Pre-Order Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983) (Reissue) (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

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[Mark-P]

Whatever. Given that the version on Disney+ is exactly the same as the previous Blu-ray, I’m sure this is just a repackaging.
There’s a brand new HD restoration of Disney’s other Christmas featurette “The Small One” on Disney+, now why couldn’t they release that on Blu-ray?

 

[richardburton84]

I’ll wait for any reviews that are made for this reissue before I even consider buying this. If they fix the DNR and cropping (which made no sense to me since they already had a perfectly good widescreen master on one of the WDT sets) like they did with the Disney + transfer of The Sword in the Stone, I might spring for this. That said, I have a pretty strong feeling that this will be the same horrendously DNR’d transfer as the last release, in which case I’ll pass.

 

[MatthewA]

This needs to be remastered. There is no reason that travesty of a transfer should ever have passed muster. This has been one of my go-to versions of A Christmas Carol for years, and I, too, would rather watch the Walt Disney Treasures version until something better comes along.

There’s a brand new HD restoration of Disney’s other Christmas featurette “The Small One” on Disney+, now why couldn’t they released that on Blu-ray?

Beats me. If I were running Disney, there would be a place for it on BD by now. Even compared to the rest of the 1970s/early 1980s Disney-on-a-recession-and-stagflation-induced-budget years, it has largely gotten the short shrift. Pooh, the hybrids, and the features have rarely been out of print but this has been in and out over about 35 years since its first release. I suppose they want to maintain streaming exclusivity for a lot of the not-on-disc content they put up for a little while. Maybe they need something else to pair it with. When it was first on VHS in the 1980s, they paired it with two black-and-white Silly Symphonies and the "Las Posadas" part of The Three Caballeros which apparently had been released as a short subject some years back.

Not to get into the religious aspects of the piece, but since my family is Jewish, my Mom (a convert to Judaism*) did not want me to rent it from the video store when I was a child because she thought it would be proselytizing. Charlie Brown, Scrooge, The Grinch, Rudolph, and Frosty were good to go but this was where she drew the line. And this was the same woman who took me to see Song of the South when I was three years old! But at the time, they were the only Jewish characters in Disney animation, and Don Bluth had just done An American Tail with a family of Jewish mice at its core. So I wanted to see it. I can't recall if I was even aware that the boy's voice was also the original Pete from Pete's Dragon or that it paired him with Mr. Carlson from WKRP.** I don't think I got to see it until The Disney Channel aired it as part of a Christmas schedule in the late 1980s or early 1990s.

I actually recently found a DVD that has it, and it's paired with MCC; both are 4x3 transfers. The only other cartoons on the disc are Santa's Workshop and Pluto's Christmas Tree.

I take it the redubbed line of the merchants' song is still redubbed. At least they could match the voices unlike Aladdin. The original (and some stereo score along with the title song in full stereo) made it onto the story album. Unlike the movie, it actually mentions Jesus by name.

*Cross-reference this with any of my posts about Helen Reddy and Nell Carter, who did the same.
**The Joe Higgins of this film's voice cast is not to be confused with Broadway veteran, songwriter, and Silver Spoons dad Joel Higgins. This one was most famous for The Rifleman and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters.