Has anyone seen the original British version? All the currently commercially released prints (including those that claim to be otherwise) run at 62 minutes, and are missing the opening and closing scenes in the courthouse. A print with "Mystery of the Mary Celeste" title instead of "Phantom Ship" would be nice.
If anyone has, drop me a line.
Robert
The word I've heard is that those scenes were lost long ago, Robert. Although it would be interesting to see them, the film doesn't suffer much from their exclusion. Lugosi is great here, and none of his footage is lost.
More frustrating is the loss of several minutes of footage from another Lugosi classic, "White Zombie". That footage literally rotted away in a vault while the film's copyright owner fought (in a protracted legal battle) the efforts of a film preservation organization to restore the original print to pristine condition. And sadly, it is believed some of this irretrievable film featured Bela.
lets hope this idiot copyright owner is haunted by Lugosi for his stupidity!
shareI second the notion, paul! It seems to me that if I owned the movie it would be MORE valuable if it was in the best condition possible! This guy obviously had money; both to aquire the copyright and fight in court; another example of how some rich people have more dollars than sense.
share