Keep Circulating The Tapes / Film Rescued

General

• Several studios, such as MGM, Universal and Warner Bros., have established "Archive Series" or "Vault Series" to release burn-on-demand DVD-Rs of older movies and television shows that aren't cost-effective to put out as regular releases but for which there is demand among old-film aficionados and fans of various actors, actresses, and directors involved with said shows. Two examples: the 1979 Peter Sellers version of The Prisoner of Zenda and the 1977 Marty Feldman/Ann-Margret spoof The Last Remake of Beau Geste are available through Universal's "Vault Series". (These releases most often are on DVD-Rs which some drives may have problems with, but nowadays unless you have a cheaper brand DVD player you shouldn't have a problem.)

Live-Action Film

• 1492: Conquest of Paradise: Despite being helmed by Ridley Scott, scored by Vangelis and starring a very well-rounded cast (including Gérard Depardieu, Sigourney Weaver, and Frank Langella), it's still unclear why this 1992 film was out-of-print in the U.S. for years, while official DVD versions were readily available in France (along with scores of unofficial bootlegs that come from Asia). Rumors suggest that there was a planned "Special Edition" release back in 2004, but those plans were apparently scuttled at the last minute. There have been several reasons bandied about for the delay: that Scott has potentially suppressed the film, the film's failure at the U.S. box office, claims of misrepresentation about Columbus' chronicled actions when he landed at the New World and the claim that a special 3-hour director's cut is being worked on. Things finally changed in August 2016 when it was announced that the film would make its long-awaited DVD and Blu-ray debut from Kino Lorber, which it eventually did in June 2017.
• Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole did not receive a formal home video release due to Paramount's low interest in releasing a movie that was critical of journalism. It only received a VHS release… in Brazil, which is a shame, because it was a revolutionary film for its day. Then, The Criterion Collection rescued it from obscurity and gave it a proper DVD release in 2007.
• The delay of the DVD release of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is one of the strangest stories in the industry. Producer David Begelman made a shady career for himself as an executive at several major Hollywood studios, including Columbia Pictures and MGM. During this period, he was the target of multiple lawsuits and criminal prosecutions for embezzlement and fraud (including a notorious check-forging scandal that exploded after actor Cliff Robertson discovered that fake checks had been made out in his name, which eventually led to Begelman being fired from Columbia), and successfully blackmailed Judy Garland with illicitly obtained medical photos. After being fired from those studios, he ran an independent company, Sherwood Productions, where he backed Buckaroo Banzai. Due to some legal chicanery, he ended up the sole owner of the rights to the film, and because of a falling-out with the writer and director over financial issues, refused to allow any further use of the property. This included blocking a planned television series, a sequel film, and the later DVD release. During this time, Laserdisc copies of the film were selling for well over $100. It took Begelman's bankruptcy and subsequent suicide for the rights to devolve to his largest creditor, Crédit Lyonnais bank, and then to Polygram Entertainment where executive Steve Gelber (a Banzai fan) pushed for a DVD release; it was finally released in 2002 under MGM's distribution. Begelman's obfuscatory and legally questionable bookkeeping practices continue to prevent any further development of the Banzai property — such as the long-awaited sequel, or a soundtrack album — as no one is really sure who owns the various rights involved.
• The African Queen only got an American DVD release in 2010, as both the rights to the film jumped from hand to hand and the original negatives for restoration were hard to find.
• Paramount's star-studded 1933 film version of Alice in Wonderland went unreleased on home media for many decades, though it sometimes aired on Turner Classic Movies. In 2010, however, to cash in on the success of the Tim Burton version, it finally received a DVD release.
• The 1995 teen comedy Angus was a title demanded by fans to be released on DVD since the format's inception. It was finally released as a launch title for the Warner Archive in 2009.
• The film version of Annie Get Your Gun was unavailable from 1974 until 2000, due to a dispute between Irving Berlin and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer over music rights. Only in 2000 was it finally released on VHS and DVD in honor of its fiftieth anniversary.
• At Long Last Love is a 1975 Cole Porter Jukebox Musical starring Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd. The movie was so hated upon its release that director Peter Bogdanovich took out ads in several newspapers throughout the country to apologize, and subsequently saw to it that the movie was never released on video in any format. Bootlegs were hard to find but did exist — it helped that aside from the star power, Bogdanovich was one of the great auteur directors of New Hollywood, so there was historical value in it — and those who saw them couldn't seem to agree if the flick was So Bad, It's Good or just as awful as its reputation. (There was no lip-synching; the actors had to sing while filming, and they weren't known for their singing.) Eventually, it surfaced legally on Fox Movie Channel from time to time, then appeared on Netflix Instant for a while, and finally got a Blu-Ray release in 2013 — along with some positive critical reevaluation.
• The Big Fix was only available as an edited VHS cassette for many years, until Twilight Time released it on Blu-ray in 2019. Even the VHS release didn't happen until January 1986 due to the same music issues that would result in the aforementioned gap between releases.
• Boom! — a poorly-received big-screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and directed by Joseph Losey — was "buried" in a VHS release by Universal just as DVD was becoming the dominant home-video format. Shout Select (Shout Factory's upscale imprint) finally released a Blu-Ray in May 2019, featuring an audio commentary by fan John Waters among other things.
• While The Children's Hour has been readily available on DVD, the earlier These Three was unavailable on video from 1997 onwards until a 2016 DVD-R from the Warner Archives was released.
• Orson Welles's classic Shakespeare film Chimes at Midnight finally received a proper DVD release via the Criterion Collection in The New '10s.
• Howard Hughes tried everything to ensure The Conqueror would never, ever, ever be seen again. He went as far as buying every print of the movie from RKO to keep it out of circulation. It remained off television for decades, and it's rumored that he had watched the film constantly to remind himself of his regret toward the movie in the final years of his life^note Though this could also have had something to do with his infamous obsessive compulsive complications he had suffered for much of his life. It took several years after his death for Universal to purchase the rights to the movie and return the film to circulation, getting VHS and DVD releases in the decades that followed. The film became sort of a Cult Classic because of how awful the film really was.
• The Vanilla Ice starring camp classic Cool as Ice was given a DVD release in 2011 after much fan demand, along with people wanting to see if it was that bad.
• The 1981 made-for-TV thriller Dark Night of the Scarecrow, having only been released on VHS in the mid-1980s, was finally released on DVD in September of 2010.
• Warner Bros. never wanted to issue The Devils, a very blasphemous piece of controversy, on DVD - across the Pond, the British Film Institute released a 2-disc DVD that managed to get the uncut 111-minute theatrical version (all the VHS versions cut up to 7 minutes) - and even on digital distribution it's been a hard path: the movie was available for only 3 days on the iTunes store, and both FilmStruck and its successor The Criterion Channel had it included and then removed. Still, The Devils entered the AMC streaming service Shudder in 2017 and is still in its catalogue.
• Parodied with Dude Bro Party Massacre 3, which claims that after its first airing at midnight in the late 80s, DBPM3 was banned by executive order of President Ronald Reagan, with this copy only existing because a teenager stayed up to record the broadcast on his VCR.
• ET The Extraterrestrial came to DVD in 2002 with the 20th Anniversary Edition included on Disc One, and the original version included on Disc Two. A while later, Universal stopped selling this DVD with the second disc, making the original E.T. a rarity. In 2012, Universal started selling the original E.T. again, on Blu-Ray and DVD. Interestingly, this release does not include the 20th Anniversary Edition (the two scenes added to the 20th Anniversary Edition are included as bonus features, though the alternate gun/walkie-talkie shots are not), turning it into a rarity. (Although no one seems to mind as much.)
• The 1984 cult classic Electric Dreams, starring Lenny Von Dolen, Virginia Madsen, and Bud Cort. It's a love triangle between a man, a woman, and a computer. Sadly, VHS copies of this film run for pretty much the same price as the computer featured in the movie. There's only one discernable reason given why this movie remained out of print until 2009 (but even then only released in Region 2): they thought nobody would buy it. (Well, we didn't say it was a bad reason.)
• Eyes Of Fire, a cult classic 1983 folk horror film set in colonial America about a religious splinter cell trekking into the wilderness only to encounter a powerful forest witch, was almost totally ignored during its theatrical run and didn't fare much better when released on VHS in the late '80s by Vestron Video. Aside from a suspicious Brazilian DVD there was no reprint on home video for over 25 years. However, in 2022 Severin Films gave the movie a much needed re-release, including both a 4K restoration and the rarely-seen alternate extended cut (under the title Crying Blue Sky). Since then, it's also been made available through streaming services like Shudder.
• Every Godzilla film from the Showa era has received a DVD release or two. Some of the movies, such as those released by Classic Media, are still available and easy to acquire, but several have fallen out of print. Fortunately, to coincide with the 2014 remake of the original Gojira, a company called Kraken Releasing has acquired the rights from Toho to re-release Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, and Godzilla vs. Gigan on Blu-Ray.
  • When the original Classic Media DVD copies of the Showa era movies eventually went out of print, The Criterion Collection came to the rescue in 2019 with a commemorative box set that had all 15 films bundled together for the first time. The downside though is that, aside from Godzilla (1954) and King Kong vs. Godzilla, none of the American cuts were included in the set, still making them valuable. On a positive note, the Japanese cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla was finally made available to American viewers after so many years.
  • The Return of Godzilla was, for the longest time, the only Godzilla film not available on DVD or Blu-ray in the states due to rights issues concerning its initial U.S. distributor, New World Pictures, who re-edited the film a la the original Godzilla: King of the Monsters! and released it theatrically as Godzilla 1985. When New World Pictures folded in the late 90s, the only way to obtain the film in any form on home media would be a VHS copy containing the Godzilla 1985 cut, and even that eventually went out of print. Fast forward to May of 2016, when Kraken Releasing announced that they had managed to acquire the rights to The Return of Godzilla and would finally be releasing the original Japanese cut on DVD and Blu-ray (the release also includes an international English dub that is standard for Godzilla movies, though the Godzilla 1985 cut couldn't be included due to the aforementioned rights issues).
• The Producer's Cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers was only available as bootleg recordings from television broadcasts until 2014, when it was released as part of a new limited edition Halloween box set from Anchor Bay in association with Scream Factory. Lionsgate later released it stand-alone in 2015 without the bonus features.
• Due to rights problems (including song copyrights), Hellzapoppin has never been released on VHS or DVD in America. It did get a UK DVD release in 2007, though.
• Considered to be at the forefront of the Disaster Movie genre, The High and the Mighty, starring John Wayne, was in this trope for a couple of decades. After a decade-long string of television repeats, it was stricken off the airwaves in 1985 due to multiple royalty issues and a constantly delayed restoration due to years sitting in the vault surviving water damage and having one copy of the movie lost, making a near-pristine restoration of the film nearly impossible. After a year of remastering and an extra three months to correct audio issues, the fully restored and remastered film finally made a rebroadcast on AMC in July 2005, 20 years since its most recent showing on television, and a DVD release followed just a month later.
• Alfred Hitchcock pulled Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much (the remake), The Trouble with Harry, Rear Window, and Rope (the five films he completely controlled the rights to) from legal circulation in the 1970s for reasons that were never made clear^note Some say he did this in order to deliberately increase the films' value so they could act as a de facto trust fund for his daughter Patricia and her family after he died. Others claim it was in response to the rise of the New Hollywood era. Fans turned to the black market to watch them — unless Hitchcock's estate managed to destroy the distributor's print. Rear Window and Vertigo became especially valuable. After Hitchcock died, Universal bought distribution rights to these movies, and then gave each a long-awaited theatrical re-release in the early 1980s. They've since received official home video releases on several formats, and Vertigo in particular saw its reputation go way up once people were able to see it again.
• Due to a lawsuit filed by a paparazzo who alleged improper reappropriation of a spy photo he snapped on the set of the film that became our first look at the Iron Man suit, Iron Man was unavailable in its original version following the original theatrical release until 2021, when Disney released the 2018 IMAX Enhanced version to its Disney+ service with the original picture on The Chronicle intact.
• The Iron Petticoat, a 1950s film featuring the only on-screen performance of Bob Hope with Katharine Hepburn, was suppressed by Hope shortly after its original theatrical release, as he had bad memories of the making of the film, including fights between him and writer Ben Hecht (Hope insisted on having him and his gag writers write schtick for the movie, and Hecht resisted.) Hope had ended up with all U.S. rights to the movie (he didn't own the international rights, so it was released on VHS in the UK) and sat on it for the rest of his life. It was only in 2012 that his estate relented and allowed the film to be released on Blu-Ray and for TV broadcast.
• After its original theatrical release, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World had its Intermission (which had its own soundtrack of police radio coverage of the various parties' progress) dropped and was cut to 159 minutes for worldwide distribution, with the edited footage discarded. Some of the discarded film elements were eventually found in an abandoned warehouse, and roughly 20 minutes of footage were re-edited back into place for one of the VHS releases. The movie couldn't be digitally converted with the extra footage — which was still in 70mm format — so DVD releases used only the general release 159-minute cut, at most using some of the cut scenes as bonus features. But in 2014, The Criterion Collection brought out a set including both a 4K restoration of the general release version and a 197-minute version that incorporates the surviving cut material in as high-definition a transfer as could be managed.
• The films of Alejandro Jodorowsky were unavailable for many years due to a bad partnership Jodorowsky had with manager and producer Allen Klein. For years fans had to circulate bootlegs. This changed in 2007 when El Topo and The Holy Mountain became widely available for the first time on DVD.
• For nearly 20 years, a copy of Johnny Got His Gun was fairly difficult to acquire. Why? Well, Metallica wanted to use footage from the movie for their video of "One" back in 1988, and found it simpler to just purchase the rights to the movie...and then do nothing with it. Only in 2009 did Shout! Factory snatch the rights for a DVD release.
• David Bowie's second leading man effort, Just A Gigolo (1978), only had a Region 2 DVD release in Germany until June 2021, when Shout! Factory dug it up for Region 1. For bonus points, unlike the late 1980s VHS release of the 98-minute American cut from 1981, this is the 105-minute U.K. version.
• Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie became such an infamous Follow-Up Failure that after a VHS release, it remained hard to find for decades, even as it got some critical reappraisal. While it got a DVD release in Europe, the one that Hopper planned once he got the rights back in 2006 did not happen by the time he died four years later. Eventually, Arbelos Films picked up the project and did a 4K restoration of The Last Movie that in 2018 got released on Blu-ray, preceded by a special screening in Hollywood.
• The 1980 PBS made-for-TV adaption of The Lathe of Heaven was unavailable after the rights expired in 1988. A DVD was finally released in 2000, albeit with a cover version of The Beatles song used in the original.
• The Legend of Billie Jean spent years in release limbo with no shot of ever getting a DVD release, despite massive fan demand. It was finally released in November 2011 through Sony Classics On Demand with an audio commentary.
• For decades, Raymond Bernard's 1934 French film of Les Misérables was nearly impossible to see in the US, despite being revered as possibly the greatest film version of the book. In 2007, however, it was finally released on DVD by The Criterion Collection alongside the same director's Wooden Crosses, and then received a full restoration and new DVD and Blu-Ray releases in 2013 and 2014.
• On 8 May 2024, after decades of being out of print, Let It Be made its streaming debut on Disney+ with a remaster by Peter Jackson. The documentary starring The Beatles had been out of print for decades, presumably because the tension that led up to the Fab Four's breakup.
• For the longest time, you could only find Little Darlings on VHS, as music licensing issues prevented the film from being released on DVD or Blu-Ray. Paramount eventually ironed those rights out, and by 2019, the film was made available for digital download.
• When Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson wrote a book on the best So Bad, It's Good films, one of them was the infamous 1973 musical adaptation of Lost Horizon, which he noted had never been released on home video in the US and was only available "trying to find it on eBay, or watching it on some all-night/all-movie cable channel with very low standards". Wilson was kind of wrong in that the film did receive a laser-disc release in the early '90s but in scarce quantities. Eventually, it got a DVD and Blu-Ray in 2011, even restoring the "fertility dance" sequence that hadn't been seen since the original theatrical release.
• The Frank Sinatra film Meet Danny Wilson has yet to be released on DVD in the United States, presumably for music rights issues. However, the movie was released on VHS in the mid-90s and isn't too difficult to find. It was given a DVD release, but only in the UK.
• Moonwalker didn't get a Region 1 re-release for a long time, for obvious reasons. It was finally released internationally on Blu-Ray in 2010, albeit with some of the violence in the "Smooth Criminal" segment trimmed.
• Mosquito from 1995 was out of print for a long time. Copies went for $200+ on Amazon. Luckily, with the 20th Anniversary re-release, this movie is now easy to get. Now we can watch Leatherface cut up some big-ass mosquitoes with his chainsaw.
• The Muppet Christmas Carol is widely available, its most recent release being a Blu-Ray in 2012. But most home video releases don't include the deleted "When Love Is Gone" song. It was removed from the theatrical cut to director Brian Henson's strong objections but restored for the 1993 VHS and laserdisc. The DVDs from 2002, 2005, and 2012 include the full-length cut, but it was not in widescreen — only the theatrical cut was. The aforementioned Blu-Ray, and the Digital HD version, don't have the song at all. Thankfully, the "When Love Is Gone" sequence would eventually make its HD debut as an extra on the movie's iTunes and Disney+ releases.
  • And then Henson announced in 2020 that a pristine version of "When Love Is Gone" had been discovered and would be reinstated in a forthcoming 4K re-release, which was eventually added to Disney+ alongside the theatrical cut.
• The 1952 Red Scare film My Son John starring Robert Walker, who tragically died while making this film, as the title character, was very hard to find and only managed to get a home video release in 2010. This is in large part due to the embarrassment on the part of Paramount for making this film, which is infamous not just for Walker's death but for its very, very questionable messages, one of which is that open-mindedness is the gateway to Communism. (!)
• Nightbreed was unavailable in any version in the UK until 2019, when Arrow Video released a limited edition Blu-ray containing both the theatrical and director's cuts of the film.
• The infamous North was withheld from a DVD release for almost two decades because of how notoriously awful it was, especially to nearly everyone who worked on it, with the notable exception of director Rob Reiner. Columbia Pictures finally released the film on DVD-R as part of the burn-on-demand Sony Pictures Choice Collection in 2012. Before that, all you had to rely on were the VHS release and television broadcasts.
• Nosferatu was like this for a long time due to claims from the Stoker Estate. Both are now in the public domain, ending the dispute. It's worth noting that because of the dispute, all copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed; were it not for those dedicated bootleggers, the film would not have survived at all. To those collectors and reprinters, wherever you may be — the fans and historians of the world salute you.
• The Oscar, a campy melodrama from 1966 co-written by Harlan Ellison and featuring the only acting performance of Tony Bennett, had a VHS release in the mid-1980s...and that was it for three decades. TCM plays the film occasionally but is forced to use an older pan-and-scan master (unusual for the network). This is very telling of the film's current demand because for a time it was included in many "Worst Films of All Time" lists as well as the Medved brothers' Golden Turkey Awards and even warranted a SCTV parody (The Nobel), but appears to have been overshadowed by more recent films that are a lot worse and more infamous. Ultimately, Kino Lorber released the film on Blu-Ray in February 2020 with a new 4K remaster and two audio commentaries, with one of them featuring (of all people) Patton Oswalt as a participant.
• The 1982 horror/slasher spoof Pandemonium, despite its cult status, was stuck on VHS until 2020, when Vinegar Syndrome brought out a 2K restoration on Blu-Ray.
• The Poughkeepsie Tapes, for the longest time, could only be seen as a bootleg due to MGM shelving the film a month before it was set to open (due to their financial issues). As a result, trailers and posters were all over theatres in 2008 for a film that was never released. However, strong reactions from the bootleg (taken from a festival version of the film) got the directors two studio films since the film was shelved (Quarantine and Devil). It was first made available legally...through Blockbuster Online. It was then finally released on Blu-ray and DVD through Scream Factory on October 10, 2017.
• RAD was one of the only films from Talia Shire's production company Taliafilm not to receive a digital media release for many years, even though it did pretty well on VHS and has a passionate fan base. Despite a petition to get a DVD release, it wasn't until 2020 that its day came: It was restored in 4K from the original camera negatives, coming to home video courtesy of cult film label Vinegar Syndrome, who partnered with Utopia Distribution (a film label owned by Shire’s son - and Jason’s brother - Robert Schwartzman) for a strictly limited 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray release. Utopia was originally going to premiere the restoration at South By Southwest, but the COVID outbreak led to that festival’s cancellation. Happily, the Blu-Ray release still went forward that May, and the A.V. Club even did a feature on it, explaining why it took so long. Mill Creek Entertainment released a Blu-Ray Steelbook of the movie in March 2021 and serves as #46 Mondo X Steelbook collaboration with some totally rad artwork.
  • Taliafilm also produced the drama Lionheart (not the Van Damme one), which was buried in a limited theatrical release in 1987, and was released on VHS in 1990. For many years the film was unavailable aside from the occasional cable airing until 2009 when it became one of the first DVD releases from the Warner Archive Collection.
• Two of the Razzies’ Worst Pictures that had only been available on VHS got Blu-Ray releases in 2017, The Lonely Lady and Ghosts Can't Do It (the latter, a double feature with fellow Bo Derek "winner" Bolero, which did get a DVD back in the day).
• Rodgers and Hammerstein:
  • The movie versions of The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, Carousel, State Fair, South Pacific and The King and I debuted on DVD in 1999 and 2000, but Flower Drum Song did not receive a DVD release at this time. It ultimately did so in 2006, partly to celebrate the movie's 45th anniversary, and partly because Universal wanted to cash in on 20th Century Fox releasing remastered DVDs of seven R&H movies.
  • The Sound of Music went out of print in 2014, possibly even earlier than that. Past releases garnered rather hefty prices in the Amazon Marketplace. Fox put the movie back in print in 2015, in honor of its 50th anniversary.
  • The widely panned 1962 remake of State Fair just barely beat Flower Drum Song to DVD. It did not receive a release until 2005 when its predecessor turned 60. Unfortunately, this went out of print some years later.
• Despite its critical acclaim and commercial success, Franco Zeffirelli's screen adaptation of Shakesperare's Romeo and Juliet became this after its U.S. DVD release went out of print in the late 2000s. The movie got a Blu-ray release... but only in Europe and Australia, which was a shame because it was a groundbreaking movie for its day. Then, The Criterion Collection released it for the first time on Blu-ray in the U.S. market on Valentine's Day, 2023.
• Scarface, a notable classic in the film industry, was last seen in a US theater in 1949. The film's rights were owned by producer Howard Hughes, who declined all requests for later theatrical re-releases in the United States. However, Hughes did allow a few re-releases in select European nations. Upon Hughes' death, Universal bought the film rights from his estate. Taking advantage of this acquisition, Universal screened Scarface at the New York Film Festival in 1979. This marked the beginning of the film's reintroduction to the public, which was solidified when it was released to the home video market the following year. Universal's acquisition of Scarface didn't just allow for the film's re-release; it also paved the way for the production of a more contemporary remake of the film that is familiar to many today.
• David Cronenberg's feature film debut, Shivers (1975) (aka They Came From Within) saw only scant and OOP video release over the years despite Cronenberg's godlike status among horror fans and the generally good success of his films (like The Fly (1986), Scanners, and A History of Violence). It's odd that Anchor Bay released a special edition VHS, but didn't re-release it on DVD. Strange and infuriating. But British cult film label Arrow Films released a new Blu-Ray of the film in the fall of 2014, and Lionsgate brought out a Region 1 Blu-Ray in 2020. In between, legal streaming services also began to offer it.
• Sorcerer was unavailable on VHS and Laserdisc until 1990, the first DVD issue in 1998 (transferred from the Laserdisc) was a very rare item, and rights issues kept even repertoire theaters from screening it. Once director William Friedkin took matters into his own hands, suing studios Paramount (who financed production) and Universal (who was a co-distributor) for the rights, he manage to settle things, and Friedkin supervised a restoration financed by Warner Bros. (who would then hold the home media and streaming distribution, with Paramount for theatrical and Universal on TV), used as the basis for the first Sorcerer Blu-Ray on 2014.
• Static, the first feature-length film by One Hour Photo writer/director Mark Romanek, saw its theatrical debut in 1985. Was not made available on DVD despite a fairly strong cult following; and the existence of VHS and Laserdisc versions; both becoming increasingly difficult to find in good condition. Word of God was that, while Romanek didn't view regret it, he considered it an inferior sophomore effort (if he acknowledged it at all), and therefore not worth re-releasing. Romanek eventually relented, and it was officially released on DVD by Telavista in 2007.
• Despite having critical acclaim, an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in Richard Farnsworth and directed by David Lynch, The Straight Story has not seen a Blu-Ray release in the U.S. and Europe, though Japan got a Blu-Ray release by Paramount and Comstock and later a German Blu-ray in 2019, as the U.S. DVD is out-of-print (though since the film was so little seen, it was still easy to find copies for cheap). However, it is available on Vudu, Amazon Prime, Google Play, and the iTunes Store in the U.S., though the latter service offers it only for rental; and was later rebroadcast on Showtime in 2017 in preparation for Twin Peaks third season. It is also on Disney+ in the U.S. as of May 2020.
• Richard Linklater's SubUrbia was unavailable on any digital physical format until a DVD-R from Warner Archive was released in 2018. Up until that point, you could only find a digital copy on Amazon Instant.
• F.W. Murnau's silent arthouse classic Sunrise (which won Best Picture, back when there were two Best Picture categories) was only available on DVD through mail-order in the United States for many years. On top of that, it was only available if you collected other titles in a set of classic 20th Century Fox films and mailed proof of purchases to the company. That release eventually went out of print and it commanded a pretty penny on eBay and Amazon, both for the solid restoration of the film and the DVD's impressive extras. After that, the only places that it was in print were in two box sets (one is a box set of early Oscar winners from Fox Studios which despite costing under $30 is still pretty hard to come by. The second is a handsome set of films by Murnau and Frank Borzage...which commands a price of over $200), or by importing a 2009 British, region-free Blu-Ray from Eureka Entertainment (part of their 'Masters Of Cinema' line). Fans had to wait until 2014 for the first wide-release home video version of Sunrise in the United States, and it was well worth it: The film got an acclaimed Blu-Ray/DVD combo set that made Sunrise one of the first silent films to ever be released in a high definition restoration.
• That Night, a little-seen but acclaimed 1993 comedy with Juliette Lewis, C. Thomas Howell and a young Eliza Dushku (in her film debut) about a girl's romance told from the point of view of her neighbor, a 10-year-old wanting to know what love is. The film was released on VHS but is out of print. Warner Bros. never released it on DVD; whether this might change now that said studio's rights to the film have expired is anyone's guess. 20th Century Fox has released it digitally via Movies Anywhere. As of January 2019, the film is also available on the American Netflix.
• Titicut Follies, a 1967 documentary about the mistreatment of patients at Bridgewater State Hospital, was infamously banned by the state of Massachusetts for supposedly infringing on the privacy of the patients. Following an appeal by director-producer Frederick Wiseman, the film was allowed to be shown to doctors, lawyers, judges, healthcare professionals, social workers, and students in those and related fields in 1969, but could still not be distributed to the general public. The ban was lifted in 1991, but outside of one broadcast on PBS in 1992, the film remained out of circulation until 2007 when it was released on DVD.
• Val Guest was never paid for working on the pop musical Toomorrow (which featured Olivia Newton-John's film debut), so he obtained an injunction saying the film could never be shown in public until he was. As a result, Toomorrow was shown for only one week before being shelved. For the next forty years, the only available copies were bootlegs, until it was finally released on DVD in 2012.
• TRON lapsed into this after its 20th anniversary DVD release went out of print around 2008. In 2010, when the sequel TRON: Legacy hit theaters, the film was reaching prices of up to $215 on Amazon, and even Netflix was having availability problems (the lack of re-release at such a propitious time was questioned, raised theories, and boosted piracy). But at least it got a re-release, on both DVD and Blu-Ray when Legacy hit shelves in 2011.
• The 1977 nuclear-war thriller Twilight's Last Gleaming was in DVD release limbo for years after numerous announcements followed by cancellations from former rights holder Warner Bros. In 2012, Olive Films released it on DVD and Blu-ray, making a legal DVD copy now possible.
• The original widescreen version of West Side Story inexplicably disappeared from DVD shelves in the mid-2000s. All the DVDs produced during the remainder of the decade presented the movie in Pan and Scan, although movie box sets contained the uncropped version. Widescreen DVDs finally became available again in 2011, in honor of the movie's 50th anniversary.
• Where the Buffalo Roam a film starring Bill Murray as writer Hunter S. Thompson (made many years before Johnny Depp would take the role) was always available on DVD. But if you wanted to hear the original Neil Young soundtrack, you had to track down an old VHS copy. Anchor Bay replaced the music with a generic '80s synth on the DVD due to music licensing issues. Fortunately, Shout Factory re-released the film on Blu-Ray with all of the original music intact.
• For 28 years, the only way that you could see Samuel Fuller's White Dog was through the occasional repertory screening or a bootleg copy taken from the few television airings of the film. In 2010 The Criterion Collection came to the rescue and released a DVD.
• The 1927 classic Wings, the first film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture, was announced for release in 2011 on DVD and Blu-Ray by Paramount. Before this announcement, it had been the only film that had won Best Picture at the Oscars that hadn't been released on DVD. It doesn't help that the movie was one of the very few silent movies still under copyright before it finally expired in 2023, which made public domain releases impossible up until then.
• The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, a George Pal super-production that was one of only two non-documentary films shot in the specialty Cinerama format^note the other being How the West Was Won, has never had a DVD release; Turner Classic Movies occasionally aired it but only in a letterbox format which distorts the wraparound imagery. While it was believed the original negative was too water-damaged to restore without prohibitive expense for a niche title, this proved not to be the case. Warner Archive's 4K restoration was released in 2022 and includes both letterboxed and non-distorted versions.
• For unknown reasons, David Lynch’s Inland Empire had been completely out of print in the U.S., with the Region 1 DVD release fetching high prices online. In 2023, The Criterion Collection rereleased the movie in North America on blu ray, officially rescuing it.

Animated Film

• The infamous Colombian animated film Bolívar, el Héroe was lost for a long time, to the point that it was thought that the existence of the film was a hoax to ridicule Colombia. However, YouTube user A. Ariza uploaded the film in December 2015.
• Heavy Metal was theatrically released in 1981, but only got to VHS after 15 years - with a DVD one year later - due to copyright issues (the film has much, much licensed music). The Agony Booth recap even says the movie got much of its Cult Classic status for its rarity than for actual quality.
• The Swan Princess and The Swan Princess III: The Mystery of the Enchanted Treasure came to DVD in 2004, but The Swan Princess: Escape from Castle Mountain did not. People wanting to complete the set had to wait five years for that film, which was retitled The Swan Princess: The Secret of the Castle.
• There has been no Region 1 DVD release of Felidae in the United States, aside from a unofficial reupload of the whole film on YouTube back in 2013, however on April 2024, it was revealed both on Deaf Crocodile's Twitter and a video on the Disc Connected YouTube channel that Deaf Crocodile acquired the North American rights to the film and will be releasing a Definitive 4K Restored Blu-Ray and Ultra HD of the film later on this year

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