Which Hammer Films are lost?

[Vlad Orlok]

First of all i will excuse of my not so perfect English, but i am Danish. Hope that you understand me...



I might have the largest Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price collections in the world, and at least Denmarks largest Hammer collection with 180 titles. This mail is dealing with Hammer!



In that section of the forum where you can look for certain titles, i tried to ask for Hammer titles from the 30's + 40's two days ago, but i also wanted to know which ones of them are lost. But until now no answer...



Since i can't look for certain titles here, i will just ask for lost titles (of all of the Hammer films), since this also helps me in my hunt.



The only Hammer titles i for sure know are lost, is "The Public Life of Henry the Ninth", 1935 and "The Ugly Duckling" from 1959.



My question now is, if anybody knows about any other lost Hammer films?



Jan

[Dr Amicus]

AFAIK The Ugly Duckling is NOT lost - apparently it was shown once on Channel 5 (?) over here, and in a conversation with Norman J Warren a few years back he confirmed the existence of (IIRC) the negative but no-one was prepared to pay for prints to be struck from it.

[mal]

Hi Vlad. Your English is fine so don't worry about that.



I can't help with your query apart from being able to say that The Ugly Duckling isn't quite "lost" in that there is a print at the Library of Congress:

The Ugly duckling / a Hammer Film production ; produced by Michael Carreras...



LC Control No.: 91785155

LCCN Permalink: Library of Congress LCCN Permalink for 91785155

Type of Material: Moving Image or Slide/Transparency

Main Title: The Ugly duckling / a Hammer Film production ; produced by Michael Carreras ; directed by Lance Comfort.

Published/Created: 1959.

U.S.

Description: 2 reel : sd., b&w ; 16 mm. ref print

Mal

[avalard]

name='mal']Hi Vlad. Your English is fine so don't worry about that.



I can't help with your query apart from being able to say that The Ugly Duckling isn't quite "lost" in that there is a print at the Library of Congress:







Mal

There's prints in the UK, and the negatives are in the Sony archives. As Sony is currently releasing its entire collection of Hammer films (albeit slowly) I'd expect this to come out on DVD in the future.



As for what else is lost... its complicated. Lots of the films (especially the shorts) from the 30s through to mid 50s are 'thought' lost. That is, no copies are currently in circulation or known about. Some HAVE turned up on bootleg dvds (though no trace of the source print!), others on tv, and others are in private collections.



Public Life of Henry the Ninth is indeed thought lost, though I'm convinced its buried in an archive somewhere. Haven't proved it yet though...