Here's the shot Brian De Palma cut out of Scarface's infamous chainsaw massacre scene, and why he trimmed it. Scarface arrived in 1983 and was a modern updating of Howard Hawks' gangster movie from the 1930s. The remake cast Al Pacino as Cuban refugee turned gangster Tony Montana, who climbs his way up the food chain of the Miami drug trade. Tony's ambition is limitless but after a while, his explosive temper and several poor decisions lead to his downfall.
While director Brian De Palma is revered as an auteur now, seemingly every film he released during the 1980s, such as Dressed To Kill or Scarface, was met with mixed reviews and complaints about their graphic violence. Scarface is a film all about excess, be it Tony reveling in his newfound wealth or the sheer number of f-bombs dropped. The film was still a hit upon release and is now considered a classic.
Scarface features several iconic lines and sequences, including the final shootout in Tony's mansion. Arguably the most infamous scene from Scarface comes early when Tony and his friend Angel attempt to buy drugs from some Colombian dealers in a hotel room. The deal goes wrong, and Tony has to watch as Angel is dismembered in a bathtub with a chainsaw, though Tony himself is eventually saved from a similiar fate. It's still a shocking scene, though most of the bloody carnage happens offscreen. For years, rumors have persisted of a gorier version being shot that showed Angel being hacked up, which isn't true; that said, there was one shot De Palma removed.
There are no shots in Scarface of the chainsaw cutting into Angel, nor was any such footage filmed. There was, however, one shot showing Angel dangling from the railing with his severed arm also swinging from a chain, which came before his leg is hacked off too. The movie was famously caught in a battle with the MPAA board, who kept awarding it an X rating, which would have been a commercial kiss of death. Understandably, they were disturbed by the chainsaw sequence, and that swinging arm shot in particular.
It turns out Brian De Palma always intended to cut that moment anyway, as he wanted to hint at more bloodshed than was ever shown. In the end, Scarface was awarded an R rating for a slightly edited cut - though De Palma opted to release his original edit anyway, figuring the MPAA wouldn't notice the difference. Scarface's chainsaw attack is still a startling sequence, and in the end, it didn't need to show more of poor Angel's fate to get its point across.