I remember seeing “Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video” on a Netflix DVD, back in those days, so it’s been legitimately released, at least in that format.
Rumor has it that there was one episode , or maybe an animatic of an episode, of a traditionally animated TV series of The Incredibles.
There was a special feature on the DVD with a gag “animated episode” being watched and critiqued MST3K-style by Mr. Incredible and Frozone – is that it?
Supposedly there’s an entire 24 episode season of a Blazing Saddles TV show starring Louis Gossett, Jr. as Black Bart. You can see the pilot on the original DVD release of Blazing Saddles but they made an entire season of it which has never been seen in public.
Apparently Mel Brooks had a clause in his contract that he wouldn’t make a sequel to Blazing Saddles unless the studio somehow could make it into a spin-off TV series, under the assumption the premise was unadaptable. But the studio did in a desperate attempt to force him to make a sequel to his hit movie, and it was entirely intended to never air unless Mel Brooks refused to budge. I believe Mel Brooks then decided to honor the clause but in his own way by making the studio a different movie but claiming he was making a Blazing Saddles sequel.
Other than the fact they made a pilot for a TV series called Black Bart that was broadcast exactly one time, this isn’t true. The latest source for this rumor claims a unbelievable 4 seasons worth of television was shot and never aired, which is even less believable than one 24 episode season as you say. Possibly the actual source of all this is quoted (and refuted) here.
Honestly I think it’s a pretty weird thing to lie about, but I guess it’s no weirder a thing to lie about than Roxie the female Street Shark, who is not just fictional like the other characters of that mostly forgotten cartoon but also completely fabricated after the fact.
Remember, Hollywood back then thought of films as ephemeral: once they’re released, there was no reason to keep them unless they were smash hits that might attract audiences down the road.* But the run-of-the-mill silent film had no monetary value (they couldn’t imagine TV rights), and even if there was some, it went down when sound came in. Nitrate stock was flammable and there was no reason to rent warehouse space to store it, since there was no perceived market for it.
Even big films of the era were lost and can only been seen now because someone somewhere decided to keep a print.
*Chaplin and Harold Lloyd owned their films and were willing to preserve them; Chaplin would often rerelease them with a soundtrack.
I don’t know if they still do it, but the Seattle International Film Festival used to do a secret screening every year of some film that they really weren’t supposed to have. Attendees had to sign a form swearing not to reveal what movie they saw. I think the only way to get in to that showing was to buy a pass to the entire festival.
I haven’t looked into it too deeply, but I’ve never heard any of the titles leaked.
Even weirder, the SyFy Channel Original Movie that was a rip-off of the original movie actually wound up coming out BEFORE it due to the original being delayed six years, and ripping off the original premise.
That was the rumor at the time, but checking into it, it seems Teen Wolf was simply delayed a few months to capitalize on BTTF, rather than shelved because it was a cheap piece of crap.
No.
There was an announcement from Disney that there would be a TV serioes, after the first movie.
Rumors of the animatic, then–nothing.
I lived in Seattle for decades and attended the Secret Festival for many of those years.
Yes, we did have to sign a vow of confidentiality.
No, I’m not going to name or discuss or hint at any of the movies we saw.
I will say that (a) many of them were pretty cool, (b) a fair number of them sucked, and (c) I don’t remember a single one of them that could be categorized according to the thread topic, a mostly-to-fully completed film that was buried prior to release and unviewable by normal means.
The closest comparison would be a couple of movies that were released but bombed badly, so their owners didn’t feel the need to preserve the materials. Later, the people involved in the films became more successful, but that early work was difficult to see, with very few surviving prints. By various means, the Secret Fest organizers were able to acquire prints from private archivists, and that’s what we saw. I can’t really be more specific than that.
But I can’t recall ever seeing a “never released” movie of the type being discussed.
From what I now understand, we’re not talking about a treasure trove of films like “Citizen Kane” that the public has been deprived of, but mostly some “Glen or Glenda” or “Ishtar” films that were deemed so bad that studios and independent producers were willing to forgo releasing them because nothing good could come from it.
If all these films were preserved there might be a few that are watchable, but sitting for hours and looking at these lost films would probably be an overall unpleasant experience. BTW, if you happen to like the films “Glen or Glenda” or “Ishtar”, here’s a list of the worst films ever made in case you’re interested. I didn’t make up this list, but it rings pretty true to me.
I run a niche film festival in NW Montana and the idea of showing a film that nobody has ever heard of, let alone seen, sounds pretty compelling. I would like to see a copy of the “contract” the festival has the viewers sign before showing the film. What happens if someone accidentally leaks the title of the film, and why would anyone really care if they did?
Don’s Plum, starring Leonardo Di Caprio and Tobey McGuire, was filmed in 1995-96 when both actors were up-and-comers but had not reached the heights of superstardom they would achieve in Titanic and Spiderman. Both actors subsequently sued to prevent the release, claiming that they had only agreed to a short film instead of the feature film that the producers wanted to release. The settlement was that the film could not be released in the U.S. or Canada, although international releases were allowed.
Quite a number of silent films have been lost exactly for that reason. I remember back in 1978 all the excitement when a treasure trove was found in Dawson City, heart of the Klondike gold rush.
In 1978, another kind of buried treasure was discovered when a construction excavation inadvertently uncovered a forgotten collection of more than 500 discarded films on highly flammable nitrate film stock from the early 20th century that were buried in (and preserved by) the permafrost. These silent-era film reels, dating from “between 1903 and 1929, were uncovered in the rubble beneath [an] old hockey rink”.[9] (See Dawson Film Find.) Owing to its dangerous chemical volatility,[10] the historical find was moved by military transport to Library and Archives Canada and the U.S. Library of Congress for both transfer to safety film and storage. A documentary about the find, Dawson City: Frozen Time , was released in 2016.[11]
Apparently, the expense of shipping the films back was considered too great.
On the original subject, I was a crowd extra for a movie around 1988. The working title was A Touch of Wing and the assistant director told us it was sort of a Karate Kid goes to college. It had a Chinese director – Taiwan I think – and an American crew filming in San Jose State University’s old gym.
A lot of kids from a number of dojos were sitting around the floor in their gis, just before the the stands. Us ordinary folk were filling the stands above. We didn’t see any of the action shots that led up to it but rather the aftermath.
The hero’s girlfriend ran up to him for the clinch while the kids leapt up to surround them while his buddy, with a leg in a cast, looked on approvingly as us guys in the stands jumped up and down cheering (silently).
Then a dolly shot was set up where the bad guy gets up from the floor and rushes the happy couple with a knife in his hand only to get flattened by the hero. They also filmed several crowd reaction shots of several types. This was over eight hours from 9am to 5pm. We got a box lunch and a prize drawing every few hours to keep us there.
This was before the Web, never mind IMDb, but I have used its search feature every way I can think of, including location information, without finding anything like it. I assume it died in the can.
Note that Kane nearly was a lost film. Nicholas Schenk of MGM offered RKO $800K to destroy all prints and burn the negative.
There was an interesting Terry Gilliam movie called Brazil. Gilliam’s production company signed a deal with Universal to make the film, but before Gilliam could deliver the film Universal had a new president. The new president didn’t like the movie and had his editors create a new version. Gilliam wanted the original to be released, and a legal battle ensued. Gilliam arranged screenings for critics, and the positive word-of-mouth eventually forced Universal’s hand. The movie was released, but without much advertising or support.
I always thought the Secret Festival would be films like that; movies in some kind of legal limbo that couldn’t be officially shown. I heard of someone a few years ago who was doing a William Friedkin festival and wanted to show his film Sorceror, but couldn’t because no one knew who owned the rights to it anymore.
I’m kind of amazed that the films in the Seattle Secret Festival have been kept secret pretty well. I have no idea how legally enforceable the non-disclosure contract is. Maybe everybody keeps the secret because they like things better that way. I haven’t really tried to find out; maybe some of them have been leaked.
I remember hearing that a nearly complete print of Metropolis was discovered in Buenos Aires in 2010, including some scenes that hadn’t been seen in decades. The first hurdle in the restoration was to raise the money to have the print transported to Germany. I thought “how much can it cost to put a movie on a plane and fly it across the Atlantic?” Apparently, when the film is on flammable nitrate stock, it costs quite a lot.
There was a perceived market for these films but not one that movie fans like. Old film contained a significant amount of silver and studios could sell the film to recyclers who would extract the silver.
So studios looked at the choice between paying to store old movies with no expectation of ever making any money from them in the future or selling them for scrap.
In terms of “films that were released theatrically but NEVER released on a home format” the infamous 1982 film Inchon bombed so badly in theaters it was never released on VHS despite having Terrence Young as Director and an all star cast including Laurence Olivier as General MacArthur.
I’d love it if somebody found a film print of that and scanned it into HD since I hear the battle scenes are actually pretty good since they had a very high budget. There exist bootlegs copies in VHS quality standard definition but that won’t do.
