Question about Why We Fight (1 Viewer)

[MarkHarrison]

I was out shopping last night and saw two different sets of Why We Fight from Vintage Home Entertainment for $6 each. I've heard of this series in the past and it seems that I've heard good things about it, but the $6 price tag kind of threw me. So I went home and did some research. It seems there's several different releases of this series including versions from Goodtimes and United American.

First off, is this a good series? Second, does anyone know anything about this Vintage version? The two sets contain 7 different shows which from my limited research seems to make it the complete set. Basically I want to know if it's worth the $12 or if I should go with the Goodtimes version or some other version. I'm not expecting perfect picture quality or bonus features, but if one of the other sets are vastly superior, I'll get them instead.

 

[Jon Martin]

I have the Madacy version and it is okay quality. The films are all public domain that have been released countless times so don't expect perfect quality. I had a few of the episodes on EP VHS years ago, bought for $9 a tape (back when that was cheap for a video).

The series is definitely worth seeing. For $12, I think it would be worth it.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

A quick review. I have the Goodtimes set (OK) and the Madacy set (unacceptable - cuts out the climactic last 10 minutes of Battle of Russia!). I would like to hear a report on the other versions.

WWF was created by Frank Capra as a series of "motivational" propaganda films to show our troops going off to WWII. This isn't politically correct - the film shows piles of burning corpses and talks about "evil buck-toothed Japs". It's Capra at his best. The Epstein brothers were pulled off writing the script for Casablanca to work on it, as it was considered more important at the time. It was produced by the US Government - officially - so by definition it's public domain. There's a disclaimer at the beginning of each episode about the films not representing "current US policy" as it talks about our "freedom loving Soviet allies under wonderful Stalin."

The roughly one-hour episodes are:
Prelude to War
The Nazis Strike
Divide and Conquer
Battle of Britain
Battle of Russia (long episode)
Battle of China
War Comes to America

Each episode is listed individually in IMDB.

 

[Carlo_M]

I was going to say because people keep posting to Star Wars threads!

Okay - so that was probably only funny to me, and my fellow SW posters...but seriously that's what I thought when I first clicked into this thread.

 

[MarkHarrison]

I'll probably pick it up, but I won't have time to watch it right away. I do seem to recall however that the Battle of Russia was listed as 80+ minutes. It stuck out because the rest were about 45-60 as I recall. Since IMDB lists it at 83 minutes, I would presume it's uncut.

When I get it, I'll try to report back. Thanks for the info.

 

[Garrett Adams]

Was John Ford's Italian campaign footage ever included in a finished film? I saw some of it a few years back on TV. My memory has faded somewhat but I think it was assault charge (possibly of the 442nd RCT).

 

[MarkHarrison]

Time to report back. I picked up the set from Vintage Home Entertainment. The first disc was off balance and made horrible sounds in the player as it wobbled. So I took it back out. I put in the second disc and my player wouldn't recognize the disc on multiple tries. So I returned both the next night and picked up replacements. The replacements each had the same problem as the previous discs (one wasn't balanced correctly and the other wouldn't load).

So I took them back, got a refund and will just order the Goodtimes version. I hate to say anything bad about Vintage Home Entertainment. Perhaps it was just coincidence that both discs were from bad runs. But I'll not be picking up anything from them in the future.