Genius Press Release: The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection (1 Viewer)

[Ethan Riley]

A mini petty nickpicking review:
Okay, got this yesterday from amazon. Okay, um...there's some serious quality control issues here that will irritate the crap out of hardcore Our Gangers. First, in the little booklet, there's a page of Our Gang cast members who supposedly died young and/or tragically. Some of the Rascals are misidentified. Donald Haines is listed as Mickey Daniels, and it says he died of cirrohosis of the liver. Well, Mickey did die of cirrohosis; Donald died during World War II. It says Chubby died after crash dieting; he didn't--he had a serious glandular problem and died following surgery for that. Worst of all--Dick Moore is listed as Scotty Beckett and says he was beaten to death at age 38. Hello--Dick Moore is not only still alive, but he's a participant in the dvd extras!

Some of the shorts' titles are misspelled in the book and/or in the dvd menus: "Hearts are Thump," instead of "Hearts are ThumpS," "Moan & Groan" instead of "Moan & Groan INC." The filmed intro for disc 6 should be the intro for disc 7. During a filmed documentary, the commentators go on and on about Sunshine Sammy, while they're showing us pictures of Farina. And on and on. This stuff is petty to be true, but it's also inexcusable, because the films themselves do not carry cast credits for the most part. So new people watching them are going to think Dick Moore was beaten to death instead of Scotty, and so on. This sort of misrepresentation has plagued the cast members since the series' inception; go read "Our Gang: the Life and Times of the Little Rascals" for far more anecdotes. But for the dvd, this is what happens when you try to do a Little Rascals dvd without the participation of Leonard Maltin--a gross mispresentation of facts and faces.

As for the films themselves? I watched five of them. Mush & Milk looked like it was filmed yesterday! Great print. But "Free Eats" is scratched all the way through. So far as I can tell, the films are all complete and uncensored, though.

This is a mixed bag of quality; that's all I can really say. I don't hate this dvd, but it could have been so much more...

 

[Rob_Ray]

This sort of thing is NOT petty and is beyond inexcusable. You should not need Leonard Maltin's participation in order to do standard everyday research, fact-checking and overall review before mastering. Whoever is responsible for such shoddy "research" should be fired. Legend should be ashamed to release any product with factual errors such as these. One or two errors can be forgiven but this many? There's no excuse.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I recieved my boxset and noted some of the errors also. It's a beautiful box and I will be working my way through the whole set, but some of the oversights are truly distracting. Even if they didn't want to pay for some experts, someone should have at least read Maltin's book. WTF?

Another thing is bugging me concerning the Blackhawk prints. If these were truly transferred from 16mm, how on earth did somebody not start asking questions? I've only handled film once or twice in my lifetime (from my grade school days) and even I would know the difference between 16mm & 35mm. I'm assuming that this would have even required diferent equipment or at least a setup change. This should certainly have triggered a "Are these the correct films to transfer?"

Absolutely mind-blowing!!

 

[Ethan Riley]

Well, Rob, I purposely underplayed my disappointment in this set, because I don't want to put people off from buying it. It's actually a very nice set. But it was surprising to open the thing and start finding mistakes right away...and these are only the errors I've found so far. I'm just sayin' !

 

[buttmunker]

Aside from bad titles, are the short films intact, as their newsletter said they would be?

 

[Mark Lx]

What a shame, and mine shipped a couple days ago. Oh well, I still need some Our Gang DVDs and many I haven't seen at all. Live and suffer. I got the 6 disc (48 short) Cabin Fever DVD set but they're all shot. I only managed to backup 2 of the discs. Then I only have one other "best of" that I copied (with 10 shorts).

 

[Michael Elliott]

That's what I want to know. I can live with the Blackhawk titles as I'm use to them since I've got so many films from them.

 

[ahollis]

Mine has shipped and I should be watching tomorrow. While I am disappointed with some of what I have read hear, I am still looking forward to the set. The mistakes are inexcusable and I am sure anyone of many Our Gang Fans would have been happy to help out just for the love it. I guess this is truly the definition of expecting more than there is so there will certainly be disappointment.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Well, I've seen "Mush & Milk" "Free Eats," "Shrimps for a Day," "A Lad n' a Lamp" and "the First Seven Years." So far, so good. I haven't noticed anything missing from any of those particular films. But yeah--I think Rhino or "Genius" or whoever made this set needs to re-issue it with 35mm prints, and offer an exchange program. And fix the booklet while they're at it--sheesh! Dick Moore was not beaten to death at age 38! He's still alive!

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I've got my set from Amazon and I was just searching around for a bit. While examining A LAD AN' A LAMP, it seems that the audio is slightly out of synch with the mouthes. I didn't notice any other shorts having this problem on my player so I'd be curious if someone would please check the first few minutes of that episode to see if theirs appears out of synch too.

 

[Mark Y]

First of all...Blackhawk prints could just as likely be Super 8 as well as 16mm. Nah...they wouldn't, would they?

Question for anyone who might be in the know: what were Blackhawk's prints made from as far as negs, preprint material, etc. Could their masters have been done on 35mm after all, even though they didn't sell 35mm prints?

 

[Jon Martin]

Has Genius ever done special editions like this in the past?

 

[Joe Lugoff]

This is an example of what plagues the world in many areas, i.e., people being assigned to projects about which they have no knowledge and, worse, no interest.

I still get somewhat angry thinking about something that happened 30 years ago.

In the Spring of 1978, the late and unlamented St. Louis Globe-Democrat ran a full page article/interview.

In the middle of the page was a picture of a fat-cheeked, middle-aged woman, and the headline was, "She Had 'Em All Fooled!"

The article told us that she played Spanky in "Our Gang," and no one ever knew she was a girl.

The picture "proving" this was of her wearing overalls and a straw hat, with the caption "Edna Finklehoover (or whatever her name was) as Spanky."

Looked nothing like Spanky, of course.

So I called the paper and asked to talk to the writer of the article.

She was incensed that I doubted the veracity of the woman. "Why," she told me, "she had pictures that prove it!"

I told her to come over and I'll show her some of my kid pictures, which will prove that I was really Shirley Temple.

The Maltin book had just come out and I told her it's well documented that Spanky was, and always had been, George McFarland, whose real life nickname as a child was Spanky.

She said she'd find the book and get back to me.

The next day I called again and she told me, "I called George McFarland himself and he verified that this woman was the real Spanky and he only took over the role years later."

It was the day I lost my "innocence" as far as journalism is concerned.

Rather than admit that they printed a bunch of baloney due to a gullible reporter believing what a chronic liar had to say, they lied to me. There's no way in hell the real Spanky would ever say such a thing.

But has anything in the history of movies been the source of more confusion and misinformation than "Our Gang?" I doubt it.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Joe: that is the nuttiest false identity story! Wish Maltin knew about it, for his book.

Yeesh; I'm going home from work now. I'm gonna watch more of the episodes. Lord knows what I'll find next. I do hope that posters who are knowledgeable about the films and their prints will have a chance to review some of them.

 

[Michael Elliott]

Genius just distributes the products. Someone else is doing the "work" so to speak unless something has changed.

 

[CameronMcC]

Warner also released a single disc with four shorts as a Suncoast exclusive when King Kong (1933) came out on dvd. It was given as a freebie, but comes in a real deal case with a upc and studio catalog number on the spine. I have it, and figured they were going to do a line of them. Its never had another commercial release as far as I know.

Our Gang's Favorite Alfalfa
- Alfalfa'a Aunt (1939)
- Alfalfa's Double (1940)
- Cousin Wilbur (1939)
- Auto Antics (1939)

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I really wish I could dive into this new set in chronological order, but I'm still dedicating the last days of October to watching horror features. But I have sampled a bunch of shorts and am starting to think this won't be bad at all once the viewing gets underway. Even the very earliest talkies like SMALL TALK and BOXING GLOVES look and sound good, considering their age and the fact that they're so primitive. It sounds to me like the audio has been cleaned and boosted up, which is a good thing for those earliest shorts which always sounded so quiet and had a lot of surface hiss.

I've been trying to be less harsh on this set overall as I try to become more sensible, and have considered a few positive things for myself which work for me as I look at the reality of this situation (your mileage may vary):

1.) We've got all 80 shorts together in chronological order. So 13 of 80 have the Blackhawk title cards; that's unfortunate but not really a big deal as long as the quality isn't poor and the movies are uncut.

2.) I have 21 volumes of the "Cabin Fever" Little Rascals on VHS already, and some of them are even still sealed! So it's not like I've been watching the shorts I already own with any regularity for the past 10+ years. So is it going to be so hard in accepting a Blackhawk title card for 13 out of 80 movies while revisiting the Genius Collection once in only every 5 years? Is that really so detrimental?

3.) I have several DVD versions of the old "Cabin Fever" releases, which includes the original versions of at least 4 or 5 of these desecrated "Blackhawk" titles, with their original title cards intact. So that narrows the amount of "affected" shorts on the Genius set to around only 8 or 9 ( out of 80) for me! So if I'm worried about, say, THE KID FROM BORNEO being compromised on the Genius set, I've already got it intact on the Cabin Fever DVD.

So in the end, the main thing comes down to edits. If the quality is good and there is no stuff missing, then it doesn't matter if a handful of shorts have a Blackhawk logo. The pros will far outweigh the cons. I'd still like some confirmation on the short A LAD 'N A LAMP though; to see if anyone else notices the audio not in synch with the lips in the first scenes. We should also keep in mind that many of these Hal Roach shorts always have had some surface scratchings and imperfections, no matter what.

 

[Tino]

Joe

in a few of the shorts I have watched(I believe it was Teachers Pet), I have noticed some lip synching issues, but they appear to be on the shorts themselves, not due to the transfer. I'll check out more today.

I am loving this set so far, and as far as I can tell, The Blackhawk prints look no better or worse than the original titled shorts.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

Oh, no. I hope this isn't the case because lip synching problems always are very distracting to me when I'm trying to enjoy a movie. Unless the movie is a dubbed foreign film.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I watched the first four shorts last night and so far I'm pretty impressed. I only watched one of the Blackhawk shorts "Boxing Gloves", and it was far better than I was prepared to see. Yes there was a fair amount of print damage and yes it was missing the original title card, but I found that neither of these reduced my enjoyment of the short. I did not notice a reduction in resolution as I had expected, but only a significant amount of light scratches which I have come to accept. I'll watch a few more before making my final judgement.

I also created a handy cross-reference that shows which characters appear in which shorts and highlights which shorts are from Blackhawk prints and which shorts have commentary tracks. The files are too large to upload here, so if you're interested in a copy send me an IM.