17. F.T.A. (1972) ^ During her Hanoi Jane days, Jane Fonda produced and starred in a touring company including Donald Sutherland and Holly Near which offered a revue of anti-Vietnam War skits and songs to audiences in towns surrounding U.S. military bases. The show was called “F.T.A.” (an acronym for “F**k the Army”) and was penned by Dalton Trumbo, the once-blacklisted writer and member of the Hollywood Ten. The film version of “F.T.A.” was a concert documentary designed to bring its left-leaning politics to a wider audience. It didn’t quite happen, as the film was abruptly pulled from release by its distributor, American International Pictures, after a week in theaters. It has yet to return to any form of release. WHY IS THIS FILM NOT ON VIDEO? Jane Fonda controls the rights to “F.T.A.” and has not allowed the film to be re-released. The film was conspicuously absent from the recent retrospective of her work at New York’s Lincoln Center.
18. IMAGES (1972) ^ Following his one-two triumphs with “M*A*S*H” and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” Robert Altman traveled to Ireland to direct this troubling psychological drama about a writer haunted by hallucinations of her dead lover. In an attempt to clear her mind, she and her husband travel to their countryside home for a holiday, but her hallucinations multiply to the point that her sanity is threatened. Susannah York won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her startling performance as the haunted writer and John Williams’ chilling musical score earned an Oscar nomination. ^ WHY IS THIS FILM NOT ON VIDEO? The rights to “Images” have long been in dispute and it has been missing from release for many years; its absence was a major void in a recent New York retrospective of Altman’s work. The late Paul Wunder, film critic for New York’s WBAI-FM radio, cited this film as the top missing feature he hoped to see released on video.
Get more of the list in the next part of NEVER ON VIDEO: THE TOP 20 “MISSING” MOVIES>>>
