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Agreed. Apparently there was a Super-8-Sound release of COD in the 60s or 70s, and in the late 80s Sinister Cinema used one of these prints to source a VHS edition. The picture was, however, somewhat washed out and the sound weak, so Sinister eventually dropped it from their catalog. But if you can't see a picture any other way than in a poor printing or from a poor condition print, I do not understand the logic of not making it available at all. That's an articially "lost film". And the 8mm version must've had a 35mm or 16mm source, so where is it? Gotta be somewhere.

I haven't looked at COD in a decade or more, but I remember it was heavily re-edited. The ending in particular - that wonderful final sequence with the fluidly following musical score, starting with Gray and Gisele walking out of the mist and into the sunlight, then back to the "wheels of progress" grinding to a halt, the last bit of Courtempierre erased in an avalanche of purity-white flour, was moved somewhat earlier in the finale, the music stripped and replaced with something else: the final shot in COD is of Sybille Schmitz sitting up in bed, free finally of the curse of Marguerite Chopin, smiling sunnily. That's the main reason I've put a re-watch of COD on indefinite hold: the original was much better in all its various forms, in the ending, which is one of my favorite endings in a film, and COD seemed something of a desecration on that score.

COD was probably roadshown. I've never seen it reviewed in any of the trades, and there is no record of it in the NYSA archives, which means it never *played* New York state even tho that's where Ziehm had his offices, in NYC. My recollection is that Ziehm was originally from Austria and had been a producer-distributor there. Probably emigrated when Hitler moved in, as it's about 1935 when General Foreign Sales showed up, one of several distributors of German-language films during the mid-30s, not often subtitled VAMPYR may have been its first film
as I think GFS copyrighted in in 1934, as THE VAMPIRE. The New York Times and Film Daily reviewed it (V) under the title NOT AGAINST THE FLESH, altho it was submitted to the censors just as VAMPYR, and THE VAMPIRE is used as the header on the dialogue translation provided to the censors. GFS also handled HERR DER WELT, BTW. After Ziehm dropped that company name around 1939, he operated as Arthur Ziehm Inc. and handled a few American and British titles. His known genre contribution thus has been Tod Slaughter's FACE AT THE WINDOW, also the interestingly-titled TORSO MURDER MYSTERY, about which anything I ever knew has been forgotten in my dotage. For Western fans he made available BUZZY AND THE PHANTOM PINTO, and another BUZZY (the name of a kid) oater, the name of which is also eluding me. And a few other things. I do recall that he evidently closed out his business with the onset of WWII and went into the US military. What became of Ziehm afterward I do not know, nor do I know who took over his product line (Arthur Ziehm Inc. was one of those pretty-much one man operations).

Finally, the dialogue transcript of VAMPYR indicates it was cut around. i've had it for a few months, and need to get down CASTLE OF DOOM and see if the dialogue order matches that for Ziehm's release of VAMPYR or if it was additionally cut to make COD. Too bad it wasn't a full cutting continuity. Just got the Criterion restoration about a week ago, and it is MARVELOUS. My only objection is that no one yet seems to have identified the player of the peglegged policeman. But I have had a few other films to look at first, and we also just got a new dog, so a review of COD, inspired by this great piece of restorative work, is still on the bucket list. And I just spotted a title at NYSA, as I was writing this post, from the US in 1934 called THE VAMPIRE OF MARRAKESH, from Advance Pictures Co. Ooooh, what IS this? Must go check my AFI Catalog and maybe include it on my next order for continuities from NYSA, something else which I am long overdue to have done.

Thanks for the tip-off, Phantom. Funny, I never even thought to check IMDb, a site I find making itself ever more useless despite the efforts of a few dedicated film researchers to make it better than it wants to be. BTW, on re-examining the NYSA entry, the distrib is actually Advance Film Exchange, and on looking that up, it appears to be a "states rights" exchange for NY handling various product, mostly indie westerns, and what are probably shorts similar to this one from a variety of sources. The Production Company is given as Albert Hammer Films, which of course has nothing to do with the UK's Hammer, but perhaps in IMDb's inimitable way, they combined companies on the strength of the common word/name Hammer, one of their favorite tricks (or, rather, a wretchedly prolific contributor who has, or had until he was exposed, free passage to load the site with false, nonexistent company names to umbrella multiple companies operated by one person at different times - e.g. "Sam Katzman Productions" covering Victory Pictures, Banner Productions, Clover Productions, etc.).

On another note, I found a couple of distributors once who, at some point after WWII, had submitted numerous one-reel Castle, Official, Pictorial and other home-movie titles to the New York censors. Whether this means these films actually were shown in theaters, I do not know.