Lassie Come Home - disappointing (1 Viewer)

[John Hodson]

Maybe I've been spoilt, but I always expect the best from Warners, and that's why I'm so disappointed with their transfer of Lassie Come Home.

A quick skim through the disc shows it to be very soft in places, but worse than that there's quite bit of dirt and debris and evidence of damage - most un-Warners like and a huge disappointment.

Or maybe it's because the other DVD in the package that arrived today was that glistening jewel known as The Yearling

BTW, The Yearling bears a logo on the cover I've never come across (certainly on a classic movie); it says, 'Warner Bros. Family Entertainment' and the disc has extras to back that up. There's no evidence of this on Lassie Comes Home; was this a line that Warners gave up on? Did The Yearling fail to sell, hence the perfunctory release of Lassie Comes Home?

 

[Andrew Budgell]

I was also a bit disapointed with the quality of Lassie Come Home and Courage of Lassie. However, I am just thankful to have these two Elizabeth Taylor films on DVD.

About the "Warner Bros. Family Entertainment" logo, as far as I know this was mainly a line of family friendly films availbile on video. However, several DVDs boast this logo including The Wizard of Oz. I haven't seen many titles with this logo on it for quite sometime, so one would assume Warner has abandoned it.

Andy

 

[Patrick McCart]

I may be wrong, but I think Lassie Come Home was one of the first films to be shot with Technicolor's monopack color system.

 

[Roger Rollins]

Patrick is correct, and the poor quality of monopack elements are directly responsible for why the DVD doesn't look as perfect as WB's other classic DVDs.

 

[John Hodson]

Would it have been impossible to at least have given the elements a clean-up Roger? The amount of dirt on show is unprecedented in my experience on a Warners transfer.

I hope it's not a sign that WB are letting their excellent standards slip...

(BTW I'm pretty sure they didn't use the 'Warners Family Entertainment' logo in R2, maybe that's why it passed me by until now)

 

[Will Krupp]

The lighter, easier to handle monopack was used for outdoor sequences only. That is why there has always been a noticeable change in quality between the studio shot interiors and the "location" shots. No matter how much they cleaned or spruced the elements, there will always be a qualitative difference between the two.