Holy Grail Films

The undeniable king of "lost" films. Jerry Lewis' Holocaust comedy clusterfuck. Library of Congress in 2024 here I come.

Starring Richard Pryor and directed by film student-at the time Penelope Spheeris (director of The Decline of Western Civilization trilogy)

Plot: A white man goes on trial for having raped a black woman.

At the time of the making of this film, Richard Pryor's wife complained that he was paying more attention to the film than he was to her, so he shredded the negative.

No copies of the film were known to have survived, however in 2005, scenes from the film appeared in a retrospective while Pryor was being honored by the Directors Guild of America. There is still a law suite pending to this day between Pryor’s ex wife and his daughter over this film and who should own it.

Bill Cosby has seen it.

It's talked about in some length in the new Pryor biography called Furious Cool.

It is believed that this film existed until 1967. Inventory records indicated that the only remaining print was being stored in MGM's vault #7 which was destroyed by fire in 1967. By that time, all other elements had been destroyed or were missing.

Easily the most mysterious and drooled over of all the yet to be found b-movies out there. It's reputation has grown to a ridiculous size and some don't even think it exists at all.

obscurityandbeyond.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/lost-movie-detective-dead-end-1985.html

Who Killed Bambi? - 1978

Russ Meyer was set to direct this film, which was to be the first featuring the Sex Pistols. The movie was intended as a pseudo-punk version of A Hard Day’s Night. Just a day and a half worth of shooting were completed as the filming stopped when the executives at 20th Century Fox read the script. The Producers and decision-makers were so shocked that they pulled all funding. The footage that exists shows Sting (the leader of a pop group called The Blow-Waves) assaulting drummer Paul Cook as he stops to ask for directions.

blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/malcolm_meyer_rotten_vicious_m.html

blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/who_killed_bambi_-_a_screenpla.html

Once the most sought after porn on the internet, it was finally uploaded in the summer of 2009 when a VHS copy was finally ascertained much to the delight of whacked out cinephiles.

A power surge sends whacked out computer programmer Squeegie Hornio and his brother Ornio into cyberspace where they meet up with, have sex with, and even fight, a variety of characters from a popular video game.

STILL MISSING & NOT LISTED ON IMDB

Heartbeat in the Brain - 1970

Everything you ever wanted to know about trepanation (boring a hole into your skull to gain enlightenment) but were afraid to ask. "Bore hole" enthusiast Joe Mellen films fellow trepper Amanda Feilding during a self drilling. This flick has been known to clear many a room. Fun Facts! Rumor has it Bernardo Bertolucci is a fan of the film; John and Yoko considered the procedure back in the day.

Exploitation fans have been waiting on this flick to be released forever. Constant delayed dvd release dates for years and years make people question if it'll ever see the light of day.

What sounds like a masterpiece of spooky cinema, this Martin Landau creeper still lies dormant somewhere in somebody's attic or on some 8 hour SLP tape along with some Twilight Zone episodes.

Caused a ruckus at Cannes, hasn't been seen since...

This Argentine film is either telling a dangerous political story in an allegorical manner, or is simply surrealistic and nonsensical. In either case, it tells of an upper-class family whose inner dynamics are exposed during the evening meal. As time goes by, these mealtime gatherings grow less and less conventional and polite, often degenerating into food fights. Certain other topics are touched on, such as incest, desecration of mother figures, and so on. The family members are all apparently waiting for someone named Hallewyn to appear at their meals.

Apparently this one was shown in the International Film Festival of Mar Del Plata in 2003, which means there's still a copy out there.

ilsa vs bruce lee in the triangle of death

www.badmovieplanet.com/unknownmovies/reviews/rev420.html

Game in the Sand (German: Spiel im Sand) is an unreleased short film written and directed by Werner Herzog in 1964. The plot concerns four children and a rooster in a cardboard box[2], and includes a scene where the chicken is buried in sand up to its neck.[3] Very little information about the film and its production is known.

The film has never been published or publicly exhibited, and Herzog has stated that he will never give it a release in his lifetime. Herzog says that the shooting "got out of hand," in a way which caused him to abandon the project. He has likened the shoot to controversial moments in his later film Even Dwarfs Started Small, such as young piglets suckling on the corpse of a dead mother pig, and cannibalistic chickens, or when an actor was accidentally set on fire and run over by a truck.[4] These moments were allowed a release in Dwarfs, but Herzog decided that the footage of Game in the Sand was not fit for release.

Batman Dracula is a 1964 American film that was produced and directed by Andy Warhol, without the permission of DC Comics. It was screened only at his art exibits. A fan of the Batman serials, Warhol's movie was a "homage" to the series, and is considered the first appearance of a blatantly campy Batman. No prints of the film are known to exist.

From IMDB Message Board:

it DOES exist and is owned by the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

With the recent hd remastered few of the Warhol screentests on dvd now it seems the Museum have changed their policy to never show his films outside of museums. Let's hope we get this eventually.

As someone else mentioned around 25 seconds worth from i think 3 scenes are featured in Jack Smith and The Destruction of Atlantis (and it honestly looks amazing!!!)

One of the interviewees in the documentary said that Batman Dracula was never finished, and that after shooting Smith fell out with Warhol because Warhol had just left the camera on and turned round to make some canvases, which meant Smith was out of shot most of the time essentially ruining the scenes.
So although i don't think a complete film is in existence, most of the random parts will be.
(sorry for rambling structure, very tired!)

JUST FOUND YOUTUBE FOOTAGE!!! LEGIT!?!?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8OMdb9rn7A

Son of Heatwave 1960s/70s - NOT ON IMDB

This one's a real mystery. I was recently contacted by someone about an independent film made in the late sixties/early seventies that toured the college campus circuit. He hadn't seen it himself and couldn't remember the exact title or any other info but he does recall the basic plot as described to him by folks fortunate enough to catch it. Jesus returns to earth and performs various miracles (tearing up a speeding ticket; giving a young woman large breasts, leaving everyone with an ecstatic smile on their face). Later he's confronted in the ghetto with comments like "If you really loved those kids, you'd turn them white!" After granting their wish he's immediately chased down the street by an angry mob and escapes by running across a swimming pool as the mob falls in the water. Eventually, a bunch of rednecks nail Jesus to a giant peace symbol and set him on fire. In the end, a bruised and bloodied Jesus grabs a machine gun and declares, "OK, no more Mr. Nice Guy!" If this film sounds in any way familiar please, please, please drop me a line. I'm still not sure if rumors of this film's existence aren't just the results of a mass halluncination.

Update! A recent contact informed me that in the seventies, Canadian parliment tried to ban a film, sounding very similar to the one described above, by passing legislation (a Private Member's Bill). Ring any bells?

Copied from Pimpadelic Wonderland.

Convention City was scandalous enough that, after the motion picture production code was passed, further screenings were banned. It had name stars like Joan Blondell, Dick Powell and Mary Astor. It pushed the boundaries of 1930′s morality and, in fact, this movie could have hastened adoption of the code. Warner Brothers apparently destroyed this one deliberately. It competes with London After Midnight as the most sought-after lost film. The plot revolved around drunk and sexed-up employees of the Honeywell Rubber Company, at a convention in Atlantic City. Dr. James Wingate, chair of the Motion Picture Division of the State of New York Department of Education — which oversaw the state’s censorship board — described it as “a pretty rowdy picture, dealing largely with drunkenness, blackmail and lechery, and without any particularly sympathetic characters or elements.”

Santo Gold's "Blood Circus" is a science fiction movie, with a professional-wrestling theme, produced in 1985. The movie was produced by Baltimore-native Santo Victor Rigatuso, also called Robert "Bob" Harris, who promoted it through infomercials for his mail-order "Santo Gold" jewelry business.

ilming for Blood Circus began in 1985. After spending two years editing it, Rigatuso could not find a distributor for the film. He ended up renting several theaters in the Baltimore area to show his film. It was shown for only a week, and took in far less than the $2 million it cost to make the movie. The movie was never shown to the public after it ended its initial run, and the original copy of the film was believed to have been lost.[3] Clips of Blood Circus can still be seen in portions of "Santo Gold" infomercials circulating on the internet.

In 2008, the Santo Gold website[4] announced that the 35mm negatives of "Blood Circus" had finally been found, and that producers were being sought for its release.

In June 2011, the 35mm negatives was offered for auction on eBay with a starting bid of $21 million and a sale price of $750 million, with offers for a "partnership"; the auction ended June 21, 2011 with no takers.

ON YOUTUBE NOW!!!

Tim Burton directed. Was only broadcast on the Disney Channel, which commissioned it, once: Halloween night, 1983. Contrary to popular belief, this film contains no animation. Tim Burton's "Hansel and Gretel" is a live action film short featuring Japanese actors and striking set designs reminiscent of his later work in films such as "Beetle Juice" and "Edward Scissorhands". This film was created during Tim Burton's employment at Disney Feature Animation.

At first, many thought the Raiders of Lost Ark The Adaptation didn't even exist outside of a few copies, but sure enough, it turned up on the net and spread out.

Production was stopped by Soviet officials in 1937. Sergei M. Eisenstein had spent two years filming and had up to 3 different completed versions. The shot material in movie form was taken to a film storage vault, which was destroyed during a German bombing raid in the war. The film was confirmed to be destroyed at this time, however the government is thought to have destroyed it earlier on. Eisenstein, however saved two frames from the beginning and end of all of his shots and in the mid 1960s these were put together according to script, story board, and notes on the film to a 31-minute reconstruction of film stills.

Sergei M. Eisenstein reportedly claimed to have a print of this film hidden away where one one could find it. In the 60 years since his death a print has not been found. It is believed to have been among the cans of film the Soviet government removed from Eisenstein's home the morning after his death.

The longest film in cinema history clocking in at 87 hours. Not really following any standard plot structure, the film mostly consists of poet L.D. Groban reciting his own poem of 4,080 pages, inter-spliced with X-rated film footage and rock music videos.

Timothy Carey's unfinished Tweet's Ladies Of Pasadena

Parts of the original camera negative were stolen, so the film makers had no choice but to assemble many scenes from alternate takes. Until today the original negative has not been found.
I'd have to go with the original cut/footage from Nobody's the Greatest (Un genio, due compari, un pollo), the sequel to My Name is Nobody. It stars Terence Hill, Patrick McGoohan, Miou-Miou, and Klaus Kinski. The film was completed and edited and then someone stole the only print. The version that was released was compiled completely from outtakes and suffered accordingly. I pray that the thief someday comes forward with the original version.

FOUND WITH NO ENGLISH SUBS

Ensalada Baudelaire (Spain, 78)

A cruel story about a decadent upper-class marriage, whose yacht cruise is converted into a session of sadism by the arrival of two strangers.Marina Lager plays the icy, beautiful Andrea, the principal victim of the humiliating games, whilst her restrained husband watches. The best moment is without doubt the banquet the kidnappers eat from the naked body of their hostage.

Officially unreleased but Catalan film library (Filmoteca de Catalunya) has a remastered version and some collectors have managed to get a copy of it. What I don't understand is why these FdC prints are not being released on DVD as they have had remastered versions on DVD format for some years now. Maybe there just isn't enough interest for this kind of stuff?

FOUND WITH ENGLISH SUBS

This children's fantasy features live animals in all the lead roles as it tells the story of a good fairy's magic wand that is stolen by a malicious monkey who uses the tool to control all the elements. Fortunately, two daring ducks fly via balloon to the Land of the Doves where they are rendered immune to the monkey's evil mojo. Later, the ducks defeat the primate and turn him to stone. They then take the wand back to its rightful owner.

A french made child movie with all the roles played by real animals! It's a festival in town, but the wand of the good fairy gets stolen by sneaky and diabolical the Black Troll, who hates love and kindness since the fairy didn't give him her hand in marriage. Per The Poet gets his girlfriend Barbara turned into stone and leaves with the fairy to the Black Trolls land to return the wand.

According to reliable source this may be a hoax:

"Of your titles I seem to recall the Adam West film as one of those Tom Weaver or other sci-fi/fantasy book listings that's never turned up. When I was actively working in the industry in the '70s and '80s I would keep track of all announced English-language productions worldwide, and a good many titles were
spurious only because they never started shooting on time, but were announced and publicized, or were halted early in production. Such cinderellas still exist in the literature but with no film to match. I sent Alan Goble, he of the encyclopedic intl. movie list, a rundown on about 50 of these fake films that he had listed since the '80s, and I believe he recently cleaned them out of his website by using a terminology of "Project announced" or something like that to take care of nonexistent films."

STILL MISSING

www.kiddiematinee.com/s-santacircus.html

Don’t miss this ultra rare witchcraft documentary by notorious British exploitation veteran Derek Ford. Hairdresser Penny is curious about paganism and meets Alex Saunders, the infamous ‘King of Witches’, for a pint at her local. She is soon initiated – undergoing the mysterious rites of the First Degree – and attends a pagan wedding, complete with groovy post-ceremony ‘free expressive dance’. Saunders, dressed as Anubis, then leads his circle in the climatic Egyptian Rites of Ra. Obscure prog band The Spindle provide the evocative and intense soundtrack to this quirky but respectful film.

As far as I'm aware, the British Film Institute have a mint copy of this but haven't released it commercially.
If anyone knows of a bootleg version, I'd be delighted to hear about it.

www.cornishwitchcraft.co.uk/images/shiels-coven1.jpg

Man in the film was unaware he was being filmed to appear in an experimental film and sued to stop the distribution of the film. He won the case and his name and that of the professional actress in the film were not divulged. The film has circulated in an illegal video version.
The director spent 16 months in jail.
Negatives were destroyed

Super cheap retelling of the life of porn star John Holmes is an okay cautionary tale, 10 October 2005
6/10
Author: dbborroughs from Glen Cove, New York

This has to be one of the first films that looked at the life and times of porn star John Holmes. Here he's named John Wade, a twist of Holmes John Wadd character. This film takes us from the moment John decides to do porn on through his slide into drugs, crime and HIV. Its supposedly the inspiration for Boogie Nights and covers (more clearly) the murderous events depicted in Wonderland.

Made on the cheap, its two or three steps above a home movie, though this is actually an okay look at Holmes and his world. In its way the cheapness adds to the sleaziness of it all and at times makes you feel like you're watching real people behaving like idiots. I'm not sure if its suppose to be wholly serious or not because I'm not sure if some of the humor is intentional or unintentional. Part of the problem is that the film is populated by non-actors, some of which really really can't act, so scenes sometimes have odd "bends" to them. It makes the film a scary cautionary tale about how dumb some people can be and how drugs can make people dumber. In an odd way it gives the film a reality the big budget Hollywood versions didn't have. Making things weirder, especially if you know the Holmes story, is the fact that no one looks like their real life counterparts -the Holmes character is played by a thin lanky balding high school janitor. Over all its not bad, but it could have been better with a budget of any sort.

(Oh, did I mention there is no nudity and only fleeting sex?)

This is an odd film. If you're curious about truly independent films and don't mind seeing another take on the life of John Holmes give it a shot. Though be ready for a really cheap viewing experience.

(I read somewhere that the director was so fed up with the problems of making this and then trying to get it seen he gave up and went off to repair air conditioners. I have no idea if its true but its an interesting side note to this story)

Apparently it was somehow a major influence on "Boogie Nights" -- I have no idea how Paul Thomas Anderson found a copy of it either.

templeofschlock.blogspot.com/2009/07/lost-and-still-not-found-case-file-38_29.html

2 hour 45 minute cut.

3 hour cut.

The original version entitled "The Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell" originally ran some 175 minutes in length. The only remaining print of it in that form is thought to be stored in a New York film lab.

7 hour cut.

5 hour cut.