Search - Sci-Fi Double Feature: Lawnmower Man/Lawnmower Man 2 on DVD

Get the Uncut Version

slk54 | Florida, USA | 08/21/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The first time I saw "The Lawnmower Man" I felt something was missing from the story. I had this same feeling about "The Abyss." When they first release "The Abyss" on DVD it included two version of the movie on one DVD. The second DVD contains other materials about the making of the movie. The movie went from 145min to 170min. With though additional 25 minutes the movie had structure added to it. The science fiction part of the story stood out. The same thing could be said about the "The Lawnmower Man" if they would release the Director's Cut of this movie on DVD.

The theater version of "The Lawnmower Man" on VHS was 107min in length and the story seem to be missing something. Then the Director's Cut came out on VHS and it was 141min in length. The added and rearranged scene made this story presented more structure to it. The concepts of what led Job to do what he did at the end of this feature are explained.

Uniformity, it does not seem that no one has no intention to release the Unrated Director's Cut on DVD and VHS copies ware thin after so many plays. I do see that you can still get the Unrated Director's Cut version on VHS through "Amazon.com" for $10.00 without shipping & handling cost. If you have never seen this version of the film I would advise you to get it on VHS. The whole story is presented here and it made change some people's opinion about the movie.

I am aware that some of the outtakes are presented on side B of the DVD. If you do not know where they fit in the story it can be very confusing and appear to be unimportant. Also, a lot of the scenes were rearrange to fit the theater version and this miss up the original story.
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Great Movie, Bad DVD

slk54 | 09/21/1999

(1 out of 5 stars)

"To describe it in a few words the Lawnmower Man is an excellent movie with a great cast and intriguing plot. I first saw the movie on VHS and loved it. When I saw the DVD and looked on the back of the box to find it had twelve deleted scenes I was very excited. I immediatly purchased the DVD even though I already owned the movie on VHS. When I saw the deleted scenes however I was furious. They were just parts of the movie that had been taken out and called deleted scenes. Then I realized on the box of my original VHS movie it read "the Director's Cut". I can't believe that those scenes were completely removed when they seemed so critical to the plot; especially the part with Roscoe and the death of Caroline. The commentary on the disc is also misleading. I thought that I would hear a critic of the movie by maybe some famous critic like on the Dark City DVD(which had Roger Ebert). However the comentary talked nothing of any real elements of film such as imagry or allusion, it just seemed like a behind the scenes with the writers. Like I said the movie is fantastic but don't waste the money on the DVD until they come out with a directors cut. If you can't wait buy the directors cut on VHS."

Accelerated Learning

Laura De Giorgio | Canada | 12/07/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"My delight in and fascination with this movie revolves around the elements related to accelerated learning - yap, I have a certain obsession with mind-stuff and learning, development of different abilities, so this movie was right up my alley.

The movie involves a scientists who has passion for mental development. His main tools are nootropics (smart drugs) and virtual reality. His experiments are funded by government which is only interested in creating killers. The original experiment is conducted on a monkey. It goes astray when the monkey breaks lose and kills few people. Though, even this neurologically rewired monkey doesn't kill indiscriminately - he assesses whether the individual he is facing is potentially dangerous or not. For that matter, one could say, this would work even on the instinctive level of an animal. This monkey, on the run, stumbles upon a Lawnmower Man - a good-hearted, simple, young man whose mental development has been arrested somewhere around the age of a 5-year old and who just happens to live next door to the scientist's house.

Lawnmower man and the monkey strike instant friendship, however the government agents track down the monkey and shoot him. Lawnmower is devastated (he has identified the monkey as one of his comic strip characters come to life), and so is the scientist. But then, the brilliant idea occurs to the scientist, to continue his experiments in private on the Lawnmower man.

He begins infusing him with nootropics and stimulating his mind with virtual reality. The first images impressed upon his mind, very much in the way subliminal programming is used are the seals from the Solomonic magick. Different parts of his brain are also neurologically stimulated, following by feeding the man's mind with more information.

This is a sci-fi movie, but the learning process does have some parallels to the methods and techniques used in real life. There are lots of people who are taking nootropics (smart drugs), albeit in oral form; and subliminal and supraliminal programming - if not yet quite the use of virtual reality - are alive and well. Those who are familiar with photoreading and different techniques from Neuro-Linguistic Programming, also know that the mind does tend to absorb information better when it is delivered fast, as well as when all of one's senses are engaged in the process (that's the stimulation that virtual reality here provides).

So, the hero of this movie, Lawnmower man, makes extraordinarily rapid progress - together with amassing huge amount of knowledge in record time, absorbing the information mainly subliminally, he also begins to develop different abilities which are normally considered supernatural. This, as matter of fact, also makes sense, because development of such abilities is based on stimulating and creating new neural connections. The more he learns, the more hungry for learning he becomes. There's also the reality that anyone with passion for learning is well aware of. His ultimate desire is to "be all" - yet another element, that those who are involved in spiritual growth are very much into - the ultimate goal of merging with All There Is. This, being a sci-fi movie, instead of merging with the spirit - our hero merges with the virtual reality - which is a decent metaphor for the spiritual reality / a quantum reality, where everything is made out of mind stuff and through the mind one becomes omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient.

In vast majority of the movies, it is this ending where the movie flops and this ultimate level of omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience either for dramatic purposes or due to lack of understanding of those who play with the idea, ends up in feeding individual's ego (that was even worst in Highlander than in this movie), as the one who has become All just won't have any desire to go and kill others - how could he - he IS present in all (even all others) - but for drama needed to make movies exciting this element that one would be all loving at this point, seems as if it would be boring. In any event, here is where The Lawnmower Man II, flopped - it went into cyber neverland and lost the spirit of the original theme."

Don't buy this great movie on DVD

slk54 | 02/06/2000

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I just purchased this dvd yesterday at the store without reading some of the reviews on Amazon first. I was excited when I saw the "deleted scenes" section on the back of the dvd case because I was lead to believe that these were the scenes deleted from the director's cut version and place on the back side of the disc. I was very disappointed that the deleted scenes were from the original movie (original release). These scenes are essential to the entire telling of the movie. My recommendation: DO NO PURCHASE THIS MOVIE ON DVD! - at least not until a new version with the "deleted scenes" replaced back into the original format, but I won't hold my breath for it to happen. TOO BAD THERE ISN'T A "NO STAR" RATING - THE DVD VERSION DESERVES IT!"