Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Top 10 Unfinished Movies
Top 10 Great Movies That Were Never Finished - The List Universe: "The film industry has a long reputation for unfinished screenplays or projects abandoned because of expensive production costs and a hundred other reasons. These are the top 10 films that actually started filming but were never finished or released for one reason or another."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
KALEIDOSCOPE's nude footage seems somehow odd from Hitchcock...Gilliam's QUIXOTE might not have been the most unlucky production ever, but it's certainly up there. APOCALYPSE NOW where no one was quite willing to die for the purposes of making a film.
Having watched the WIND clip and listened to half of the SOMETHING'S clip, I can see why no one has managed to finish and release either, even as some sort of re-edited or recast thing...they're pretty dire. WIND reminds me of THE OSCAR. GIVE is as laughless as a Bob Hope 1960s film.
THE OSCAR. Now there' a classic. Based on a novel by pulp great Richard Sale. Maybe he even did the screenplay.
Dunno how Sale's novel was, but the screenplay was credited to the producers and Harlan Ellison--the only cinematic script by Ellison to be produced, iinm. And an endless source of embarrassment to him, with good reason. "'Lie down with dogs, get up smelling like garbage...'"
Of course, Tony Bennett's complete and utter inability to act didn't help matters one bit. Given that the man is a genuinely talented painter as well as singer, his inability to express any emotion in a dramatic context isn't quite puzzling but is remarkable.
What about Orson Welles' DON QUIXOTE and the I, CLAUDIUS film that Charles Laughton was starring in?
The list of films we wished were never finished is far more extensive.
Personally I think that the biggest problem Hitchcock had with Kaleidoscope was his decision to sign a long term contract with Universal. He would probably have been able to make the film with a different studio. Universal forced Julie Andrews and Paul Newman on him for Torn Curtain and from what I've read practically forced him to make Topaz. And while I like Family Plot as a sort of light confection it is scarcely a monument to the great man's abilities - and was hampered but budget restrictions that kept him from getting star names for some of the roles.
Still the Hitchcock project I'd have loved to have seen was the film he wanted to make entirely in Disneyland. Supposedly Disney loved the idea...until he saw Psycho.
Actually, SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE was redone with Doris Day, James Garner, and Polly Bergen, and was renamed MOVE OVER, DARLING. It was a pretty good Day picture; Edgar Buchanan took John McGiver's place as the judge and stole the last scene of the pic.
Edgar had a way of doing that.
Welles may have been better represented by THE DEEP, his adaption of the same Charles Williams novel that two decades later was turned into DEAD CALM.
For an example of a movie project that was never even started, Hitchcock considered following up FAMILY PLOT with a take on Elmore Leonard's UNKNOWN MAN #89. Now, there's a combination that makes you wonder what might have been.
A Hitchcock version of a Charles Williams novel or an Elmore Leonard novel? Sounds like matches made in heaven.
Post a Comment