For every movie that is released, there are countless that never made it. Scripts that were never picked up. Films shut down in pre-production. Even disastrous shoots that were called off before they could be completed.
There aren't so many that make it right to the final hurdle and don't get a release after being completed. The stories behind these ones, though, are suitably surprising.
1. Hippie Hippie Shake
This biopic centred around the legendary obscenity trial brought against counterculture magazine Oz in 1960s London had an impressive pedigree thanks to Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit director Beeban Kidron, Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall and a cast including Sienna Miller, Cillian Murphy and Hugh Bonneville.
Early reviews were fairly positive, and the reasons for its shelving have never been entirely clear. Some blame a brewing media storm around Miller's love life, while others think it was the negative reaction of some of the real people depicted in the movie.
"You used to have to die before assorted hacks started munching your remains and modelling a new version of you out of their own excreta," said Germaine Greer with her usual aplomb.
2. Unlawful Killing
Directed and presented by Keith Allen (yes, that Keith Allen) and financed by Mohamed Al-Fayed (yes, that Mohamed Al-Fayed), this documentary investigating the 'murder' of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed is a conspiracy theorist's dream.
Attendees to the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 were treated to the film, which suggests that the establishment were involved in a major cover-up of Diana's death at the behest of the Royal Family.
Claiming a massive conspiracy and comparing Prince Philip to Fred West (oops), the UK censors demanded 87 cuts before it could be shown, and it didn't have any more luck in the US. It's easy to find online, however.
3. Dark Blood
River Phoenix died in 1993 during the filming of Dark Blood – the tale of a couple who are taken prisoner by a mysterious young man – leaving key scenes unfilmed, and Dark Blood sitting on a shelf for the best part of 19 years.
Joaquin Phoenix declined to record dialogue to dub his late brother's part, and the Phoenix family refused any involvement with the project. It was eventually screened in 2012 at a series of film festivals, with director George Sluizer narrating the events of the missing scenes, though has never had a broad release.
4. The Other Side of the Wind
Pretty much the definition of 'troubled genius', Orson Welles struggled to recapture the critical success of Citizen Kane throughout his career. Shooting of The Other Side of the Wind – the tale of a studio director who dies on the night of his 70th birthday party – stretched out over six years (1970-76) thanks to legal battles, casting issues, a lack of funds and the Iranian Revolution (which led to the negative being impounded).
Dogged by continuing lawsuits, Welles continued working on the movie but left it unfinished at the time of his death in 1985. In 2014, an attempt began to get the film completed to mark Welles' centenary (2015), including a crowdfunding campaign. Some 47 years after the whole debacle began, the movie is still reported to be in post-production.
5. Glitterati
Some of you may remember the sequence from 2002 Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Rules of Attraction in which actor Kip Pardue is shown at high speed, flirting his way through a European trip. Director Roger Avary filmed 70 hours of footage over a 15-day trip, cutting it together into a movie that would form a bridge between his first movie and the planned (but never made) adaptation of Ellis's Glamorama.
The problem was that most of the 'actors' involved didn't know that they were in a movie. Avary allegedly branded his own film "ethically questionable" and said that he would only screen it in private.
"For many legal reasons, it will never see the light of day," Ellis told AV Club. "You can't really show Glitterati in public, it's not possible. There are a lot of people who would be very upset. I don't even know if they got permission from a lot of the people in it, which might be a big problem [and] why it's only shown privately.
"[It's] basically about 90 minutes of [Pardue] in character actually seducing women throughout Europe."
6. The Day the Clown Cried
The Day the Clown Cried is the touchstone of never released movies. The tale of a clown imprisoned in a German concentration camp who eventually leads a group of Jewish children to their deaths (yes, you read that right), it was directed by and starred American comedian Jerry Lewis, and – depending on who you ask – was a triumph or a travesty.
Harry Shearer (best known for his work on The Simpsons) declared it a "perfect object", but Lewis himself was clearly in the latter camp. He suppressed the movie, and would later react angrily to anyone who asked him if it would ever be released.
Still, he donated his copy of the movie to the Library of Congress before his death with the weird stipulation that it not be screened before June 2024. So that's something to look forward to.
7. Empires of the Deep
Inspired by the success of Avatar, China launched its largest ever film production ($130 million) in 2010. After Monica Bellucci (wisely) dropped out, Olga Kurylenko stepped in to star in this sexy mermaid adventure.
The film burned through four directors, earning itself only an ever-inflating budget and a preview trailer that looks part Legendary Adventures of Hercules episode, part Ray Harryhausen reject and part awful PSone game.
The film remains unreleased, with the latest reports claiming that much of the cast and crew are still waiting to be paid.
8. Cocksucker Blues
This documentary was commissioned to coincide with the Rolling Stones' 1972 tour of the US, the band's first visit since the disastrous Altamont concert in 1969. What could possibly go wrong?
The Stones eventually decided that the film's portrayal of sex, drug use – including one 'groupie' shooting up heroin – and general debauchery probably wasn't something they wanted screening in your local Odeon.
A court order ruled that Cocksucker Blues (cute name, BTW) could only be screened if co-director Robert Frank was present, and even then no more than four times a year. There have indeed been screenings, but don't expect a home entertainment release any century soon.
9. Uncle Tom's Fairy Tales: The Movie for Homosexuals
Mystery surrounds the plot of Richard Pryor's 1968 movie Uncle Tom's Fairy Tale, which apparently was about a wealthy white man who is kidnapped by the Black Panthers after sexually assaulting an African-American woman and tried for all the great crimes in American history. How this was supposed to particularly appeal to the LGBTQ community is unknown.
Legend had it that the film was shredded in a fight between Pryor and his then-wife Shelley Bonis during a screening at their house. Its whereabouts in the intervening decades is debated, but scenes from the movie were eventually screened at a 2005 Pryor retrospective, prompting a lawsuit from his last wife Jennifer Lee-Pryor which is still pending.
10. My Best Friend's Birthday
Back in the '80s, an unknown young amateur filmmaker called Quentin Tarantino split his time between working in an LA video rental store and directing, writing and starring in a 70-minute movie about a man desperately trying to do something nice for his friend's birthday (with hilarious results).
My Best Friend's Birthday was shot for about $5,000, but was partially destroyed in a fire in a film lab. The 36 remaining minutes have screened at film festivals but never received an official release. It can be found online without too much hard work.
11. Fantastic Four
The Fantastic Four disaster of 2015 wasn't the first movie that was rushed into existence in a bid to keep hold of the rights to Marvel's oldest superhero team. Faced with losing control of the property, German producer Bernd Eichinger hired Hollywood indie legend Roger Corman to create a movie on a $1 million budget.
A trailer was released and the movie was teased at Comic-Con, but for reasons that remain unclear, the movie was never released. Eichinger hung in there and eventually got to produce the 'proper' 2005 movie and its sequel, while the elusive (and notoriously campy) Corman film became something of a legend, eventually spawning a documentary called Doomed!. And it's possibly not even the worst FF movie ever made.
