Jodorowsky's Dune Uncovered

Scenes 47-49 : Rabban's Wrath

Having been ordered to leave Dune, Rabban is drunk with anger, and his Harkonnen army are massacring men, women and children in Arrakeen.

Rabban sees the Guild ship carrying the Atreides approaching and spits and swears at it.

At the Palace beggars look longingly through the fence at the fountain and palm grove. Rabban and his soldiers suddenly appear and blow up the fountain killing several bystanders.

Rabban grabs an old man and asks him how much water the 20 palm trees need - enough water for 100 men every day.

Rabban then has the old man and other survivors bound against the trees before they are set alight.

Entering the Palace Rabban orders every servant killed, Rabban himself slaughtering children with glee.

Finally Rabban orders ever Harkonnen soldier into the hall, and once it is full they are commanded to defecate!

The defecating scene is mentioned by the Jodorowsky's Dune documentary director Frank Pavich in an interview on Indiewire

'In order to insult Duke Leto, David Carradine, Rabban the Beast gets his army, the Algerian army, to pull down their pants in front of the palace and shit. So there's going to be a scene of 2,000 extras defecating at once. So here's Charlotte Rampling, she agrees to meet with Jodo, she gets the script, she reads the script, and she says, "I can't be in a movie where there's 2,000 extras defecating on screen!" '

On the Japanese Blu-ray of the Jodorowsky's Dune documentary there is a deleted scene in which Jodorowsky talks about this scene, unfortunately it is in Spanish with Japanese subtitles!

In the official Jodorowsky's Dune Script from a Ulule crowd funding campaign for Jodorowsky's "Psychomagic, an art that heals" movie, the defecating scene has been removed, persumably cut from an early draft.

Apparently this scene didn't make it into the Moebius storyboards, but as there are no publicly available images of the boards for this section of the script it is sadly not possible to know if Rabban's rampage is included in any fashion.

In the next part the Atreides arrive on Dune - although there is no mention of if they appreciated Rabban's gift of moisture!

Continue to Part 17: Atreides Arrival