Bedknobs and Broomsticks blu-ray on August 12 (1 Viewer)

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Funny that the soundtrack was in stereo, but the film was in mono. Wikipedia points out this fact.

 

[classicmovieguy]

The soundtrack may have been re-channelled into an 'ersatz' or fake stereo... I'm not sure.

 

[darkrock17]

I never knew that, though I only have the soundtrack on CD.

 

[Mark-P]

The soundtrack may have been re-channelled into an 'ersatz' or fake stereo... I'm not sure.

It's not fake. Disney remixed the soundtrack into true stereo for its 25th anniversary. Stereophonic sound for movies was nearly dead by the early 1970s, The studios just didn't want to pay the extra cost of magnetic striping. Then along came Dolby to save the day with optical stereo tracks.

 

[MatthewA]

The stereo mix was done for the restoration by going back to the music score tracks. Dialogue and effects are pretty much confined to the center channel.It just occurred to me: what will they do to the animated parts? This movie is practically smack dab in the middle of the Xerography era. I recently watched the Netflix HD version of Mickey and the Beanstalk segment from Fun and Fancy Free. It replaced the Edgar Bergen segments with Ludwig Von Drake and Herman the Bootle Beetle. Those parts looked almost bad as The Sword in the Stone on Blu-Ray. On the other hand, the other two flying babysitters got to disc without significant harm to the picture quality.

 

[Ejanss]

Cable/Netflix HD isn't always taken from the disk master, it could be any upgrade for broadcast.
In Ludwig's case, I'm guessing you were watching it on the cartoon-anthology DVD's, which weren't even intended for Blu in the first place. I'm not expecting much from F&FF (if it's being treated as much of a "disk extra" on AIMT as Reluctant Dragon is), but we'll see what we get when we get it.

 

[Escapay]

The 25th anniversary laserdisc warned us about the two faded clips of the Portobello Road dance, saying "two clips on this disc exhibit poor picture quality."

Yeah, it's discussed in the "Music Magic" featurette (which as you said was chopped on the 2009 release). It's still amazing to see just how far they could get the image to look when compared to what they were working with.

 

[classicmovieguy]

I love these 2 older ladies, kicking up their heels with the girls.

 

[Escapay]

Same here. My siblings and I would imitate that scene all the time.
We also were masters at "Step in Time" from Mary Poppins and the whole "cleaning the cottage" sequence in Sleeping Beauty.

 

[classicmovieguy]

I adore the Overture arrangement on this 1970s 'studio cast' album of the score, which features Beryl Reid in the Eglantine role. The part near the end where "Age of Not Believing" builds still gives me chills.

 

[darkrock17]

This is my favorite part from Portobello Road dance. Sorry if it's fuzzy, YouTube dosen't have any HD versions of the dance.

 

[MatthewA]

Miss Price's twisted ankle healed pretty quickly. ​

 

[classicmovieguy]

I always thought she healed it with a spell, but yes, that twisted ankle doesn't seem to give her any bother.

 

[MatthewA]

I wonder what the percentage of formerly cut footage that is dubbed amounts to. Of the three children, Carrie and Paul only had one redubbed line each; Carrie's was "What's all that?" in the dining room [spoken by Scott MacQueen's daughter, Amanda] and Paul's was "nothing happened" after the bed fails to take off the first time [the ADR artist was uncredited, and I don't know why they didn't just copy Roy Snart's voice when he says "nothing happened" in the lead-in to "Substitutiary Locomotion"]. But Charlie's voice double, Gregory Grundt, is all over the place; when he says "I told you it wouldn't work," his voice sounds about an octave lower than usual. It's almost like the ever-changing voice of Wart in The Sword in the Stone!

None of this would have happened if the film had been released at this length to begin with.

This was first laserdisc I owned, but the transfer was so bad [yellowish tinge to the picture, time-compressed opening credits, and no Buena Vista logo or "Walt Disney and You"] I preferred to watch the VHS tape I recorded off The Disney Channel:

This film also holds some historical significance as the last Disney film released while Roy O. Disney was alive; he died on December 20, and its US premiere was a week earlier. December was not a good month for the Disneys. Walt, Roy O., Roy E. and Diane all died that month.

I haven't seen this guy in the parks since 1993, when I overheard a kid thinking he was Prince John from Robin Hood [must have been the robe ]:

 

[classicmovieguy]

Was I alone in preferring to watch the walking suits of armour only when the lights remained switched ON when I was a kid? It was one of my favourite movies (still is), but my goodness that scene always gave me the heebies. Also, the main titles were quite eerie, especially at the start.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

post removed

 

[MatthewA]

Was I alone in preferring to watch the walking suits of armour only when the lights remained switched ON when I was a kid? It was one of my favourite movies (still is), but my goodness that scene always gave me the heebies. Also, the main titles were quite eerie, especially at the start.

The one part that always creeped me out was the angle of Cosmic Creepers as he meowed in reaction to Mr. Browne walking into the room.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Post removed

 

[Bryan Tuck]

This is pure speculation, but I wonder at what stage the "hack job" began. Was the film ever "locked" at 139 minutes (or a little more with "Step in the Right Direction"), or was that simply the current length of the film when the decision was made to cut it to under 2 hours?

I only ask because there are some things in the longer version (particularly the "Portabello Road" sequence) that feel like they probably would (and should) have been trimmed a little, even without the aggressive chopping.

It might be comparable to the Director's Cut of Legend, which from what I understand is essentially the version that was test-screened, which means it probably never went through a "fine cut." Although the UK & US theatrical versions were overly cut down, there are certain scenes, particularly in the US cut, in which the internal editing is a little more fine-tuned than in the Director's Cut (the entrance of Darkness through the mirror, for example).

Could that have been the case with Bedknobs?

 

[MatthewA]

I'm assuming they had some kind of continuity to go by, and the fact that they had underscore for much of it suggests it was intended to be longer than what they actually released. Radio City Music Hall has been named as being behind the cuts [Robert B. Sherman blamed them for cutting Family Band], and Card Walker, who was one of the three men in charge of Walt Disney Productions at the time [Roy O. Disney and Donn Tatum being the others], was also involved [Walker and Bill Anderson almost stopped talking because of their bitter dispute over the cuts to Happiest Millionaire]. Walker usually took the middle out of the dance sequences [per Bill Anderson in Walt's People: Volume 8].

Richard M. Sherman talks about the film and the cuts in this interview; he liked the shorter Portobello Road Dance, but Angela said she liked the long version of the dance better in the "Music Magic" featurette on the old DVD. I have heard that that featurette was also supposed to have been even longer, and the long version of that only aired on the Disney Channel when they debuted the restoration. It seems like his ideal would be a slightly shorter long version. Personally, the only things I would cut would be some of the repetitive motions between shots and maybe tighten a few shots here and there without cutting music or dialogue.

Interestingly enough, "Nobody's Problems For Me" was nowhere to be found in any of the music-related merchandise; neither the soundtrack album nor any of the sheet music published at the time. The first time the song was released to the public was in 1992 on the box set The Music of Disney: A Legacy in Song.

There was a very good article about the reconstruction on Disney's website when Vault Disney was still on The Disney Channel. I'm trying to find it on the Web Archive, but it'll take some time. Frankly, Disney missed the boat when it came to promoting this [perhaps because of concerns over the dubbing]. We'll never know whether a wider theatrical re-release would have done well because they didn't try. They made a couple 35mm prints but made it difficult for theaters to get them.