Dead Ringer (lost unreleased film based on Meat Loaf album; 1983)

This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its poor formatting and informal writing (including but not limited to first-person POV).

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Status: Lost

Dead Ringer is the name of a film made to promote the 1981 album by popular American artist Meat Loaf. The album was the follow up to the critically acclaimed and highly successful 1977 release Bat Out Of Hell. While the latter album had videos created to promote it, this was a feature length movie featuring the music from Dead Ringer. The film was directed by Allan F. Nichols and written by Meat Loaf and Al Dellantash. Talks of a movie to accompany the album date back to an interview with the singer from February 17th, 1979, where he is quoted as saying:

"It'll probably be called Renegade Angel. It's still vision to us. What we're trying to create is film and vinyl. So that you'll be able to sit and look at your speakers and watch pictures come out of them."

. Early talks of this film seem to derive from the 1977 Jim Steinman play Neverland, a futuristic take on the classic Peter Pan story. We can see this in the same interview:

"It's futuristic version of Peter Pan. that takes place about 4,000 years from now," says the Loaf, "and I play Tinkerbell. We're talking about Roman Polanski to direct it. It's a pretty heavy film, that's the way Jim Steinman writes, sort of dark humour. It'll be a black comedy involving his fantasies. And CBS are backing it."

The film would be mentioned a few more times until the release of the album in September 1981. The film had to have been shot before 1982, as it features Davey Johnstone as a member of Meat Loaf's band (The Neverland Express). Davey was already out of the band and replaced by 1982. So far, there are 2 known versions of the film; the CBS cut, which was screened in Montreal on August 29th, 1982 and in Hollywood on July 17th, 1991. The film was mentioned in Meat Loaf's 1999 autobiography To Hell And Back and talk of the film would surface online shortly thereafter. Internet forums discussing the film exist on MLUKFC, the Meat Loaf UK fanclub in mid-2002. It was at this point that a clip of the film had surfaced on the fan-site, www.republicofloadom.com. However, this clip can no longer be accessed due to changes with the site. By this point the story of the 2nd version had begun to emerge. Its existence was confirmed in a 1983 interview, in which Meat Loaf discussed the movie and was still working on it well into 1983, despite the CBS cut being fully complete by mid-1982.

On November 29th, 2005 a review of the film was posted on IMDB, but it would soon turn out to be a hoax, as the review had been copied and pasted from a 1982 review on jimsteinman.com. That same year, it was alleged by Vicki Pearson, a long-term Meat Loaf fan, that the film had been "confiscated by the US government after Meat faced financial difficulty". In October 2006, rumors spread the BBC had previously aired clips of the film. The following month, an interview with Meat Loaf surfaced where he was quoted as saying he was unaware of any existing copies of the film.

In April 2011 the film was the subject of an episode of the podcast 'The Projection Booth;’ the host was sent a copy by the film’s director. Shortly after the episode was released The 101 minute cut shown at film festivals in 1982 and 1991 was leaked, in subpar quality. This version featured a previously unreleased music video for the song "Peel Out", as well as already released and discovered videos for "I'm Gonna Love Her For Both Of Us", "More Than You Deserve" and "I'll Kill You If You Don't Come Back". The film also featured "live" footage from Meat Loaf’s 1981 concerts.

In 2014 an info file was posted about the film on Facebook by Gibson DelGiudice. The file reveals that CBS Films advanced $1.5 million for the production of the film. This file would also feature a download link for the 2011 leaked CBS cut.

As of 2021, the CBS cut has surfaced and been restored. But the second version, with the full Dead Ringer For Love scene has yet to emerge.