Possible news on remastered Rathbone Holmes releases

Paul Drake · 04-14-2003, 09:19 PM

Hi,

Hopefully an official announcment will be forthcoming, but one of the folks who runs the Scarlet Street magazine and website posted this today:

At Last! Rathbone and Bruce on DVD!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been waiting patiently to announce this exciting news for months, and at long last I got the okay . . .

MPI Home Video has acquired the rights to release on DVD the Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Starting in September, all 14 remastered films in the series will be released at the rate of two films per month, one film per disc. It hasn't yet been decided whether they'll appear in the order of the films' original theatrical release. (I'm pushing for it.) There's a possibility that the DVDs will contain extra features, but that, too, remains undecided.

I'll be providing the chapter stops and liner notes for all 14 films, as I've been doing for the 41 episodes of the Sherlock Holmes TV series starring Jeremy Brett.

Further information about both series will appear on the Scarlet Street Message Boards at www.scarletstreet.com as it becomes available . . .

Richard Valley

The above contradicts earlier published accounts indicating that CBS/King World would be the distributor. I'm concerned because of the flak MPI got over the quality of their Brett releases. I had thought that the films would be released two on one disk since they're so short. Hopefully the extra space will be put to good use.

Comments from anybody in a position to confirm or refute
the above would be welcome.

Here's a link to the Holmes message board:

http://pub134.ezboard.com/fscarletstreetsherlockholmes

Paul

Jeff Adkins · 04-15-2003, 07:43 AM

MPI is one of the worst studios with any major product. Two of my big pet peeves:

-Their release of Henryortrait Of A Serial Killer has an awful audio sync problem in addition to mediocre picture quality. The audio sync problem isn't a minor thing, it's WAY out of sync yet they never fixed it.

-They released Help!, Magical Mystery Tour and Hard Days Night in compressed DD 2.0 sound quality with a low bit rate (192 if I remember correctly). The LD's sound was much better.

I have little faith that they will do the Rathbone films properly.

Jeff

Stephen PI · 04-15-2003, 10:09 AM

I am also concerned about "Becket" which they also own. I hope they do this film justice, eg. new anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer and discrete, properly transferred audio.

Marcia Jessen · 04-22-2003, 05:27 PM

I have read that the 12 Universal Sherlock Holmes films were digitally restored by UCLA (with funding by Hugh Hefner) and that the quality is excellent. I hope that The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes will be as good. I don't think either has been properly restored yet.

Marcia

Larry Sutliff · 04-22-2003, 06:44 PM

Quote:

I have read that the 12 Universal Sherlock Holmes films were digitally restored by UCLA (with funding by Hugh Hefner) and that the quality is excellent.

I'm sure that the quality of the restorations are excellent. However, VCI could still screw these up by transfering the elements badly. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

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David Von Pein · 07-13-2003, 07:11 AM

SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION #1 -- October 28th.

SHERLOCK HOLMES COLLECTION #2 -- November 25th.

Are the above collections, which each contain 4 different Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce S.H. Classics, the official releases from MPI Home Video?

Those two collections will feature the first 8 Universal Basil S.H. movies, in the order they were made, beginning with 1942's "Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror".

Good price too, it would appear .... just $12.60 per film. Of course, each movie is quite short on the running time, averaging approx. 65 minutes per Basil Classic. But still, not a bad deal if the quality is good (which I'm praying it will be).

(Anybody know if MPI is also doing the two Fox S.H. entries in this series? If so, it appears those will be released out of sequence.)

Larry Sutliff · 07-13-2003, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Anybody know if MPI is also doing the two Fox S.H. entries in this series? If so, it appears those will be released out of sequence

The two TCF Holmes films will be released after the Universal films. UCLA didn't restore the Fox films, so they don't look as good as the Universals. MPI didn't want people to think these films were representative of how the whole series looked, so they decided to release them last.

Robert Crawford · 07-13-2003, 10:09 AM

I'm still having a hard time believing that Fox lost the rights to MPI regarding those two titles.

Crawdaddy

Jeff_HR · 07-13-2003, 12:04 PM

Quote:

The two TCF Holmes films will be released after the Universal films. UCLA didn't restore the Fox films, so they don't look as good as the Universals

Those are the ONLY 2 films in the series that I'm interested in. I was under the impression that ALL of the films were being restored. If these two films are being left in their original states, I might as well just keep my Key Video tapes & not bother buying them on DVD. What a damned shame!!!!!