Universal preparing THE MARX BROTHERS and MOVIE MONSTERS 2 COLLECTIONS and MORE for HD! (1 Viewer)

[David Weicker]

I am looking forward to purchasing a restored Marx set.
My personal rankings would be

1) Duck Soup
2) Horsefeathers / Monkey Business (tie)
4) A Day At The Races
5) A Night At The Opera
6) Animal Crackers
7) The Cocoanuts
8) rest of the MGMs (I enjoy Go West, and At The Circus has "Lydia")


Also hoping that Love Me Tonight shows up on a future leaked document)

 

[classicmovieguy]

Fabulous news for the Marx Brothers titles, "My Man Godfrey" and "Shanghai Express". Now all we need is for Warners to release their own Marx Brothers titles on Blu.

 

[TheSteig]

Outside the Universal Horrors Im interested in My Man Godfrey and The Phantom Lady. I wish the Glass Key and The Blu(e) Dahlia were getting blu ray releases as well..

 

[Tony Bensley]

A potential case in point regarding HD/4K Remasters not necessarily translating to Blu-ray Releases:


While all 28 Abbott & Costello Universal Features are reported to have HD transfers, among these, only BUCK PRIVATES and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN have been issued on Blu-ray by Universal, to date!


Hopefully, none of the stated Films in the initial post meet the fate of non Blu-ray Release!


CHEERS!

 

[jacksparrow900]

I think out of all the titles announced I'm looking foward to finally seeing a good transfer of The Last Warning. I'm also excited that the Monster films are being restored beyond the ones released in 2012.

 

[Rob W]

Horsefeathers was never re-released to theaters after 1932 that I know of.

Horse Feathers was re-released by Paramount in 1936. Heritage Auctions have a lobby card from the reissue in their upcoming July 25 poster auction, and have sold other cards from the re-release in previous auctions.

 

[Towergrove]

From the original post all I see is that they are doing 4K restoration. Did they announce Bluray releases for these as the title of this post says?

 

[atfree]

A potential case in point regarding HD/4K Remasters not necessarily translating to Blu-ray Releases:

While all 28 Abbott & Costello Universal Features are reported to have HD transfers, among these, only BUCK PRIVATES and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN have been issued on Blu-ray by Universal, to date!

Hopefully, none of the stated Films in the initial post don't meet the fate of non Blu-ray Release!

CHEERS!

"Always with the negative waves Moriarty, ALWAYS with the negative waves! There you go, more negative waves! Have a little faith, baby! Have a little faith..."

 

[bgart13]

Very exciting news. Thank you for sharing. I'm most excited to see a 4k remaster for SON OF FRANKENSTEIN -- it has the best cinematography out of any of the Frankenstein movies, IMO. Too bad there's no mention of their Hammer titles.

 

[Garysb]

It would be great news if these films came to blu ray. Even better if Warner Bros could find the missing frames from " Night At the Opera". At this time this information seems to be similar to people looking at the CBS/Paramount bible to see which TV shows have been restored and speculating that the restored shows will soon be released on DVD. This work could be for streaming on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Hopefully there will be a proper blu ray release of these classics. a 4K restoration of the public domain " My Man Godfrey" is fantastic. I can only assume all this work being done is the result of Comcast's purchase of Universal. They are also putting massive amounts of money into the Theme Parks with the Harry Potter Land in Orlando. They are also building something similar at their California park.

 

[JoeDoakes]

Horsefeathers was released in 1932, not 1934. The cuts were made for *TV* release long after the film was made. Universal kept using the same TV master on home video. The idea is that now, they will go back to the 35 original elements, not the TV print.

My understanding is that Universal's predecessor, MCA, purchased the pre-1949 Paramounts for television distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount_Pictures) in 1949. Due to the low quality of 1950s tvs, MCA didn't even care that much about receiving all the elements and negatives were junked. This is shortly after Universal junked its silent film library btw (Universal and MCA were not related at that time). Paramount donated a lot of their remaining prints to UCLA and many of the best prints of Paramounts come from there. My understanding is that the cuts to the Marx Brothers films were made by Paramount in the 1930s to comply with the Hays Office rules, and the cut parts not preserved by them.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

MCA bought the Paramount pre-1948 feature library in February 1958.


https://books.google.com/books?id=PyEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=billboard+paramount+mca+1958&source=bl&ots=KvPYmHfriP&sig=G5mWRj11nqNCKFv9E0jbO8qj_6Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMInpGux4_cxgIVgaMeCh2bDAPR#v=onepage&q=billboard%20paramount%20mca%201958&f=false

 

[Nailwraps]

Speaking of Universal, have they done a new transfer for Army of Darkness (with Scream Factory Collector's Edition coming and all)?

 

[Squire]

My understanding is that Universal's predecessor, MCA, purchased the pre-1949 Paramounts for television distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount_Pictures) in 1949. Due to the low quality of 1950s tvs, MCA didn't even care that much about receiving all the elements and negatives were junked. This is shortly after Universal junked its silent film library btw (Universal and MCA were not related at that time). Paramount donated a lot of their remaining prints to UCLA and many of the best prints of Paramounts come from there. My understanding is that the cuts to the Marx Brothers films were made by Paramount in the 1930s to comply with the Hays Office rules, and the cut parts not preserved by them.

Sounds about par for the course. Very disappointing but not at all surprising.

 

[dana martin]

4 pages in 10 hours, wow did Uni light a fire under all of our asses or what, agree with everybody on here that I so badly want these to end up on my shelf and player, and I don't mean streaming, I mean physical copy! So much great stuff in that back catalogue that could be mined, and for those that complain about a double dip, or it been out on dvd forever, I am not saying that the market is different, with catalogue titles, but the way they are released anymore has changed.


every title listed in that first post becomes an instant pre-order as soon as it is listed, the question remains, when that time will be.



Hopefully Universal is looking at some other well overlooked great comedians other than A&C, that they have in there library, Hope and Crosby Road Pictures, the bulk of W.C. Fields and Mae West, along with lots of 50's Sci-Fi that hasn't seen a proper blu release stateside.

 

[battlebeast]

SHANGHAI EXPRESS!!!

 

[Bob Furmanek]

I used to know someone with a 35mm nitrate print of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN. Wait'll you see this one in 4K off the original negative!


Click to enlarge.

 

[ShellOilJunior]

Great news on the Marx Brothers movies!

 

[Reed Grele]

I used to know someone with a 35mm nitrate print of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN. Wait'll you see this one in 4K off the original negative!

The first 15 minutes or so of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man has more going for it than most other films have in their entirety!


The music, b&w cinematography, and sets are sublime. This was Universal's magic at its finest.


I thought that the print used for the previous VHS, laserdisc, and DVD looked superb. I can't imagine how great this film will look and sound when we experience it on Blu ray, restored from the original negative.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

In the interest of those who expressed concern over the original title of this thread....


While true, the quarterly report indicated that only HD restorations were being prepared for these titles, I believe that it's a sure thing that THE MARX BROTHERS and MONSTERS COLLECTIONS will be prepared for Blu-ray release. These titles are in too much demand not to be released to Blu-ray, and as someone here already suggested, the releases would help offset the cost of the restorations themselves.


I have amended the title to reflect that these titles are being prepared for HD.