"Lost" Movies

When I was in high school in the late 60's I went to a boarding school where, if your GPA was good enough, you could be excused from nightly study hall to go to the movies. So I saw a lot of movies and the habit continued well into my twenties (having three TV channels and no way to see movies outside the theater helped, too.)

There were a few that stuck with me mainly because they were reasonably popular and/or well reviewed at the time but have largely disappeared. I know it would probably be possible to track them down, but it's curious that they never seem to show up on Netflix or the various cable channels. So here's a thread devoted to forgotten treasures including:

Goodbye, Columbus - Ali McGraw at her peak ( it was said she didn't need to act to play Philip Roth's spoiled princess), Richard Benjamin trying to cross from character to lead actor, a great script, and terrific supporting roles.

Summer of '42 - A glorious Jennifer O'Neil in every adolescent boy's dream story. I wonder if it would have to be called Summer of Statutory Rape if it came out today.

Last Summer - the very sexy young Barbara Hershey in a nasty little movie. Responsible for many subsequent stories of the spirit of a dying seagull entering Barbara resulting in her changing her name to Barbara Seagull until she grew up.

Castle Keep - a "surreal" war movie, before surreal became a cliche. I only vaguely remember it, but it was intriguing enough that I went two nights in a row. My main memory images are of Burt Lancaster wandering through it with this "What the hell did I get into?" look.

Little Fauss and Big Halsy - maybe the worst movie title ever. Robert Redford (who doesn't get enough credit for being brave enough to play a**holes) and Michael J. Pollard, during his fifteen minutes of post Bonnie and Clyde fame as biker buddies/ex-buddies.

Interested in other lost treasures.

 

A couple of my family members were extras in this one! They were in one of the crowd scenes. Got a free box lunch for doing it.

I think they went and saw it at the theater when it came out and were able to see that they were in the final cut. This thing probably played on TV at some point, but I don't think it ever even made it to VHS, let alone DVD. I've checked on it every so often.

 

Recall Castle Keep on release - not a bad little flick

 

There was speculation that the negative and possibly all prints of Last Summer were lost (with only a TV tape transfer remaining), but I read somewhere (I think criterionforum.org) that Warner Bros. does have the negative. Whether they will ever release it on disk is another question.

Castle Keep was released on DVD in a full screen and then a later correct widescreen edition, I see that the widescreen version appears to be out of print and somewhat expensive.

Something for Everyone is one that I saw years ago at a repertory theater that doesn't seem to show up much (not available on disk AFAIK). Good roles for Michael York and Angela Lansbury. Some similarities to Passolini's Teorema from a few years earlier.

I haven't seen these but would like to, they have similarities to Jules and Jim:

Willie and Phil: I'm a big fan of Paul Mazursky and Margot Kidder. I think there's an Italian DVD but I haven't picked it up for some reason, maybe holding out hope it would be released on BD (stranger things have happened).
Lovin' Molly: Big fan of Blythe Danner. This one appears to be available for Amazon streaming and has some non-USA DVDs as well.

Get Crazy used to show up on cable, it now appears as if it may really be almost lost, as director Allan Arkush reports that the producers of this went bankrupt and he fears that the negatives and other film elements including the audio masters have disappeared. There is a TV tape transfer and a few battered prints around. This is a great movie, I saw it on release in 1983.

 

A movie most fans have heard of (Altman, ya know), but probably few have seen: Brewster McCloud .

Bizarre, weird and quirky flick. To me, it's notable because it was the first movie (and first real acting job) for Shelly Duvall. From Wikipedia:

" Was discovered in 1970 by Brian McKay and Tommy Thompson, who spotted her at a party while scouting locations for Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud (1970) in Houston, Texas. At the time, she was majoring in nutrition and diet therapy at South Texas Junior College and working as a cosmetics salesperson at a Foley's department store. Although she had no prior acting experience, she was cast by Altman in the film and won a three-picture contract with MGM for her performance."

 

That was indeed one weird movie

 

If you like Brewster McCloud and haven't seen them, I strongly recommend these comedies from director Alan Rudolph:

Trixie
Roadie
Breakfast of Champions

Nick Nolte gives great comic performances in Trixie and Breakfast of Champions, although the latter film is hurt by a weak performance from Bruce Willis (can't fault him too much, the movie wouldn't have been made without his interest). All of these are way off-kilter.

 

Love Lou Reed's role in this film. Saw it in 83 on cable.
Youtube to the rescue. So much lost (and found) art on that site.
Looks like a pretty high quality copy.

 

Man, none of these movies are "lost" to me. They're still out there -- you just have to hunt them down. The ones that are really lost are the ones where the negatives and tracks are gone, or there's legal problems, or some cloud over the rights that prevents it from being reissued on home video (like FM, American Hot Wax, and many others). That's what I call lost.

"Obscure" moves are just obscure. Goodbye Columbus and Summer of 42 were pretty good-sized hits and well-remembered. The others... not so much.

I did the mastering in the 1980s on Summer of 42, and that's a soft, weird, "smeary" movie -- made at the height of the 1970s trend to put tons of diffusion and fog filters on the lens. Not a great look.

 

House of Numbers- Jack Palance playing twin brothers. apparently not worthy of any digital release.
80 Steps To Jonah-Wayne Newton, Butch Patrick...
I consider these 2 lost...

 

Exactly, hence the "quotes" - forgotten would probably have been a better word for the thread title, the point being that no one is going to track them down if they don't remember in the first place. Summer of '42 and Columbus may have been hits, but I wonder if anyone under the age of 40 is familiar with them.

The Brewster McCloud reference is interesting. Nashville (and all the Altman movies but MASH from his "classic" period) are worth noting, too. I'm not sure his films have aged well... Has anyone watched Nashville in the last thirty years? I remember Pauline Kael writing about it in ecstasy, as though it had been directed by Moses, but, in retrospect, making a movie about country music and musicians without any, you know, actual country music or musicians may have been revealed as the act of cultural hubris that it was. Aside from the Keith Carradine and Lily Tomlin charcters,my only real memory of it is looking over, an hour in, and seeing my girlfriend fast asleep, which was probably a more prescient review than Kael provided.

 

I've always meant to catch this one but have never gotten around to it. The only thing I really know about it is that it's advertised on a Times Square theater marquee during the opening credits of Shaft.

 

Interestingly, there was a time when movies like this (and their French and German counterparts - though I was less keen on the German movies at the time) would regularly turn up late-sh on BBC2 on a Sunday night. Meanwhile, late on Saturday, you could see any amount of old American crime/noir films on BBC1.

Now you get asinine comedies and repetitive action movies from the last 10-20 years and a who;e generation have missed out

 

I would certainly hope so. Criterion just reissued it on both Blu-ray and DVD a little over a year ago, and before that there was a Paramount DVD in 2000 that was greeted with a fair amount of attention by Altman fans.

 

I'm sure that it looks great sitting on the shelf next to its brothers and sisters, but collecting it and actually sitting through it are two different things.

 

Brewster McCloud is one of those early 70s countercultural minor classics. Altman was on such a roll after the surprise success of the smash hit M*A*S*H, and he parleyed that into an extraordinary series of movies for the next several years, some of which are acknowledged classics (McCabe & Mrs Miller, Nashville), some of which are underrated near-masterpieces (California Split, Thieves Like Us), and some of which are cult favorites (The Long Goodbye, Three Women, and this one).

It represents a sustained period of daring creative activity the likes of which we don't see often in the American movie industry.

 

Nashville is one of my favorite three movies of all time...

 

Goodbye, Columbus has been broadcast, with commercials but uncut, on the MOVIES! network in the last two years. Swear words muted and any hint of nudity blurred (nicely done if they have to do it). I think Summer of '42 has too.

 

I've watched Nashville a couple of times.... once was just within the past couple of months, actually.

 

The Animated feature SHINBONE ALLEY, based on a Broadway Musical that was in turn based on Don Marquis' "Archie and Mahitabel" stories, seemed to have disappeared without a trace-no second run theatre showings, no TV plays-after It opened about 1970 or so.

 

To each his own. I think Nashville is eminently watchable.

TCM airs Summer... occasionally. Great movie.

The book was co-written by Mel Brooks. A real curio. Saw it late at night on a PBS station years ago when I was down with the flu and couldn't sleep.

 

"Daytona Beach Weekend (Sixtieth Arts, 1965)

Shot in 16mm, in Black and White, this was shown in Drive Ins in the SE portion of the US. It may have not even made it to any theaters. It didn't make it to the NE in any form.

Of note, the great Del Shannon performs at least 2 songs in this movie.

Supposedly, finding a copy of this in any form is next to impossible. I know I've never seen one

This is one of those films that just HAS to be found and issued on DVD, even if they dont restore it.

 

A few random picks:

"London After Midnight" No known prints exist.

"“Wasei Kingu Kongu” aka King Kong Appears In Edo (King Kong imitation made in Japan in the 30's) Ditto

"The Day The Clown Cried" Unreleased legendary Jerry Lewis-directed film

"The Keep" Although released on vhs and laserdisc, this Michael Mann-directed movie appears to be tied up in rights limbo

 

On the other hand, there are Films that are assumed to have been lost, but they've been under somebody's nose all the time. Well, one anyway. THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM was thought lost in the 60s, It's rediscovery announced about '69 or '70. But people who worked at Warners in the 60s knew of a print on the lot before that, and one or two directors ran it for reference(They were making their own wax museum horror movies).

 

This is superb.