re: Our Gang Collection, 80 shorts, Oct. 28
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Originally Posted by Steve...O
Agreed. Lionsgate is (thankfully) no longer associated with the Roach library. The disc that Dan1 refers to is a contender for "worst DVD ever" in my opinion. The Music Box short even has a rolling screen in one spot that is clearly a video based defect.
One recalls Steve Beeks' infamous quote that the only B&W films that sell are John Wayne films. That was his justification for largely ignoring the Roach library.
I have an e-mail into the publisher of the L&H magazine to see if he's heard any rumblings of a R1 release of the sound L&H shorts and Roach features.
Does anyone know if HD transfers exist for the Roach material? Ideally the Genius set for Our Gang (and potentially L&H) will be sourced from new transfers and not recycled transfers used for prior VHS releases. After watching the Stooge shorts in all their restored glory one hopes the legendary Roach comics will get similar treatment.
Steve
PS: I'll make Genius a deal: if they follow up this wonderful Our Gang collection with a high quality L&H complete sound shorts collection by the end of the year (with a promise of features to follow), I'll vote for them as "Studio of the Year" in the annual HTF poll  |
What L&H need is an advocate like a Leonard Maltin, Jerry Beck, George Feldtenstein (sp?) etc., who would advise the studio and actually be listened to. I think it's no coinidence that Maltin was involved in the previous
Little Rascals Cabin Fever series. What had me banging my head against the wall was: the same company (RHI, through Cabin Fever and later Hallmark) then released a series of L&H shorts on VHS, from colorized TV masters (some edited) with one short to a tape. D'oh! (Hey, let's be authentic: D'ooooooooooooohh!!)
Assuming a comparable L&H set eventually comes to pass: I wonder if it would be possible/feasible for them to use the masters used for the Region 2 DVD releases. This stuff was great, as crystal clear as we're likely to ever see. And the majority of the films had the original titles and original M-G-M logos and fanfares...did you know that the original version of
Block-Heads has an opening fanfare over the M-G-M lion that continues into the title theme? I'd never heard it before I got the German DVD version.
A few things: I believe Michael Agee (the same guy who has been working on the mythical silent L&H set) worked on the transfers/restorations of the sound L&H films back in the 1980s, and I believe I have read remarks from him to the effect that whatever other versions have become available since then -- home video, TV, etc., all started out with his masters as source material. For instance, his version of
Sons Of The Desert got a 1980s "Hal Roach Studios" intro plastered onto it in place of the original M-G-M logo, had background music dubbed onto it, and depending on which version (for TV or home video), had video fades to black inserted for commercial breaks...but the source was the original master done by Agee in the 1980s, altered by someone else later on. I have read rumors that those original tapes were erased/recycled some years back, but if the above is true, it would seem that the European DVDs seem to originate from these copies too, somewhere down the line. Now, of course, different entities officially own the US rights for the silent and sound films. But the work has already been done...though the PAL/NTSC speed difference would be another issue. (I can deal with that, it's better than what Hallmark gave us.)
I was very happy to see (1) original title sequences restored for the majority of the films where possible on the German DVDs, and (2) in cases where they couldn't actually restore them, they left them alone with the "Film Classics" reissue titles and didn't try to "fake" them by using bits and pieces of the FC titles cut together with the original opening from some other short, with the end result not being authentic anyway. (This was done for the TV versions of several shorts, as aired on
The Laurel & Hardy Show and later on AMC.)
A couple things to look out for: The German (Kinowelt) DVD issue of "The Chimp" has the authentic original titles with the circus motif. I'm told the UK version has the Film Classics titles...if the original titles didn't exist, I'd prefer the FC titles over a fake approximation. But I wonder what happened there. (On top of it, the two "intro text title cards" are reversed on the FC reissue version, so they don't really make sense...and for the 1980s "fake restoration," they left them that way.)
Also, I remember reading that some time between the mid-1980s (when the syndicated
Laurel & Hardy Show was put together) and the DVD era, when the European restorations came out, the third reel of "The Music Box" somehow got lost, so they had to dupe it from some past video transfer, and it is very contrasty compared to the rest of the film. (The best version of this short I've seen in recent years is the one that's been shown on TCM.) Of course, this also would suggest that the European releases did not necessarily originate solely from Michael Agee's 1980s versions.
Anyway...I'd love to see a good L&H set in the US, and I am definitely looking forward to this Little Rascals collection! I would bet that the Rascals are coming out first because they have good masters already done for previous releases, all set to go.
