The harsh truth of the film industry is that movies are business investments.
In the best-case scenario, a movie thrills audiences and makes producers happier and
wealthier.
But sometimes a movie can be so bad, so bizarre, and so damaging to the reputation of a studio
that the people in charge will willingly kill it, keeping it away from audiences and writing
it off as a lost cause.
Here are a few movies that, if the studios had their way, the public would never, ever
get to see.
"Here is entertainment so entertaining, so uplifting, so satifactual, you'll want to
see it again and again."
Rad
Released in 1986, Rad follows a young, unsigned BMXer striving to come out on top in the world's
greatest off-road bike race.
It's gnarly with a capital G, and its camp value is off the charts.
"Would you try to understand the only thing I'm good at is racing this bike!"
Reviewers hated it, blaming stilted performances, and a totally inexplicable plot.
Viewers with a healthy sense of irony, however, can still find plenty to appreciate, like
a scene in which characters take their bikes to the school dance — and onto the dance
floor.
Rad may fail at what it's trying to do, but it goes above and beyond as a relic of its
era, so it's well worth tracking down online or on unofficial DVDs.
It was popular as a rental in the days of VHS, but the studio has all but abandoned
it since — unfortunate, considering its growing value as an examination of '80s culture
at its most totally radical.
Martin
One of the late George Romero's best and most interesting horror movies is also his hardest
to track down.
You can find a copy of Night of the Living Dead anywhere, but if you want to legitimately
see Martin, you'll have to pony up for an out-of-print DVD or track down a bootleg copy.
The story of a young man in Pittsburgh who may or may not be an ageless vampire, Martin
is a movie that sticks with you.
Its hero, who appears unsure as to whether or not he's a monster, is sweet and sympathetic,
which makes the scenes of him drugging, cutting, and drinking the blood from people all the
more disquieting.
"Don't be afraid.
You'll just go to sleep.
I don't have to hurt you now."
It's not the quality of the film that keeps it out of viewers' hands, because it's actually
pretty highly regarded among its fans.
It's reportedly not available because the producer who owns the rights for its release
simply wants too much money for it.
It's a shame it's out of print, because it's a unique, wonderfully crafted take on the
vampire fable, and an example of how to remix old monster stories in a hauntingly effective
way.
The Last Movie
There's a lot of interesting things going on in Dennis Hopper's second feature, 1971's
The Last Movie.
The problem is, they're not presented in an interesting way.
You really can't fault Universal Pictures for burying this movie and never releasing
it on DVD.
Roger Ebert wasn't kidding when he summed it up as "a wasteland of cinematic wreckage."
It's even edited out of order to the point of incoherence; the title card for the movie
doesn't appear until 26 minutes in.
"And I want it legitimate and different.
And better than its ever been done."
A few viewings could help you cobble together the meaning of the movie, which follows Hopper's
character as he goes native in Peru and contends with locals who can't tell that movies aren't
reality.
But it's a joyless, aggravating experience.
Despite the criticism, and the fact that the film's performance kept Hopper out of the
director's chair for nearly a decade afterward, Hopper supported the movie up to his final
days, screening it on his own while trying to secure a home video revival.
Let It Be
The film that captured the Beatles struggling to recapture their chemistry, Let It Be has
developed a reputation over the years as a portrait of a band dissolving.
In reality, it's not as explosive as has been implied, unless you were naive enough to think
the bandmates never bickered.
While it may have been a bummer at the time, the movie is an interesting, loosely-constructed
chronicle of the recording sessions leading up to their legendary final rooftop performance.
It doesn't make anybody look good, but it doesn't make anyone look that bad, either,
and any Beatles fan is apt to find something intriguing in the film's many moments.
Whether it's the implied drama of Yoko Ono lurking at the fringes of the studio or the
way the band lights up when it comes time to play some music, it's an intriguing document,
with the rooftop performance serving as an unlikely swan song to one of the most successful
musical runs of all time.
So why hasn't it ever released on DVD or Blu-ray?
While it's consistently been suppressed through threat of lawsuit by its image-conscious cast,
the reality today is that — for a layman audience — the movie's just not very good
as a movie.
It's got an aimless structure and lousy sound.
It's a fans-only experience of a depressing time that a lot of casual music-lovers probably
wouldn't care to see.
The Star Wars trilogy
In what is perhaps the biggest, strangest case of cinematic injustice on this list,
the original three Star Wars movies — undoubtedly some of the most influential films of all
time — are extremely difficult to find in their original form.
For decades now, each release of the movies has shown incremental changes in their content,
all in the name of moving, quote, "closer" to what's been called George Lucas' original
vision.
The most egregious examples of this cinematic revisionism were the Star Wars special editions,
released in 1997 in an overt attempt to replace, rather than complement, the trilogy.
As those special editions were developed, it became increasingly harder for actual,
original versions of the movies to be found.
The shortage of official releases has led to fan edits of the special editions, which
keep the cleaned-up visuals and sound while ditching the extraneous junk.
The fact that fans have had to do this with some of the highest-grossing, most culturally-embedded
movies ever is nothing short of absurd, and the day Disney releases the originals in a
restored format will be a cause for celebration.
Speaking of Star Wars celebrations...
The Star Wars Holiday Special
With a legendary reputation in the world of bad entertainment, the Star Wars Holiday Special
is so far afield from what makes the franchise great that it boggles the mind.
Released after the success of the first movie, this largely plotless, overlong, ugly, and
aggressively unentertaining slog poses itself as a variety show in space, which leads to
surreal moments like Bea Arthur singing to aliens in a cantina, and Wookies watching
what can only be described as holographic dance porno.
"I am your experience, so experience me."
"I am your pleasure.
So enjoy me."
It's frequently been reported that George Lucas has said that if he had the time, he
would destroy every copy in existence — and, really, someone should've let him.
Ironically or not, there's no fun to be had here.
The Star Wars Holiday Special's biggest problem is that it commits the cardinal sin of the
crappy movie: it's not just bad.
It's boring, too.
"Where's Chewbacca?"
The Ewoks films
Less notorious than the despised Holiday Special, the Ewok films are interesting Star Wars apocrypha.
They happen on a pretty faithful version of Endor, and actor Warwick Davis returns as
Wicket, who made his first appearance in Return of the Jedi.
The problem?
Well, the Ewoks are more articulate than they were in Jedi, and hanging around with a stranded
human family.
"We came on a star cruiser and we crashed!"
"(Speaking Ewokese)"
Even less tolerable is the decidedly non-Star Wars plot turns both movies take.
The first film, Caravan of Courage, includes a magical pond that traps people, bootleg-looking
fairies made of light, and the unbearable moral message that love is the strongest force
in the universe.
What is this, Interstellar?
"Love, TARS, love.
My connection with Murph.
It is quantifiable."
Shut up!
Anyway, Caravan of Courage's sequel, The Battle for Endor, immediately goes full oddball with
the introduction of an evil, shapeshifting sorceress whose outfit looks like something
the costuming department on Xena: Warrior Princess would've rejected as too tacky.
There's also a horrifying Alf-like alien that lead actor Wilford Brimley's character lives
with in the woods.
Easy to make fun of, they're entertaining experiences if you watch with the proper mindset.
But are they're not actually good.
Or interesting.
Hey, even the prequels can't live up to that standard.
The Carter
This documentary is a fairly straightforward look at the life of the rapper Lil Wayne,
recorded around the the release of Tha Carter III in 2008.
What makes The Carter such an interesting document is how revealing it is.
It's remarkably unflattering to its subject, and the damage is all self-inflicted.
Even as it demonstrates how talented the rapper is at what he does, Wayne's selfishness, self-destructive
habits, and personal rudeness make him a very difficult figure to like.
A look into the mind and life of an artist you would probably never want to meet, it's
a great watch, and though it's been sporadically released on iTunes, it's currently not officially
available, with legal challenges from Wayne's camp blocking the release of the film.
Song of the South
Though the notion that Disney's Song of the South takes place during the times of American
slavery is a misconception, the reality isn't much better.
This is radioactive material, and Disney's portrayal of the post-Civil War South as a
chipper place where former slaves sit around singing songs all night feels like its glossing
over the big picture.
The story of Song of the South is actually about a young white boy and his relationship
with Uncle Remus, a former slave.
In the film, the white people are without a doubt the bad guys and Uncle Remus is the
hero.
But none of that matters, because the setting is so jarring that it's not shocking at all
that Disney doesn't want it to re-emerge as something people can buy.
As of the making of this video, Song of the South never been released officially on home
video in the United States.
In all likelihood, unless Disney experiences a drastic change in its artistic mission,
it probably never will be..
Glitterati
Roger Avary's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction is an underappreciated
dark comedy, bearing a loose and loopy structure filmed with daring stylistic touches.
One of the more memorable sequences occurs in the middle of the film, when a world-travelling
character named Victor recounts his extensive European travels in a breathless, kinetic
montage.
Though the sequence barely lasts four minutes, Avary reportedly shot days' worth of footage
for it, with Victor's actor staying in character as he takes drugs, seduces women, and otherwise
behaves like the alpha and omega of the boorish American tourist archetype.
Avary assembled this footage into its own movie, called Glitterati, which is one of
the more legendarily hard-to-see films from recent years, which author Ellis describes
as "like a documentary with a fictional character in the middle of it."
Lionsgate Films distributed The Rules of Attraction, but not Glitterati, and the reasons come down
to what is likely a combination of quality and legality.
According to Ellis,
"...for many legal reasons, it will never see the light of day.
You can't really show Glitterati in public, it's not possible.
There are a lot of people who would be very upset."
Avary himself has called the process of making Glitterati "insane" and "ethically questionable"
— to this date, he has only showed the film at screenings that he hosts, and the chances
of that changing anytime soon are vanishingly small.
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