Hell Just Froze Over....

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Thrilled to see Baby It's You and French Postcards on the list. I'm concerned, however, that the original soundtracks will not be restored for these DVDs, especially since they are not actually being released by Paramount. Still, I will hold out hope until the discs actually materialize.

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I still can't find the Paramount titles.............Is there a link?

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Yeah, the opening credit tune of FRENCH POSTCARDS (French version of DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC) was replaced on the home video one. They ran it on Cinemax couple of years ago with the tune back in, so hopefully, Paramount cleared it.

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Money From Home! Great.

As most of you know, for mysterious reasons, Money From Home and Three Ring Circus were not in the Martin & Lewis DVD sets that Paramount released.

Some speculated that Money From Home was caught in the Damon Runyon problem. No one knew what the Three Ring Circus problem could be.

It was strange because both films were shown several times on TCM in the past few years.

But now, Money From Home has been announced as one of the new Paramount - Legend titles.

It doesn't make any sense. (But I am happy)

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Ken, on the main page, theres a box right in the middle that shows the Paramount DVDs. Just click on it and it takes you right to the page!

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Maybe they are planning on releasing it on two DVD's with one dvd as the flat version and one in field-sequential 3-D? Yeah right. That will never happen.

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Yes, when the films have played on cable the soundtracks have, thankfully, been intact.

In addition to the opening tune, French Postcards was also missing Nicolette Larson's "Lotta Love," Linda Ronstadt's "Just One Look," and at least a few others. There was a club scene which featured some French pop songs from the period that were altered for home video. I will have to take out my DVR from Cinemax and Paramount VHS to compare. On the video, the end credits were even redone, and made very cheap looking, to reflect the music changes.

As for Baby It's You, several songs were replaced with K-Tel-sounding versions. I can particularly remember that the soundtrack utilizes one of these cheap recordings of "Baby It's You." Sounded terrible. I don't have a copy from cable to compare and my only other version of the film is the Paramount laserdisc, but this is in storage. I believe the end credits are affected in the same way as French Postcards.

Sayles talks about Paramount's failure to secure the home video rights to all of the music and the film's delayed home video release in the book Sayles on Sayles:
"So there was no video available of Baby It's You for almost six or seven years. Anybody who wanted to see it on tape had to know somebody who had taped it off of Showtime. And by the time it came back, certain songs had gotten much more expensive."

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FRENCH POSTCARDS was also unusual in that the film initially was one of a few Paramount titles that were exclusive to Fotomat, when they had a video-rental program. Moreover, I'm willing to bet that those VHS tapes did have the music intact, much like the early MCA releases of SLAP SHOT and NIGHT HAWKS, and it was only when Paramount released their own tape that they rescored the songs.
AMERICAN HOT WAX and FRATERNITY ROW were two other Paramount titles that Fotomat offered which never received any other VHS release, though HOT WAX did get issued in the defunct CED Videodisc format.

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Thanks for the information, Mark. You have mentioned these Fotomat releases in other posts in the past. Have you ever seen one of these Fotomat tapes in person? I'd love to know what the artwork looked like and if it was anything similar to the old Magnetic Video design. I knew of the American Hot Wax Fotomat VHS and later CED release, but not about Fraternity Row. Very interesting.

Video Oyster used to list the American Hot Wax Fotomat tape in the ultra-rare, expensive section of the catalog. I don't remember if they ever offered any of the other Fotomat tapes.

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I'll buy it...so make it 2 who will purchase it.

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Unfortunate news with regards to the Baby It's You and French Postcards DVDs from Maria Mason of Legend Films:

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The titles are now available for sale on the Legend site, but with shipping and taxes they are about $23.00 each. I may hold off until they are sold by Amazon, DVD Pacific etc. I'm curious if anyone has ordered any titles yet and recieved notification they are shipping.

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The tape cover had no picture sleeve, no synopsis, it was just a slide from the side case, in silver, where the center was cut so you can see the label on middle of the tape to see the title. It almost looked like a home video tape! (and the transfer looked dupey, like it was second generation)

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Hmmm; extras free Paramount discs at near Criterion prices - I suspect they may be slightly disappointed with the initial sales figures.

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I paid $19.90 total including shipping (no sales tax) for The Skull. Hardly near Criterion gouging pricing.

I wish I could get Criterion discs for near $14.95 MSRP.

For those who can wait until the official release in June, Amazon will most likely carry the titles for less than $10 each.

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I'm assuming that there are a few fans of some of these films who will pay the premium to get them a bit earlier than the rest of us. If they don't already have the infrastructure in place to handle direct sales, then both the pricing as well as the 'offer' itself make sense. They may not want or be able to deal with many retail orders right away. I'm hoping all these will be offered at Deep Discount. If I could snag them for around $8-$9 each, there'd be about 7-8 titles there I would like to get. If $15 is the best I can do, I'd pick up 4 and Netflix the rest. There are quite a few titles in that list i'm unfamiliar with, but which sound very intriguing. The One And Only is a movie I have very fond memories of. Haven't seen it in 30 years, but I found myself thinking about it a couple months back wondering who had the rights to it. I didn't bother investigating it because it didn't seem like it would matter. There wasn't any way in hell something that ...gentle...and esoteric would make it's way out. I'm again very delighted to be wrong.
Does anyone know if they will be hewing to a regular monthly schedule with the Paramount material...or is it going to be one or two batches ever quarter or six months? Very curious to see what else they've got plans for.

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Jim; you know that nearly $20 is a little rich, even if my playful Criterion comment doesn't apply (though I'd have preferred to be 'gouged' by a release through Criterion, complete with their usual thoughtful extras.)


...and that's when the sales graph will probably take a sharp upturn, especially when we outside the US feel we can afford to weigh in in numbers.

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Some of the titles like Houdini are up for pre-order on Amazon.com for June 3rd - the price is still $14.95 for the moment.

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Wow....I think I may be buying virtually ALL of these titles. Legend really scored a coup in the licensing and it's great to hear they've done a good job on them.

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I was very pleasantly surprised at this 'legend'ary arragement that paramount has set up. It truly is a barometer that the studios-even one as seemingly beligerent in releasing catalog titles as Paramount-do listen to their fans "of a certain age"(most of us fit into that category) and are trying to satiate our wants. I commend them for doing so and I think the $15 pricetag for seeing most of these obscure titles (THE OPTIMISTS? THE BUSY BODY? WON TON TON...!!!!!?) that I never thought would see the light of day beyond the terrible bootlegs (the new flickers) and foreign out of print videos they were on in a previous lifeform, is very reasonable. I have ordered all of these with the exception of BLUE CITY-a truly awful 80s brartpack noir.
Judging fro their eclectic titles-I soon envision other Paramount titles heretofore unreleased in any video format finally seeing the light of day after trial runs on cable (TCMs recent showing of SKIDOO) and on Amazons Unbox (my guilty pleasure SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN NEW YORK as well as TR BASKIN , INNOCENT BYSTANDERS and MAN ON A STRING all are available there as well as MANDINGO ). these titles seem a cinch soon.
It seems as if Paramount will soon become the premiere releasing unit for the mostly forgotten 60s and 70s era films. I can see them leasing their prestige pix to Criterion (ala THE NAKED PREY and the never released on video ACE IN THE HOLE) such as the terrific 1980 thriller THE OUTSIDER, WHITE DOG , LADIES AND GENTLEMAN THE FABULOUS STAINS, BREAKING GLASS, Ingmar Bergmans seemingly lost FACE TO FACE,LEADBELLY , AMERICAN HOT WAX the beguilingly mia CITIZENS BAND from Jonathan Demme and LOOKING FOR MR GOODBAR among others and more popular movies such as ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH, ASH WEDNESDAY, A SEPERATE PEACE, FIRST LOVE, ROUGH CUT ,PLAYERS, BLOODLINE going via Legend. With the never released WON TON TON and THE PIED PIPER (as well as the surprising release last year of O WHAT A LOVELY WAR!) I would like to see them also release FRATERNITY ROW, THE LAWYER, THE PENTHOUSE , WUSA and LITTLE FAUSS AND BIG HALSY and others. Very exciting!
The only question remaing: What is left for Paramount proper to release?
Now if Universal/Legend would make a similar licensing agreement we may finally get THE GREEK TYCOON, MOMENT BY MOMENT and NUNZIO.....

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I ordered The Skull, The Possession of Joel Delaney, and Student Bodies on April 1. I'll probably order The Man Who Could Cheat Death, The Deadly Bees, and The Sender when they become available in May. Any other titles I'll order at the retail level. I think the $14.95 SRP is very reasonable for these. MGM/Fox are releasing a slew of War and Western films in May with the same SRP, while Universal is asking $19.98 for The Man of a Thousand Faces. Shipping charges seem to be the deal-breaker here for some. Luckily within a few months that won't be a factor.

I soooo hope Legend and Paramount are satisfied with how this turns out. Getting anamorphic R1 releases of Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and Blood & Roses actually seems possible now.

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I'm excited by these releases, but I'm going to hold off until June in anticipation of Deep Discount's semi-annual 20% off sale.

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As if Gehenna isn't getting frosty enough with all of this news, TCM is disinterring Paramount's Walk Like a Dragon for a 1:30 a.m. ET showing on June 18.

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The STUDENT BODIES disc includes the trailer. It's a lousy trailer, but it's cool to have.

MANDINGO is the uncut 127 minute R-rated version.

BABY IT'S YOU appears to be the same music-modified version that was on VHS (it includes the Springsteen songs).

POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY - the controversial full-frontal of the young boy is matted out on this widescreen version (the VHS was open-matte and showed below the waist).

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Thanks for the update, Jeff. Never thought we'd see Mandingo, let alone uncut.

As for Baby It's You, a Legend Films exec was nice enough to let me know that it and French Postcards are the same re-scored versions that have been previously available. All the same, I will have a hard time not purchasing them because they are OAR and two of my most-wanted DVDs. Sadly, this would seem to confirm that we will never see these two films in their original theatrical versions on home video.

BTW, how is the PQ of Baby It's You?

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Then again, if sales of BABY, IT'S YOU are respectable enough, I could very easily see Criterion do a reissue with the original music restored. Universal put out two different DVDs of DAZED AND CONFUSED before Criterion did theirs. FRENCH POSTCARDS is probably a dead issue though, sadly.

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Ordered Tuesday night, received the package Friday afternoon. Great service. I'll be taking a quick peek at The Pied Piper, ZPG and Money From Home tonight.

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WHITE DOG is apparently coming later this year from Criterion.

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Yeah I also think the price is reasonable (except the shipping charge) and I also hope these sell well enough so that it encourages Legend to license more titles from Paramount and maybe some other studios like Sony, Fox, MGM, Universal that are sitting on some great cult titles in their vaults.


Yeah bonus material is always nice to have (though I find some of their commentaries/material dry, overly academic and lifeless) and I'm sure Criterion would pretty up the artwork. Is it worth an extra $25 added to the price for having it released by [cue heavenly choir] Criterion [/heavenly choir]? Not for me.

It's funny how Criterion still gets a free pass for charging a standard $40 MSRP in this day and age, the standard excuse always being being those dreaded "licensing fees" yet Legend's $15 MSRP for these licensed titles is a little rich?

I just don't get it.

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Does anyone pay MSRP? (Apart from Legend customers obviously). Not to go too far off topic, you're looking at a few cents shy of $20 to get these shipped to you (I'm not sure if they're shipping these internationally), the last Criterion disc I bought, shipped to the UK, cost me a few cents shy of $27, and the extras, the presentation as a whole, was well worth it. At least to me.

Hey, if Legend had included an Amicus documentary, a feature on Peter Cushing, and a decent commentary on The Skull, I'd be looking to plunk my $20 down right now...but I think I'll wait until June.