We talk a lot bout the importance of preservation and physical media. But what about movies that never get a physical release at all? Below, we’re going to talk about 8 horror movies that never had a release on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, etc. Most due to rights issues, but some due to artistic choices.
1969 – Daughter of the Mind
Directed by Walter Grauman, from a script by Luther Davis. This 1969 film is based on Paul Gallico’s novel The Hand of Mary Constable. It tells the story of a cybernetics professor who starts to believe that his dead daughter is communicating with him from the beyond. It was a made-for- TV film by ABC that has never seen a home media release.
1971 – Sweet, Sweet Rachel
Directed by Sutton Roley, from a script by Anthony Lawrence. 1971’s Sweet, Sweet Rachel centers around an ESP expert who uses his powers to try to track down a murderous psychic using telepathy to kill. It aired on ABC as a backdoor pilot for the 1972 TV series The Sixth Sense.
1971 (Universal Television)
1971 – A Little Game
Based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Fielden Farrington, this film is directed by Paul Wendkos, from a script by Carol Sobieski. A Little Game tells the story of Stuart Parker, a hostile young boy who will stop at nothing to break up his mother’s second marriage. When he becomes a suspect in a homicide, his stepfather fears that he may be Stuart’s next target. This was originally an ABC Movie of the Week.
1977 – Spectre
Directed by Clive Donner, from a script co-written by Gene Roddenberry and Samuel A. Peeples. This is a failed pilot for an NBC show by Roddenberry that never came to fruition. It centers on a criminologist who decides to start investigating occult matters with his former crime-fighting partner. The two are asked to investigate a prominent businessman’s possible dealings with the occult by his worried sister.
1979 – Vampire
This made-for-TV film is directed by E.W. Swackhamer, from a script co-written by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll. Vampire tells the story of Anton Voytek, whose lair is disturbed by the groundbreaking for a new church. If that weren’t bad enough, he also finds out the authorities have seized his hoarded wealth. Understandably angry, he takes revenge on the architect responsible for the new church. The architect eventually teams up with a retired Detective to hunt Anton down.
1981 – Tales of the Haunted aka Evil Stalks This House
Directed by Gordon Hessler, from a script by Louis M. Heyward. Tales of the Haunted is a well-worn story about an old, dark house and a family curse. Despite starring Jack Palance and being hosted by Christopher Lee, this film has never received a home media release.
1999 – Monster!
This is a made-for-TV Syfy (SciFi at the time) Channel original film. Monster! centers on a small town holding a monster movie festival. It’s all fun and games until one of the fictional creatures decides to come to life and wreak havoc. The film is directed by John Lafia from a script by Ronnie Christensen.
2010 – Pig
Directed by Adam Mason, from a script he co-wrote with star Andrew Howard. Pig follows a day in the life of a psychotic hillbilly serial killer and his captives. We see him torture and kill his captives- innocent people he abducted just to live out his violent fantasies. This film was screened at SXSW and briefly streamed. It was never made with the intention of being sold, so it never received a physical media release. The 80-minute film plays out in one continuous shot. As a result, most of the dialogue is ad-libbed.
These were 8 horror films that never received a home media release. So outside of their original television airing or theatrical runs, these have not been legally available to view. Yes, we are fully aware that there is a robust bootleg market keeping these films accessible to anyone with enough patience to dig for them. The problem is the obvious legal issues in the bootleg or even grey market, its gret for a reason. The problem is, the fewer copies of something that exist, the greater the chance that it will eventually become lost.
The Méliès’ Conundrum
Unfortunately, illegal copies are sometimes the only way to preserve film history. Earlier this year, George Méliès’ 1897 film Gugusse and the Automaton was only recovered via an illegal copy. During WWI, a lot of Méliès’ film negatives were melted down for silver and celluloid. The 45-second film was only preserved because a potato farmer at the time made a 3rd-generation copy of it. His great-grandson found the print and gave it to the Library of Congress who immediately made it available for all to see, and thus preserving it for all time. Would it have been nice if it were sourced from a direct, official release that Méliès would have made some money on at the time? Yes. But given how new the medium was, many didn’t think about long-term things like copyright law.
A Breif History Of Pysical Media
You’d think this problem would have lessened as time went on, and it has, but it’s far from nonexistent. During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a huge boom in the newly emerging home media market. Plenty of mom-and-pop video stores popped up, and so did market demand for new titles to fill shelves. In stepped countless fly-by-night studios making low-budget films with varying degrees of success. (And we mean that financially and artistically.) The issue is, again, VHS, Betamax, and LaserDisc were all new media for new technologies that let consumers watch movies in their own homes.
These small companies often had no idea about the legalities of something like copyright for their films. And when the boom died out, they went bankrupt. This led to a lot of titles becoming orphaned. While a company or individual did hold the copyright to the title, they often didn’t have the resources to distribute them in mass anymore (if they ever got past a limited run to begin with). So this means that another company can’t just swoop in and make its own copies of the film, so it just sits in a weird legal limbo until eventually falling into the public domain. (Assuming the rights holders don’t care enough about the film to periodically renew the copyright. But even then, it still ends up here eventually.)
So you’d think archivists could just “wait it out” for everything to go into the public domain. But then you’re risking no copies existing by the time it gets there. While optical disc-based formats may be more stable, previous media were not. And unfortunately, the only people interested in trying to get these films seen and preserved legally can’t.
