Long thought to have been seized by the federal government during raids on Arrow Productions and anyone else associated with the making or screening of the controversial 1972 adult film, the original set of negatives found its way back to Southern California after Interlandi ordered the contents of a New York City film vault emptied and sent to Arrow’s Northridge offices.
Labeled “Lost Treasure,” the canister at first struck Interlandi as ironic, but after fully realizing what he’d stumbled upon, he was jubilant.
“It was a pretty great moment,” Interlandi told XBiz, considering that earlier this year, he and the crew at Arrow had spent more than $30,000 recreating a set of negatives for the film to be shown in theaters nationwide.
“I suspected the lost treasure really could be lost treasure,” he said. “But I had no idea I had discovered the lost treasure of ‘Deep Throat.’ It’s pretty valuable stuff, being that it’s the most successful independent film ever made, and all this time I thought it was completely gone.”
Interlandi is now in possession of two sets of negatives for “Deep Throat;” a set created through a costly process of transferring the movie prints from film to video and then back to film, and now the original set, including the soundtrack.
Interlandi said he plans to have the negatives cleaned at a facility in Burbank, Calif., and then transferred to high-definition.
Among the canisters shipped from New York was the original trailer for the sequel “Deep Throat II,” which the movie’s star, Linda Lovelace denied having anything to do with, according to Interlandi.
“Deep Throat II” only played in theaters for one week in 1973 before it was permanently pulled. Those original negatives have never been found, although Arrow is in possession of a video copy of the film and is making plans for a release in the near future.
In the meantime, the restored version of “Deep Throat” and the 17-minute documentary “Days of Deep Throat and Linda Lovelace” have been handpicked to screen at the Rio De Janeiro International Film Festival that runs Sept. 22-Oct. 4.
