ADV. of SUPERMAN SEASON 2 has edits

CIULLOCAMNY · 10-17-2006, 05:45 PM

Hi everyone. I'm new to the thread and I'm not sure if this was brought up at all. The Adventures of Superman Season 2 has at least 2 episodes that I know of with some blatant edits. MY FRIEND SUPERMAN and AROUND THE WORLD WITH SUPERMAN are missing footage. Luckily I am a 16mm film collector and have had these episodes intact, so at least I am able to see the difference. Warner Home Video has done it again. Hey Warner, are you listening - HOW ABOUT A REPLACEMENT DISC WITH ALL UNCUT EPISODES !!!
You listened to the public about the Looney Tunes box sets and the Tom and Jerry set. How about some due respect to the Man of Steel ??? What's crazy about this is that there's going to be some cock and bull story about how that these were the only materials that were available. When you do an extensive search, you're supposed to cover all of your bases. Even if it means going outside the 35mm film world and relying on 16mm film elements to due so. There have been many TV stations running these shows and I'm sure that there's someone out there who had these shows uncut. Hell, I had them on 16mm film, but let them go thinking that these box sets would have more pristine materials than the film versions. In this case, I was wrong. What's the big rush to try and market these things. Get it done right the first time. Yours truly would be more than happy to wait for it. It would be worth the wait. How long will I have to wait for a replacement disc now ?

LaurenceGarvey · 10-17-2006, 05:57 PM

Yeah, this is not news. We all survived. The Superman sets could've used much better bonus material, too, and the color episodes have a lousy print for all the opening credits. *shrugs* I still enjoy the episodes.

Michael Alden · 10-17-2006, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CIULLOCAMNY

Hi everyone. I'm new to the thread and I'm not sure if this was brought up at all. The Adventures of Superman Season 2 has at least 2 episodes that I know of with some blatant edits. MY FRIEND SUPERMAN and AROUND THE WORLD WITH SUPERMAN are missing footage. Luckily I am a 16mm film collector and have had these episodes intact, so at least I am able to see the difference. Warner Home Video has done it again. Hey Warner, are you listening - HOW ABOUT A REPLACEMENT DISC WITH ALL UNCUT EPISODES !!!
You listened to the public about the Looney Tunes box sets and the Tom and Jerry set. How about some due respect to the Man of Steel ??? What's crazy about this is that there's going to be some cock and bull story about how that these were the only materials that were available. When you do an extensive search, you're supposed to cover all of your bases. Even if it means going outside the 35mm film world and relying on 16mm film elements to due so. There have been many TV stations running these shows and I'm sure that there's someone out there who had these shows uncut. Hell, I had them on 16mm film, but let them go thinking that these box sets would have more pristine materials than the film versions. In this case, I was wrong. What's the big rush to try and market these things. Get it done right the first time. Yours truly would be more than happy to wait for it. It would be worth the wait. How long will I have to wait for a replacement disc now ?

Call Warner up and offer your prints to them to use. I'd love to see what they say. BTW, how about the first season episode that looks like a 16mm dupe with tons of scratches that they didn't bother to clean up.

Steve...O · 10-17-2006, 06:43 PM

This is not new news. Warners was asked about this in the last chat and they responded that the prints have changed hands many times over the past 50 years and what they had was put on the DVD. I'm willing to give them a pass on this considering that the other episodes all look fantastic, are complete and not time sped. These edits are about a minute each and one of the cuts doesn't feature any main characters.

I've seen 16mm copies of the missing scenes and they are also rough looking so finding pristine copies of them would have been a challenge. If someone does offer Warners use of high quality materials, a replacement disc program would be nice, but I'm not going to be upset if one doesn't come.

Stolen Costume does look worse than the other episodes, but it's still quite viewable. Robert Harris or someone conversant in restoration will probably tell you that the amount of money required to full restore this episode wouldn't be cost effective.

On the whole, I've been quite pleased with these sets. Jack Larson and Noel Neill are prominently featured on the bonus features, the episodes look wonderful, and the pricing is right.

CIULLOCAMNY · 10-18-2006, 07:31 PM

It's just that Warner has a history of making these so called edits to a bunch of stuff they own. This isn't the first time. A lot of thier Bowery Boys materials are lacking some scenes as well. And as far as the edits to the Superman episodes - In MY FRIEND SUPERMAN - the entire scene with Tony setting up the tape recorder - I feel - is very crucial and is missing from the DVD as well as this scene in AROUND THE WORLD... The whole scene where he looks into the little girl's eye to see if there is something corrupting her vision. A great close-up shot of George Reeves performing his x-ray vision. Not to mention that most of the second season openings aren't the originals either. I'm sorry, but I remember this stuff as a little kid and it stays with you. And I like I said in the first thread, what Warner said about the materials they have and the different copies of the episodes is B.S. Because it was the Warner copies I saw on TV not too many years ago and those scenes were there. So they make the excuse that this is what they got and they send Mr. and Mrs. America away and all is supposedly fine. Although, in the first season and a most controversial scene from the episode RIDDLE OF THE CHINESE JADE. The scene was cut from some syndication packages because it depicted the villain of the episode physically throwing a Chinese girl onto a couch and promptly following it up by jumping on top of her and punching her with a couple of nasty closed fists with his back to the camera. This scene was cut from some syndication packages at the point where he was about to hit her, yet THIS scene IS included on the first season DVD set uncut with all the brutality. Which, I guess, I should be thanking Warners for including it. But it makes me wonder about the rest of the collections. GO FIGURE !!! Good thing I still have some of the films. Thanks for letting me vent and thanks for your responses.

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Steve...O · 10-19-2006, 07:27 AM

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your perspective.

We all agree that we want everything to as perfect as possible. Realistically though when dealing with syndicated vintage properties like TAOS or poverty row studios like Monogram (Bowery Boys) where Warners wasn't the original owner, I'm willing to cut them some slack and give them the benefit of the doubt. They do have a very impressive record with their classic theatrical catalog and these Superman episodes look darn good.

Warners is holding up the DVD release of the Bowery Boys because they aren't satisfied with what they have in their vaults and they're doing a worldwide seach for better elements. Some fans aren't happy with this delay, but I applaud Warners for taking the time to do it right.

Perhaps if the right people at Warners had been contacted early in the process of the developing TAOS and been provided high quality copies of the scenes from the copy of a collector perhaps we'd have these intact. The running times of these epsisodes are not signficantly shorter than the others so it may not have been obvious to the people putting this together that brief scenes were missing. Should it have been? Perhaps, but that's assuming they could have found an expert on the series willing to act as a consultant at a price within the parameters of the budget for this release (read "gratis").

Sky King · 10-19-2006, 12:06 PM

Steve,

I was surprised to hear Warner Brothers say, (after criticism of the video quality of the first TAOS DVD set) that the TAOS prints passed through many hands before reaching them. How many hands did they pass through ??
It was my longtime understanding that National passed them directly to Warner Brothers, but I've recently read that Screen Gems also owned TAOS for a while and that they (SG) really wore down the negatives.

John

Chas_Michael · 10-19-2006, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CIULLOCAMNY

You listened to the public about the Looney Tunes box sets

can you please clarify this statement?

CIULLOCAMNY · 10-21-2006, 07:40 PM

If what you mean by clarify, is that WB has reassured that it will have replacement discs for the various cartoon box sets because they contained insufficient material or alternate soundtracks or some other kind of imperfections that desecrated what was once known as a piece of Americana. I called for my replacement disc(s) for Tom and Jerry Spotlight #2 and it's going to take 6-8 weeks. Whether or not they do something about Looney Tunes is beyond me. I had found out through another source that some of the toons may not be complete or have been altered for Politically Correct standards. Whether WB is going to correct that problem, I don't know. They listened to the public about THIS. Why can't they do something about TAOS. I'm just trying to get through to them.

pitchman · 10-22-2006, 08:57 AM

In general, I am pleased with the sets as issued by Warner Bros. Taking advantage of sale prices, for less than $125, one can collect the entire six season run of The Adventures of Superman. Are they perfect? No. But, that doesn't detract from the overall quality and consistency of presentation that Warner has delivered. Just the fact that they didn't abandon the series, like so many of their industry counterparts, is commendable.

I agree with nearly all of the comments made in this thread. The Stolen Costume (although serviceable when taken alone) looks BAD when viewed alongside the other episodes in the set. It would be n