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Praise for UCLA Film and MPI Home Video (1 Viewer)

Joined
Sep 10, 2003
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36
Just would like to send out much deserved praise to both UCLA and MPI Home Video for the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes DVDS. The first collection looks and sounds terrific. It is nice to see some of the true classic series films make it to DVD. Kudos to UCLA for the restoration and Kudos to MPI for releasing the dvds, I hope MPI makes a mint on these as to encourage other studios to follow suit with their series detective classics. C'mon Peter Staddon and FOX, get on the ball with Peter Lorre's Mr. Moto and Warner Oland's/Sidney Toler's Charlie Chan.
 

Paul Drake

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Jan 5, 2003
Messages
240
I'll second that motion.

My Holmes set arrived this weekend and I was blown away at how good these films look and sound. "Voice of Terror" looks like it was filmed in 2002 instead of 1942. "Secret Weapon" is prevalent on the public domain circuit, but those versions can't begin to hold a candle to what is on here. Even "Faces Death" for which no usable original elements exist (so I'm told) looks spectacular despite the use of prints several generations removed from the original.

MPI is getting beat up a little bit for over-hyping the extras on this set. Yes, perhaps they did, but the films themselves are the real stars here. I also like the packaging, which is essentially a quadruple case as opposed to 4 individual cases.

A special thank you also to Mr. Hugh Hefner who donated a sizable amount of money to the UCLA project. Without his generous gift I doubt these restorations would have occured.

These sets are doing quite well on the various online retailers. If that doesn't convince our good friends at Fox that there is a viable market for these films, nothing will.
 
Joined
Sep 10, 2003
Messages
36
That's right, I forgot about Hef! Rumor also has it that he has donated a large sum to restore 3 William Powell PHilo Vance films, which hopefully means Canary, Benson and Greene(God knows there are enough copies of Kennel out there!) Hopefully MPI will release these too.
 

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