Even a complete ignoramus like Sean Hannity knows that Brian De Palma decided at the last minute to remove footage from Phantom's final cut depicting Winslow emerging, bloodied, from the record press, only to be shot by the security guard. Mr. De Palma said in an interview at the time that he felt that its tone wasn't consistent with the rest of the film. We can't be sure, but we presume he meant it was too gory. Prior to this footage being found, the only glimpse we'd had of this scene was a few frames of Winslow's mangled face, which had been included in one of the trailers ("previews of coming attractions"), presumably assembled before the decision was made to remove the scene from the film, and a still shot of the guard's gun being fired. In any event, at long last, and with great pride, we self-congratulatingly present this pinnacle of cinematic archeological achievement here.

Here we have three takes of Winslow just after having his head mooshed by the record press. These scenes were shot January 24, 1974. It looks like more blood is being added to Winslow's hand between takes here. None of this was used in the final cut, but a few frames from Take 2, we think, appear in the Lost Record Factory Sequence.

We've often wondered how many times Gerrit Graham had to get that plunger shoved in his face. Now we know: at least six. Here are Takes 5 and 6, shot on December 18, 1973; it turns out that this is the exact 14th anniversary of the shooting of Psycho's own shower scene, which took place December 17-23, 1959. Gerrit seems to wince a bit when the water hits him on Take 6, which makes sense, because the crew, playing a little joke on him, was making the water successively colder for each take.

Here are several takes of Bill Finley, as Winslow, extricating himself from the cardboard box in which he had escaped prison, and running off into the streets of New York. In one of these takes, Finley has a lot of trouble getting out of the box, and, when he finally gets out, he breaks character, cracking up at his own bungling attempt to "escape". This was shot in January of 1974, in New York.

Here's an alternate take of Winslow's rooftop suicide, from an angle we're unaccustomed to. It looks like there's a helmet malfunction cutting things short.

We never thought the Death Records Receptionist was given enough to do. In the Archives' opinion, she should have starred in her own spinoff series. For those who can't get enough of her, this won't help much. But it's a start. She was played by Mary Margaret Amato, and also shows up (in the purple blouse) as part of Swan's entourage in the balcony during Beef's rehearsal and (in her red boots) at the club where the Juicy Fruits perform Goodbye, Eddie, as well as with Philbin in Beef's dressing room, as he line-checks at the Paradise, and, in a fetching red leotard, as he extinguishes the flames on Beef's corpse.

Here are several takes of Winslow meeting the receptionist, in which we get to watch Winslow's reactions (not visible in the film) to the receptionist's finding his name in her card file, and then pressing the "eject the visitor" button. We see that Winslow looks pleased and vindicated when the receptionist finds a card with his name on it, not realizing that it says "Never to be Seen!", and that he looks even happier when she presses the emergency buzzer...apparently he doesn't understand that she's summoning the goons.

This footage, along with the rest of the elements of the montage sequence showing time passing as Winslow rewrote his cantata for Phoenix, was directed and shot by editor Paul Hirsch in Dallas, much of it in the back of the Majestic Theater, against a background of black Duvateen (draping, feltlike material). Here are a number of "fly-by"'s of the Death Records clock. The footage, shot on Christmas eve 1973, shows a number of different ideas for how the clock could have been shown traveling through space.

Here's some more footage shot by Paul Hirsch. This is several takes of a truck-forward into the lens of one of Swan's "Swan Song" videocameras. It appears that this footage, along with the flying clocks and calendars, was going to be used as one of the elements in the "time-passing" montage. We believe that the cameras were ultimately not used in the montage because they had the Swan Song logo on them. (You can read more about the deletion of most of the Swan Song references in the film on our Swan Song Fiasco page, which, incidentally, is chock-full of more never-before-seen outtakes).

This is how it appears the Swan Song videocamera would have been used in Paul Hirsch's montage sequence, had it been retained.

Here's Archie Hahn's third runthrough of "Goodbye, Eddie," including an ultra-rare view of the back of his head!

Here's Take 1, shot December 10, 1973, from the point of view of the camera tasked with staying on Harold and Jeff. We hadn't realized before we saw this that Harold had his chewing gum in his ear. And watch for the little game of pattycake that didn't find its way into the final cut.

And this is a wide shot of the Juicy Fruits' performance.

Here's Take 4 of Phoenix's performance of "Special to Me," on December 14, 1973, from the perspective of the camera assigned to a medium shot of Phoenix. Here, we get to see her entire performance, without cutting away to Swan and Winslow up in their box seats.

This is the first take of "Special to Me," shot on December 14, 1973, a tighter shot than was used in Take 4. In the last couple of seconds, after she's finished, a moment between Jessica Harper and Brian De Palma is captured.

Here's the Phantom's stunt double in the rafters of the Paradise; we see how he started on a ladder, and then worked his way all the way across the beam above the stage. We assume there was only one take of this, and the "missing" footage in the middle is what was actually used in the final cut.

After frying Beef, the Phantom awaits his cue (the smoke) to start his triumphant screaming. Here, William Finley gives his director several screams from which to choose, as the camera just rolls. We presume that because the smoke was only going to last for a limited amount of time, it made sense to provide several options as a single continuous take, rather than to waste time setting up separate takes here.

The Phantom operates the spotlight for Phoenix. Here, Finley is providing a wide variety of facial expressions from which De Palma and editor Hirsch can later choose what they want for what turns out to be a very quick cutaway from Phoenix's performance.

This is raw footage from one of the handheld cameras at Swan and Winslow's death scene; here, we get an extended view of Winslow's lonely Bataan Death Crawl along the stage, and of Phoenix cradling his head after he's died; it looks like Jessica Harper had to climb over the cameraman to get herself into position here.

The addition to the film's title of the words "of the Paradise" was a last-minute change, made after the film was sold to 20th Century Fox, the result of legal concerns arising from the comic strip, "Phantom". Here's how the first few seconds of the film were going to look prior to the title change having been made.