I was thumbing through a Jerry Lewis biography that had a chapter about the movie “The Day The Clown Cried”. It was a early 70’s movie where Jerry played a clown charged with keeping children in the Nazi concentration camps occupied. Due to financing problems the film never got a cinematic release. Jerry now hates the movie, and as a result it has only been seen by handfulls of people and may never put out on DVD. Are there any other unreleased films that have acquired any notoriety?
The Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues.
Lyrics to the titular song- I can’t believe Decca wouldn’t release it…
Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote movie. There was even a documentary about the disasterous attempt to shoot it - “Lost In La Mancha.”
The original Fantastic Four movie.
Billy Jack Goes to Washington seems to have played in a few locations, but never got any sort of wide release.
There was also a movie a couple of years ago whose entire release was a single performance in a small theater in Texas.
A Day at the Beach (1970), a Roman Polanski film starring Peter Sellers. Don’t think it was ever released.
Shoreditch - It had a one week run, raised about 2000 Brit pounds and then slunk away into the vaults. Its star, Shane Ritchie, had invested half a million pounds into the production. AFAIK it’s never gone to DVD.
Zyzzyx Road- last in the dictionary and last in box office gross!
Disney’s Song of the South may never see daylight again. It’s a shame, really.
Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote was never actually finished. If you see Lost in La Mancha, you’ll know why.
If unfinished films count, the 1930s attempt to film I, Claudius is of note.
The Other Side of the Wind has been “just a short time from release” for over thirty years.
To count a short and lost film, Humor Risk would be of some interest, if only to resolve the loose ends about any content other than the presence of the Marx Brothers.
The first Marx Brothers film was a disaster at it’s première, never released, and is now considered lost.
And yet, somehow Jakob the Liar got made and distributed.
The incomplete Something’s Got to Give (George Cukor 1962) was beset with problems, mainly in the shape of Marilyn Monroe and, to a lesser extent, Cukor himself.
Amazon has it in stock.
Guys, this thread is about completed movies that were never released, or had a very limited screening. Incomplete movies is a topic for another thread.
Most of Greed was never released.
There also Orson Welles’s documentary It’s All True, which he never completed, though footage has been put together into a documentary of the same name about the attempt to make the film.
The House of God was completed in 1979, but saw only a very, very limited release on cable TV in 1984.
I loved the book, but from what bits I’ve glimpsed of the movie (and I do own a copy but couldn’t bear to watch it in its entirity) I can see why it never was released in theaters and am amazed it was shown on cable at all.
Was The Kid & I ever officially released?