A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Train Robbers & Cahill U.S. Marshall -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

Warners has released two of their final John Wayne films on Blu-ray, and not only do they look and sound terrific, but at under $10 at Amazon, they're a steal.

Both films, The Train Robbers and Cahill: U.S. Marshall (both 1973) appear to have been scanned from IPs.  Color, densities, image stability, shadow detail, all superb.  Grain looks as it should based on an IP, which is basically the way people would have seen the film theatrcially.

While neither film is great Wayne, they're both nicely mounted productions, with quality cinematography.

Sound on both is superb, as it should be.

For Wayne completists, like myself, these two films fill a part of that early 1970s void, that takes us one step closer to the goal.

The Train Robbers

Image - 4.25

Audio - 5

Pass / Fail - Pass

Cahill: U.S. Marshall

Image - 4.25

Audio - 5

Pass / Fail - Pass

Both are quality release, and especially at the asking prices, are.

Recommended

RAH

Great. Can't wait until I get them.

Wonderful news! Been way too long since the last release of a Duke film on BD.

Hopefully Robert that goal will one day be "The Alamo" -- but as Burgess Meredith so suscinctly put it in "Grumpier Old Men", you can wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills up first....


John Wayne on bluray -- from the 1970s, the main missing title is "The Shootist", possibly saved for a 40th Anniversary Special Edition release next year by Paramount -- has any hardy soul had the temerity to compile a title list of the Duke on bluray up to May 2015?

Brian McP said:

Hopefully Robert that goal will one day be "The Alamo" -- but as Burgess Meredith so suscinctly put it in "Grumpier Old Men", you can wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills up first....


John Wayne on bluray -- from the 1970s, the main missing title is "The Shootist", possibly saved for a 40th Anniversary Special Edition release next year by Paramount -- has any hardy soul had the temerity to compile a title list of the Duke on bluray up to May 2015?

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Here they are (I believe it's complete, alhthough it doesn't include the pending August US Release of The Hellfighters, but it does include that title from its Region B release):

Wow, Alex! Thank you for such visible proof providing the identity of the King of Blu-ray! (Or should that be Duke?)

Mr Harris: Is a German audio track on both discs?

Thanks for your review.

Matt Hough said:

Wow, Alex! Thank you for such visible proof providing the identity of the King of Blu-ray! (Or should that be Duke?)

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No problem...I have all these in my collection so it's pretty easy to download the list! I am a Duke completist.

I keep hoping that Olive will release a box of their Wayne titles.

If I'm correct, the only missing Duke titles from his 70's output are (starring roles only):


Chisum (1970)- Warners

McQ (1973)- Warners

The Shootist (1976)- Paramount


From the 1960's (not including Hellfighters):


The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)- Paramount

In Harm's Way (1965)- Paramount

Donovan's Reef (1963)- Paramount

The Alamo (1960)- MGM


I would think we'll get all of those in the next couple of years with the exception of, of course, The Alamo (unless MGM proceeds with their half-assed plans).

Thanks Warners for releasing The Train Robbers and Cahill on BluRay! Cahill is not one of my favorite John Wayne movies, but I do like it. The Train Robbers is one of my all time favorite movies! Warners could you please soon release MCQ and Chisum on Blu-Ray! MCQ is the movie I want most of all on BluRay. Does anyone here have any information on whether Warners is going to release MCQ on BLURAY in 2015, or ever? Thanks!

Robert

I would really like to see Chisum come out on BD as well. I was disappointed the French release never materialized.

And let's not forget, from the 50s,


The High and the Mighty (Paramount)

Island in the Sky (Paramount)

The Sea Chase (Warner)

John Hermes said:

I would really like to see Chisum come out on BD as well. I was disappointed the French release never materialized.

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It's playing on Warner Instant in 1080p.

Robert Crawford said:

It's playing on Warner Instant in 1080p.

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I had the Warner Archive Instant streaming service for a while and did watch it, but I'm kind of a disc guy.

John Hermes said:

I had the Warner Archive Instant streaming service for a while and did watch it, but I'm kind of a disc guy.

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My point is that it might be coming out on BD soon due to it being on WA Instant.

Robert Crawford said:

My point is that it might be coming out on BD soon due to it being on WA Instant.

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That would be very cool indeed.

Mr. Harris,


What would you say regarding Blu-ray.com giving Cahill: U. S. Marshall a video rating of 3 out of 5 and saying this in their review?:


"Unfortunately, Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is only a fair reproduction of Biroc's anamorphic widescreen photography, with inconsistent and often weak detail, especially in long shots, and sharpness that is equally variable. Some scenes look better than others, and for many viewers, especially those with smaller screens, I suspect the disc will be deemed satisfactory on the ground that "this is the best it's ever looked". It is, however, less than it could be, and it is noticeably inferior to The Train Robbers, which is being released at the same time. As has often been the case with Warner's catalog titles, the culprit appears to be high frequency filtering for the purpose of fitting this 102-minute film onto a BD-25 (and Warner hasn't even used all of the available space on the disc). With an average bitrate of 18.96 Mbps, fine detail appears to have been sacrificed to conserve space."


That's a pretty far cry from what you said about it. I was planning to purchase it based on your review, but now I'm not sure.

I'd go with RAH over Blu-Ray.com any day.

David_B_K said:

I'd go with RAH over Blu-Ray.com any day.

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He expressed a similar thought regarding the use of the BD 25 only recently in connection with the Frank Sinatra Collection (Warner is apparently moving away from using those). Perhaps he'll chime in regarding whether that is a valid point.