that Indy knows the history of the Ark, that it was dangerously holy and not to be touched (hence carrying it with poles), and how it was used as a weapon carried ahead of the ancient Hebrew armies.

I always thought that Indy just figured that God would not be happy about the Nazis getting their hands on the Ark (and btw, the audience gets a hint of this in the scene in the hold of the cargo ship when the nazi symbol burns off the crate carrying the Ark), and it would be best to avoid looking in that direction after they opened it. Indy might have gotten a hint from the biblical account of Lot's wife (when she turned back to watch God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah) that It's not good to look upon God's wrath.

As for Short Round's actions to get Indy out of the trance, it always seemed to be just an act of desperation. The filmed and deleted scene indicates the filmmakers had a different idea originally, but I would guess that, when the movie was being edited, they decided that it wasn't really needed after all. IMHO, that was a good decision. It makes the sequence more intense since no one has an idea what, if anything, Short Round can do. Had the deleted scene been left in, there would be no suspense to that sequence. The audience would know just what Short Round had to do and would be expecting it.