They've all obviously been touched up for black and white level balancing and run through a grain and scratch removal filter.
The other sixty-four shorts look nothing short of spectacular. I skimmed through the collection to get an final tally of the shorts with the old prints: it's all the ones Francis Rizzo posted title cards for, excluding "Bouncing Babies' (which *is* restored) and including "Anniversary Trouble" and "Little Pap" (which are not). The good news in all of this is that it only effects sixteen out of the eighty shorts.
#ORIGINAL LITTLE RASCALS QUOTES TV#
Hissy, poppy, low contrast, low on detail, and (in the case of "Bear Facts" at least) improperly framed (you can see a big strip of black at the bottom of the screen on "Bear Facts", which probably would be invisible on a TV with overscan). They're sourced from the old analog video masters done back in the 1980s for the Republic Pictures video tapes put out then. I finally got my copy of the set, so I could have a look at the Blackhawk prints myself.Īnd yikes. This is one that 99.7% of people never would have noticed and even those that do should chalk it up to a slight disappointment and then get on with their lives. Seriously, this isn't like WKRP in Cincinnati, where the films are mutilated and all the music is replaced. I'd hate to not get to complete a collections because a few anal retentive "fans" get so obsessed over minutia that they don't buy the sets.
When I think of Our Gang, I do include the Froggy, Mickey, and latterday Spanky and Alfalfa shorts. Yeah, they are the crappy MGM ones, but they are just as part of my childhood as these were, probably more. Also, by not buying this set, then that guarantees that they won't bring out the rest of the series. If the "less than pristine" shorts are on every disc, then they probably won't reissue it. They haven't made a LD player in maybe 7 years so having a copy on an obsolete, relatively obscure format is not one of the best reasons to avoid this set.
#ORIGINAL LITTLE RASCALS QUOTES PLUS#
Not all of us have the laserdisc version, plus those that do, when that laserdisc player finally breaks down then you've got a white elephant in that Little Rascals set (speaking as someone with more than a few deluxe laserdisc sets that have been almost completely replicated on DVD for a fraction of the original cost). They are all in one collection and on DVD. So all this is over a dozen "less than pristine" shorts, a couple with a racist line here and there snipped? Shorts that most of us saw on crappy 16mm film-chained TV broadcasts 30+ years ago censored to begin with? Yeah, it sucks that they aren't totally optimized, but it's still not bad for 70 year old shorts.