DVD Review HTF REVIEW: "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) (with screenshots) (1 Viewer)

[Jeff_HR]

Good review. I'll be buying!

 

[streeter]

Thanks for the response, Ron. Wonderful to know that Kirk Douglas was involved with the DVD.

Also, here's another request for a Love Bug review.

 

[Dave Jessup]

As this review was being posted on Sunday, we in Rochester had the chance to see a screening - probably 35mm, certainly widescreen, and from a Technicolor print - at the George Eastman House, as they kicked off their celebration of 50 Years of Cinemascope.

Richard Fleischer was there to host the screening and answer questions. Delightful to see him.

Presentation (whether purposefully or not) acted as a promotion for this DVD release. (Two lucky folks won copies of the DVDs.)

Last time I saw this was on a network showing - pan & scan, b&w, years ago. I'll look forward to this disc, after seeing how the movie *should* look.

(Ah yes - an unannounced added attraction was the short produced by Richard's father and uncle, featuring another Rochester native: Betty Boop in "Minnie The Moocher", with Cab Calloway.)

 

[Todd Schnell]

Thanks for another great review Ron, & way to go Disney on doing this classic justice.
Looking forward to picking this one up, & seeing it for the first time in the correct OAR.

I will also confirm this former Disney World attraction was indeed a ride. Rode it a couple of times back in the 70s.

Here is a site that has some pix, & even a video.
http://www.wdwmagic.com/past_attractions.htm

Todd

 

[Paul Penna]

The absolute *worst* video versions were the first, non-stereo, laserdisc and tapes. Both were "time-compressed" (sped up) to squeeze the 127-minute film onto a 120-minute medium (this being the days before the 2-hour tape length barrier was broken). Kirk Douglas sounded like another Disney star, Mickey Mouse.

I always loved the film, and remember being a bitterly disappointed 8 year-old when I found out the only toy "Nautilus" you could buy was a plastic version of the USN nuclear sub, not Nemo's.

Naturally, I loved the Disneyland walk-through, even the rather cheesy, though expedient, way they reproduced the blinding light coming from the slot of the power unit's chamber. Inside the walk-through, your eyes had adjusted to the dim light, so all they had to do was make a small window to the outside, where a white wall reflected direct sunlight. Presumably they had it illuminated at night.

 

[Xenia Stathakopoulou]

Great review Ron, nice to hear they fully restored it.

 

[JeremySt]

One of the only VHS titles I owned as a youngster in the early '80s was 20k leagues. It was one of those White snapper disney releases with a picture of Douglas and Mason undwerwater on the cover. As far as I know, thats the only version Ive seen. It will be a real treat to see this on DVD, in Widescreen, for the first time. I cant wait.

 

[Andrew Pierce]

I, coincidentally, just finished reading the novel. (In the novel) Verne describes everything on the Nautilus as electric powered, but stops short of actually describing the propulsion mechanism.

At one point the ship stops to refuel in a hollow volcanic island with an underground sea inlet and a coal mine. The crew mine the coal, but oddly, burn it on the surface to extract sulpher from it only load the sulpher on board. So the ship has a means of converting sulpher to electricity and propulsion. Also, the ships engines produce heat which helps it to melt out of the ice it gets stuck in in the ocean under the south pole.

Not that any of this has to do with the movie, neccesarily.

 

[Ron Etaylor]

I always kicked myself for not getting the LD of 20k all those years ago(wasn't it one of those $60-$70 dollar sets?) Thankfully the wait to own the movie on something other than tape will soon be over.

 

[Jeff Swindoll]

The absolute *worst* video versions were the first, non-stereo, laserdisc and tapes. Both were "time-compressed" (sped up) to squeeze the 127-minute film onto a 120-minute medium (this being the days before the 2-hour tape length barrier was broken).

Back in the olden days when VHS and Beta Players were new and way expensive, Me Pap got the RCA discovision player because it was WAY cheaper. I dont recall much being sped up, but I do know that they CUT bits out of the film to make it fit. On my first viewing of 20K I thought that it was strange that Nemo never played the organ (since it was such a big part of the set). It wasnt until later (on the 127 minute unsped tape) that I discovered that he did and that they had cut all those scences out of the discovision disc.

 

[Seth Paxton]

The SE looks great. Disney has really been tearing it up the last year or so, at least for their own classic material. I was one of the people pushing to have them listed as Studio of the Year due to their slew of incredible SEs and those Disney Tins. I won't debate how they handle foreign material, but for their own stuff they are back to the top of the heap like they were with LD.

It's nice to have them back up there considering what their library is.

Put me down as someone who loved the ride and loves the film. Finally the LD gets retired.

 

[Francois Caron]

I always kicked myself for not getting the LD of 20k all those years ago(wasn't it one of those $60-$70 dollar sets?)

I believe so. I think I recall the disc costing me about $65 at the Disney store in Las Vegas. And it did have the complete "Operation Undersea" segment which actually taught me a lot about the aqua lung that I didn't know.

Unfortunately, the movie's transfer wasn't as good as it could have been, and the image was vertically squished causing everyone to appear slightly fat. I never understood how such an error could have been missed during the transfer process.

I just checked my disc again. It's starting to develop laser rot on side 2. The new DVD release arrived just in time.

 

[Dharmesh C]

Don't think I've ever seen this, so I'll buy it!

 

[Randy Korstick]

Glad to hear this transfer turned out so well since this has always been a favorite of mine. I'm looking forward to the DVD. Its another LD I can now retire.

 

[Joe_Pinney]

Although it was mentioned earlier, just wanted to let readers in Southern California know about the special screening at the El Capitan Theater (a WONDERFULLY restored 1920s movie palace; formerly the Paramount theater), directly across the street from Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Kodak Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. on the evening of May 20th!

Here's the details as the folks at the wonderful American Cinematheque were so kind as to provide :

Tuesday, May 20 – 7:30 PM

Special Screening at the El Capitan Theatre – Director Richard Fleischer In Person!

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, 1954, Walt Disney, 127 min. Join us for a screening of this beloved adventure classic, to coincide with the film’s upcoming release on DVD and video from Walt Disney Home Video! James Mason is the ideal Captain Nemo, opposite salty dog Kirk Douglas, scientist Paul Lukas and faithful valet Peter Lorre, in this glorious adapation of Jules Verne’s novel. Academy Award-winning art direction and special effects highlight this thrilling underwater adventure, from the director of FANTASTIC VOYAGE, SOYLENT GREEN and DR. DOLITTLE. Discussion before screening with director Richard Fleischer (schedule permitting). Please note: this screening will be held at the El Capitan Theatre, 6838 Hollywood Blvd. Special Ticket Price of $19 VIP, $10 adults and $7 students/seniors for this screening only. Tickets are available at the El Capitan Box Office. Please call 1-800/DISNEY6 for further information, or visit their website at: www.elcapitantickets.com.

 

[oscar_merkx]

Just received this today and immediately watched this.

James Mason is absolutely a delight to watch as Nemo.

The squid sequence was done very well indeed and really enjoyed this.

Can't wait for the rest of the dvd to explore.

 

[oscar_merkx]

Finished watching most of the supplemental features on this disc, and without a doubt absolutely top notch work from Disney once again.

The lost footage of the cancelled squid was an absolutely gem to watch. For all you knew this could have been today.

One thing that sprang to mind as I was watching the 78 min documentary was the matte painting and how advanced this looked.

Great job Disney

 

[Lawrence B]

I would like to respond specifically to the sentence: "Though some of the special effects look cheesy today..." Time to grow up and be aware of motion picture history. 20,000 LEAGUES was THE state of the art in special effects when it was produced in 1954. No other studio could have done any better than Disney did. None. In fact, unlike most other studios, Disney kept sending his effects crew back to shoot and re-shoot the effects many times to get them better. Veteran special effects pioneer Ralph Hammeras & his effects team, on loan to Disney from 20th Century Fox, went crazy trying to satisfy Disney's penchant for excellence. What you see in the DVD is the absolute Height in photo-chemical special optical effects for the time. This was the best anyone could do WITHOUT computers. The best.
If you're going to call the effects in LEAGUES "cheesy", I guess you're also thinking that the effects in 1933's KING KONG were cheesy, too (incredibly fake looking, wouldn't you say?). Then one could dismiss most of the effects work in all of George Pal's films (WAR OF THE WORLDS - look at all the wires showing on the Martian War Machines, VERY cheesy. THE TIME MACHINE, cheesy looking volcano lava!). And who could overlook THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, with big, black cheesy matte lines showing in every shot). Can't forget CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, with the cheesy Alien marionette doll bending those fake arms, and then there's RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, containing a few really cheesy ghosts at the end (they look like someone is pulling a doll with shrouds blowing-in-the-wind past the camera), and who could forget E.T., with such a cheesy alien E.T. robot that Spielberg himself re-shot 90% of the E.T. robot scenes, replacing them with a computer-generated E.T.?

The point is this: when critiquing the special effects of a film, especially of older vintage, it is important to distinguish between obviously poor work in low budget pictures (example: A.I.P.s monster movies) and the better work where you could see the effects team striving to pull off a difficult scene. Taking a cheap shot at something by calling it cheesy is dismissive and unfair. Hey, let's see what you could do without a computer???

When you see something like KING KONG, THINGS TO COME, WAR OF THE WORLDS, 20,000 LEAGUES, FORBIDDEN PLANET, TEN COMMANDMENTS, 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, E.T., etc., you're looking at movies where the filmmakers were actively trying to push the envelope of special effects, using all the technology available to them at the time. None of these films has ONLY GREAT, REALISTIC shots. Each one of them has effects scenes that didn't work. But I would not dismiss, would not belittle their work out of hand by calling any part of it "cheesy". Have some kind of appreciation or knowlege of film history ... you're seeing the the very limits in effects technology for that time period.

I learned a long ago, the special effects we see as realistic today will (HEADLINE!) indeed look inferior when we see them 10 or 20 years from now. You may not believe it, but KING KONG was extremely realistic to the audiences of 1933. So was THINGS TO COME's airships, and the fantastic creatures of Ray Harryhausen. Today, all seem dated, in many cases crude, obvious, and often not very real. Think back in your own life - didn't E.T. look realistic, weren't all of the aliens in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS amazing, didn't the ghosts swooping out of the ark from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK appear stunning back then? I'm 53, and I can still remember the first time I saw WAR OF THE WORLDS; the Martian War Machines were enormously unsettling in their realism. Today, I cringe watching some of those effects shots. By today's standards, some of the effects don't past muster. However, I wouldn't call them cheesy. I would state that not everything they did holds up. But never dismisssive, never calling the work with such a derogatory, deprecating term.
Summing up, a number of LEAGUES' effects shots do not hold up. But most of the others do. I think it is a major achievement that many of the effects look so good 50 years later. Some are even BETTER than much of the stuff being done today. Don't believe me? Compare the underwater shots of the Nautilus to the submarine scenes in CRIMSON TIDE or HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Now, some of those made me cringe.

Lawrence Brooks
Writer - of the 20,000 LEAGUES retrospective article in CineFantastique Magazine
Historical Consultant - 20,000 LEAGUES DVD

 

[Dan Hitchman]

I don't know how badly the film negatives had deteriorated, but IMHO it was not one of the best restorations I've ever seen. There were a few shots that were quite clear with accurate color balance, but others that looked pretty bad.

Couldn't they have scanned a duplicate of the restored negatives and washed it through a theatrical quality 4K telecine computer program to further clean up the image and further tweak the color timing?

I thought the sound remix was atrocious with very haphazard use of the surrounds and stereo fronts(almost cutting in all of a sudden then suddenly switching back to an almost mono sound- the music was the most obvious). There were only a few directional effects and dialog sprinkled throughout when there were ample moments to use it during the entire film. Who did the sound remastering, Mickey Mouse?

I give the supplements an A- and the A/V restoration quality a C.

Dan

 

[Paul Penna]

I thought the sound remix was atrocious with very haphazard use of the surrounds and stereo fronts(almost cutting in all of a sudden then suddenly switching back to an almost mono sound- the music was the most obvious). There were only a few directional effects and dialog sprinkled throughout when there were ample moments to use it during the entire film. Who did the sound remastering, Mickey Mouse?

How does it compare to the way it sounded in its original release?