Alfred Hitchcock Presents Coming To Dvd In 2005...i Hope!!!!!! (1 Viewer)

[JeffT.]

If you're asking me specifically I'm definitely getting the ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS-THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON collection beyond that I'm really not certain just what else is coming out on that particular day but if it's a good, classic pre-1970s tv series than I'll probably purchase it as well.

I can say that I'll also be acquiring THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN-THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON 5-disc DVD box set due out on October 18th, 2005.

Jeff T.

 

[TravisR]

Tom, I'll also be picking up the Alfred Hitchcock movie box set, the Val Lewton box set, and Space: Above And Beyond all on that day too (and since it's early there still might be a few more things that get scheduled for that day too). That's all probably going to cost in the neighborhood of about $175 or so. My wallet is scared

 

[Michael Alden]

I'm just thinking, if we can get Universal to crank out the sets at one a year, by the time I'm 57 I'll have the whole series complete! Oh, forgot about the color ones from the 80s. Okay, maybe by 65.

 

[Dane Marvin]

Yeah, October is looking like the best DVD month this year. With all those films and shows you mention, Craig, plus three-disc editions of both The Wizard of Oz and Titanic and the SE of The Big Lebowski. And hopefully not everything has been announced yet!

I'm really excited to get this set in particular. TZ is my favorite show and I've heard that there are a lot of similarities between these two shows, including a large number of interchangeable cast members (which I love to see). I only remember watching parts of this show when I was probably 5 or 6 and they were showing it on Nick at Nite. My grandfather looked uncannily like Alfred Hitchcock, which is why I used to watch the beginning of every episode (and my only memories of watching this are at his house, oddly enough).

 

[Tom.W]

Before Universal's announcement last year I thought we would have to wait much longer for a vintage show of 10 seasons (including 3 Hitchcock Hour seasons) like this. Hitchcock is truly one of the finest anthology series, and in a way more engaging than many Twilight Zones, since it depicts everyday people in terrifying situations. Not taking anything away from TZ, just sometimes you want more realism.

I hope this means that Thriller is not too far down the road. The fantastic visuals and sets in Thriller deserve a dvd release.

 

[Craig Beam]

I'm incredibly excited that season 1 is coming out... but I'm also rather skeptical that Universal will actually release the remaining seasons. If AHP had lasted only a few seasons, I wouldn't worry. But 10? Yikes. It's Universal, after all.

Wouldn't it be glorious if Universal had licensed the series to Image Entertainment? They'd give us pristine transfers, isolated music tracks, and copious extras. Since it's Universal... well, we'll get acceptable (but not breathtaking) transfers, unrestored audio, and no guarantee that more seasons will follow.

 

[Jeff#]

Universal does an excellent job on their series! Just look at Columbo and Kojak! My only complaint there is that they removed the original Universal logos / music that were at the end of the end theme songs for those shows -- only to put the modern Universal logo / music at the beginning of each episode, but that's a minor point.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as syndicated since the mid 1980s (when I discovered the series on WHYY -- the PBS station from Philadelphia), exists in the form we want. The film prints were crystal clear and with excellent sound! The entire first 7 years of the series from 1955 to 1962 are already pristine, so nothing else has to be done with them.

The last 3 years as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour from the 1960s, however, needs to be cleaend up. I actually saw that series first Saturday nights at 10 on USA Network in 1982-1983! While they were in good condition, they could use some remastering. Also, Hitchcock introducing next week's stories were edited out, and I've never seen those.

 

[Michael Alden]

Yes, but the half hours also exist in time sped form as well, since this is how they aired on Nick at Nite in the early 90s. As for the hours, a guy I knew actually worked on the editing of them for USA, having to trim them down to about 47 minutes. At the time they weren't remastered but I would assume that they must have been for the run they had on Encore in the 90s, although from what I understand, Encore didn't pick up all 93 hours.

 

[Peter M Fitzgerald]

Actually, ENCORE MYSTERY channel ran THE ALFRED HITCHCOCK HOUR a few years ago (circa 1998-2000), and those prints looked quite good (and were un-cut/un-compressed, with the Hitchcock-hosted openings/midpoints/closings intact, since the channel was/is a commercial-free premium network). The only odd thing was, there seemed to be a subset of episodes that weren't in the package, such as "An Unlocked Window", "The Magic Shop", "Lonely Place" and "Where the Woodbine Twineth", which were part of the package when USA NETWORK ran the series in the 1980s. I don't know if this had something to do with issues surrounding the story rights for those episodes, or was just a goof-up on the part of whoever put the more recent syndication package together.

After ENCORE dropped the show, both TV LAND and HALLMARK aired some of them (albeit very briefly), and the same quality prints were used, though edited for commercial time, and possibly time-compressed, too.

 

[Jeff#]

I wasn't aware The Mystery Channel had The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Peter! I got that channel after that period, which was in 2002-2003. Well, since Encore's other TV series are uncut and uninterrupted (The Saint, The Avengers, GUNSMOKE on the The Westerns Channel, etc.) it's easy to see The Alfred Hitchcock Hour would have gotten the same treatment and also included Hitchcock's intros for next week's episodes.

A limited number of those hour-long shows (but mostly the half-hours) aired on TV Land, but TV Land has the old prints of the Hitchcock Hour -- not remastered.

Hallmark Channel ran it too? They butcher everything to make more commercial time and do a horrible job interrupting and visually compressing the end credits to one side of the screen, as they did to BONANZA and all of their shows.

 

[Tom.W]

I taped the Encore run of Hitchcock Hours, and although they appeared to be from remastered prints, uncut with beginnings and closings intact, I don't recall Hitchcock introducing next week's episode, nor seeing the bumper at midpoint. (I will double check.)Let's hope Universal includes these.

A pbs station in my area ran many of the Hours in the early 80's, and they were complete episodes with the middle bumper. The missing episodes from the Encore run were included, but I don't recall that every episode aired.

I think the WHYY airing of Hitchcock Presents was probably the best. They were complete, uncompressed, and the ORIGINAL end credits aired. The syndicated version and the one used by TVLand used an edited version of the end credits, not to mention the horrible chopped up episodes as pointed out previously. Hopefully Universal will commit to finishing AHP and then AHH. That's 265 AHP eps and 93 AHH's!

 

[JeffT.]

Oh! Universal has just got to include those (fantastic) mid-episode break bumpers with that great background music (that sounds like some Leopold Stokovski conducted symphony orchestra from FANTASIA warming up with the distinctive drum beat)...that's the best part of the show!

I always thought that LEAVE IT TO BEAVER (CBS 1957-58, ABC 1958-63) would have beat out ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS (CBS 1955-60, NBC 1960-62) to the DVD retail sales market first but probably it was already to go.

The fact that Universal is willing to market a tv property as risky as this (particularly with the broad based younger audience consumer demographic out there) gives some hope for other (more serious) dramatic efforts like THE FUGITIVE (ABC 1963-67) and THE INVADERS (ABC 1967-68) which (with the possible exception of THE INVADERS) may have only adult appeal.

If this particular DVD tv collection sells well enough I'm sure that Universal will boldly move ahead and market all the seasons. Considering just how well THE TWILIGHT ZONE (CBS 1959-64) definitive edition DVD series are selling I'm sure that CBS Television now wishes that there were more than 5 tv seasons to market.

Hopefully consumer feedback will influence Universal in the direction of its handling of this classic anthology tv series.

We'll see!

Jeff T.

 

[James Landau]

YES! When this series aired locally back in the '80s, I used to look forward to the commercial break just to see that bumper. The accompanying background music rocks.

Universal had better include them or I'm going to be royally pissed--so much so that despite my love for this series, I will seriously debate the purchase of any additional seasons. (Are you listening, Universal?)

They cut them on all the previously released Hitchcock directed episodes and the show just isn't the same without it. There are one or two cases where the music starts before the fade-to-black and they still cut the bumper resulting in the music coming to an abrupt stop.

 

[Tom.W]

I agree, JeffT.! The mid episode bumpers in Hitchcock Presents and -Hour are similar to those in TZ, essential to bridging the mood from the original commercial breaks. I'm especially looking forward to the "clock" bumpers in the later TZ seasons - just placed my order for Defintive Season 3. Don't remember if the clock was used in season 3 or it started in season 4?

Based on its continuing popularity, I also would have thought Leave it to Beaver would be released before Hitchcock. But if the prints for Hitchcock Presents have been preserved till now, that would explain Hitchcock's hitting the market first.

I'm hoping for Fugitive and Invaders too, but possibly the multi-media power of the Hitchcock name explains Universal's willingness to risk this ambitious release.

 

[David Von Pein]

SOME FURTHER "A.H.P. SEASON 1" DETAILS VIA UNIVERSAL.....................


"Packaging: Digipak with Slip Sleeve." ..... :frowning: The "Slim cases" would be nicer, IMO. This surprises me a great deal, esp. considering Universal's recent trend of utilizing the slim cases for TV products, including even two-disc packages (eg: Dragnet, Adam-12). But, *sigh*.

Special Feature on Disc 3:

>> "Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Look Back."

 

[Carlos Garcia]

3 discs? Uhuh, sounds like the dreaded double-sided disks to me! I hope my set comes error-free.

 

[John Stell]

Yeah, I'm really worried about the DVD18 thing. So far I've had defective copies of Quincy (now on the 3rd attempt), Murder She Wrote, and Volumes 1 and 3 of the Best of Abbott and Costello sets. The worst thing about these is you have to rewatch everything again to make there's not a problem on some other episode. I still have to watch Miami Vice, Gary Gooper Collection, Casino, and Hardy Boys sets. I wish I could be lucky and get an error-free set once in a while. (Well, I did with Best of A&C Volume 2.)

 

[TravisR]

I hate those damn bumpers on The TZ sets. For me, it interupts the flow of the story. Granted, it doesn't have any effect on whether I buy a show or not. And I'm not begrudging those that want them on AHP but I don't get it.

 

[Eric Peterson]

The very reason that I elmiinate 95% of DVD-18s from my purchase list. I've done this before, and exchanged them, and it fixed the problem, but then I started worrying about the content that I already watched. It made me so angry that I a company would force me to watch & re-watch the same content repeatedly just to make sure that thier product was good, that I now refuse to do so anymore.

Once Universal gets their shite together, I'll think about buying some of these sets, but for now I'll be happy watching my other discs, or renting these sets.

Personally, I would be more than happy to pay any upcharge to go to multiple discs, and I'd even throw in a bonus on top of that to ensure that I get playable discs.

 

[Peter M Fitzgerald]

Jeff#:

Yeah, HALLMARK ran a few episodes, very erratically, a couple of years ago. As I recall, they'd play 2-3 episodes back-to-back Saturday nights from midnight to 3 AM. But they'd disappear for a couple of weeks, then appear again, but were soon dropped. This was back when HALLMARK would run some WILD WILD WEST episodes, and RAWHIDE, on Saturday afternoons, also somewhat erratically (I know WILD WILD WEST wasn't on there long, maybe a handful of episodes were shown). As far as the ENCORE airings of THE HITCHCOCK HOUR, the mid-episode break bumpers were there, as well as Hitch's intros and cappers, but not his intros for next week's show.

TV LAND using the same prints as ENCORE was an assumption on my part, as they starting running HITCHCOCK HOUR episodes almost at the instant that ENCORE dropped their reruns. I recall seeing the episode, "BONFIRE", on TV LAND at that time, and thought it looked the same, but didn't give it that much attention, since it was chock full of commercials, as is TV LAND's way.

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This is also an ideal thread to remind Universal (and fans) that they also own an excellent "annex" series to ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS/HITCHCOCK HOUR, the 1957-58 hour series, SUSPICION.

The series had a 40-episode run, but half of those were live productions, with the other 20 shot on film. Hitchcock's Shamley Productions was tapped to provide 10 of those filmed episodes, which look/play identically to ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS/HITCHCOCK HOUR, except without Hitchcock's hosting duties. Those episodes are (credits & plot summaries courtesy of TV.com):



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Universal should seriously consider either releasing these 11 episodes in a special set, or as bonus episodes in future ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS dvd collections, especially as there is little chance these will be aired on TV ever again.