inspired by this thread… what are some movies that will probably never be seen or heard from through legitamate means? IE: “song of the south”
Last I heard, “Song of the South” is slated to be released later this year on DVD.
Not necessarily infamous, but Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle series of silms will never be released on DVD, and his recent “Drawing Restraint 9” has been advertised with an enormous “this film will never be released on DVD” disclaimer. The aformentioned will not be released for “art” reasons.
If you can wait until 2042, Song of the South will be in the public domain.
Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarfs, a wartime Merrie Melodies blackface parody of Snow White. It would be impossible to trim this down to meet modern standards - barely a single frame would be left.
It is the best known of the Censored Eleven classic Warner Brothers cartoons removed from distribution due to racial sensitivities.
The Radio Pizza Show, starring Leo Gorcey and Marjorie Main, possibly the first Hollywood movie to feature pizza in it. It was never transferred from nitrate stock, and no version of it is known to have survived. Probably not a big deal, though.
When was The Radio Pizza Show made? It’s not on the IMDb. Was it a short subject?
Many years ago I started a thread in the alt.fan.cecil-adams Usenet newsgroup about the earliest known mention of pizza in an American film. (I always found it odd that pizza never shows up in old movies from the 40s and 50s, which made me wonder if Americans ever heard of the stuff prior to the first time I ever ate it, circa 1965. Turns out it’s been around in some form in America since the 1890s and crazy popular since the last GIs got back from Italy circa 1950.) A poster named “lalbert” gave this fascinating response:
And this is the extent of my knowledge on the subject. If you ever find out more, please let me know!
The Day the Clown Cried, Jerry Lewis’s concentration camp movie, may never see the light of day unless Jerry relents, or arranges to re-release it after his death.
I’ve seen this plenty of times at art movie theaters. Of course, most of them are gone or ailing (even the Brattle in Harvard Square has an iffy prognosis), so I don’t know where you’d see it, outside of bootleg copies.
There are bootleg copies of the uncensored Fantasia out there. I have a copy of song of the South myself. It makes it more difficult to see, but not impossible.
You want hard to see? Try Cocksucker Blues:
To answer the OP, even harder to see is The Animal World.
Evidently no prints still exist, although the animated dino scenes ended up in the abysmal Trog http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066492/
I had heard that Myra Breckenridge would never be released, but a friend of mine told me he’d seen it. Described it accurately as far as I can tell (“Boring, despite Raquel Welch doin’ some guy with a strap-on”).
John Waters will never allow his earliest films, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, Eat Your Makeup, and Roman Candles to be seen again, simply because he says they were experimental and amateurish. He still has them stuffed in the back of his closet somewhere.
Myra Breckenridge runs on Fox Movie Channel seemingly every three days. It has been released on VHS and DVD.
Coal Black is on YouTube, although it’s not the best print. The sad thing is, it’s really not all that offensive as you’d think. I mean, it’s certainly not a modern cartoon, but the characters seem to actually be voiced by black actors, and the animation is really good and original. It might make you a little uncomfortable, but it’s not the huge shocker I was expecting.
The original Fantastic Four movie because it is embarassingly horrid. Not that the remake was that good.
There are some higher quality screenshots linked from the bottom of the Wikipedia article. I think it depends on what you’d consider offensive. It is certainly good-natured but there are loads of racial stereotypes.
Apart from the racial issues it is interesting how upfront the sexuality is for a cartoon of that period.
The original hasn’t been officially released but bootlegs are readily available.
I’d say many of Stepin Fetchit’s movies. Maybe Willie Best, too. According to Leonard Maltin, *Max Davidson was in a number of shorts that featured (IIRC) “Yiddish” humor. Those have yet to see the light of day.
*Best known as the crazy man living in the “hanted” house in the “Our Gang” short “Moan & Groan, Inc.” who keeps saying, “I know. . . BUT I WON"T TELL YA.” And especially terrorizes Farina with his “toikey legs.”
Stanley Kubrick’s first film, Fear and Desire, may eventually turn up on a bootleg, but it will probably never get an official release. Kubrick regarded it as a journeyman piece, and did everything he could to suppress it after its initial release. I understand that it really is pretty bad, but after all he was just starting to learn his craft and had only the thinnest of shoestring budgets to work with.
John Huston’s “The Kremlin Letter” is a curiosity. Despite a stellar cast, it seems to be a largely forgotten movie. It does, thankfully, air occasionally on FMC, but it’s never been released.