For over three years, people from around the globe wrote in that they had seen an alternate version of the Ring. Dubbed "the Brussels cut," as this is where it was allegedly first shown, it differed in that an alternate makeup effect was on the corpses of Sadako's victims (see below). So far, however, no hard evidence has shown up to substantiate the Brussels cut -- and when asked to comment, Ring director Nakata Hideo has twice denied that such a cut exists. That being said, read on to learn about the curious history of this supposed "other" Ring.

"I saw Ring at its European premiere at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film" [in 1999, where it won the Golden Raven award]. "Well, the movie that we saw was creepier than the general release! I wonder if this was a test version...

"The print screened in Brussels contained an effect that was apparently cut from the finished film. In the version with which we are familiar, the bodies of those slain by Sadako are shown with their mouths open in scream. The Brussels cut, however, showed the corpses of Tomoko in the closet, Ryuji in his apartment, and Tsuji Yoko being pulled from her car with a mouth that was "not simply open but deformed in a scary way: it was a narrow VERTICAL opening!

"I never understood why they didn't keep the cut I saw in Brussels," Tom went on to say. "This small extra of the weird deformed mouth makes Ring definitively creepier from the very beginning."

To clarify, the original Japanese version does contain shots of Sadako's victims. What makes the "Brussels cut" unique is that a different effect is supposedly used on the corpses, so that the mouths are narrow slits instead of being wide open.

Since receiving Tom's e-mail, I've received plenty of false starts but no real leads. One visitor claimed to have seen this as a "Singapore only" VCD, but attempts to track it down ended in failure. Another visitor wrote that "One of the organizers of the German FFF, who was there in 1999, told me that there was definitely a special cut which was exclusively shown there - only ONCE!" Unfortunately, I was unable to verify this as well.

4 August, 2004. E-mail continues to trickle in from people who claim to have seen the Brussels cut. I've received messages from visitors in both England and Spain who swear that the version shown on network television utilized a different effect from the version they later saw on the DVD. "Coming across your site and reading that someone else swears they saw this effect leads me to believe that I didn't make it up at all, and it was shown on UK TV," writes blackannis -- though following this, other UK viewers have written in, adamant that the version shown did not differ from the theatrical release.

Adding a new wrinkle to this mystery is a special feature that appeared on the German release of the Ring 2 on DVD, in which director Nakata Hideo is interviewed while in France promoting Dark Water. When asked about a "different version" supposedly shown at Brussels, Nakata smiled and described how that version was supposedly different...and then denied knowing anything about it. See here for a partial translation of that interview.

7 January, 2005. In a telephone interview, Nakata Hideo seemed genuinely amused by the prospect of there being another cut of the Ring. Any rumors that such a cut exists are, in his own words, "not true."

Is the Brussels cut just another urban legend? Or is there really another version out there, one that someone other than the director has tampered with? Until evidence is produced that can conclusively prove such a cut exists, the answer would seem to be the former.