Cry Baby Lane (found Nickelodeon TV horror film; 2000)
Cry Baby Lane (original teaser title: Someone Wants to Meet You) is a believed-to-be-lost 2000 Halloween-themed comedy horror television film that premiered for a short time on Nickelodeon on the night of October 28, 2000.
The film was never aired outside the United States nor translated/dubbed into other languages. It was also never re-aired or released for any other software media until a recording of it was re-discovered in 2011. It is unknown how many viewers the original 2000 airing attracted.
The film's original premise was to be both scary and child-friendly, however, this still triggered an extreme number of parents complaining in-mass about the film's content as they found the film to be too frightening and inappropriate for children.
This triggered Nickelodeon to state that they did not own the film and were not responsible for its "accidental" airing, with some Nick workers even denying the existence of the film or that they knew some thing about it when contacted by forums and sites from 2007 to 2011, due to that it was considered a lost film for more than 11 years. This ensued into the launch of several fan-sites in the early 2000’s where people could talk about the film’s existence. Despite the overwhelming evidence, every time the site contacted Nickelodeon, they always replied that they did not know anything about the film.
In 2011, a user on the blog forum Reddit.com under the name "Firesaladpeach" stayed that he had a (poorly) recorded VHS of the film that he recorded on the original night of October 28, 2000 on a thread at the talk board “/r/TodayILearned”, where a user taught to other people about the film and its mystery surrounding it. He later released the film on YouTube. This likely ensued a reaction which prompted TeenNick to re-air the film on October 31, 2011, who proclaimed in advertising that it was Nickelodeon’s “dark secret” film so scary it was “banned from TV”. The film was originally rated TV-Y7, but in its re-release it was re-rated TV-PG-V, and in 2015, was re-rated to TV-G for it's second airing on TeenNick.
This also revealed that Nickelodeon had the film all along since they knowingly stated its airing via-introduction and were most likely ready for a negative reaction for their makeshift film.
The film’s self-proclaimed director Peter Lauer was interviewed soon after this re-discovery and said that he was surprised and flattered by the attention his film had gotten 11 years after its original release, being unaware of its supposed banning by Nickelodeon. "I just assumed they didn't show it again because they didn't like it. I thought it failed, and I moved on."
A Nickelodeon representative later claimed that that the film was never banned or disowned by Nickelodeon; it was just merely forgotten.
The film was already troubled even before airing; it was originally set to be a cinema film under a budget of $10 million, but instead was ordered to be a $800,000 TV film made under a hurry for Halloween release in a 20-day shooting.
Both the premiere and the 2011 airing on The '90s Are All That can be viewed on YouTube.