It’s a fact that very few films are truly “lost.” I learned this back in 2009 when, writing for the late Fright.com, I made up a listing of films I was certain were lost forever, only to find (happily) that this wasn’t the case at all, having since found around eighty percent of those supposed obscurities. This means I’ll refrain from referring to the following fifty films (and one TV series episode), obscure though they are, as lost. They are, however, quite scarce—speaking as a collector who’s renowned for his ability to track down rare flicks, these are fifty that continue to elude me.
I’m aware that some of the following are readily available through certain channels. BLOT EN DRENGESTREG and THE CASTLE OF THE ROSE, for instance, are both accessible digitally, albeit only within their respective countries (the Netherlands and South Korea). Others entries appear to indeed be lost: as the imdb entry on VENTRILIQUO bluntly states, “No copies of this film are believed to exist.”
One more thing before getting started: I’ve tried to come up with titles that aren’t particularly well known. Everyone appears to know about, and be searching for, BLOOD CIRCUS, VIOLENCE IN THE CINEMA PART 1 and THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED (which was supposed to turn up in June of ‘24, a month that, sadly, has come and gone with nary a CLOWN sighting), so they won’t be included. What you will find are fifty fascinating obscurities (ranked in order of interest) that, if you ask me, simply must be rediscovered.
1. INDUSTRY AND SEX DOLL (SANGYO TO DUTCH WIFE)
This entry is distinct from all the others in that it describes a film I’ve actually seen. This viewing occurred at a 1994 film festival compilation of experimental Japanese shorts; I don’t remember the other films in the compilation, but INDUSTRY AND SEX DOLL, created by Kazuhiro Shirao (who edited the cult cyberfest I.K.U.), was quite something else, a mind-blowing assortment of “treated” images that eschews the usual subdued experimental film aesthetic in favor of a presentation that’s stark, kinetic and, most of all, loud.
I mean that literally: INDUSTRY AND SEX DOLL, with its nerve-jangling industrial soundtrack, was one of the loudest films, experimental or otherwise, I’ve ever seen in a theater.
2. JUST A PRANK (Blot en drengestreg)
Villy Sørensen’s story “Blot en Drengestreg” (a.k.a. “Child’s Play”), about childhood innocence turned to deeply horrific ends, is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read. This 15-minute animated adaptation was made by the skilled Danish animater Jannik Hastrup, which I say bodes well, even if the pic hasn’t been seen much since its 2015 inception.
3. MONSIEUR ROBERT HOUDIN
This is said to be one of the top French Telefilms of the 1960s. I’ve written fairly extensively about Gallic TV, which explains my interest in this small screen treatment of the legendary French magician Jean-Eugène Robert Houdin, with the supernatural manifestations he so ardently faked depicted as actual occurrences.
4. TIME TRAVELERS
Not to be confused with the 1964 and ‘76 films with the same title, this is a mid-length 1966 TV movie made by and starring the late Tokyo-based actor Robert Dunham. t’s said to be very TWILIGHT ZONE-ish.
5. CHRISTMAS CAROL
A French TVM version of Charles Dickens’ classic that screened in 1984. It was overshadowed by the same year’s George C. Scott headlined version, but I’ve heard director Pierre Boutron created what “could be described as a CAROL for the arthouse crowd,” in which “The overall effect is like A VERY JEAN COCTEAU CHRISTMAS.”
6. CLAIRE’S HAT: THE UNMAKING OF A FILM
In which Canada’s always-eclectic Bruce McDonald documents the unmaking of his 2001 mega-flop PICTURE CLAIRE, a film he calls “my own personal HEAVEN’S GATE.” In CLAIRE’S HAT names are named, starting with that of PICTURE CLAIRE’s producer (and Alliance Communications founder) Robert Lantos, who’s said to get slammed pretty hard. That likely explains why CLAIRE’S HAT has been so little seen.
7. PIWI
A 1981 short by Montreal’s late Jean-Claude Lauzon that’s said to serve as something of a dry run for his 1992 masterpiece LEOLO.
8. AWOL
This 2006 short, scripted by Hollywood big shot Shane Black, began as a 1998 AFI thesis project by director Jack Swanstrom, only to morph into…something else. The sci fi-tinged story features David Morse as a soldier who finds himself flashing back and forth between Vietnam in 1972 and an idyllic alternate universe America.
9. PRIVATE LIFE SHOW
This German TVM is, it would seem, a 1990s take on the type of reality TV riffs (examples of which include DAS MILLIONENSPIEL and TOD IM STUDIO) that thrived in 1970s Europe, where reality television arrived much earlier, and had a far more damning effect, than it did in the US. As with those earlier films, PRIVATE LIFE SHOW, involving a bickering couple driven to homicidal madness by having their private lives aired before a tittering studio audience, apparently resulted in numerous calls to police by viewers who believed what they were viewing was real.
Copies of this film were sold in English subtitled form by the late Shocking Videos, but after that outfit’s 2010 demise all traces of it appear to have vanished.
10. BILLENIUM
A 1974 pilot for a French TV series called TOMORROW OR NEVER that was meant to consist of adaptations of famous science fiction stories. This episode dramatized J.G. Ballard’s 1961 tale “Billenium,” about an absurdly overpopulated future city in which the surface area for each inhabitant is increasingly limited and “everyday life becomes worse than the subway at 6PM.”
11. TOO MUCH HAPPINESS (Trop de Bonheur)
For some unfathomable reason this 1994 French film, a coming-of-age dramedy that’s been favorably compared to DAZED AND CONFUSED, appears to have dropped off the face of the Earth. That’s despite a generally positive reception and the fact that the film’s own director Cédric Kahn has uploaded an hour-long abbreviation (entitled simply BONHEUR) to archive.org. What happened to the full version?
12. THE CAN
A 1994 “underground film sensation” from documentarian David Schendel, who describes THE CAN thusly:
“In a future society where soft drinks are only for the rich and powerful, one man owns the last remaining cans of Coca-Cola. After the last can is consumed, we begin a mind melting odyssey of surreal events as the can is used and abused by all walks of life. It is used as a sex toy for a nymphomaniac artist, a crack pipe for two desperate homeless men, a target for two drunk hayseeds who are later abducted by aliens and ultimately a talisman for a depressed young woman yearning to return to nature.”
13. STOCKADE
From Australia, a musical about the Eureka Stockade of the mid-1800s, in which Aussie gold miners revolted against British rule in Victoria, AU. Scripted by the great Kenneth Cook, adapting his play of the same name.
14. DR. CLAOUÉ’S SURGERY (Chirurgie Corrective et reparatrice du Dr. Claoué)
An up-close documentation of eye surgery by France’s Jean Painleve that attained infamy because it made Luis Buñuel hurl. Most of Painleve’s films are easy to find, but this 1930 short most definitely isn’t.
15. THE CASTLE OF THE ROSE (Jangmiui seong)
One of three highly controversial—read: censored—South Korean releases from 1969. The other two, THE EUNUCH (Naeshi) and THE WOMAN IN THE WALL (Byeoksokui yeoja), have since emerged from the shadows, but THE CASTLE OF THE ROSE remains under wraps. Why? A description by Roger Ebert (in the book TWO WEEKS IN THE MIDDAY SUN) of the film’s plot, which involved the odd way in which a gay man’s wife deals with her husband’s preferences (in a scene that apparently drew “gasps of disbelief” from a film festival audience), may answer that question.
16. THE OXSMÁ PLANET (Oxsmá-plánetan)
For whatever reason, I’m finding myself on an Icelandic cult film kick. I’ve tracked down a number of these supposedly “lost” films, but THE OXSMÁ PLANET, made by members of the “punk billy” band Oxsmá (whose ranks including the acclaimed filmmaker Óskar Jónasson), continues to elude me. From what I’ve been able to gather, it’s a 30-minute depiction of an astronaut trying to fit in with the residents of a distant planet.
17. THE DEMON’S DAUGHTER
A “movie that lies somewhere between a short film and a feature,” made by future DIE HARD director John McTiernan in 1974. Described as an “extremely low-budget Viking adventure” with horrific overtones, it was filmed in the woods of upstate New York, with hairpieces pasted to the heads of ponies “to make them look like Viking steeds.” The film was never released, but the score, one of the very first by Craig Safan (of THE LAST STARFIGHTER and REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS), was.
18. THE TRAGIC DIARY OF ZERO THE FOOL
The feature debut of the famed Canadian experimentalist Morley Markson, who played with cinematic artifice and “reality” in a manner that evidently pleased Werner Herzog, who’s praised this film at some length.
19. MORAVAGINE
Yet another little-seen French TVM. This one, hailing from 1989, adapted Blaise Cendrars’ classic proto-surrealist novel MORAVAGINE, with a cast that included Howard Vernon and Anna Karina.
20. CITY OF MEN
An award-winning Columbia College thesis film, made by novelist and sometime filmmaker Jay Bonansinga (STASH), that’s said to be set in a future America where men and women have been separated by a civil war. Aside from being out of circulation indefinitely, CITY OF MEN suffers from the fact that seemingly everywhere (including the imdb) it tends to be confused with the similarly titled 2007 feature.
21. OUT OF TIME (HORS DU TEMPS)
Not to be confused with the 2009 Rachel McAdams vehicle THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE (which is known as HORS DU TEMPS in France), this is a French TV movie made by LES DOCUMENTS INTERDITS’ Jean-Teddy Filippe involving animal experimentation and time travel, reportedly inspired by THE INVENTION OF MOREL by Adolfo Bioy Casares.
22. AIRPORT IN
A $10,000 feature from British Columbia-based filmmaker Erik Whittaker that has been described thusly:
“If Guy Maddin and David Lynch had gotten together at a podiatry convention in a cheesy airport hotel in Winnipeg during the final game of a 1972 Canada/Russia hockey series—they probably couldn’t have dreamed up a stranger, funnier and more offbeat set piece than Erik Whittaker’s AIRPORT IN.”
23. MICTLAN (Mictlan o la casa de los que ya no son)
A surreal 1969 epic from Mexico that was overshadowed by EL TOPO.
24. EVE’S NECKLACE
a.k.a. “The Mannequin Movie,” which refers to the fact that this 2010 neo-noir is populated entirely by mannequins. The critical consensus on EVE’S NECKLACE, which vanished from sight after its premiere at Fantasia, hasn’t been too encouraging, but I still want to see it.
25. I FIND MYSELF GETTING SMALLER AND SMALLER (Oinaru gakusei)
From a 1992 film festival program: “Takashi Koike’s seriously weird first film is set one hundred years from now, in a world of auto-drive cars, “Earth Patrols,” and strange rituals that have lost their original meanings…”
Furthermore: “Koike has developed a most distinctive filmmaking voice: a mixture of sci fi and poetry, unvoiced emotion and knockabout fun, humor and wonderment. As you’ll have gathered, his film defeats description—and demands to be seen.”
26. CLOSET CASE
A 1991 feature by Lee Karaim (KISS THE GIRLS GOODBYE), who’s turned out a “horror film of the psyche” involving familial dysfunction, compulsive masturbation and an inflatable sex doll.
27. HE! VIVA DADA
A 1965 documentary that contains footage of a supremely blasphemous and pornographic happening put on by the
notorious théâtre panique, featuring that movement’s guiding lights Fernando Arrabal, Roland Topor and Alejandro Jodorowsky.
28. THE POWER OF OIL SPIRIT (Ittarid narm mun prai)
About this 1984 Thai freak-out I know very little outside the fact that it involves a krasue, a popular figure in south Asian folklore consisting of the head of a bewitched woman that floats around with the body’s innards attached.
29. IT’S RAINING IN THE HOUSE (Il pleut dans ma maison)
Belgian comedy-horror from 1969 that an online synopsis sums up thusly: “A young fashion house director inherits an estate haunted by a ghost. A mix of wacky and fantastic. Nice effects. Careful photography.”
30. ROMAN POLANSKI’S REBECCA
This film most likely doesn’t exist, but a report on it, contained in Christopher Sandford’s 2008 biography POLANSKI, is tantalizingly specific in its details. According to Sandford, Roman Polanski is rumored to have snuck into America (where he’s been a fugitive from justice since 1978) sometime in the early nineties and filmed an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s REBECCA at a Beverly Hills mansion owned by billionaire tech magnate Max Palevsky, with a cast that included Warren Beatty, Angelica Huston and Nicole Kidman.
31. THE FANTASTIC WORLD OF MATTHEW MADSON (Die phantastische Welt des Matthew Madson)
An ambitious (or so I’m told) animated science fiction feature from Germany. It was remade in 2006 as CATHEDRAL OF NEW EMOTIONS (Die Kathedrale der neuen Gefühle), but the former film is MIA.
32. NO MAMA NO
Based on the Roland Joffé directed British TVMs I’ve seen (including THE SPONGERS, UNITED KINGDOM and TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE), this 1979 ITV PLAYHOUSE entry, adapted from an unflinching Verity Bargate novel about post-partum depression, promises to contain superb performances, gripping cinematics and a blistering treatment that pulls no punches. Anyone know where I can find it?
33. AMERICAN CHRONICLES episode 13
AMERICAN CHRONICLES was a single season docu-series from Lynch-Frost Productions—as in David Lynch and Mark Frost, of TWIN PEAKS infamy. The first twelve episodes are relatively easy to track down, but “Champions,” which aired in the UK in June of ‘92, is the rarest AMERICAN CHRONICLES segment by far, and indeed possibly the scarcest of any Lynch-related media.
34. THE VERTICAL SMILE (Le sourire vertical)
A surreal ramble from France that became (in)famous for its sexual content, which apparently broached hardcore, and made this film a trailblazer in the category of cinematic erotica.
35. WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN
A British TV adaptation of Thomas Middleton’s Jacobean drama of seduction, revenge and murder with Diana Rigg and Godfrey Quigley, broadcast on January 11, 1965, as part of ITV’s short-lived BLOOD AND THUNDER series. The only other BLOOD AND THUNDER episode, FYI, was THE CHANGELING, another Middleton adaptation that, it seems, is now even more obscure than WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN.
36. DON’T DUSTURB! (Szédülés)
A subversive 1990 comedy that reportedly made waves in its native Hungary.
37. FORCED ENTRY
An intriguing 1988 dispatch from the glory days of Film Threat Video that like most FT releases is now impossible to find. From what I’ve been able to glean, FORCED ENTRY is a no-budget parody, made by someone named Norm Orschorschki, about a right-wing activist committee that uses abduction and torture to “protect the rich and powerful from the rest of us.”
38. THE SERPENT SON
A three-part 1979 BBC adaptation of the Aeschylus trilogy ORESTEIA, which is said to have a “science fiction aesthetic” and a cast that includes Diana Rigg, Patrick Magee and Helen Mirren.
39. VENTRILOQUIO
In which Italy’s late Carmelo Bene writes, directs and acts, portraying the protagonist of J.K. Huysmans’ decadent classic A REBOURS (known in the English-speaking world as AGAINST NATURE).
40. AXOLOTL (Ajolote)
A 2007 Argentine TVM adaptation of Julio Cortazar’s story “Axolotl,” about a man transforming into an axolotl.
41. THE INBREAKER
A Vancouver-lensed melodrama with grindhouse elements from 1974. About sibling rivalry on the high seas, THE INBREAKER is of interest to me because it’s the only film credit for the recently deceased composer Grant Horrocks, who for many years taught piano to a friend of mine (a friend who, I might add, has been bugging me incessantly about tracking down this movie—thus far I’ve had zero luck).
42. INEVITABLE GRACE
I skipped this noir-infused tribute to/rip-off of VERTIGO when it played the US arthouse circuit back in 1994—a mistake, as it’s been MIA ever since. The reviews weren’t exactly encouraging (according to VARIETY it’s an “inept melodrama” that’s “Clumsily conceived and directed”), but the cast roster renders INEVITABLE GRACE at the very least a curiosity: Maxwell Caulfield, Tippi Hedren, Jennifer Nicholson (Jack’s daughter), Taylor Negron, Victoria Sellers (Peter’s daughter) and Samantha Eggar. Co-written by Jade Barrymore (Drew’s mom) and directed by RETURN TO BABYLON’s Alex Monty Canawati.
43. THE CASTLE (Le chateau)
A 1984 adaptation of THE CASTLE by Franz Kafka, made for French television by Jean Kerchbron (of the impressive 1967 TVM adaptation of Gustav Meyrink’s THE GOLEM).
44. CUMULUS 9
From what I understand, CUMULUS 9’s own writer-director Aaron Michael Lacey doesn’t possess a DVD print of this 1992 film, which (based on what little info I’ve been able to piece together) appears to be a post-apocalyptic horror fest. As to whether or not it was ever released, or even completed, your guess is as good as mine.
Apparently, Lacey’s more recent directorial effort XSCAPE (2000) suffered a similar fate.
45. THE BEACH TRAIN
An allegedly “Felliniesque” American indie from 1969 that’s best known for the fact that John Cassavetes filched several members of its crew for A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974), despite the fact that he claimed not to understand the film.
46. THE DARK ROOM
Another Bruce McDonald rarity, this one a 2007 TV movie about which I know exactly nothing outside the fact that it has an interesting cast that includes John Bourgeois, Sandrine Holt and Stephen McHattie, and an extremely high imdb score.
47. YO EL VAMPIRO
A 1993 pilot for a Mexican TV series, consisting of three adaptations of classic horror stories, that (according to one online source) “does not seem to be cited anywhere and may not have been completed.” The director was the great Juan López Moctezuma, who made this pilot the same year as his better-known “lost film” EL ALIMENTO DEL MIEDO, and for the same company: the late Estudios América, whose abrupt shuttering orphaned both projects.
48. THE HMONG AND DEATH (Les hmong et la mort)
One of several impossible-to-find documentaries made by Belgium’s late Thierry Zéno, of the notorious artsploitation feature VASE DE NOCES (1974). THE HMONG AND DEATH partakes of Zéno’s favorite subject, death, in a depiction of the elaborate funeral rites of an animist tribe in northern Thailand.
49. ANIMATION SEXITATION
Taiwanese erotica from 1990 in which the sexual fantasies of several young people are dramatized with X-rated animation.
50. I’M NOT CRAZY!
Another early 1990s release from Film Threat Video, and one that’s become even more obscure than the abovementioned FORCED ENTRY. Outside an advert in an early 1990s issue of FILM THREAT VIDEO GUIDE (“Laugh until you scream! A macabre and suspenseful shocker!”), I’ve been able to find out literally nothing about this film, which in that advert is described thusly:
“Billy, in one world a bright, loving young man. In the other, prey to the hidden demons of bloody revenge…HATRED enters Billy like a fever, and as a family fatefully gathers, he accelerated into a FULL BLAST of blood curdling, demented violence!”
Sounds intriguing, no?