In my case, it was the older managers that wanted the tapes. Most of the younger worker bees, such as myself, had no interest. 
I can’t give you the title, so this is pretty weak but, – my friend the film projectionist was always pretty bitter about the film he really liked, that was taken out of distribution and all copies destroyed because the copyright holding company went under.
Accoriding to him, with no way to pay residuals, there was no way to screen the film. Copies were destroyed because that’s what you do with worthless junk, and to prevent accidental release and screening which would expose the distributer to liablility.
There was a Sylvester Stallone porn film (Stud) which was given an edited VHS release. Apparently, my fuzzy memory tells me that the only unedited copies were owned by the same chap who owned Penthouse magazine & that he & sly made a financial arrangement regarding it.
There was also a Peter Sellers movie of which only one copy exists today, and was part of his estate. Toward the end of his life, he did several really horrible films, just trying to pay the bills. (Think: Nick Cage) I watched a documentary about Mr. Sellers a few years ago & they mentioned the super rare film. I don’t recall if it was released to theaters… If anyone is interested, I can research the name of the film.
Unrelated to the OP: I just wanted to thank usedtobe for the fascinating explanation (end of post 20) of “Merrie Melodies” and the like. Sheet music sales – I had no idea!
There’s also films like The Day the Clown Died by Jerry Lewis that may never be released in its entirety, but parts of the film are out in the public.
Melbourne, there’s still going to be someone who owns the copyright. When the previous holding company went under, there would have been a stage in the process where they sold off all of their assets, and if the copyright for that film wasn’t specifically named, eventually they’d get to the point where someone would buy “all other assets not named here” or whatever, for some price. That buyer would then own the copyright.
It doesn’t make things much easier, since they might not even realize that they own it, and it’d probably be more trouble than it was worth to convince them that they did.
The version of Big with the alternate ending seems to have been effectively scrubbed.
They’ve got almost all of it (all the plays, at least) from a variety of sources and showed what they had in January 2016 on NFL Network. It was a bit controversial because the first airing had commentators talking over the footage. They showed it again with just the NBC radio call over the video. But there’s no known, complete copy of either the CBS or NBC television broadcast.
Not disagreeing with you, just trying to add some information.
I saw a restored print of it at a local arthouse theater last year. Not good, either as art or as history.
You’d be surprised: Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher Reflect on the 'Embarrassment' That Was the 'Star Wars Holiday Special'
A documentary I highly recommend - the Nazis made a lot of films, some of which still remain in German govt. archival storage with only carefully-limited public display: Forbidden Films (2014) - IMDb
In case you’re not whooshing us: Anyone else remember the alternate ending to "Big"? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
Song of the South and The Manchirian Candidate…
Nosferatu (1922) was supposed to be destroyed. Prana Film had wanted to make Dracula but they couldn’t get the rights. So they changed the names of the characters and went ahead and made it anyway.
The Stoker estate sued them and won. Prana was supposed to destroy all copies of the movie. That court order failed and copies survived. But perhaps the Stoker estate took some satisfaction from the fact that the movie was widely bootlegged and Prana went bankrupt.
The Manchurian Candidate? I don’t know if you’re talking about the 1962 original or the 2004 remake but neither have been “scrubbed”. I just checked Amazon and you can buy them on BluRay or DVD.
The 1962 version was intentionally shelved for many years and is famous enough just for that , the 21st century version was a joke and to even mention it is strange .
You want “scrubbed from the public”?
Try the 1940 movie Swiss Family Robinson. It’s virtually never shown on television, was not available on VHS. It has been made available on hard-to-find DVD.
I’ll bet you never even heard of it.
When Disney decided to release their own version of this, they bought the rights to the 1940 RKO version so they could basically sit on it. Turner Classic apparently briefly made a DVD available.
A TV show, but I’ve read that the “Star Wars Holiday Special,” a variety Christmas show(!) was absolutely hideous and all copies of it were pulled and hidden/destroyed.
Not sure this is true. I would love to see it.
Is Song of the Sout still only available in EURO DISNEY catalogue or in store on DVD there ?
See posts 23, 31 and 49.
In this case - and in all the other cases mentioned so far - there was no attempt at editing history books to indicate that the movie never even existed, which was the criteria stipulated by the OP. Even in the case of the Traci Lords underage movies, which are officially illegal to possess, it’s widely and freely acknowledged that the movie existed (and in fact may still exist in some private video libraries).
Is it not on DVD/Blu-ray? I thought it was. It’s a classic, despite not being all that great(my opinion, anyway). Intolerance, released a year later, is vastly superior.
It’s Blu-ray is $6 right now on Amazon and is even available via Prime’s 2-day shipping. Totally not buried.
Yeah, isn’t this not the point of the thread? Those are the well known wipes, unreleased and buried. This is about wide release movies.