At first it was originally going to be released into the United States but there were several scenes that were inappropriate and were cut from the release. One was a scene of Oliver asking a woodpecker who had a resemblance to Woody Woodpecker to join him to fight Fagin, the woodpecker became outraged and did the middle finger, Oliver did the same when Olivia was singing a song. Blood was even in the film at which Fagin scratched his slave and when Betty ripped out Fagin's eye and at Armstrong's party was sexual content. About 30 seconds of the film was cut for the U.S. release.
Even though the English-language version hasn't seen a home video release since 1998 (and even then most likely for a very limited time), it was strangely enough used as the source for both the Portuguese (Portugal) and Russian dubs of the film, and was even included on the DVD release of the latter. In 2020, the dubbed version was uploaded to YouTube.
The English version of the movie was supervised by Filmation founder, Lou Scheimer.