History MissingEpisode / Film

* ''Film/ItsAMadMadMadMadWorld'' was edited down from its original 3 1/2 hour length for worldwide distribution following its original release, and the cut footage was discarded and believed lost for years. Thanks to a batch of the discarded footage being found in a condemned warehouse and the efforts of Stanley Kramer, 20 minutes of footage were re-edited back into the film for the VHS release. The film's first DVD release (in a white cover and now out-of-print) has the footage on Side B. The second release (in a blue cover) does not have this footage. In 2014, Creator/TheCriterionCollection released a reconstructed/restored version of the original release on DVD and Blu-Ray. 3 or 4 minutes are still missing, but it is still the closest we'll get to the original.

* . ''Yume Yume No Ato'' (in English, ''Dream After Dream'') was a French-Japanese co-production directed by fashion designer Kenzo Takada, a romance/fantasy film about a wandering young man who gets in a LoveTriangle with two sisters living in a mysterious castle. It's perhaps best known for the fact that Music/JourneyBand did the soundtrack--in fact, their album ''Dream After Dream'' is supposed to be the soundtrack for this film. After a theatrical run in both France and Japan, and a couple of Japanese TV broadcasts, it was never seen again. In an interview with the ''Nikkei'', Takada said that the film's TroubledProduction (including a heat wave that struck the filming locations in Morocco and the language barriers between the French cast and Japanese crew) and negative reception at the Parisian premiere led to him disowning the film. A mostly complete VHS rip of the film's Japanese dub, taken from one of the film's TV airings, appeared on [=YouTube=] in 2022, but it's in low quality and is missing 30 minutes.

* One of cinema's greatest tragedies is the fate of Erich von Stroheim's ''Film/{{Greed}}''. Its original cut was a whopping '''nine hours long''', and considered by those who were fortunate enough to see it to be a masterpiece. Unfortunately, the studio ordered it chopped down without Stroheim's involvement, and the cut pieces were destroyed. Thus, most of that footage has been lost. Even the Turner Classic Movies four-hour cut replaces a lot of the footage with still photos just to keep the story intact.

* Several of Creator/StanleyKubrick's films have trimmed content that has yet to be recovered:
** His first feature, ''Fear and Desire'', was a shoestring production funded by donations from Kubrick's family and friends. Paul Mazursky, who himself went on to a successful directing career, played a leading role. Kubrick was embarrassed by it, so he bought up as many copies as he could and discouraged screenings of the movie while he was alive. It was finally released in October 2012.
** ''Film/TheShining'' had an epilogue, in which Ullman tells Wendy that they have been unable to locate Jack's [[spoiler:frozen corpse]] and [[spoiler:gives Jack's tennis ball to Danny]]. This actually played in theaters but was cut by Kubrick a week after the film's release. (Maybe for the best, as Creator/RogerEbert pointed out because the scene left the rest of the movie open to PlotHoles.) It's not been seen since.
** The uncut version of ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'' has not been seen anywhere since its premiere engagements. Warner Bros. discovered 17 minutes of the footage in 2010; they have no intention of reinserting the footage back into the film in keeping with Kubrick's intentions, but whether they'll be included as extras in an upcoming video release is anyone's guess at this point.

* Many, ''many'' old silent and early sound films (including those of superstars like Creator/ThedaBara, Creator/ClaraBow and Creator/BabyPeggy) are now considered lost (partially or completely), simply because -- in an era well prior to rebroadcast opportunities like TV or home video -- it didn't make financial sense for the studios to care about keeping them around. The prints that do remain are usually those that were preserved in private collections. Creator/ThedaBara appeared in over two dozen films but only four have survived. According to Creator/MartinScorsese's Film Foundation, 90% of all American films made before 1929 are lost forever, while the [[GreatBigLibraryOfEverything Library of Congress]] estimates that 75% of all silent movies are lost forever.

* The Creator/BritishFilmInstitute has compiled a list of [[http://www.bfi.org.uk/nationalarchive/news/mostwanted/75-list.html The 75 Most Wanted]] lost British films. The list includes ''The Mountain Eagle'' (1926) -- the only lost feature film of Creator/AlfredHitchcock. Also included in the list are the films that served as the screen debuts for legendary actors John Gielgud, Creator/LaurenceOlivier, Creator/ErrolFlynn and Patricia Kirkwood and an early film role of Creator/IanMcKellen. The list also stretches well into the late 20th century, with the most recent films dating from the early 1970s -- the 1971 drama ''Nobody Ordered Love'' (which was so poorly promoted and received that the director withdrew it and ordered all prints destroyed at his death in 1977), and the 1972 sexploitation comedy ''The Cherry Picker'' starring Music/{{Lulu}} and Creator/SpikeMilligan (bootlegs of which do circulate, but the master prints are lost).[[note]] When the list was compiled in 2010, the 1983 farce ''Where Is Parsifal?'' starring Peter Lawford (in his final film role), Creator/OrsonWelles, and Tony Curtis was the most recent film on it, but it was never truly "lost", having instead been withdrawn before its UK release but having seen home video releases in such countries as Italy and the Netherlands. The film's director personally donated his copy to the BFI, and it is now available on Netflix. The 1974 horror film ''Symptoms'' was the second most recent film on the original list, but the negative was recovered by the BFI in 2014.[[/note]]

* In 1987, gold manufacturer Santo Rigatsuo directed a sci-fi BMovie called ''Blood Circus'' which he also starred in and produced for $2 million. The movie involves the U.S. and Soviets teaming up to fight off an alien invasion by hosting a wrestling tournament, with one of the wrestlers being a pre Wrestling/{{WWE}} Brent Albright. The film only screened for a few days at local Baltimore theaters before vanishing, with the only elements proving its existence being [[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088824/reviews?ref_=m_tt_urv IMDB reviews]] from those who saw it and [[https://youtu.be/_1GY93EWwwY a musical sequence]] with Santo himself that was meant to promote his jewelry. It wasn't until 2008 when Santo announced that a copy of the movie was found and attempted to auction it off on eBay to no avail,[[note]] possibly having to do with [[CrackIsCheaper the original starting bid being $21 million with a buy it now the price of $750 million]][[/note]] leaving any chance for the film's release uncertain.

* ''Cleopatra'', a 1917 film, is thought of to be one of the most elaborate and expensive films ever created. Prior to 2023 only [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWn7L2pL5dI 20 seconds of the film]] had been found, as it was censored by MoralGuardians and the last remaining copies were destroyed in a fire. In 2023 [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwPZuyF2Th0 an additional 40 seconds of material]] was unexpectedly found giving us approximately one minute of known surviving material from a two hour long movie.

* Creator/JerryLewis' ''Film/TheDayTheClownCried'' is about a clown who insults Hitler and ends up a Pied Piper to the children of a Jewish concentration camp. People are split on if keeping it suppressed is a good thing or not. Apart from the question of good taste, the project's [[ScrewedByTheLawyers legal ownership is disputed]]. The film remains unfinished; post-production work was never completed. The film negatives were eventually admitted into the Library of Congress in August of 2015, but under the condition that the film can't be screened for ten years. However, as stated before, the legal ownership dispute (plus the fact that some of the parties in said dispute, including Lewis, [[DiedDuringProduction are dead]]) still leaves the film indefinitely lost.

* ''The Graduation Party'' was mooted to be Paul Lynch's follow-up to his slasher classic ''Film/PromNight1980''. It centered around marooned teenagers being menaced on a remote island by a killer played by Creator/JoeSpinell. ''Starburst Magazine'' called it "''Prom Night'' meets ''Literature/TheBlueLagoon''". It's unknown if any footage was ever shot for it. If there was any footage, it's now lost.

* Music/TheBeatles documentary ''Film/LetItBe'' was last legally released in 1981 (laserdisc and VHS). Odds are, it will never be legally released again in its original form. (There is dissonance between what viewers will expect to see and what [[Music/TheBeatles Apple Corps]] wants to show.) Music/PaulMcCartney told ''[[http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/paul-mccartney-looks-back-the-rolling-stone-interview-w433437 Rolling Stone]]'' in 2016 that he wants the film to be released, correctly noting that he should be the main objector among the Apple Corps stakeholders because he "doesn't come off well" in it. It wasn't until fifty years after its original release that it received a HD remaster and recut by Creator/PeterJackson in preparation for the 2021 documentary mini-series ''Series/TheBeatlesGetBack'' intended to dispel the idea that the ''Let It Be'' sessions were purely acrimonious.

* In 1981 a movie based off of the novel ''The Pike'' was announced. However, its production was never finished and only production stills survive.

** One of the Creator/ShawBrothers' earliest films, ''Tiger Boy'', which starred Creator/JimmyWangYu and was the directorial debut of the legendary director Chang Cheh, is permanently lost after a single theatrical showing in Hong Kong. Reportedly the film made it to another theater in Singapore and is a box office success at the time, but today all that remains of the film are black-and-white magazine stills.

* In 1932, the husband-and-wife team of Mikhail Tsekhanovsky and Vera Tsenkhanovskaya embarked on their most ambitious project yet - an animated opera based on the Creator/AlexanderPushkin fairy tale ''The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda'', featuring a score by renowned composer Music/DmitriShostakovich and an art style heavily influenced by contemporary Russian Telegraph Agency posters. Unfortunately, the film suffered from one hell of a TroubledProduction, with Shostakovich bailing on the project after seeing several of his works, including the film's score, publicly denounced in a ''Pravda'' article. Since the film now had no score, it was never completed and placed in storage at the Lenfilm archive in UsefulNotes/SaintPetersburg, then known as Leningrad, where the majority of the footage was then lost when the Germans bombed the archive during the Siege of Leningrad. All that remains of the film is a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVSWMWZugis two and a half minute segment]] from the marketplace scene, showing various merchants showcasing their wares.

** Then there was his 1955 feature debut called ''The Noble Experiment'', which was a comedy he stared in opposite of an unnamed local beauty queen. The film's poor reviews would foreshadow the reception of ''Teenagers'' a few years later.

* ''Canzo Empyrean'', a bizarre movie (apparently a ''GI Joe'' fan film) involving an AIDS sex apocalypse, has received a limited release in Africa and Russia and then disappeared. Aside from trailers and info from the film's website, no complete copy of the movie has surfaced online. Recently, a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8L0xYJZPy8 45-minute compilation of various scenes]] was released online. According to the uploader, there's at least two more hours of footage still missing.

* ''Film/{{Dracula 1931}}'', in its original release, had an epilogue in which Edward Van Sloan (Van Helsing) [[BreakingTheFourthWall addressed the audience]]. The epilogue starts out sounding like a reassuring ThisIsAWorkOfFiction message, until at the last moment he subverts it with "There really ''are'' such things as vampires!" The epilogue was cut from the 1936 re-release due to fears of offending religious groups by endorsing the supernatural, and is now lost, barring a literal two seconds of footage that appear in a Dracula tribute documentary [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=461&v=C_hhOAdQDkY]].
* The full 130 minute cut of ''Film/{{Event Horizon}}''. Test audience reactions to full cut were less then stellar, with some people reportedly fainting at the extreme amounts of gore. Director Paul W.S Anderson acquiesced into cutting the film down to a much more digestible 90 minutes and the result tanked at the box office and was critically eviscerated. The full uncut version, which contained an even longer version of the notorious “Blood orgy” scene, remained lost for years until a highly deteriorated copy surfaced in a Transylvania salt mine. As it turns out, that copy was reportedly so badly damaged, a full uncut release has been deemed impossible. Still, a few deleted scenes managed to appear on the DVD, including a longer, significantly more graphic version of the final Hell Hallucinations. Yet even these scenes are very bad quality and have no sound.
* The original roadshow print of ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' is long lost; the best attempt to restore it not only omits an offending image of a black centaur in one segment, it also uses Corey Burton's voice to dub that of Deems Taylor because the original audio was greatly deteriorated to the point of becoming irretrievable.

* One of cinema's greatest tragedies is the fate of Erich von Stroheim's ''Film/{{Greed}}''. Its original cut was a whopping '''nine hours long''', and considered by those who were fortunate enough to see to be a masterpiece. Unfortunately, the studio ordered it chopped down without Stroheim's involvement, and the cut pieces were destroyed. Thus, most of that footage has been lost. Even the Turner Classic Movies four-hour cut of it replaces a lot of the footage with still photos just to keep the story intact.
* The documentary/movie ''Film/GrizzlyMan'' has an ApocalypticLog that depicts an audio recording of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend's deaths from a bear. In the movie, the coroner in the case describes the contents of the recording and Creator/WernerHerzog, the director, is shown listening to it. He tells the owner of the clip to destroy it. It’s currently locked away in a safe deposit box, with no intention of being released. Present in ''Grizzly Man''[='=]s theatrical cut, but missing from the DVD release, is a clip from Treadwell's interview with Creator/DavidLetterman in which Letterman jokes about him being eaten by a bear.

* The rumored three-hour long version of ''The Last House on Dead End Street''. Apparently, the movie, originally called ''The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell'', caused mass hysteria when it was originally released, so it was re-edited to be less violent.

* Due to CreatorBacklash, Creator/MaryPickford tried to forcibly make the 1923 film ''Film/{{Rosita}}'' into this. In the 1970s a Soviet copy was found. It was a really poor quality looking, presumably bootleg, copy from the 1920s. Attempts to restore it were made and now the film looks as good as any other silent film. A few rolls are still missing, however.

** His first feature, ''Fear and Desire'', was a shoestring production funded by donations from Kubrick's family and friends. Paul Mazursky, who himself went on to a successful directing career, played a leading role. Kubrick was embarrassed by it, so he bought up as many copies as he could and discouraged screenings of the movie while he was alive. It finally got a release in October 2012.
** ''Film/TheShining'' had an epilogue, in which Ullman tells Wendy that they have been unable to locate Jack's [[spoiler:frozen corpse]] and [[spoiler:gives Jack's tennis ball to Danny]]. This actually played in theaters, but was cut by Kubrick a week after the film's release. (Maybe for the best, as Creator/RogerEbert pointed out, because the scene left the rest of the movie open to PlotHoles.) It's not been seen since.

* The 1954 remake of ''Film/{{A Star Is Born|1954}}'' originally ran for 182 minutes, but the studio, Warner Bros., cut it down to 154 minutes before release. In 1983 a restoration was made that runs 176 minutes. However for several scenes only the audio survived, so stills were used in place of the missing footage.
* During the production of ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', assistant director David Tomblin filmed a comedic promotional short called ''Return Of The Ewok'' with Creator/WarwickDavis playing both himself and Wicket the Ewok. It starts as a straightforward documentary about Davis preparing for his role as Wicket W. Warrick in the film, but turns into a metafictional story about him meeting characters from the movie and actually turning into Wicket. George Lucas personally paid for this strange experiment, but the money ran out before Tomblin could finish the final edit or get the rights for the Music/{{Supertramp}} songs used in the film and it was never officially released. The original 16mm print was lost, but Tomblin made a VHS copy as a gift for Davis, which he donated to Lucasfilm. The only public screenings has been at the Celebration FanConvention, as well as the British National Space Centre. Some clips have appeared as part of DVD/Blu-Ray bonus content [[note]] In particular, the blooper reel EasterEgg on ''Return of the Jedi'''s DVD and the "Warwick & Sons" featurette on the Blu-ray for ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker''[[/note]] and a condensed four minute edit was briefly available on the old ''Star Wars'' website for members of the now-defunct Hyperspace fan club. Bootleg reconstructions circulated on the Internet.

* The 1972 Israeli countercultural film ''Film/AnAmericanHippieInIsrael'' was believed to be lost until 2007, when film historian Yaniv Edelstein managed to locate a copy in the possession of one of the film's cast members. Upon its rediscovery it was screened in Tel Aviv and quickly gained a cult following similar to that of ''Film/TheRoom2003''.
* An 1981 US-made Spanish horror film entitled ''Atrapados'' didn't strike a distribution deal in spite of awesome reviews when it premiered at local festivals. But the director himself [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81gy82AjK3s uploaded it to YouTube.]]

* The surprisingly prophetic 1924 film, ''Film/TheCityWithoutJews'', which was ExactlyWhatItSaysonTheTin and predicted the rise of Nazism and antisemitism, was thought lost until a badly damaged copy was found in Austria in 1989 [[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43569919 and a more complete copy was found in a Paris flea market in 2015]]. In its time it was surprisingly successful, but was banned due to the highly negative right-wing reaction to it (it helped the right wing had significant influence in Austria at the time).

* Following a limited theatrical release, the 1974 horror film ''Film/{{Deranged}}'' fell into obscurity for over two decades, with the original negatives believed by many to be lost. The film was eventually rediscovered in Florida some time around 1993 and released on home video by Creator/AmericanInternationalPictures' then-parent company Creator/{{MGM}}.

* Yet another "lost movie": the infamous 1994 Creator/RogerCorman produced ''Film/TheFantasticFour''. The story began when Constantin Film optioned the rights to make a ''Fantastic Four'' feature film with a planned budget of $40 million. Unfortunately they couldn't raise the money on time and the option was about to expire so they brought Corman on board who reduced the budget to $1.5 million and made it within a one-month shooting schedule which should give you a good estimate to its quality. From that point onward, accounts differ. According to Creator/StanLee, Constantin Film never planned to release the movie and made it only to keep the rights and basically blackmail Marvel into giving them a substantial sum in exchange for the movie never seeing the light of day (depending on the legend, Marvel either locked the movie in a vault or had Avi Arad himself ''burn the negatives''), whereas Creator/RogerCorman claims one of the other producers managed to raise the intended money, bought the distribution rights from Corman via a clause in his contract and simply chose not to release it. 9 years later, Constantin Film produced the now well known 2005 ''Fantastic Four'' and the rest is history. For a long time, one of the few ways you could see the movie was via bootleg copies sold at comic book conventions, but lately it's been uploaded to Website/YouTube, and [[http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/The_Fantastic_Four_1993.aspx recaps]] are also available. A documentary about the making and subsequent legacy of the film was also released in 2016 and includes numerous clips.
* The [[Film/FlowersInTheAttic1987 1987 film adaptation of]] ''Literature/FlowersInTheAttic'' originally ended with [[spoiler:Malcolm Foxworth still being alive for Corrine's wedding, and the grandmother attempting to kill the remaining Dollanganger children with a knife only for John the caretaker to perform a HeroicSacrifice and allow the children to be free]]. The studio cut the original ending and filmed a new one without the film's director, which pleased neither critics or fans. For years the only parts of the original ending to have surfaced were photos, but in 2018 it was announced that Arrow Video would be releasing the film on blu-ray with the original ending as a bonus feature. They later released the blu-ray in the U.S. in 2019.

* For years it was speculated whether or not a home video release of the long lost American theatrical cut of ''Film/OnceUponATimeInAmerica'' existed at one point, until in 2020 it was confirmed there was indeed [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes a very limited 1985 (likely rental only) VHS release]] which has since been recovered and uploaded to the Internet Archive.

** ''Film/TheOtherSideOfTheWind'', one of his last projects, starring John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich. Welles shot all the footage he wanted and had started editing it before the negative was seized during the Iranian Revolution. (The Shah's brother-in-law had helped pay for it.) After the new government decided it didn't have any value to them, it was locked away in a vault in Paris while various legal rights were worked out. Welles had edited about 40 minutes of footage before it was taken away. There were various efforts to complete it that were either blocked by his daughter Beatrice or by legal decisions. Showtime supposedly bought the rights to the project in the late 90s but never released a version of the film. Various people (including Bogdanovich) were granted access to the negative and tried to complete the editing. By the mid 2010s, it was supposedly "96% complete" (and just needed some post production work, including a score) but gathering dust in a vault for decades due to these legal squabbles. Netflix [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/movies/unfinished-orson-welles-film-gets-a-netflix-commitment.html bought the rights]] to the film in March 2017, and released it in late 2018.

* ''Film/ThePoughkeepsieTapes'' is a horror movie that had an incredibly limited run in theaters, and the director refuses to release it in public in any way (it doesn't help that [[Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer the studio that financed it]] is only just recovering from its recent bankruptcy). For a while the only way to find it was through pirated copies online, though for a little bit it was legally available via Direct TV On Demand back in 2014... until that was taken down not too long after it was released. Eventually it was given a direct to video release from Creator/ShoutFactory in 2017.

* While ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' and ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' have true theatrical cuts available on standard definition home video, the '''original''' theatrical cut for ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' was thought lost until originaltrilogy.com came along. All of the home video releases contain either the 1981 ''Episode IV'' crawl or audio revisionism. It's also claimed due by George Lucas the original negatives being deteriorated and destroyed. This began with some of the original Star Wars re-release in theaters to introduce "Episode IV: A New Hope" which is not original to '77. Part of this is supposedly due to Lucas having OldShame over the fact that there were several elements of the films that weren't as good as he hoped (including effects and specific scenes) - he considers the altered versions his "true" vision. However, actual original prints of Star Wars would be found as the unrestored 16mm print was used for the Puggo Grande fan project then a 35mm print was located for the Silver Screen Edition and 4K77 fan restorations.
* ''Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story'', which retells Karen's life story using Barbie dolls, was forced out of circulation by Richard Carpenter and all prints were ordered destroyed. It's readily available over the Internet, however, and a 16mm print was screened at Bard College (the alma mater of the film's director, Creator/ToddHaynes) as recently as 2011.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheThiefAndTheCobbler'' is a rather interesting example here. Creator/RichardWilliams spent decades trying to make this an animated classic, yet it was [[ExecutiveMeddling screwed up by the many executives]] that held on to the film. The original cut was left on the shelf for decades due to Williams having to deal with other works being made. Eventually, he managed to get further work done and tried to license the film to Warner Bros. for release, but Williams couldn't finish it in time, and Disney had [[WesternAnimation/{{Aladdin}} its own]] ''A Thousand and One Nights'' story in development. As a result, WB terminated the deal and the executives forced Williams out of the project. Soon afterwards, the project suffered heavy editing and outsourcing in order for the film to be completed faster, and was released to heavy panning by animation lovers and critics across the board. This made Williams extremely devastated, leaving his career in ruins. The original, unfinished left unseen for decades until it was finally shown, half remastered, as the "Recobbled Cut", retaining most of the elements of the original print and some scenes that were never even finished.
* 1922's ''Film/TheTollOfTheSea'' is considered the second oldest technicolor film. It was considered lost until it resurfaced in 1985. It's complete except for the very last scene. Fortunately, it was just a shot of an ocean and thus a new scene was shot to complete the film.

* ''Catch My Soul'', a musical version of ''Theatre/{{Othello}}'' starring Richie Havens and directed by Creator/PatrickMcGoohan was released in the early 1970s to terrible reviews (not helped by, according to legend, one of the producers "finding God" and adding fifteen minutes of religious imagery much to [=McGoohan's=] chagrin). It was retitled ''Santa Fe Satan'' before disappearing completely. Vinegar Syndrome released the film on blu-ray in 2015. Its now out of print. The soundtrack can often be found for sale on eBay, though.

* ''Catch My Soul'', a musical version of ''Theatre/{{Othello}}'' starring Richie Havens and directed by Creator/PatrickMcGoohan was released in the early 1970s to terrible reviews (not helped by, according to legend, one of the producers "finding God" and adding fifteen minutes of religious imagery much to [=McGoohan's=] chagrin). It was retitled ''Santa Fe Satan'' before disappearing completely. The soundtrack can often be found for sale on eBay, though.

* In 1974 Bruce Cardozo made a ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' fan film entitled ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_Versus_Kraven_the_Hunter Spider-Man Versus Kraven the Hunter]]'' that apparently was endorsed by Marvel itself, to the point its only public proof are screenshots from an article in ''Foom'' magazine. It was last shown at a convention in 2005, a decade prior to Cardoso's death.

* ''Cleopatra'', a 1917 film, is thought of to be one of the most elaborate and expensive films ever created. Only [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWn7L2pL5dI 20 seconds of the film]] has been found, as it was censored by MoralGuardians and the last remaining copies were destroyed in a fire.

* During the production of ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', assistant director David Tomblin filmed a comedic promotional short called ''Return Of The Ewok'' with Creator/WarwickDavis playing both himself and Wicket the Ewok. It starts as a straightforward documentary about Davis preparing for his role as Wicket W. Warrick in the film, but turns into a metafictional story about him meeting characters from the movie and actually turning into Wicket. George Lucas personally paid for this strange experiment, but the money ran out before Tomblin could finish the final edit or get the rights for the Music/{{Supertramp}} songs used in the film and it was never officially released. The original 16mm print was lost, but Tomblin made a VHS copy as a gift for Davis, which he donated to Lucasfilm. The only public screenings has been at the Celebration FanConvention, as well as the British National Space Centre. Some clips have appeared as part of DVD/Blu-Ray bonus content [[note]] In particular, the blooper reel EasterEgg on ''Return of the Jedi'''s DVD and the "Warwick & Sons" featurette on the Blu-ray for ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker''[[/note]] and a condensed four minute edit was briefly available on the old ''Star Wars'' website for members of the now-defunct Hyperspace fan club.

* During the production of ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', assistant director David Tomblin filmed a comedic promotional short called ''Return Of The Ewok'' with Creator/WarwickDavis playing both himself and Wicket the Ewok. It starts as a straightforward documentary about Davis preparing for his role as Wicket W. Warrick in the film, but turns into a metafictional story about him meeting characters from the movie and actually turning into Wicket. George Lucas personally paid for this strange experiment, but the money ran out before Tomblin could finish the final edit and it was never officially released. The original 16mm print was lost, but Tomblin made a VHS copy as a gift for Davis, which he donated to Lucasfilm. The only public screenings has been at the Celebration FanConvention, as well as the British National Space Centre. Some clips have appeared as part of DVD/Blu-Ray bonus content [[note]] In particular, the blooper reel EasterEgg on ''Return of the Jedi'''s DVD and the "Warwick & Sons" featurette on the Blu-ray for ''Film/TheRiseOfSkywalker''[[/note]] and a condensed four minute edit was briefly available on the old ''Star Wars'' website for members of the now-defunct Hyperspace fan club.

* 1912's ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saved_from_the_Titanic Saved from the Titanic]]'' is noteworthy for three reasons: It has historical significance as the first fiction film to be made about the sinking of the UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic, it was released to cinemas [[AbsurdlyShortProductionTime just 31 days after the disaster]], and it starred an actual survivor of the event: An actress and model named Dorothy Gibson, who was effectively coerced into doing the film and retired from show business shortly afterward due to the trauma of the experience. The film's prints were destroyed in a fire in 1914 and the film is lost.

* In addition to ''The Mountain Eagle'', two early Creator/AlfredHitchcock films, ''Number 13'' (1922; unfinished) and ''An Elastic Affair'' (1930) - both shorts - are lost.
* There exist reports of a [[{{Bowdlerization}} heavily-edited]] American network television version of ''Film/OnceUponATimeInAmerica'', based on the director's cut and [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes the American theatrical cut]], that was made and first aired in the early-to-mid 1990s. It ran for almost three hours long (without commercials), and while retaining the non-chronological order of the director's cut, had also removed many key scenes that had violence or graphic content, as well as having all profanity and references to drugs exiled from the broadcast version. This version was supposedly intended as a one-off showing, and despite apparently being re-aired by local stations (and according to one source, AMC) via syndication, no copies of this cut are known to exist.
* In 1953 Disney established the Buena Vista Film Distribution Company, a division of the studio that was [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin set up to allow them to distribute their own films and shorts]] independent of the other major studios. However, they were still contractually obligated to release one more animated film for RKO Pictures, who up until that point had distributed all of their movies. Disney was worried about Howard Hughes' somewhat chaotic leadership of RKO and wanted to sever their ties with the studio as soon as they could. Their solution was to quickly edit together and release a [[CompilationMovie package film]] titled ''Music Land'' (no relation to [[WesternAnimation/MusicLand the 1935 short of the same name]]), which was comprised of shorts from other package films ''WesternAnimation/MakeMineMusic'' (1946) and ''WesternAnimation/MelodyTime'' (1948). Though the shorts were the same, the film included a new intro and ending, as well as new transitions between the shorts. This was technically enough to classify the film as a new movie entirely, and it allowed Disney to complete their contract with RKO two years before the release of their next animated film ''WesternAnimation/LadyAndTheTramp''. ''Music Land'' itself has not been released in any form since 1953, and [[{{Retcon}} it was removed]] from the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon entirely in 1985.
* Music/TheBeatles documentary ''Film/LetItBe'' was last legally released in 1991 (laserdisc and VHS). Odds are, it will never be legally released again in its original form. (There is dissonance between what viewers will expect to see and what [[Music/TheBeatles Apple Corps]] wants to show.) Music/PaulMcCartney told ''[[http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/paul-mccartney-looks-back-the-rolling-stone-interview-w433437 Rolling Stone]]'' in 2016 that he wants the film to be released, correctly noting that he should be the main objector among the Apple Corps stakeholders because he "doesn't come off well" in it. It wasn't until fifty years after its original release that it received an HD remaster and recut by Creator/PeterJackson in preparation for the 2021 documentary mini-series ''Series/TheBeatlesGetBack'' intended to dispel the idea that the ''Let It Be'' sessions were purely acrimonious.
* Creator/JerryLewis' ''Film/TheDayTheClownCried'' is about a clown who insults Hitler and ends up a Pied Piper to the children of a Jewish concentration camp. People are split on if keeping it suppressed is a good thing or not. Apart from the question of good taste, the project's [[ScrewedByTheLawyers legal ownership is disputed]]. The film remains unfinished; post-production work was never completed. The film negatives were eventually admitted into the Library of Congress in August of 2015, but under the condition that the film can't be screened for ten years. However, as stated before, the legal ownership dispute (plus the fact that some of the parties in said dispute, including Lewis, [[DiedDuringProduction are dead]]) still leaves the film indefinitely lost.
* The "Gay Jesus" film ''HIM'' (actually about a man who has sexual fantasies ''about'' Jesus) is sometimes thought to be mythical. Evidence for the film's existence (in the form of contemporary newspaper and magazine clippings) has been [[http://obscurityandbeyond.blogspot.com/2010/02/lost-movie-detective-him-1974.html collected]] to show that the film at least ''did'' exist, but if any prints have survived, their location is unknown, and they're not in public circulation.
* The original cut of Creator/OrsonWelles' ''Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons'', as well as the hour or so raw footage that was [[ExecutiveMeddling excised for the final release]], is lost forever - and we do mean ''forever''; the excised footage was rendered for the silver nitrate. It's been said that Welles received a copy of the original cut, but where it is right now if it actually happened, is anybody's guess.
* Four of the Film/CharlieChan movies from the 1930s, ''Charlie Chan Carries On'', ''Charlie Chan's Chance'', ''Charlie Chan's Greatest Case'', and ''Charlie Chan's Courage'', are lost (though ''Charlie Chan Carries On'' survives in a Spanish-language version, ''Eran Trece'').
* The last known copy of ''Film/LondonAfterMidnight'' was destroyed (along with hundreds of other silent films) in 1967 when the vault it was stored in caught fire. A reconstruction using surviving stills and the original script was put together in 2002. Browning remade the film in 1935 as ''Film/MarkOfTheVampire'', which was pared down from 80 minutes to 61 minutes prior to distribution; the cut footage is believed lost.
* Creator/ErrolFlynn spent $500,000 of his own money to produce his comeback feature ''William Tell''. Most of the money went to building an Alpine resort set, and he only had enough money left to shoot 30 minutes of the film. He screened the footage at the Venice Film Festival, but bouts with dysentery and diarrhea kept him from meeting with investors for any meaningful lengths of time. Desperate, he staged a fake paralysis from a fall in his hotel room, hoping to secure a large insurance settlement. When this failed, he abandoned the project and spent the rest of his career playing drunks before dying of heart failure at the age of 50. None of the film's footage has been found, and the only evidence of the film remaining is the Alpine resort set, which is now a popular tourist attraction.

* Good luck finding a copy of ''Day Of The Tiger'', the ultra-violent early 80s kung-fu film. After the audience's reaction (disgust and horror) to its limited screening, the original distributor attempted to destroy all copies of the film to appease their theaters, and it's unclear if they succeeded or not. Most of the time, you'll just find small clips mistaken for parts of ''Film/TheStoryOfRicky''. Its sequel, at least, can be found in torrents. The film is so rare that it's increasingly believed to be a hoax. The only information anyone has on it is from a Reddit post [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Lost_Films/comments/3g26p6/lost_obscure_kung_fu_movie_day_of_the_tiger/]].
* ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209031/combined Humor Risk]]'' (also called ''Humorisk'') is a 1921 silent film notable for being the Creator/MarxBrothers' ''real'' screen debut. Accounts vary on how exactly it became lost, with one claiming that Groucho hated the result of their first venture on the screen so much that he and his brothers got their hands on all copies of the film and its negatives and destroyed them. It would take eight years (and the invention of talkies) before the Brothers returned to the movies.
* Not one, but ''two'' Japanese adaptations of ''Film/KingKong'':
** The 1938 film ''Film/KingKong Appears in Edo'' (featuring an unauthorized use of RKO's Kong character) appears to have been one of the first, if not ''the'' first, Japanese {{Kaiju}} films. Reports differ on whether the ape (reportedly only called Kong in the title) was a giant or merely implied to be so in publicity while being a more human-scale yeti-like creature in the film itself. Never shown outside of its original theatrical run in Japan, all prints of the film appear to have been lost during World War II or the postwar occupation. All that remains are movie posters (incorporating stills from the film).
** ''Wasei Kingu Kongu'', a silent short from 1933, is supposedly lost for similar reasons. Stills remain of this one too. Although the film itself remains lost, details about the film's script have emerged. Apparently, it was a promotional tie-in to the 1933 RKO film, made with RKO's approval. The film is actually not a monster movie, but a comedy about an actor who begins playing King Kong on the vaudeville stage following the InUniverse release and popularity of ''Film/KingKong''.
* ''Catch My Soul'', a musical version of ''Theatre/{{Othello}}'' starring Richie Havens and directed by Creator/PatrickMcGoohan was released in the early 1970s to terrible reviews (not helped by, according to legend, one of the producers "finding God" and adding fifteen minutes of religious imagery much to [=McGoohan's=] chagrin). It was retitled ''Santa Fe Satan'' before disappearing completely. The soundtrack can often be found for sale on eBay, though.
* Prior to ''Film/{{The Birth of a Nation|1915}}'', Charles Giblyn's 1913 ''The Battle of Gettysburg'' was the longest and most expensive movie about UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. Today, it appears to be a lost film. ''Birth of a Nation'' itself had a sequel, ''The Fall of a Nation'', which flopped upon release and is now considered lost.

** This is the real reason that ''Film/TheDayTheClownCried'' (mentioned above) was never released. By the time filming was completed, the rights had expired. They ended up reverting to the screenwriters, who were so horrified and embarrassed by the result that they refused to make any sort of deal that would allow the film to be released.

* ''Cleopatra'', a 1917 film, is thought of to be one of the most elaborate and expensive films ever created. Only [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWn7L2pL5dI 20 seconds of the film]] has been found, as it was censored by MoralGuardians and the last remaining copies were destroyed in a fire.
* The 1930 Creator/FredAstaire[=/=]Music/IrvingBerlin film ''Puttin' On The Ritz''. Very few parts of the film remain, unfortunately, and not even in its original color.
* The first film adaptation of ''Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' was made in 1916, starring the Swedish actor Nils Olaf Chrisander and the Norwegian actress Aud Egede-Nissen. There is no evidence of the film's existence save references in other media.

* All prints of the first [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf]] movie, 1913's ''The Werewolf'', are believed to have been destroyed in a 1924 fire. The movie featured a Navajo female werewolf.
* ''Life Without Soul'' (1915) is the second film adaptation of ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'', and a lost film.
* The first ever ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' film, ''A Study in Scarlet'', released in 1914, has yet to be rediscovered.

* In 1988, a movie called ''Music City Blues'' was announced, starring Catherine Bach (aka [[Series/TheDukesOfHazzard Daisy Duke]]) and CountryMusic singer Larry Boone. The film was abruptly canceled due to lack of funding, per a 1989 news article in ''The Tennesseean'', and no traces of it are known to exist.
* The first film adaptation of ''Literature/LandOfOz'' books from 1908, ''The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays'', is considered a historically important yet lost film. It was the first silent film to feature an intended musical score (rather than musicians improvising) and was the first all-color film. It was a blockbuster however was cut short after a few months due to being too expensive to show (due to it involving play elements alongside being a film). Only a few screencaps exist and the film itself is missing. The [[Film/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz1910 1910 film]] was once thought to be the same film, but once that surfaced it became clear that it was a completely different adaptation.
* The 1933 [[UsefulNotes/ThePreCodeEra Pre-Code]] comedy ''Convention City'' was taken out of circulation shortly after its release due to its very racy content. The most recent known screening was in a Spanish theater in 1942. The script still exists and there have reportedly been readings of it at film festivals. Also, BRoll footage of Atlantic City that was used for the movie has been found.
* The Taiwanese film ''Hai Mo'', released in 1975, is believed to be lost. A poster for the film is pretty much the only thing that has survived. Going by the poster illustrations and the English title "Sea of Monsters", it seems the plot revolved around sea monsters of some sort.
* The 1917 film ''The Gulf Between'' is considered the oldest all-technicolor film. Only tidbits are known to still exist.

* The two sequels to ''Film/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz1910'' are both missing.
* ''The Song of the Flame'', the first film from Creator/WarnerBros to incorporate widescreen footage, is better known as the first film to be accompanied by a Looney Tune on the big screen. Only its soundtrack survives.
* ''Film/TeenagersFromOuterSpace'' director Tom Graeff made four other movies prior to ''Teenagers''[='=] release, but since his [[DrivenToSuicide suicide]] in 1970 they've completely disappeared. While his first film was eventually found, his other three remain missing and it's unlikely they'll ever be found.
** His first missing short was called ''The Orange Coast College Story'' and was commissioned by Orange Coast College with Creator/VincentPrice providing narration.
** Then there was his 1955 feature debut called ''The Noble Experiment'', which was a comedy he stared in opposite of an unnamed local beauty queen. The film's poor reviews would foreshadow the reception of ''Teenagers'' a few years later.
** Finally there was his short art film ''Island Sunrise'' which doesn't have any info on it whatsoever.
* At least a couple of old Creator/ShawBrothers movies; no surprise, considering the studios made over 1000 films before its closure in 1997:
** The directorial debut of Chang Cheh, titled ''Tiger Boy'' and starring a teenage Jimmy Wang Yu, is confirmed to be permanently lost by the studios themselves.
** There was a Shaw movie filmed in 1970, titled ''The Drinking Knight'', which went through two different directors and a whole lot of TroubledProduction before it was eventually cancelled. The only remaining traces of this film are production stills.
* In 1987, gold manufacturer Santo Rigatsuo directed a sci-fi BMovie called ''Blood Circus'' which he also starred in and produced for $2 million. The movie involves the U.S. and Soviets teaming up to fight off an alien invasion by hosting a wrestling tournament, with one of the wrestlers being a pre Wrestling/{{WWE}} Brent Albright. The film only screened for a few days at local Baltimore theaters before vanishing, with the only elements proving its existence being [[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088824/reviews?ref_=m_tt_urv IMDB reviews]] from those who saw it and [[https://youtu.be/_1GY93EWwwY a musical sequence]] with Santo himself that was meant to promote his jewelry. It wasn't until 2008 when Santo announced that a copy of the movie was found and attempted to auction it off on eBay to no avail,[[note]] possibly having to do with [[CrackIsCheaper the original starting bid being $21 million with a buy it now the price of $750 million]][[/note]] leaving any chance for the film's release uncertain.
* In 1985 Brian De Palma was approached by Creator/OrionPictures to make a horror film entitled ''The Piece Maker''. However, the project was canceled due to the studio performing poorly at the box office that year. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgK6AZGl5kY Only a trailer survives.]]
* In 1981 a movie based off of the novel ''The Pike'' was announced. However, its production was never finished and only production stills survive.
* The only way to watch the action movie ''Fight and Revenge'' was to be in the theaters it played in 1997.
* The 1982 Filipino religious drama film ''Milagro sa Porta Vaga'' (lit. ''Miracle at Porta Vaga'') starring the late child actress Julie Vega remains lost to this day. No footage has surfaced apart from a promotional poster and a [[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zewOGLSxFNc/THAnlEt73iI/AAAAAAAAAcA/FN-dFbdIq5Y/s1600/julie2.jpeg still]] from the movie, much to the dismay of a confraternity in Cavite City dedicated to the titular Marian image of Porta Vaga, stating:
--> It is sad to know that no copy exists of this film. One of the Cofradia de la Virgen de la Soledad de Porta Vaga, Inc.'s goals was to obtain a copy of this film to aid in spreading our devotion.
* In 1974 Bruce Cardozo made a ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' fan film entitled ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_Versus_Kraven_the_Hunter Spider-Man Versus Kraven the Hunter]]'' that apparently was endorsed by Marvel itself, to the point its only public proof are screenshots from an article in ''Foom'' magazine. It was last shown at a convention in 2005, a decade prior to Cardoso's death.
* Charles Band and Creator/FullMoonFeatures apparently has [[http://tomboftheunproducedhorrormovie.blogspot.com/p/unfinishedunreleased.html many cases]] along with those he didn't even make.
* ''Children of Loneliness'' (1937) was an exploitation melodrama film written and directed by Richard C. Kahn. Said to be inspired by the 1928 novel ''Literature/TheWellOfLoneliness'', the picture is also notable for being one of the first exploitation films to explore the subject of homosexuality. No footage of this movie has surfaced anywhere aside from [[https://lostmediawiki.com/w/images/0/0d/Tumblr_me98yzXIAZ1rqj88io1_250.jpg a promotional poster]].
* Two films of exploitation director Todd Sheets found this fate, ''The Kansas City Blender Massacre'' and ''Chainsaw Tales'', even if he made copies of the original tapes.
* In the summer of 1987, Carlos Tobalinias was working on a movie titled ''The Kulies'' which was released in 1988. It quickly vanished from theaters after Carlos's death in March of 1989. B-movie distributor Vinegar Syndrome got the rights to Carlos's films in 2017. They found a print of ''The Kulies'' that sadly was damaged beyond use making restoration impossible.
* The 1988 SlasherFilm ''Carnage Hall'', is about a man in an Albert Einstein mask killing the residents of a male dormitory. Shot on video by college students, aside from [[http://www.thehorrorsection.com/2016/12/texas-einstein-massacre.html one report]] it doesn't appear to have extant copies.
* Creator/CurtisHanson made in the 1970s a horror movie called ''[[http://templeofschlock.blogspot.com/2009/01/lost-and-still-not-found-case-file-19.html God Bless Dr. Shagetz]]'', whose only public footage is in recut form in the 1987 direct-to-video ''Evil Town''. The negatives are [[https://catalog.afi.com/Catalog/MovieDetails/55928 purpotedly]] still with the producer of ''Evil Town''.
* In 1985 Creator/GaryColeman starred in a made-for-TV movie called ''Playing with Fire'', a clear attempt to cash in on ''Film/{{Firestarter}}'' where he played a teenage arsonist. It was badly received and while rumored to have copies shown in schools for educational purposes, only [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC0nlTQC0IY two]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCV-lHWi4yE promos]] remain of footage.
* A 1976 Swedish adaptation of ''Literature/TheMetamorphosis'', though it has [[https://forums.lostmediawiki.com/thread/221/metamorphosis-1976 at least one copy in possession of the Swedish Film Institute.]]
* A 1975 movie, ''Never The Twain''(not to be confused with an eponymous British show), centering around a man who gets possessed by the ghost of Mark Twain and goes to the Miss World Nude Pageant, supposedly inspired by an incident that happened to lead actor Ed Trostle. All proof of it is a poster.
* A bunch of theatrical horror films that saw limited releases in the 70s and 80s are now lost. These include such titles as ''Alien Flesh Eaters'', ''Ripsaw Rapes'', ''Halls of Exorcism'', ''Face of Darkness'', and ''The Female Beast''. A lot of these movies are theorized to be obscure retitlings of other movies (''Halls of Exorcism'' and ''Face of Darkness'' could easily be retitlings of ''House of Exorcism'' and ''Faces of Death'') while others such as ''Transformations: A Sandwich of Nightmares'' are actually lost movies.
* ''Black Water Transit'' is a 2009 movie by Tom Kaye that got withheld from release by the producers and studio heads. All that survives is a poster.
* David Lynch's daughter Jennifer Lynch was working on a movie titled ''A Fall From Grace''. It had a poster released along with a trailer; it was supposed to come out in 2015 but either got canceled or went unreleased.
* This seems to be the fate of Roberto Busó-Garcìa's ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging_Emma Paging Emma]]'', as it only played at two theaters in Puerto Rico, but didn't interest distributors and vanished.

* In an October 1980 edition of Box Office Magazine it was announced that Boon Collins of Wild Rose Studios was going to produce a movie titled ''The Cellar''. Nothing else has been heard.
* A movie called ''The Mall'' was announced at Cannes in 1981. It had a poster made for it and even a plot synopsis made: A group of teenagers partying at a mall after everyone else has left (eerily similar to the later released ''Film/ChoppingMall'') are picked off one by one by a deranged killer who's escaped from an asylum after murdering his parents and has made the mall his home. George P. Cosmatos was set to direct and pitched a few scenes. It's unknown what happened to this movie as it was never finished. although it's possible that footage exists.
* ''The Graduation Party'' was mooted to be Paul Lynch's follow-up to his slasher classic ''Film/PromNight1980''. It centered around marooned teenagers being menaced on a remote island by a killer played by Creator/JoeSpinell. ''Starburst Magazine'' called it "''Prom Night'' meets ''Literature/TheBlueLagoon''". It's unknown if any footage was ever shot for it. If there was any footage, it's now lost. It was later released as ''Out of Control'', and it's unknown how much of ''The Graduation Party''[='s=] script was incorporated into the final version.
* ''The Gold Diggers of Broadway'', an early Creator/WarnerBros movie musical, has only a few surviving elements, including clips of "Tiptoe Thru' the Tulips" and most of the finale. It was a remake of a 1923 silent version which is entirely lost.

* ''Firelight'', the first full-length film directed by then 17-year-old Creator/StevenSpielberg, was only screened once at his local theatre in 1964. Apparently, when he moved to Hollywood in TheSeventies, he made the mistake of loaning the print to an unscrupulous producer who then vanished with it.
* In the early 1930s, Creator/WarnerBros created a series of five live-action shorts called ''Spooney Melodies'', which were precursors to the animated ''Merrie Melodies''. Only the first short, ''Cryin' for the Carolines'', survives today; it can be viewed on the ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' Golden Collection's first and sixth volumes. The other four are completely lost.
* The first film adaptation of ''Literature/TheBlueLagoon'', released in 1923, the only one that received positive reviews upon release, is currently regarded as a lost film. The sole remaining print, obtained by Herbert Wilcox in 1929 for the purpose of a remake, met its demise in a fire at the British and Dominions Imperial Studios on February 9, 1936. Adding to the unfortunate turn of events, Wilcox managed to eliminate all existing copies of the 1923 film, creating a regrettable tragedy.

* The first half of a lost 1923 Hitchcock melodrama, ''The White Shadow'', [[http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/03/us-alfredhitchcock-idUSTRE7726XV20110803 was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archives]]. The second half of the film remains lost.

* ''Film/TheWickerMan1973'' had something like twelve minutes of footage removed after an early screening. With the possible exception of the original Media-Home Entertainment release, they've never been seen since. Creator/ChristopherLee, who considered this one of his best films, [[BerserkButton was NOT happy about this]]. A 2001 home video release restored some of these scenes, including the original opening scene - from a clearly inferior print, but still.

* Several of Creator/StanleyKubrick's films have trimmed content that has yet to be recovered.
** His first feature, ''Fear and Desire'', was a shoestring production funded by donations from Kubrick's family and friends. Paul Mazursky, who himself went on to a successful directing career, played a leading role. Kubrick was embarrassed by it, so he bought up as many copies as he could and discouraged screenings of the movie while he was alive. It finally got a release in October 2012.
** ''Film/TheShining'' had an epilogue, in which Ullman tells Wendy that they have been unable to locate Jack's [[spoiler:frozen corpse]] and [[spoiler:gives Jack's tennis ball to Danny]]. This actually played in theaters, but was cut by Kubrick a week after the film's release. (Maybe for the best, as Creator/RogerEbert pointed out, because the scene left the rest of the movie open to PlotHoles.) It's not been seen since.
** The uncut version of ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey'' has not been seen anywhere since its premiere engagements. Warner Bros. discovered 17 minutes of the footage in 2010; they have no intention of reinserting the footage back into the film in keeping with Kubrick's intentions, but whether they'll be included as extras in an upcoming video release is anyone's guess at this point.
* The 3D versions of ''TopBanana'' and ''SouthwestPassage'', as well as the uncut version of the former.

* ''Film/{{Dracula 1931}}'', in its original release, had an epilogue in which Edward Van Sloan (Van Helsing) [[BreakingTheFourthWall addressed the audience]]. The epilogue starts out sounding like a reassuring ThisIsAWorkOfFiction message, until at the last moment he subverts it with "There really ''are'' such things as vampires!" The epilogue was cut from the 1936 re-release due to fears of offending religious groups by endorsing the supernatural, and is now lost, barring a literal two seconds of footage that appear in a Dracula tribute documentary [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=461&v=C_hhOAdQDkY]].
* The rumored three-hour long version of ''The Last House on Dead End Street''. Apparently, the movie, originally called ''The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell'', caused mass hysteria when it was originally released, so it was re-edited to be less violent.
* The 1954 remake of ''Film/{{A Star Is Born|1954}}'' originally ran for 182 minutes, but the studio, Warner Bros., cut it down to 154 minutes before release. In 1983 a restoration was made that runs 176 minutes. However for several scenes only the audio survived, so stills were used in place of the missing footage.
* The documentary/movie ''Film/GrizzlyMan'' has an ApocalypticLog that depicts an audio recording of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend's deaths from a bear. In the movie, the coroner in the case describes the contents of the recording and Creator/WernerHerzog, the director, is shown listening to it. He tells the owner of the clip to destroy it. It’s currently locked away in a safe deposit box, with no intention of being released. Present in ''Grizzly Man''[='=]s theatrical cut, but missing from the DVD release, is a clip from Treadwell's interview with Creator/DavidLetterman in which Letterman jokes about him being eaten by a bear.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLandBeforeTime'' has eleven minutes cut from the final film for being too scary and intense. All that remains of those eleven minutes are some stills and production sketches.

* The [[Film/FlowersInTheAttic1987 1987 film adaptation of]] ''Literature/FlowersInTheAttic'' originally ended with [[spoiler:Malcolm Foxworth still being alive for Corrine's wedding, and the grandmother attempting to kill the remaining Dollanganger children with a knife only for John the caretaker to perform a HeroicSacrifice and allow the children to be free]]. The studio cut the original ending and filmed a new one without the film's director, which pleased neither critics or fans. For years the only parts of the original ending to have surfaced were photos, but in 2018 it was announced that Arrow Video would be releasing the film on blu-ray with the original ending as a bonus feature. They later released the blu-ray in the U.S. in 2019.
* Due to CreatorBacklash, Creator/MaryPickford tried to forcibly make the 1923 film ''Film/{{Rosita}}'' into this. In the 1970s a Soviet copy was found. It was a really poor quality looking, presumably bootleg, copy from the 1920s. Attempts to restore it were made and now the film looks as good as any other silent film. A few rolls are still missing, however.

* The full 130 minute cut of ''Film/{{Event Horizon}}''. Test audience reactions to full cut were less then stellar, with some people reportedly fainting at the extreme amounts of gore. Director Paul W.S Anderson acquiesced into cutting the film down to a much more digestible 90 minutes and the result tanked at the box office and was critically eviscerated. The full uncut version, which contained an even longer version of the notorious “Blood orgy” scene, remained lost for years until a highly deteriorated copy surfaced in a Transylvania salt mine. As it turns out, that copy was reportedly so badly damaged, a full uncut release has been deemed impossible. Still, a few deleted scenes managed to appear on the DVD, including a longer, significantly more graphic version of the final Hell Hallucinations. Yet even these scenes are very bad quality and have no sound.
* When ''Film/BlackRage'' was released on VHS in 1988 about 11 minutes of footage was edited out for unknown reasons, resulting in rather blatant jumps in the middle of several scenes. Since then the additional footage has yet to turn up and it possibly never will [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes given how rare the 1988 edit already was]].
* The original roadshow print of ''WesternAnimation/{{Fantasia}}'' is long lost; the best attempt to restore it not only omits an offending image of a black centaur in one segment, it also uses Corey Burton's voice to dub that of Deems Taylor because the original audio was greatly deteriorated to the point of becoming irretrievable.
* In 1932, the husband-and-wife team of Mikhail Tsekhanovsky and Vera Tsenkhanovskaya embarked on their most ambitious project yet - an animated opera based on the Creator/AlexanderPushkin fairy tale ''The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda'', featuring a score by renowned composer Music/DmitriShostakovich and an art style heavily influenced by contemporary Russian Telegraph Agency posters. Unfortunately, the film suffered from one hell of a TroubledProduction, with Shostakovich bailing on the project after seeing several of his works, including the film's score, publicly denounced in a ''Pravda'' article. Since the film now had no score, it was never completed and placed in storage at the Lenfilm archive in UsefulNotes/SaintPetersburg, then known as Leningrad, where the majority of the footage was then lost when the Germans bombed the archive during the Siege of Leningrad. All that remains of the film is a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVSWMWZugis two and a half minute segment]] from the marketplace scene, showing various merchants showcasing their wares.
* Due to poor preservation methods and heavy re-cutting for foreign markets, roughly a quarter of the original theatrical cut of the 1927 Creator/FritzLang film ''Film/{{Metropolis}}'' was considered lost for decades. The first serious effort to reconstruct the film began in 2001, using footage discovered in archives around the world; released on home video in 2003, it came up about half an hour short of the original. In 2008, a complete (but heavily damaged) copy was found at a film museum in Argentina, spurring a new project to restore the film. The resulting effort, released on home video in 2010, includes all but two scenes (roughly five minutes' worth of running time) and is considered to be the most complete version of ''Metropolis'' since its original premiere in Germany.
* One of Creator/ShawBrothers' earliest films, ''Tiger Boy'', which starred Creator/JimmyWangYu and was the directorial debut of the legendary director Chang Cheh, is permanently lost after a single theatrical showing in Hong Kong. Reportedly the film made it to another theater in Singapore and is a box office success at the time, but today all that remains of the film are black-and-white magazine stills.
* Creator/KrzysztofKieslowski finished work on ''Film/BlindChance'' in 1981, but the film had to wait until 1987 to receive its premiere, and even then, several scenes were cut by Polish censors. When Tor Film Studios produced a digital restoration of the film in 2012, all but one of the cuts were reversed; the footage of the exception, which showed protagonist Witek being beaten by police for resisting arrest, was too badly degraded to restore. Only the audio survives.
* The 1932 pre-Code musical ''Film/LoveMeTonight'', notable for featuring the first use of Rodgers and Hart's "Isn't it Romantic?", was cut by eight minutes when UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode went into effect in 1934; among the footage cut was a sequence featuring Creator/MyrnaLoy in a negligee that was deemed too suggestive. The missing sequences have never been recovered, so only the Code-compliant version exists today.

* Yet another "lost movie": the infamous 1994 Creator/RogerCorman produced ''Film/TheFantasticFour''. The story began when Constantin Film optioned the rights to make a ''Fantastic Four'' feature film with a planned budget of $40 million. Unfortunately they couldn't raise the money on time and the option was about to expire so they brought Corman on board who reduced the budget to $1.5 million and made it within a one-month shooting schedule which should give you a good estimate to its quality. From that point onward, accounts differ. According to Creator/StanLee, Constantin Film never planned to release the movie and made it only to keep the rights and basically blackmail Marvel into giving them a substantial sum in exchange for the movie never seeing the light of day (depending on the legend, Marvel either locked the movie in a vault or had Avi Arad himself ''burn the negatives''), whereas Creator/RogerCorman claims one of the other producers managed to raise the intended money, bought the distribution rights from Corman via a clause in his contract and simply chose not to release it. 9 years later, Constantin Film produced the now well known 2005 ''Fantastic Four'' and the rest is history. For a long time, one of the few ways you could see the movie was via bootleg copies sold at comic book conventions, but lately it's been uploaded to Website/YouTube, and [[http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/The_Fantastic_Four_1993.aspx recaps]] are also available. A documentary about the making and subsequent legacy of the film was also released in 2016 and includes numerous clips.

* Creator/OrsonWelles' early comedy film ''Too Much Johnson'', made even before ''Citizen Kane'', was never even publicly screened. Given [[HaveAGayOldTime the title]], this is almost for the best. However, a work print was discovered in 2013 and it was put online in 2014 (and aired on Creator/TurnerClassicMovies in 2015).

* ''Film/ThePoughkeepsieTapes'' is a horror movie that had an incredibly limited run in theaters, and the director refuses to release it in public in any way (it doesn't help that [[Creator/MetroGoldwynMayer the studio that financed it]] is only just recovering from its recent bankruptcy). For a while the only way to find it was through pirated copies online, though for a little bit it was legally available via Direct TV On Demand back in 2014... until that was taken down not too long after it was released. Eventually it was given a direct to video release from Creator/ShoutFactory in 2017.
* One of Wrestling/ElSanto's many films, ''Film/SantoEnElTesoroDeDracula'' (''Santo in Dracula's Treasure'') (1968), had an alternate version entitled ''El Vampiro y el Sexo'' ("The Vampire and Sex"). Additional scenes featured nude or topless vampire seductresses (fortunately or unfortunately, the heroic luchador himself did not engage in any sexual activity). This version of the film, intended for more liberal audiences outside Mexico, apparently had a limited release (newspaper ads exist for showings in New York-area Spanish language theaters), then disappeared, but stills of nude vampire ladies from the "sexy" version provided evidence of its existence. It was finally discovered by the producer's grand-niece and publicly screened in Guadalajara in July 2011.

* The strange Creator/JonVoight film ''The Legend of Simon Conjurer'' seems to be heading this way. It was supposedly released to a limited number of theaters in 2006 and apparently has yet to receive any release on DVD, Blu-ray, or even Netflix with a large portion of the internet population trying to find it. Considering the only footage available is a trailer, it is speculated that the whole thing was a weird hoax. The film was quietly released to streaming platforms in September 2014. It is now called ''Film/DeadlyLessons''.
* The second ever Franchise/SherlockHolmes movie, released in 1916 and simply titled ''Sherlock Holmes'', was thought lost forever, [[http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29474334 until it was found mislabeled]] in the French Film Archive in Paris in 2014. This is especially important since it stars William Gillette, the man who first performed Sherlock Holmes on stage over a thousand times and became the TropeCodifier for many Sherlock-isms like "Elementary, dear Watson" and him smoking a Calabash pipe (he needed a pipe that could be seen from the back row). So in many ways, this is the first time ever we are able to see the original Sherlock Holmes!
* For many decades, the only way to watch a complete version of ''Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera1925'' was the Eastman House print of the [[ReCut 1929 recut]] since the original 1925 version was believed to be lost to time. That all changed in 2011 when the British Film Institute located a copy, going on to release it on DVD two years later.
* Charles Burnett's 1978 student film ''Film/KillerOfSheep'' was made to wild acclaim by every critic who saw it, but could not be released commercially because the rights to the soundtrack, filled with blues legends, were way too expensive. For nearly 30 years it remained almost unseen while appearing on the [[UsefulNotes/RogerEbertGreatMoviesList Roger Ebert "Great Movies" list]] and other lists of critical masterpieces. It finally got a home video release in 2007 after a fundraising campaign scraped together the money for the soundtrack.

* The surprisingly prophetic 1924 film, ''Film/TheCityWithoutJews'', which was ExactlyWhatItSaysonTheTin and predicted the rise of Nazism and antisemitism, was thought lost until a badly damaged copy was found in Austria in 1989 [[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43569919 and a more complete copy was found in a Paris flea market in 2015]]. In its time it was surprisingly successful, but was banned due to the highly negative right-wing reaction to it (it helped the right wing had significant influence in Austria at the time).
* The 1962 Hong Kong film ''Big and Little Wong Tin Bar'', featuring the young Creator/JackieChan and Creator/SammoHung in their film debuts, was long considered lost, with only a 9-minute opening clip and a 5-minute stretch of dialogue surviving. The complete film was rediscovered in 2016 and has since been posted to Website/YouTube.
* Orson Welles' ''Film/TheOtherSideOfTheWind'', one of his last projects, starring John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich. Welles shot all the footage he wanted and had started editing it before the negative was seized during the Iranian Revolution. (The Shah's brother-in-law had helped pay for it.) After the new government decided it didn't have any value to them, it was locked away in a vault in Paris while various legal rights were worked out. Welles had edited about 40 minutes of footage before it was taken away. There were various efforts to complete it that were either blocked by his daughter Beatrice or by legal decisions. Showtime supposedly bought the rights to the project in the late 90s but never released a version of the film. Various people (including Bogdanovich) were granted access to the negative and tried to complete the editing. By the mid 2010s, it was supposedly "96% complete" (and just needed some post production work, including a score) but gathering dust in a vault for decades due to these legal squabbles. Netflix [[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/movies/unfinished-orson-welles-film-gets-a-netflix-commitment.html bought the rights]] to the film in March 2017, and released it in late 2018.
* Carl Dreyer's original cut of ''Film/ThePassionOfJoanOfArc'' was believed to be lost after the master negative was destroyed in a fire just a few weeks after the film's release in 1928, though he would reconstruct a facsimile of his original cut using alternate and unused takes (this, too, was destroyed in a fire the following year, but not before enough copies were made to allow continued distribution). Dreyer died in 1968 believing his film was lost forever. It wasn't until 1981 that copies of the original negative were found in, of all places, an insane asylum in Norway. It's unknown how they came to be there -- there are no records of any copies of the film being shipped to Norway -- but historians believe that the director of the asylum in the 1920s -- who was also a professional historian -- may have requested a special copy.
* The 1972 Israeli countercultural film ''Film/AnAmericanHippieInIsrael'' was believed to be lost until 2007, when film historian Yaniv Edelstein managed to locate a copy in the possession of one of the film's cast members. Upon its rediscovery it was screened in Tel Aviv and quickly gained a cult following similar to that of ''Film/TheRoom2003''.
* ''Series/TheKeepers'', a 1991 Soviet adaptation of the first part of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' was considered lost after a single broadcast, but in March 2021, the studio found a copy and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vquKyNdgH3s uploaded it]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLevCLNnLmg to YouTube]].
* The majority of Creator/BabyPeggy[='=]s films as well as production records for it have unfortunately been lost to time, though a handful of Baby Peggy shorts, including ''Playmates'', ''Miles of Smiles'' and ''Sweetie'', have surfaced and have since been preserved by film archives around the world. In addition, Peggy's 1924 film Our Pet had been re-discovered in Japan in 2016.
* While ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' and ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' have true theatrical cuts available on standard definition home video, the '''original''' theatrical cut for ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' was thought lost until originaltrilogy.com came along. All of the home video releases contain either the 1981 ''Episode IV'' crawl or audio revisionism. It's also claimed due by George Lucas the original negatives being deteriorated and destroyed. This began with some of the original Star Wars re-release in theaters to introduce "Episode IV: A New Hope" which is not original to '77. Part of this is supposedly due to Lucas having OldShame over the fact that there were several elements of the films that weren't as good as he hoped (including effects and specific scenes) - he considers the altered versions his "true" vision. However, actual original prints of Star Wars would be found as the unrestored 16mm print was used for the Puggo Grande fan project then a 35mm print was located for the Silver Screen Edition and 4K77 fan restorations.
* A 1982 Slasher titled ''Early Frost'' was thought to be lost for years until it was recovered in 2020.
* An 1981 US-made Spanish horror film entitled ''Atrapados'' didn't strike a distribution deal in spite of awesome reviews when it premiered at local festivals. But the director himself [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81gy82AjK3s uploaded it to YouTube.]]
* One of Creator/RobertCarradine's last films was a movie titled ''The 13th Alley'', a slasher movie set at a bowling alley. It played in a few theaters, leading to a [[https://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/7489/13th-alley-the-2008/ particularly scathing review from Dread Central]], and the DVD was available on its website which has since been deleted, though it was on private torrent sites and finally in 2022 a copy was uploaded to the[[https://archive.org/details/vts-01-1_20220505 Internet Archive]]
* Following a limited theatrical release, the 1974 horror film ''Film/{{Deranged}}'' fell into obscurity for over two decades, with the original negatives believed by many to be lost. The film was eventually rediscovered in Florida some time around 1993 and released on home video by Creator/AmericanInternationalPictures' then-parent company Creator/{{MGM}}.

* ''Film/DifferentFromTheOthers (Anders als die Andern)'' (1919), likely the first [[GayAesop pro-LGBTQ+ film ever made]], was banned by the Nazis and nearly every copy was destroyed. A partial print was found in the 1970s and the film has since been reconstructed and released, but about two-thirds of the footage is still lost.

* The 1972 Israeli countercultural film ''Film/AnAmericanHippieInIsrael'' was believed to be lost until 2007, when film historian Yaniv Edelstein managed to locate a copy in the possession of one of the film's cast members. Upon its rediscovery it was screened in Tel Aviv and quickly gained a cult following similar to that of ''Film/TheRoom''.

* 1912's ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saved_from_the_Titanic Saved from the Titanic]]'' is noteworthy for three reasons: It has historical signficance as the first fiction film to be made about the sinking of the UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic, it was released to cinemas [[AbsurdlyShortProductionTime just 31 days after the disaster]], and it starred an actual survivor of the event: An actress and model named Dorothy Gibson, who was effectively coerced into doing the film and retired from show business shortly afterwards due to the trauma of the experience. The film prints was destroyed in a fire in 1914, and is lost.

* There exist reports of a [[{{Bowdlerization}} heavily-edited]] American network television version of ''Film/OnceUponATimeInAmerica'', based on the director's cut and [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes the American theatrical cut]], that was made and first aired in the early-to-mid 1990s. It ran for almost three hours long (without commercials), and while retaining the non-chronological order of the director's cut, had also removed many key scenes that had violence or graphic content, as well as having all profanity and references to drugs exiled from broadcast. This version was supposedly intended as a one-off showing, and despite apparently being re-aired by local stations (and according to one source, AMC) via syndication, no copies of this cut are known to exist.
* In 1953 Disney established the Buena Vista Film Distribution Company, a division of the studio that was [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin set up to allow them to distribute their own films and shorts]] independent of the other major studios. However they were still contractually obligated to release one more animated film for RKO Pictures, who up until that point had distributed all of their movies. Disney was worried about Howard Hughes' somewhat chaotic leadership of RKO, and wanted to sever their ties with the studio as soon as they could. Their solution was to quickly edit together and release a [[CompilationMovie package film]] titled ''Music Land'' (no relation to [[WesternAnimation/MusicLand the 1935 short of the same name]]), which was comprised of shorts from other package films ''WesternAnimation/MakeMineMusic'' (1946) and ''WesternAnimation/MelodyTime'' (1948). Though the shorts were the same, the film included a new intro and ending, as well as new transitions between the shorts. This was technically enough to classify the film as a new movie entirely, and it allowed Disney to complete their contract with RKO two years before the release of their next animated film ''WesternAnimation/LadyAndTheTramp''. ''Music Land'' itself has not been released in any form since 1953, and [[{{Retcon}} it was removed]] from the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon entirely in 1985.

* Creator/JerryLewis' ''Film/TheDayTheClownCried'', about a clown who insults Hitler and ends up a Pied Piper to the children of a Jewish concentration camp. People are split on if keeping it suppressed is a good thing or not. Apart from the question of good taste, the project's [[ScrewedByTheLawyers legal ownership is disputed]]. The film remains unfinished; post production work was never completed. The film negatives were eventually admitted into the Library of Congress in August of 2015, but under the condition that it can't be screened for ten years. However, as stated before, the legal ownership dispute (plus the fact that some of the parties in said dispute, including Lewis, [[DiedDuringProduction are dead]]) still leaves the film indefinitely lost.

* The original cut of Creator/OrsonWelles' ''Film/TheMagnificentAmbersons'', as well as the hour or so raw footage that was [[ExecutiveMeddling excised for the final release]], is lost forever - and we do mean ''forever''; the excised footage was rendered for the silver nitrate. It's been said that Welles received a copy of the original cut, but where it is right now, if it actually happened, is anybody's guess.

* Creator/ErrolFlynn spent $500,000 of his own money to produce his comeback feature ''William Tell''. Most of the money went to building an Alpine resort set, and he only had enough money left to shoot 30 minutes of film. He screened the footage at the Venice Film Festival, but bouts with dysentery and diarrhea kept him from meeting with investors for any meaningful lengths of time. Desperate, he staged a fake paralysis from a fall in his hotel room, hoping to secure a large insurance settlement. When this failed, he abandoned the project and spent the rest of his career playing drunks before dying of heart failure at the age of 50. None of the film's footage has been found, and the only evidence of the film remaining is the Alpine resort set, which is now a popular tourist attraction.

* Good luck finding a copy of ''Day Of The Tiger'', the ultra-violent early 80s kung-fu film. After the audience reaction (disgust and horror) to its limited screening, the original distributor attempted to destroy all copies of the film to appease their theaters, and it's unclear if they succeeded or not. Most of the time, you'll just find small clips mistaken for parts of ''Film/TheStoryOfRicky''. Its sequel, at least, can be found in torrents. The film is so rare that it's increasingly believed to be a hoax. The only information anyone has on it is from a Reddit post [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Lost_Films/comments/3g26p6/lost_obscure_kung_fu_movie_day_of_the_tiger/]].

** The 1938 film ''Film/KingKong Appears in Edo'' (featuring an unauthorized use of RKO's Kong character) appears to have been one of the first, if not ''the'' first, Japanese {{Kaiju}} films. Reports differ on whether the ape (reportedly only called Kong in the title) was a giant or merely implied to be so in publicity while being a more human-scale yeti like creature in the film itself. Never shown outside of its original theatrical run in Japan, all prints of the film appear to have been lost during World War II or the postwar occupation. All that remains are movie posters (incorporating stills from the film).
** ''Wasei Kingu Kongu'', a silent short from 1933, is supposedly lost for similar reasons. Stills remain of this one too. Although the film itself remains lost, details about the film's script have emerged. Apparently it was a promotional tie-in to the 1933 RKO film, made with RKO's approval. The film is actually not a monster movie, but a comedy about an actor who begins playing King Kong on the vaudeville stage following the InUniverse release and popularity of ''Film/KingKong''.
* ''Catch My Soul'', a musical version of ''Theatre/{{Othello}}'' starring Richie Havens and directed by Creator/PatrickMcGoohan was released in the early 1970s to terrible reviews (not helped by, according to legend, one of the producers "finding God" and adding fifteen minutes of religious imagery much to [=McGoohan's=] chagrin). It was retitled ''Santa Fe Satan'' before disappearing completely. The soundtrack can often be found for sale on Ebay, though.

** Sometimes estates can be persuaded to cooperate. In recent years, [[Creator/TurnerClassicMovies TCM]] lawyers have persuaded the literary executors of Margaret Kennedy to allow general release of 1943's ''The Constant Nymph'', and the estate of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to allow release of 1933's ''Night Flight''.
** This is the real reason that ''Film/TheDayTheClownCried'' (mentioned above) was never released. By the time filming was completed, the rights had expired. They ended up reverting to the screenwriters, who were so horrified and embarrassed by the result that they have refused to make any sort of deal that would allow the film to be released.
** This has also held up any release of the somewhat obscure Creator/ErrolFlynn movie ''The Perfect Specimen'', a rare screwball comedy which has Flynn (alongside Creator/JoanBlondell) PlayingAgainstType as a spineless milquetoast.

* The 1930 Creator/FredAstaire[=/=]Music/IrvingBerlin film ''Puttin' On The Ritz''. Very few parts of the film remain, unfortunately, and not even in its original colour.

* A low-budget, straight-to-video zombie film titled ''Dead End'' was produced around 1985 but it is now considered lost due to the fact that none of the original VHS tapes (which were supposedly sold at horror conventions) are known to still exist. Those who saw the film have provided detailed and consistent accounts of its extraordinarily graphic violence and twisted sense of humor (a zombie mailman stuffs body parts into mailboxes while another drags a dead dog on a leash towards a fire hydrant and expects it to urinate), making it something of a holy grail for zombie fans. Unfortunately, not even a single still frame remains, and the director himself has admitted that he does not know where a copy might exist, meaning it will likely never be viewed again. Many [[http://obscurityandbeyond.blogspot.com/2012/07/lost-movie-detective-dead-end-1985.html suspect]] that the film was merely a hoax planted into [=IMDb=], given the surrounding evidence.
* ''Dracula's Death'' (1921) was a Hungarian movie that was the first film to feature Dracula, beating F.W. Murnau's ''Film/{{Nosferatu}}'' by a year. The movie was re-released in an edited version in Hungary in 1923 and disappeared afterwards. However, a novelization of the movie was published in Hungary, and the story had nothing to do with Bram Stoker's novel; only the name of Dracula was used. Dracula is not even a vampire in this story, but rather a demon, who terrorizes a woman in a mental asylum in a castle in Switzerland.

* The first film adaptation of ''Literature/LandOfOz'' books from 1908, ''The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays'', is considered a historically important yet lost film. It was the first silent film to feature an intended musical score (rather than musicians improvising) and was the first all-colour film. It was a blockbuster however was cut short after a few months due to being too expensive to show (due to it involving play elements alongside being a film). Only a few screencaps exist and the film itself is missing. The [[Film/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz1910 1910 film]] was once thought to be the same film, but once that surfaced it became clear that it was a completely different adaptation.

* In 1987, gold manufacturer Santo Rigatsuo directed a sci-fi BMovie called ''Blood Circus'' which he also starred in and produced for $2 million. The movie involves the U.S. and Soviets teaming up to fight off an alien invasion by hosting a wrestling tournament, with one of the wrestlers being a pre Wrestling/{{WWE}} Brent Albright. The film only screened for a few days at local Baltimore theaters before vanishing, with the only elements proving its existence being [[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088824/reviews?ref_=m_tt_urv IMDB reviews]] from those who saw it and [[https://youtu.be/_1GY93EWwwY a musical sequence]] with Santo himself that was meant to promote his jewelry. It wasn't until 2008 when Santo announced that a copy of the movie was found and attempted to auction it off on eBay to no avail,[[note]] possibly having to do with [[CrackIsCheaper the original starting bid being $21 million with a buy it now price of $750 million]][[/note]] leaving any chance for the film's release uncertain.
* In 1985 Brian De Palma was approached by Creator/OrionPictures to make a horror film entitled ''The Piece Maker''. However, the project was cancelled due to the studio performing poorly at the box office that year. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgK6AZGl5kY Only a trailer survives.]]

* The only way to watch the action movie ''Fight and Revenge'' was to be in the theaters it played in in 1997.

* In the summer of 1987, Carlos Tobalinias was working on a movie titled ''The Kulies'' which was released in 1988. It quitely vanished from theaters after Carlos's death in March of 1989. B-movie distributor Vinegar Syndrome got the rights to Carlos's films in 2017. They found a print of ''The Kulies'' that sadly was damaged beyond use making restoration impossible.
* The 1988 SlasherFilm ''Carnage Hall'', about a man in an Albert Einstein mask killing the residents of a male dormitory. Shot on video by college students, aside from [[http://www.thehorrorsection.com/2016/12/texas-einstein-massacre.html one report]] it doesn't appear to have extant copies.

* In 1985 Creator/GaryColeman starred in a made for TV movie called ''Playing with Fire'', a clear attempt to cash in on ''Film/{{Firestarter}}'' where he played a teenage arsonist. It was badly received and while rumoured to have copies shown in schools for educational purposes, only [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC0nlTQC0IY two]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCV-lHWi4yE promos]] remain of footage.

* A 1975 movie, ''Never The Twain''(not to confused with an eponymous British show), centering around a man who gets possessed by the ghost of Mark Twain and goes to the Miss World Nude Pageant, supposedly inspired by an incident that happened to lead actor Ed Trostle. All proof of it is a poster.
* A bunch of theatrical horror films that saw limited releases in the 70s and 80s are now lost. These include such titles as ''Alien Flesh Eaters'', ''Ripsaw Rapes'', ''Halls of Exorcism'', ''Face of Darkness'', and ''The Female Beast''. A lot of these movies are theorized to be obscure retitlings of other movies (''Halls of Exorcism'' and ''Face of Darkness'' could easily be retitlings of ''House of Exorcism'' and ''Faces of Death'') while others such as ''Transformations: A Sandwich of Nightmares'' are actual lost movies.

* David Lynch's daughter Jennifer Lynch was working on a movie titled ''A Fall From Grace''. It had a poster released along with a trailer; it was supposed to come out in 2015 but either got cancelled or went unreleased.

* ''The Graduation Party'' was mooted to be Paul Lynch's follow up to his slasher classic ''Film/PromNight1980''. It centered around marooned teenagers being menaced on a remote island by a killer played by Creator/JoeSpinell. ''Starburst Magazine'' called it "''Prom Night'' meets ''Literature/TheBlueLagoon''". It's unknown if any footage was ever shot for it. If there was any footage, it's now lost. It was later released as ''Out of Control'', and it's unknown how much of ''The Graduation Party''[='s=] script was incorporated into the final version.

* ''Catch My Soul'', a musical version of ''Theatre/{{Othello}}'' starring Richie Havens and directed by Patrick [=McGoohan=] was released in the early 1970s to terrible reviews (not helped by, according to legend, one of the producers "finding God" and adding fifteen minutes of religious imagery much to [=McGoohan's=] chagrin). It was retitled ''Santa Fe Satan'' before disappearing completely. The soundtrack can often be found for sale on Ebay, though.

* Creator/StanleyKubrick's first feature, ''Fear and Desire'', a shoestring production funded by donations from Kubrick's family and friends. Paul Mazursky, who himself went on to a successful directing career, played a leading role. Kubrick was embarrassed by it, so he bought up as many copies as he could and discouraged screenings of the movie while he was alive. It finally got a release in October 2012.

* The documentary/movie ''Film/GrizzlyMan'' has an ApocalypticLog that depicts an audio recording of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend's deaths from a bear. In the movie, the coroner in the case describes the contents of the recording and Creator/WernerHerzog, the director, is shown listening to it. He tells the owner of the clip to destroy it. It’s currently locked away in a safe deposit box, with no intention of being released.
** Present in ''Grizzly Man''s theatrical cut, but missing from the DVD release, is a clip from Treadwell's interview with Creator/DavidLetterman in which Letterman jokes about him being eaten by a bear.

* One of Creator/ShawBrothers' earliest films, ''Tiger Boy'' -- which is in fact the debut of legendary director Chang Cheh, starring Creator/JimmyWangYu, is permanently lost after a single theatrical showing in Hong Kong. Reportedly the film made it to another theater in Singapore and is a box office success at the time, but today all that remains of the film are black-and-white magazine stills.

* ''Film/DifferentFromTheOthers (Anders als die Andern)'' (1919), likely the first [[GayAesop pro-LGBTQ+ films ever made]], was banned by the Nazis and nearly every copy was destroyed. A partial print was found in the 1970s and the film has since been reconstructed and released, but about two-thirds of the footage is still lost.

* ''Children of Loneliness'' (1937) was an exploitation melodrama film written and directed by Richard C. Kahn. Said to be inspired by the 1928 novel ''Literature/TheWellOfLoneliness'', the picture is also notable for being one of the first exploitation films to explore the subject of homosexuality. No footage of this movie has surfaced anywhere aside from [[https://lostmediawiki.com/images/0/0d/Tumblr_me98yzXIAZ1rqj88io1_250.jpg a promotional poster]].

* A sequel to ''Gutterballs'' named ''Gutterballs 2: Balls Deep'' was released in 2015 to moderate praise by horror movie fans who saw it when it debuted at festivals. It vanished with no sign of a DVD release and remains lost to this day.

* A movie called ''The Mall'' was announced at Cannes in 1981. It had a poster made for it and even a plot synopsis made: A group of teenagers partying at a mall after everyone else has left (eerily similar to the later released ''Chopping Mall'') are picked off one by one by a deranged killer who's escaped from an asylum after murdering his parents and has made the mall his home. George P. Cosmatos was set to direct and pitched a few scenes. It's unknown what happened to this movie as it was never finished. although it's possible that footage exists.
* ''The Graduation Party'' was mooted to be Paul Lynch's follow up to his slasher classic ''Prom Night''. It centered around marooned teenagers being menaced on a remote island by Joe Spinell. Starburst Magazine called it "Prom Night meets The Blue Lagoon". It's unknown if any footage was ever shot for it. If there was any footage, it's now lost. It was later released as ''Out of Control'', and it's unknown how much of ''The Graduation Party'''s script was incorporated into the final version.

* ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209031/combined Humor Risk]]'' (also called ''Humorisk'')is a 1921 silent film notable for being the Creator/MarxBrothers' ''real'' screen debut. Accounts vary on how exactly it became lost, with one claiming that Groucho hated the result of their first venture on the screen so much that he and his brothers got their hands on all copies of the film and its negatives and destroyed them. It would take eight years (and the invention of talkies) before the Brothers returned to the movies.

* ''[[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209031/combined Humor Risk]]'' (also called ''Humorisk''), the 1921 silent film which was the Creator/MarxBrothers' ''real'' screen debut. Accounts vary on how exactly it became lost, with one claiming that Groucho disliked the result of their first venture on the screen so much that he bought and destroyed all copies of the film and its negatives. It would take 8 years (and the invention of talkies) before the Brothers returned to the movies.