Lost Movies

Cafe Society
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I don’t mean any of those old movies (especially silent ones), all copies of which have deteriorated or been incinerated. Nor do I mean Great Movies that have been ignored. Nothing so grandiose.

No, I mean the cheap movie-theater fodder that I used to see in our local Main Street downtown theater (we actually had one) that have disappeared off the face of the earth. Movies that I never saw afterwards on television, or on cable, or on VHS or DVD, or streamed through any of the services.

In many cases, of course, the reason is that the films weren’t very good. But that doesn’t explain it all – LOTS of films aren’t any damned good, and they keep showing up over and over again.
Here are a few of them:

The Last of the Secret Agents? (the title has been given with and without that final question mark. 1966 spy spoof starring the team of Allen and Rossi (Who? I hear you say). Nancy Sinatra sang the title song (which later was used at the end of Bill Murray’s The Man who Knew too Little). It was the 60s, and everybody was cashing in on the James Bond craze. I barely remember anything from it, which is probably just as well.

Birds Do It – star vehicle for Soupy Sales, who plays a guy who can fly. Sales himself hated the film. Made by Ivan Tors, who gave us Flipper (who appears in the film)

Acouple of Disney Real-Life adventures make the list:

Perri – about a squirrel (1957). Based on a book by Felix Salten, who wrote Bambi. Bambi gets a cameo in the film (as a real deer, not a cartoon character). I know I’ve seen the film offered on DVD, but you have to go out of your way to get it.

Jungle Cat – last of the True Life adventures. It had its own Dell comic. It was released to DVD in 2006, but copies are “hard to find”, and it’s out of print

Dick Van Dyke had a bunch of generally forgotten and rarely seen films, a couple of them from Disney:

Never a Dull Moment – This one is available through various places, apparently. I still can’t recall it ever showing up on TV in any form, and never saw it in a video store. 1968 film stars Dick Van Dyke, along with Dorothy Provine, Edward G. Robinson (!!), Slim Pickens (!), and other familiar faces.

Lieutenant Robin Crusoe, USN – Van Dyke is a castaway on a South Pacific Island with a chimp. Later he meets Nancy Kwan, whom he names Wednesday. Akim Tamiroff (a Armenian actor) plays her Polynesian father. This film has apparently come out on VHS and DVD, but I suspect more modern sensibilities to native people have encouraged this one to keep a low profile. Disney himself contributed to ther screenplay, and is credited as “Retlaw Yensid”

Fitzwilly – another van Dyke film, but not from Disney this time (1967). Van Dyke plays a butler who goes to great lengths to keep from his employer that she’s ac tually virtually broke. The household staff robs Gimbels on Christmas Eve to raise money. A lot of the cast was appearing on various TV shows at the time, including “Get Smart”'s Barbara Feldon (for whom this was a first movie role). Score by a very young John Williams.
I’ve got lots of others. Why did these films virtually disappear while other mediocrities from the same time survive? I suspect because it’s not making enough money for someone.

Do any of you have similar memories of “lost” films?

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I have seen Fitzwilly pop up on television maybe 3 times in the past 20-30 years. It has to be at least that long since I’ve seen the other 2 Van Dyke films. I’ve heard of Last of the the Secret Agents and Birds Do It, but I don’t have a memory of seeing them.

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The number of movies that have been “lost” is immense, especially the further back you go. If you look at newspapers from the 30s and 40s, you will see the movie pages filled with films that you can barely find anything about. Of course, movies before TV were considered disposable unless they achieved classic status, and sometimes not then.

There are a lot of factors. Sturgeon’s Law is a big one – the many bad films of an era just get forgotten.

As for which you see and which you don’t – it’s serendipity. There are rights issues, for instance. Or a film was packaged for broadcast while another one was not. Or a film was being broadcast 15 years ago on cable, but is no longer made available. No one thinks there’s a market for a DVD or video. It could be available, but you’ve just never come across it.

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I acknowledge as much in the OP. I’m not at all surprised that The Last of the Secret Agents or Birds Do it sank without a trace. But I’m more surprised that the Dick van Dyke films were so obscure, especially with the Disney connection – Disney tends to keep their things in play, at least to some degree. Never a Dull Moment even had considerable star power, with Edward G. Robinson there. I know that I’ve seen other Dick van Dyke films of the era on TV even in recent years – The Art of Love (with James Garner!), What a Way to Go (a terrible movie with a unbelievable cast of prominent names) – but I haven’t seen or heard of Never a Dull Moment since it was in the theaters.

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It strikes me that there are a lot of Disney live-action films from that time period–the late 60s into the 70s–that Disney doesn’t really do much with these days. It was kind of a fallow period for them, to my mind. I have vague memories of a lot of terribly bland comedies from that era, often starring the likes of Dean Jones, with someone like Tim Conway or Joe Flynn in a supporting role, and Keenan Wynn playing the villain, that qualify as the sort of “lost movies” you’re talking about.

Titles that come to mind include things like Snowball Express, The Million Dollar Duck, The North Avenue Irregulars, The Shaggy D.A., and Unidentified Flying Oddball. It wasn’t really a very good time for Disney, creatively. Only rarely among the dross would you get a relative standout like The Love Bug and its sequels.

I am fairly sure that I saw most, maybe all, of those movies. But I remember almost nothing about any of them. Probably in an attempt to appeal to the widest common denominator, they were almost aggressively bland and uninteresting. These days, Disney seems somewhat embarrassed by them and doesn’t do a whole lot to exploit them, so they rarely turn up on TV or as DVDs.

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I was looking through TCM’s listings and saw The Big Cube, an LSD movie from 1969 starring Lana Turner, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it, never seen a reference to it.

Skidoo, directed by Otto Preminger, is rarely talked about, even though it has a star-filled cast and is a Marx Brothers must because Groucho plays God, no, not that God, but the gangster head honcho.

Rachel Welch starred - and sang - in A Swingin’ Summer, one of about 50 beach movies that didn’t star Frankie and Annette, but had appearances by major 60s groups.

The Rowan and Martin spoof of mysteries, The Maltese Bippy, is a classic nonentity.

Soon after Tommy Smothers starred in Get to Know Your Rabbit.

And don’t forget, although everyone has, the only movie Joan Rivers directed: Rabbit Test, in which Billy Crystal gets pregnant.

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It might be a rights issue with surviving estates, or a clear chain of rights with some movies, and none with others. Other than that, it may be that some one has exclusive rights to an underpreforming property thats over priced.

Declan

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Skiddoo I knew about, since some consider it a classic “bad” film.

The Maltese Bippy made the cover of Life magazine when it came out. Fame is definitely fleeting.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LIFE-MAGAZINE-MAY-23-1969-JIM-BROWN-ROWAN-AND-MARTIN-/160552701331
I knew about Rabbit Test because Joan Rivers came to our University to plug it (plus, I was already a big Billy Crystal fan).
But I gotta admit that I never heard of the others.

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Against a Crooked Sky-Most memorable to me is the kid having to run a mile before his sister is shot with an arrow and he is about a second shy of doing so. Turns out it wasn’t his sister.

The Bubble-3d film about a town under a dome.

It Grows on Trees-A movie about a tree that grows money.

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Then there’s any number of 70s ‘Chariots of the Gods’ type films whose names I don’t remember. Films about Bigfoot or the impending Armageddon that the Antichrist will usher in.

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The Bubble was also released as The Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth during the 1970s mini-wave of 3D movies. It was made by Arch Oboler, better known for his radio shows (He’s the guy responsible for the Chicken Heart horror story that Bill Cosby later referenced). The film wasn’t particularly memorable, but I strongly suspect that Stephen King knew about it – it’s the same basic premise as Under the Dome.

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This is a fun thread, I’m really digging deep in my memory to find movies I haven’t thought of in 25+years. I’m ignoring most TV movies since there’s a great book out where you can find a synopsis of almost every TV movie made. And ignoring famous 70s horror since most people remember Killdozer, Gargoyles, Sssssss, Damnation Alley…I’m trying to remember those obscure 70s summer films you could see for a dollar.

Here’s one: (not a 70s film though)

The 27th Day-Aliens give five individuals the means to destroy the earth. My memory told me at the end the hero obliterated the USSR. Wiki says he killed everyone on Earth who ‘was an enemy of human freedom’

What the hell does that mean?? He killed every politician on Earth? That sounds nice but the world would be plunged into chaos.

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I agree with this one as an almost completely forgotten one. It’s based on an equally forgotten science fiction novel. I finally got hold of a copy a couple of years ago and read it – it’s basically the same as the movie.

As for what it means, the filmmakers obviously intended it to mean that all the evil Communist leaders got killed. One wag observed, though, that the President of the US isn’t mentioned after that point in the film, either. Nor do any of the cast die. It’s all a political parable dressed up in SF drag.

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Hello Down There - cheesy movie about a guy being more or less forced to take his family and live in an experimental underwater dwelling. The kids are trying to make it big as a rock band, and they play a song called Hello Down There that ends up getting them discovered.

Always made me want to live underwater, it is one of the reasons I took scuba diving [open water 1 and 2, nothing fancy though I wouldn’t mind wreck, cave and depth diving certs.]

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Red Sky at Morning. It had Richard Thomas, Desk Arnaz Jr, Richard Crenna, Strother Martin, and Claire Bloom. Hal Wallis production. Arnaz won a most promising newcomer golden globe. I’ve never seen it on tv or in the store as a DVD or vhs. You can order a made to order DVD from overseas for about $20. I don’t know why it’s never been re-released. It got pretty good reviews and the book is one of my favorites.

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THE BUBBLE is far from lost! It has just been restored and is available on 3-D blu-ray from Kino Lorber.

For more information on the history and restoration, please visit http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/home/The-Bubble

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I remember when it first came out and was showing in nearby theaters, but I agree – I don’t recall it showing up on later on TV or on video.
This is the kind of movie I meant in the OP. As a fan of really bad movies and fantasy/sf/horror, I can tell you about a LOT of forgotten monster flicks and the like (The Cosmic Monsters, The Magnetic Monster, Gog, Curcucu – Beast of the Amazon, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam). But these were never big movies, heavily promoted, meant for mainstream audiences. Whereas Disney’s 1962 movies bon Voyage or in Search of the Castaways were supposed to be. Or 1981’s Condorman, which starred a pre-Phantom Michael Crawford and Oliver Reed. It’s one of the few films actually based on a Robert Sheckley novel, rather than being stolen from one. In recent years a cult has grown up around the film, including inside Disney – the Toy Story short Small Fry features a “Condorman” action figure from a Happy Meal or suchlike (something that never actually happened).

https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AwrBT9PYBaNUQDkAgiVXNyoA;_ylc=X1MDMjc2NjY3OQRfcgMyBGZyA3lmcC10LTkwMQRncHJpZANHekpIZ1AwZFNyMnB1R21jZFZlR0pBBG5fcnNsdAMwBG5fc3VnZwM0BG9yaWdpbgNzZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tBHBvcwMwBHBxc3RyAwRwcXN0cmwDBHFzdHJsAzE5BHF1ZXJ5A0NvbmRvcm1hbiBUb3kgU3RvcnkEdF9zdG1wAzE0MTk5NzAxMjM-?p=Condorman+Toy+Story&fr2=sb-top-search&fr=yfp-t-901&fp=1

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Prediction: this thread will be zombie bait.
There was a movie I remember seeing in the late 70’s as the throwaway part of a double feature. I didn’t have a title, though, and I thought I would have trouble searching for it.

Turns out, it was really easy to find by Googling “movie laser gun necklace space”. Laserblast: “a 1978 American science fiction film about an unhappy teenage loner who discovers an alien laser cannon and goes on a murderous rampage, seeking revenge against those who he feels have wronged him.”

The image of little metal disk that forms on his chest from the necklace is what stuck with me for 35 years.

Turns out there’s even an MST3K for it. Time to go searching for that.

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I’ve seen it, and the MST3King of it. David Allen animated the aliens, and that’s the only really good part of the film. It was definitely a low-budget flick when released.

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I actually have a blog that covers a lot of films like these. Some that would fit include:

Picking Up the Pieces (very big name cast, including Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Keifer Sutherland, David Schwimmer, Elliot Gould, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt)
Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones is magnificent)
Putney Swope
Cry Uncle(too bawdy for TV)
Movie Movie
The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (written by Dr. Seuss!)
Brute Force Hume Cronin as one of Hollywood’s most sadistic villains.
Best Boy
The Onion Field (Made James Woods a star, and helped Ted Danson, too)
Targets (Boris Karloff’s last major film, and one of his best)
Mother Night (great adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut novel)