Wow, that's amazing, Andy! I heard there is a VHS copy of the Clayton rough cut in the Ray Bradbury Collection at Indiana University-Purdue, but that's not something they are going to interlibrary loan, lol.
Yeah absolutely not! I stumbled into seeing it to be honest, Chris. An email friend of mine was talking about it and talking as if he had seen it. I didn't know him well enough to just ask him but I said, so what, I'll just ask -- and then ask if he had it! lol. What else could be said but "no", right? We worked out a way to make that happen.
I am certain the VHS copy from the Bradbury collection is what is out there. I believe when the Delerue score was released, Dark Delicacies or Creature Features -- those now defunct (?) little shops out in L.A. -- one of them had a night to commemorate the release of the CD. They showed a reel or two (maybe more) of the Delerue scored sequences to people in attendance, probably (my guess) from that VHS copy. At some point over the years, that tape was transferred, but clearly not to too many people because it's never shown up anywhere on the collector front.
Either way, the "Clayton cut" opens with a title card stating you're about to see a preview of a work in progress with unfinished effects. Then it opens without any shots of the Vermont reshoot -- just the kids and the teacher. It could be they wanted it to start another way and hadn't filmed those sequences yet -- but I'm not sure. Bradbury in his commentary indicated that whole lovely, lyrical opening was part of the reshoot, and the movie vitally needed that. I agree with him wholeheartedly, the film loses something without it.
I read that when the train arrives in Green Town and the carnival appears, it was originally a much longer and more complex special effects sequence, with Tron-like CGI elements. One article said that the train itself magically turned into the carnival, another said smoke from the train's smokestack magically turned into the carnival. Was this longer effects sequence part of the original cut? In a couple of interviews Clayton said that he did not want the film to be effects-heavy (he said he greatly disliked effects-laden films like Poltergeist), but Disney kept pushing for more effects. I read this longer carnival FX sequence was one of the parts of the rough cut that was removed after the poor test screening, but I don't know if that is accurate.
None of those FX are in this workprint. Like you wrote, those effect sequences were written up substantially in the Cinefantastique article (still the best thing that was ever written about the movie) and many of them didn't make the final cut. I'd imagine if there's ever a release of this, they could be part of the supplemental features.
I also read that Clayton felt Bradbury's original screenplay was too dark, which is partly why he brought in John Mortimer to do a re-write, angering Bradbury. However, I heard that the Clayton rough cut is much darker than the final theatrical version - and the theatrical version is actually more in line with Bradbury's vision. What are your thoughts on that?
My overall take is there are some good extensions to scenes but the movie just sort of "plods along" in the Clayton version. It never catches fire, there's not a lot of fantasy. The Delerue score is gorgeous by itself but it's so restrained in the Clayton version, it matches the lack of intensity in the picture as it was constructed (at least in the workprint).
The goal Bradbury had was to "punch up" the film and I can't say he was wrong. I think it was the consensus really of everyone who worked on it. The pacing needed more energy, it needed the narration and those shots of the fall and the Midwest landscape in Autumn, and to be honest, it needed Horner's score. It needed a "pick up", an injection of "movement" and pace. Some of the reshoots didn't work, but the set-pieces were injected to try and give it a little more suspense -- I think it's fair to argue whether they worked or not. Yet, what was there originally...let's just say it's not really THE INNOCENTS. Probably more like Clayton's misfired GREAT GATSBY in terms of a "staid period piece" that doesn't exhibit a whole lot of cinematic "verve" for lack of a better term.
It's one of those things, though, where I'd still like to see it get remastered and officially released. Seeing it in something beyond VHS quality would undoubtedly help. Maybe they have a version that was more recent than the June 1982 test screening one too -- one that had some of the FX sequences you mentioned -- because they weren't finished in time for this one.