Genius Press Release: The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection (1 Viewer)

[Rob W]

For what it's worth, Blackhawk Films were the Criterion of the 16mm / 8mm world during those golden days when collectors bought actual film prints of classic movies. Their people knew what they were doing and cared about the results. They thought nothing of re-doing a release if better quality printing elements were discovered and upgraded their most popular titles many times. ( Double-dipping is not a recent phenomenon ! ) And since they had legal rights to the complete Hal Roach library, most of their printing materials were of high-quality, and had 30 or 40 years less wear than anything that would be available to make prints today. I remember occasional films would be offered or reissued with the promise of 'original titles' which would send waves of joy throughout the collector's world. We were pretty passionate about those things then as well as now. And to confuse things even more, some titles were released with different 'Film Classics' titles which was the name of the company who reissued the films to theatres & television in the 1940's and 50's. ( although I think this affected Laurel and Hardy more than The Little Rascals. )

I'm only guessing here but I suspect it was the MGM corporate logo that was the sticking point that prevented Blackhawk from releasing the Hal Roach titles with original title cards. Hal Roach Studios released their product through MGM and the lion logo usually opened the shorts and had a place on the title cards of most of the shorts. Roach had the rights to lease the films to Blackhawk but probably no rights to let them use Leo. I know of at least one Laurel and Hardy film that was released with original title cards except for Blackhawk's Indian head logo superimposed over the MGM lion at the bottom of the title card frame. I don't recall the MGM lion ever actually appearing before the shorts ( although I think there were a few times he could be heard roaring over black screen on the soundtrack ).

This of course does not excuse the misleading information about restoration, etc that appears on the box.

 

[gunthertoody]

You people that are complaining are nuts! I've watched about a dozen so far including 2 of the Blackhawk prints and they're fine.

Of course we'd like the original title cards, but we've got 80 OUR GANG SHORTS IN ONE SET! Who knows how much extra the set would've cost if they improved the sets in just a marginal way.

Complainers of such minor issues only discourage companies from putting out more classic films that are not exactly cash cows, but probably marginally profitable.

Kudos to Genius! Now where's Laurel & Hardy!

 

[buttmunker]

I'm not going to be one to turn my back on this set either. I've been waiting too many years for something like this, ever since I found the Cabin Fever DVD's in my local porno shop (of all places!) - it was like discovering gold! My focus changed so dramatically, and the propreitor of the shop must have thought I was a loon, bringing six DVD of Little Rascals to the counter and not one porno film....

I held off on buying the remaining volumes on VHS (because I hate the format and have been spoiled by DVD's chapter skip), and now that I can finally see Pigskin Pooloka is worth every penny.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I have the set but had no time to peek at it. I will comment further
on the quality when I do.

However, based on some of the remarks here thus far it looks as if
the Blackhawk Films issue, while I agree misleading, is not the end
of the world. As a pre-teen I was a huge collector of Blackhawk 8mm
titles. I had stacks of their catalogs and I agree that they were the
original "Criterion" when it came to taking care of their elements and
offering the very best quality. Nobody cared about those old films as
much as Blackhawk did. I have fond memories of that company and
their staff who I often talked with. Even as a kid they treated me as
an adult who took film collecting seriously.

It also sounds as if the quality of these shorts despite the replaced
title cards look pretty decent overall.

Yes, I think we would have all been better off if Cabin Fever were
still around and had been involved in this set rather than Genius
products. However, as someone pointed out, Genius may just be the
distributor and the blame for the historically incorrect booklet and
the flaws with the original source material may be somebody else's
fault.

For the amount of time we have been waiting for these shorts, it's a
shame that the end result is not as perfect as we had hoped. However,
I am highly skeptical that Genius will go back to remastering or correcting
the problems that have been brought to surface.

I am just happy to have these shorts and that they are not a total
disaster as some are making them out to be.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I agree, Ron. And Genius is not going to re-do anything here. But I'd bet this collection will ultimately be deemed a "hit" overall, especially with the mainstream buying public. But what remains to be seen is if any of these individual shorts are defective or edited. And that can only happen once people who are very familiar with all of them can verify. There was some report I'd heard from a friend where he'd read that BEAR SHOOTERS was missing some dialogue. I have no idea if that's accurate or not. I believe this was based on a DVDTalk discussion.

 

[Darrell S.]

I received my set and unfortunately A Tough Winter (1930) with Stepin Fetchit is way out of sync the whole way through. What a disappointment and deserves a remastering and replacement disc. This is the reason I bought the set and it is a bad 16mm print and the words don't even come close to matching the lip movement. This is a huge oversight and it is impossible to imagine how they could have missed this. Also on Little Daddy (1931), the image is wobbly and morphs in and out. Is there a recall effort out there? Let us all know.

On a positive note, FLY MY KITE, looks like it was filmed yesterday. It is razor-sharp and clean of even one piece of dust. For some reason, they felt this one was the only short deserving of restoration which puzzles me. I guess it was because it was the swan song of many of the original kids, although one of my least favorite shorts.

The commentaries offered are awful. The man speaking apparently either goes to sleep or leaves because he leaves long silent passages. If you're going to give a commentary, here's an idea, talk! Don't just sit back and watch the film and forget what you're supposed to be doing.

They made a huge error on the booklet section where they discuss the "curse." They have Dickie Moore's photo on Scotty Beckett's name. Dickie Moore is still alive and married to Jane Powell and has apparently escaped the "curse" and had a positive life.

 

[MilesH]

Judging by comments in this thread, the set's issues are:

1) Audio on some shorts is out of sync

2) Original title cards on some shorts are missing

3) At least one short is cut

4) Menus have misspellings

5) Intros are on the wrong discs

6) Booklet is filled with errors

7) Awful audio commentary

8) Shoddy packaging

9) No involvement by Maltin

And people are still trying to convince others that there are no problems with the set? No wonder companies continue to dump subpar DVDs on the market....people will buy just about anything.

 

[Mark Y]

I agree, Ron, but the problem really comes down to these properties having changed hands too many times, with plenty of opportunities for things to get lost or misplaced over a relatively few years.

The fact is that the 80 talkie shorts were subject to a major restoration in the mid-1990s, and the work was all done then. They were all released that way on VHS and a bunch made it to DVD. The Hal Roach library in general must be in a state of disarray because the same thing happened with Laurel & Hardy. L&H's Roach talkies were restored back in the 1980s. American Movie Classics ran them on Saturday mornings for several years, and then the properties changed hands. In Europe, L&H have been subject to some beautifully restored DVD collections. In the States, TCM eventually got the rights and had to make do with a colorized (and then "un-colorized") Way Out West, an edited Swiss Miss with breaks inserted for commercials, etc. I'm not even going to mention the two L&H DVDs released through Hallmark...yes I am. Good selection of films, indifferent mastering, no effort at all to get it right.

Yes, I am glad to see all the Rascals talkies in a set and I will eventually pick this up. I hope a comparable set for Laurel & Hardy will follow. But I am still frustrated, because as I mentioned above, the work was already done years ago -- now it's just a matter of finding it and keeping everything straight. And that requires some knowledge and interest in the films themselves. I'd even volunteer to be a consultant for nothing, if it would make a possible L&H set better.

 

[TravisR]

Your first three points are valid but the rest aren't make or break issues. #4, 5, 6 and 8 are unprofessional and annoying errors. You can't do anything about #7 and since I have lots of good DVDs that didn't involve Leonard Maltin, #9 seems meaningless. No wonder companies don't listen to the fans about real problems when people always try to blow things out of proportion.

 

[Michael Elliott]

Yeah, I don't need Maltin on their making apologies and he does have a great book to read for anyone who wants more information.

People can be upset with the mistakes all they want but it's not like the Blu-ray releases are coming next week. It's doubtful these will be redone so this is a lot better than nothing. And again, Genius just puts them in stores and they have nothing to do with any of the issues on the release. Someone needs to contact whoever owns the rights. If it was a rush job on their part then I guess we should expect the same on L&H.

 

[buttmunker]

I just say halleluiah that they’re not edited in content.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I just watched two more of the shorts on my lunch "Bouncin' Babies" & "Moan & Groan Inc." which was one of the Blackhawk shorts. Both shorts were not in very good condition which leads me to believe that some of the non-Blackhawk prints are not the restored prints either. "Moan & Groan Inc." was borderline terrible (Very Jumpy, Dupey looking, & filled with scratches and other debris). Truly disappointing.

I would have gladly paid more than twice the asking price to have these done properly, but it looks like we're stuck with what we've got now.

This was going to be my DVD of the year, but not now.

Regarding the packaging, the complaints are completely unmerited in my opinion. While I've seen beefier packaging on multi-disc sets, I see no problems with this set. It feels durable and looks damn handsome on my shelf. Too bad the contents don't live up to the cases' standards.

 

[Darrell S.]

I agree. The packaging is nice and they did attempt to make this attractive, but they should have paid attention to the most important things: SYNCHING THE SOUND, using readily-available RESTORED PRINTS.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Watched "Choo Choo" last night.

Sigh.

Okay--you all remember when the Cabin Fever vhs copies came out? Remember that little commercial at the beginning that talked about how these were complete, restored prints? They had that little clip of Dorothy beating the crap out of Spud on the train. The voiceover then said something like, "previously, only scratched, censored prints have existed on home video blah blah blah...but not Cabin Fever's!" and then they cut to a split screen that showed a restored, pristine image of the Dorothy vs. Spud fight.

Well, let me put this to you flatly: in the new dvd, we are back to that old, scratched, unrestored print of "Choo Choo." There are DEEP vertical lines scratched through almost the entire movie. Very bad, very distracting. Bad, bad, bad!

As I said yesterday, this dvd is a mixed bag. On the other hand, "Hook and Ladder" seems to have a better print than Cabin Fever's. Yet the sound isn't as good. Yeesh...

I think this dvd is turning out to be a step back, guys. I hate to say it, but this, while being a "complete" set (of Roach's talkies anyway), this is NOT the "definitive" Our Gang. That dvd remains to be released. And for those of you who think I'm hatin' on this dvd, I'm not. I'm just pointing out the boo-boos. Isn't that what internet people do? I'm not trying to make the product lose sales; I'm just telling all you potential customers that this set is far from perfect. And I also don't think it should be overly-praised, because it's not praise-worthy. It's flawed. I think as movie fans, we need to always strive for the best of everything in home video. "Acceptable" is not good enough. We've seen better and we deserve better. Is that point of view a crime now?

 

[Robert Crawford]

Nobody is saying there aren't problems with this set, but it appears to me that more people are trying to convince others to their way of thinking and not buy this boxset.






Crawdaddy

 

[Randy Korstick]

The bad prints people are reporting make sense for the blackhawk prints used since these are old 16mm prints released on VHS in the early 80's. So I'm not surprised they don't look good but its even more alarming that non-blackhawk prints look bad. This shows a total lack of quality for this set since great copies with all originals titles exists and were released already on the Laserdisc sets. I hope this sets fail and really hope and pray Genius does not have the rights to the Laurel and Hardy films. If they do and they release them I will definately not order what would normaly be an automatic pre-order until I read reviews 1st. The Hallmark releases were nothing to write home about but I would take those over this any day.

 

[Michael Elliott]

Randy, Genius doesn't have the rights to anything. The errors in this set belong to RHI who apparently also own L&H. Genius has released titles for countless studios from Legend to Blue Underground.

 

[JeffT.]

The above image is from Amazon.com (U.S.).

I "second" the motion for a quality DVD release of the 50 (?) MGM produced Our Gang comedy shorts which are not generally considered to be prime examples of this popular short subject series but they have their estimable entertainment value nonetheless.

Anyway these are the ones that I best remember from my childhood when a local tv station used to air them every Sunday morning at around 10:00 (or 10:30) a.m. in the early 1960s.

In these latter produced programmers it is sad to witness longtime regulars Alfalfa, Darla and even Spanky all eventually phased out of the series. Only Buckwheat would remain to the end (along with relative newcomers Mickey, Froggy and Janet).

One aspect that I really like about the MGM shorts eventually adapted is the closing "The End" title art graphic depicting Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Buckwheat and Mickey (who is dragging a wagon behind him) seen walking together down their tree-lined Town of Greenpoint residency street into the sunset (likely in quest of some good fun and adventure).

On the basis of what has been disclosed here I will pass up on the Hal Roach Our Gang comedies DVD set as well. Not all of us will buy just anything that is dumped on the market!

Jeff T.

 

[Darrell S.]

I don't think anyone is trying to talk others out of buying the sets. But when you buy a DVD you expect something basic like HAVING THE SOUND SYNCHED UP! And at least using the best prints available instead of digging through an attic and pulling out an old used 16mm print.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

You said it. And now after reading about more audio synch problems on different films, as well as bad prints like on CHOO-CHOO, all the positives I was trying to hang onto earlier are quickly disappearing already. I tried to look at the bright side, but things are getting darker and darker as more viewers watch more shorts and discover new problems.

Oh -- and the later MGM shorts stink, Jeff.