Lost Bad Movies

[Jim H]

There was a SA movie made in the late 70s called "Mighty Man" - a black superhero righting wrongs in South Africa - which I get asked  about a bit: it seems to be a lost film as we don;t have it. It was directed by the person who made The Demon.

That legitimately sounds pretty interesting.  Too bad. 

Does remind me..  I suspect there's a lot more lost films outside the typical scope of things that I hear about, or indeed many on this board in the anglosphere. 

For example, some of the Shaw Brothers films, some of them never got a home video release, and while I think they archived all their negatives I remember hearing some were in such bad shape when IVL/Celestial was releasing them remastered on DVD and Bluray, some couldn't even be transferred.  I would hazard a guess that includes the ones never put out on home video, as they'd been sitting in place untouched for so long. 

They're probably some of their crappier titles too, as Shaw dug pretty deep when releasing their films on video over the years, almost everything that seemed remotely interesting got put out.  And that's from Shaw, a legit fully featured studio that had worldwide releases. 

[dcj2112]

There was a SA movie made in the late 70s called "Mighty Man" - a black superhero righting wrongs in South Africa - which I get asked  about a bit: it seems to be a lost film as we don;t have it. It was directed by the person who made The Demon.

That legitimately sounds pretty interesting.  Too bad. 

Does remind me..  I suspect there's a lot more lost films outside the typical scope of things that I hear about, or indeed many on this board in the anglosphere. 

For example, some of the Shaw Brothers films, some of them never got a home video release, and while I think they archived all their negatives I remember hearing some were in such bad shape when IVL/Celestial was releasing them remastered on DVD and Bluray, some couldn't even be transferred.  I would hazard a guess that includes the ones never put out on home video, as they'd been sitting in place untouched for so long. 

They're probably some of their crappier titles too, as Shaw dug pretty deep when releasing their films on video over the years, almost everything that seemed remotely interesting got put out.  And that's from Shaw, a legit fully featured studio that had worldwide releases. 

That makes me think of another thing I'd do if I had a ton of money and all the free time in the world. I'd love to buy old film vaults/storage units and search through them until I find the odd lost film. I'm sure for older films it would be slim pickings these days as so many have been found and the ones that haven't been just don't exist anymore. But for ones that haven't been recovered yet you do here of SOME still turning up all these decades later.

Then as you mentioned Shaws was an actual studio. With home video cameras become more and more sophisticated during the 1980s I'm wondering how many no budget things are out there that have just never seen the light of day. You know things that just feature nobodies and you're lucky if any production values were put into the things. I mean we're bad movie fans damn it! I'm sure there's a bunch of old so bad they're good things out there that we'd get a kick out of but we'll just never know about.

[Jim H]

There was a SA movie made in the late 70s called "Mighty Man" - a black superhero righting wrongs in South Africa - which I get asked  about a bit: it seems to be a lost film as we don;t have it. It was directed by the person who made The Demon.

That legitimately sounds pretty interesting.  Too bad. 

Does remind me..  I suspect there's a lot more lost films outside the typical scope of things that I hear about, or indeed many on this board in the anglosphere. 

For example, some of the Shaw Brothers films, some of them never got a home video release, and while I think they archived all their negatives I remember hearing some were in such bad shape when IVL/Celestial was releasing them remastered on DVD and Bluray, some couldn't even be transferred.  I would hazard a guess that includes the ones never put out on home video, as they'd been sitting in place untouched for so long. 

They're probably some of their crappier titles too, as Shaw dug pretty deep when releasing their films on video over the years, almost everything that seemed remotely interesting got put out.  And that's from Shaw, a legit fully featured studio that had worldwide releases. 

That makes me think of another thing I'd do if I had a ton of money and all the free time in the world. I'd love to buy old film vaults/storage units and search through them until I find the odd lost film. I'm sure for older films it would be slim pickings these days as so many have been found and the ones that haven't been just don't exist anymore. But for ones that haven't been recovered yet you do here of SOME still turning up all these decades later.

Then as you mentioned Shaws was an actual studio. With home video cameras become more and more sophisticated during the 1980s I'm wondering how many no budget things are out there that have just never seen the light of day. You know things that just feature nobodies and you're lucky if any production values were put into the things. I mean we're bad movie fans damn it! I'm sure there's a bunch of old so bad they're good things out there that we'd get a kick out of but we'll just never know about.

Yeah, that'd be a good project.  I definitely suspect there are still a decent number of lost films that will be recovered - they still occasionally find some mislabeled (or unlabeled) even in very good film archives, and there are still huge archives out there.  A Melies short was discovered in a Czech vault in 2016 for instance, just on a random reel.  Very occasionally one will turn up in an attic, barn, or storage locker facility as well. 

Also, talking about small films just reminds me of Wicked World.  I gather it did get some kind of tiny VHS release, but for the most part it couldn't be found until last year.  I'm sure you're right, that there's more of those sorts of films that haven't made there way to us yet - some more will probably get pushed out onto streaming platforms eventually, or boutique Blurays.