UPDATE: A representative for Netflix has confirmed to The New Daily that the cuts to its US service do not affect content on the Australian service. Netflix’s content is licensed on a regional basis so the US and Australian catalogues are separate.

Over 200 movies, TV programs and documentaries have been quietly slashed from the American Netflix catalogue.

The blood letting has affected titles across every genre and one Netflix blogger described the move from the streaming service as a “massacre”.

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According to Mashable, the list of axed titles include cult television programs, classic movies and Emmy Award-winning documentaries.

For example you can no longer watch Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Taxi Driver, Melrose Place, Mission Impossible (original TV show), Knight Rider and a host of pre-1930 silent films.

You can’t watch Tom Hanks’ classic, Cast Away, anymore on Netflix. Photo: Getty

Other notable titles to go are Donnie Brasco, Godzilla, Cast Away and Bowling for Columbine.

Ken Burns’ epic documentary Baseball, about the game’s social and cultural history in America, has also gone missing.

Beverly Hills, 90210 was also recently dropped from Netflix’s catalogue.

David Speranza runs a blog which keeps track of what’s new and what’s cut on the service called, What’s on Netflix Now?.

He said Netflix is perhaps “trying to keep the media from noticing exactly how many titles it’s eliminating”.

“The service saved a large chunk of its vanishing catalog for July 5 – giving no prior notice until the last couple of days (the fact that it’s July 4th weekend may also be part of their cover),” Mr Spernanza wrote.

American freelance entertainment writer Will McKinley says “classic TV reruns … are increasingly becoming an endangered species”.

“Netflix directs financial resources toward in-house productions like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Bloodline, Grace and Frankie, and Marvel Comics spin-offs it can control in all the markets it serves.”

If you’d prefer to know what you can watch on streaming services, check out this guide to what’s new on your laptop.