Why the movie Val Kilmer wanted buried was only released for one day: “No money involved”
Even though his entire career was eclectic, unpredictable, and prone to self-sabotage, no period better encapsulates the enigma of Val Kilmer to the same extent as 1995 and 1996.
During the two-year period, the actor appeared in five features, and they neatly summed up everything that made him one of his generation’s most unique talents. Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever saw him play one of pop culture’s most iconic characters, and it would remain the highest-grossing entry in his filmography that didn’t have Top Gun in the title until his death.
Almost exactly six months after he debuted as the ‘Caped Crusader’, Michael Mann’s Heat hit cinemas. One of the greatest crime thrillers ever made and a picture packed full of tour-de-force performances, it held a special place in Kilmer’s heart as one of his most memorable experiences in film, television, or theatre.
With a blockbuster and a critical darling under his belt in quick succession, his permanent ascension to A-list status seemed inevitable. However, his first onscreen outing in 1996 was The Ghost and the Darkness. The big-budget period piece may have won an Oscar for its sound editing, but it was 50% responsible for Kilmer’s ‘Worst Supporting Actor’ nomination at the Razzies.
The other half came from the infamous The Island of Dr Moreau, with the staggering range of behind-the-scenes horror stories enhancing his reputation among the industry’s most difficult customers in a film that lives on in notoriety as one of modern cinema’s ultimate debacles.
By the end of the year, he’d dropped out of the Batman franchise and had completed principal photography on The Saint, which ultimately tanked when it arrived with zero fanfare in 1997. However, the utterly bizarre experimental effort, Dead Girl, always gets lost among the shuffle.
Written, directed by, and starring Adam Coleman Howard, Kilmer lends support as a therapist named Dr Dark in a weird and off-putting story about an aspiring thespian who murders a woman and spends his days treating her corpse as if it’s alive, with the latter’s hairdo and outfit changing in almost every scene for some reason.
Dead Girl was made available in certain overseas markets, but it went unreleased in the United States either theatrically or on home video for a decade. Eventually, producer Philippe Caland struck a deal that would see the movie released on-demand on March 16th, 2005, albeit only for 24 hours before it vanished back into the ether.
“There’s no money involved,” he told Variety. “This is like a marketing study for me to see the feedback.” While he blamed the delay on studio politics making it impossible to find a distributor for an avant-garde indie flick of such blatant strangeness, it was also intimated that Kilmer’s representatives were “none too eager to see its release.”
20 years ago, that 24-hour window was enough to send Dead Girl back into oblivion. Of course, in the internet era, nothing is lost forever. Kilmer’s team may have tried to block anyone from seeing it, but after getting its brief moment in the sun, the film has inevitably found its way online for anyone brave enough to check out what’s definitely up there as one of the late actor’s most ludicrous performances.
