Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

TVShowsonDVD reports that Genius Products and RHI are releasing a "Little Rascals Collection" DVD set on October 20, 2008.

80 shorts, i.e., the "talkie" era Hal Roach shorts (1929 - 1938) owned by RHI Entertainment will comprise the collection. Suggested retail is $89.98. Box artwork and a more detailed press release are pending.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

Sounds like a great set! Can't wait for the details.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

Between that set and the silent set, there's a lot of Our Gang coming.

Forthcoming Laughsmith silent collection

Laughsmith Entertainment - Motion Picture Preservation and Production

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

sounds great! i remember the talkies from Early Sat morning TV showings

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

Ok, now where the hell is Laurel & Hardy????

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

AWESOME!!

I hope that they do it right and make it chronological.

I hate watching the old discs and videos that jump around haphazardly from a "pre-spanky" short to a short where Spanky is 10 and then back again.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

A question here: I have the complete Cabin Fever set put out a few years back. Is there more to this new set that wasn't in the Cabin Fever DVDs? I mean, the other set had the Leonard Maltin intros. Also, will the new set include shorts not seen in the Cabin Fever releases?

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

some days are just better than others, if the good lord gives you lemons make lemonade , and sale it for .02 cents, could have gotten .03 cents if the goat hadn't drank from it. LOL

8 disc average of ten shorts per disc, two reel shorts averaging 20 min per short, 200 min that does leave some room for extras.

i agree that this needs to be in order, and that number accounts for the Roach "talkie" period at MGM. Also most importantly is that these are unedited, restored whole and complete as the were first screened. I hope that they had the good sense to get Maltin, to come in and host, and also be involved in any special features. Great book by the way, i highly recommend it to anyone, but as Film Historians go he is a fan, and is also family friendly enough to give the disclaimer.

i hope that the laughsmith one would have covered the entire silent period and been in order as well, so how long before WB starts looking at the rest of the MGM, post roach ones for a set?

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I'm hoping they're remastered. I was surprised by RHI's double feature of Robert Youngson films (The Golden Age of Comedy and When Comedy Was King). Both brand new sparkling progressive transfers, even.

This is a sure buy unless they use TV prints with missing footage.

(Count me in for wanting Laurel & Hardy... but only if they're fully restored and remastered. I'm happy with the R2 complete set otherwise).

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

while i look forward to both of these , i wish that Laughsmith could be able to get ahold of all the silents, and do a huge set, , not that 4 disc is small but from 1922 - 1929 comes to 88 shorts, that would at least be an 8 disc set.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I have always thought that there are 81 Roach talkie Little Rascals, from "Small Talk" to "Hide and Shriek." Where have I gone wrong? Is it wrong count or lost film?

I am so looking forward to this announced collection and the Laughsmith collection when that comes out. A slow year is quickly turning into an expensive year.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I'm in for this. Will these 80 include all of the talkes up until the end of the Roach era? If not, which ones are left?

Now if only Warner would release the 52 post-Roach ones and General Spanky.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

Holy shit! I can't believe I am reading this.

I own the Cabin Fever DVDs that were available for a year
way back in the late '90s (I think) before the company went
bankrupt.

I never thought we would see another compilation of these
shorts ever again with all the legal issues.

I do hope the same care is given to these shorts as Cabin Fever
had done.

Someone let me know when these are ready to order. I want to be
first on line.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I know there were 3 DVD sets released in the early-mid '90s
by Cabin Fever.

Best I can remember....

Cabin Fever released only one DVD set that contained most or all of VHS Sets 1 & 2

The third set, which contains the racy shorts were never released
on DVD since Cabin Fever went bankrupt.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

what you are counting is General Spanky, which is a feature film, owned by WB, was done during the shorts, so the number is 80 shorts

The Little Rascals- The Hal Roach M-G-M Talkies

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

Laughsmith have done a lot of great releases so I doubt they'll drop their quality on this set, which they've been working on for years now.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

Thanks, I knew there was something wrong and I missed seeing General Spanky on my list and I actually have the Laserdisc copy of the film so I should have known better.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I am very happy to hear this about Laughsmith.

However, for me personally, I am not interested in the silent shorts.

I'm more interested in all the "talkies" under Hal Roach. I hope
that Genius Products put some sincere effort into these releases.
Can't be that difficult as they have already been remastered from
the Cabin Fever days and I have seen those same transfers on other
scattered Rascals releases over the years.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I'm certainly going to wait for reviews on the sound set even though I'll probably buy them no matter what they look like. I'm guessing Genius is just doing the releasing as they have with other companies so the blame or praise will probably be aimed at RHI.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

Wait a sec...

I just looked at the original Cabin Fever DVDs.

They indicate RHI on the label.

For that reason I am guessing we are in GREAT hands as these
will probably be the same superb transfers from the CF collection.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

hopefully Maltin will show up then, i just hope they are in order, i think WB has some serious competition this year in best studio, FOX, Sony, UNi, now RHI/Genius, pretty good year form everyone.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

The remaining Roach shorts did make it to VHS before the demise of Cabin Fever, although they were of course available on la$erdi$c (which is where most of those ebay DVD's came from).

This is uber-ossum! I haven't seen Wild Poses in ages!

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

Ok, here's what I know about the original Cabin Fever releases. The original sets were released on VHS and went all the way to Vol. 21, with 4 shorts per tape. That makes 84; each tape had a quick intro by Leonard Maltin, talking trivia, shooting locations etc.

Cabin Fever then began to release them on DVD, with 2 volumes per DVD, ie. Vol 1 & 2 on DVD 1, Vol. 3 & 4 on DVD 2, etc. I've got the 6 DVD's which they released covering all the same shorts, in the same order as the VHS, up to Vol 12. Unfortunately (I believe) this is when Cabin Fever went out of business. They never produced any other DVD sets to take care of the remaining 11 volumes (through to 21).

Now, still having the tapes, I met a friend a few years ago who had a VCR/DVD appliance and was able to get the VHS tapes transferred to DVD. This was great because several of the tapes were only watched once, some not at all as I hadn't gotten around to it. So the only loss was attributed to how dirty his tape heads were and the compression that the deck used. Regardless, I've got all 21 volumes safely stowed away on DVD, 6 "official" and the remaining 11 "unofficial"

Glad to see that they are releasing the set. Don't quote me on this but I have a feeling that the Our Gang set (being only 80 shorts) will comprise the entire talky period between the times Hal Roach started making talkies to when the gang moved on to MGM. The original VHS tapes did have about 4 shorts that were from the silent era....maybe 6, spread across the entire 21 volumes set. I'd have to go home and look. Regardless, the Laughsmith will probably take care of all the original silent shorts, while this new set will cover all the talkies. But again, don't quote me.

Hope this helps.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

This almost sounds too good to be true. These are some of my most wanted on my personal wish list!!

I'm wondering... is there any chance that all the Hal Roach Laurel and Hardy shorts could be released in the same way? I thought L&H and Our Gang were BOTH owned by Hallmark? And if this company is now able to release Our Gang, could it be they have acquired Laurel & Hardy too??

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I'm pretty sure Lionsgate still own L&H.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

The Laughingsmith collection so far is only going to have 26 shorts--not nearly all the silents--but they're still working very hard on it. And who's to say that it will be the only collection. And best of all, it's going to include films that have been "lost" for years...

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I noticed that the Laughsmith collection only has 2 Our Gang shorts that were originally distributed by MGM. (Roach's films were distibuted by Pathe until 1927, and then by MGM until the late 1930s). Pathe shorts have been showing up on public domain VHS and DVDs for years, but the MGM shorts have been few and far between. Does anyone know if many of the MGM shorts are lost or if they are held back by some legal issue? I personally consider Hal Roach studio's "golden age" is from 1928 to 1934, so I would really like to see more of the MGM silents.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

I am looking forward to this set. I purchased the six-disc Cabin Fever set (containing vols 1-12). I also had the four LD sets. I hope that Leonard Maltin can contribute to this set (I'm sure he would be glad to, considering his passion for these).

I did some research using the Maltin book as a reference, for the 80 Roach/MGM talkies, there was 1 three-reeler, 57 two-reelers, and 22 one-reelers, for a total of 139 reels or 1390 minutes of content. This works out to be 23 hours, 10 minutes. With no extras, this would fit onto 6 discs

David

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

This is EXCELLENT news and I'm overjoyed. A poster on the classic horror board indicated there would be extras; we'll have to wait to see what they are if indeed there are any.

I may be wrong but I do believe earlier news accounts indicated that L&H is now owned by RHI and not Lionsgate. This Our Gang release bodes very well for a L&H collection in my opinion. Mr. Maltin should be involved in both.

Warners owns (I think) 52 Our Gang shorts most if not all of which are 1 reel. This could easily be a single collection. The films are not highly regarded but would appeal to collectors. Unfortunately WHV has not chosen to release dedicated collections of their short subjects.

Many thanks to Genius for releasing this.

re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28

My understanding is that all of the Pathe-released material is public domain. For the most part, M-G-M filed copyrights for all the Hal Roach films they released, which were reassigned to Hal Roach's company in the 1940s/1950s (some ended up reverting back to M-G-M, such as General Spanky and the Laurel & Hardy features The Devil's Brother and Bonnie Scotland, which is why those were released as part of TCM's Laurel & Hardy Collection DVD set). This library has changed hands a few times over the years and is currently owned by RHI.

Apart from still being under copyright, the other major issue with the MGM-period silent shorts is that several had gone missing over the years. In the 1950s, when the first Little Rascals TV package was put together, 13 early silent films were included (16mm TV prints of these still circulate) -- and apparently, these were the only Hal Roach/MGM Our Gang silent shorts that were still known to exist at that time. (There were 22 Hal Roach/MGM Our Gang silent shorts; I believe more of them have been found since then. Maybe someone else out there has more definitive information.) But these are the titles that were known to be extant in the 1950s:

DOG HEAVEN
RAINY DAYS
OLD GRAY HOSS
CRAZY HOUSE
SPOOK SPOOFING
ELECTION DAY
NOISY NOISES
WIGGLE YOUR EARS
BARNUM AND RINGLING INC.
LITTLE MOTHER
FAST FREIGHT
CAT, DOG AND COMPANY
SATURDAY'S LESSON

As far as I know, these (and the other nine Roach/MGM silents) belong to RHI. It would be cool to see them show up as extras. What was confusing to me was how RHI included four silent shorts as part of the original 21 VHS tapes, only one of which (Cat, Dog And Company) was from the above list (another, Dog Heaven, later showed up on a separate dog-themed tape along with some previously-released talkie shorts). The other three silent shorts issued in the RHI/Cabin Fever set were public domain Pathe silents.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this set and am hopeful to see a similar Laurel & Hardy collection down the road!