A classic example of actors being better than their material, “The Misfits” offers a slate of diverse talents who use the force of their respective energies and charismas to give magic to material that, quite frankly, is not very good.
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BOOTLEG FILES 898: “No Exit” (1954 French film based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s play).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It was never released in the United States.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.
In May 1944, Jean-Paul Sartre’s drama “Huis clos” had its premiere in Paris. The play came to New York in November 1946 with a production directed by John Huston – this would be the filmmaker’s only foray into directing for Broadway. Sartre’s title, which translated as “Behind Closed Doors,” was changed to “No Exit” for this production, and since then the work is known to American audiences by that title – in Britain, the play has been produced as “Vicious Circle” and “In Camera.”
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BOOTLEG FILES 669: “Report from the Aleutians” (1943 U.S. Army documentary directed by John Huston).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube and other online video sites.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On public domain labels.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: There was no copyright filed.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Stuck in public domain hell, but it would be great if this little was digitally restored.
Everyone knows that the Japanese bombed the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. But few people seem to know that the Japanese invaded and occupied Kiska and Attu in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands in June 1942, which marked the only section of North America was taken over by the Axis forces in World War II.
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Orson Welles’ “The Other Side of the Wind” was, for many years, the second most infamous unfinished film of all time. (A certain Jerry Lewis film earned the top spot within incomplete cinema.) As everyone knows by now, the film was posthumously stitched together 42 years after principal photography was finished and is now being made available via Netflix. To be blunt, it would have been better if Welles’ unedited work was left in oblivion.
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