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Originally Posted by J Harker  How about some sort of attempt at creating Jacques Tourneurs original vision where we never actually see the demon? |
It's a lovely idea, and it was of course considered months ago (you are by no means the first person to suggest it), but it's simply not practical without shot-by-shot information about what Tourneur intended to do instead.
Unfortunately, he didn't supervise the edit, so there's no concrete "original vision" to refer to, and all that he said in interviews was vague stuff about clouds. Even if he actually shot something that he intended to use instead (and the jury's out on whether this was done), all surplus footage was destroyed decades ago - as an independent production in the pre-video era, there was no obvious reason to preserve it, not least as there'd be hefty storage charges involved.
And if you just cut the shots of the demon out altogether without any substitutions - and yes, I did experimentally try this - it simply doesn't work dramatically any more.