Missing, Presumed Deleted

By Gordon Hopkins It is tragic to think about all the movies lost from the early days of Hollywood. Some movies vanished because the film stock was unstable and deteriorated beyond saving while they sat unwatched in some studio's storeroom. Others were destroyed in fires and accidents, with no copies because the concept of backups was never considered. Some movies just vanished and no one knows where the heck they got to.One of the most famous of these lost films in Lon Chaney's silent vampire flick, “London After Midnight” (1927). Only a few production photos still exist, mostly showing one of the most famous faces of “The Man of a Thousand Faces.” That face, that bizarre grimace with the pointy teeth and the corners of his mouth upturned in what no one would call a smile, adorns posters and T-shirts and all manner of merchandise owned by people who have never seen the original film.There are thousands of film buffs, perhaps millions, that would give anything to see this film.Yes, I know there was a remake, “Mark of the Vampire” (1935) with Bela Lugosi, buy I still want to see the original.Recovery of lost films is an obsession for some. Some folks have spent their entire lives searching the world for these lost treasures, like some sort of celluloid Indiana Jones. Occasionally, they are successful. “The Ghoul” (1933), starring Boris Karloff as an undead Egyptologist, was thought lost for years before a collector discovered a badly damaged and subtitled 16mm copy in 1969 in then-communist Czechoslovakia and restored it. I remember watching that version on VHS. A better version was found in the 1980s in a forgotten film vault at Shepperton Studios.The rediscovery and restoration of old films is yet another thing that is about to go the way of the dodo and disco in our digitized world. These days, the movie-loving community is all of a dither over news that Warner Bros. Pictures not only has intentions of not releasing the live-action/animated comedy, “Coyote vs. Acme.” They plan on deleting it.While I had no great desire to see “Coyote vs. Acme,” I am certainly offended that a company would spend millions to create this thing just to make it vanish for a tax write-off.Assuming this is true and not just a depressing rumor, it means the end of the searching long-forgotten studios for lost silver screen gems. Now, unseen movies can be disappeared with the push of a button.

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