Region 2 DVD (from Spain)

While we await a Region 1 DVD of Woman's World, one of many films Fox inexplicably has refused to come out with all these years, I looked up and found a Fox DVD of the film made for the Spanish market, and ordered it. It's now out of print, but copies are available from Amazon Marketplace, or from Amazon UK's version of "Marketplace".

This is an authorized disc, made by Fox. Its menu allows you to watch it in English without subtitles. (I did watch some of it in Spanish, just to hear how closely the dubbing matched the real actors' voices. It didn't!) The picture and sound are fine. Of course, this is a Region 2, PAL disc, playable mainly in Europe, so if you live in the US or Canada (NTSC Region 1), you'll need an all-Region DVD player to watch it, but that's an inexpensive and worthwhile purchase. Given the fact that PAL discs run at 25 frames per second, vs. NTSC's standard 24 frames, the running time of this disc is about 90 minutes, as against the film's actual length of 94 minutes, but the film is complete and unedited.

The DVD was a bit pricy, but in the end worth it. Now that Fox has begun its own MOD program (Fox Cinema Archives), it's possible WW may one day be released from that venue. Fox has also begun releasing a handful of its classics in mixed DVD/Blu-ray editions, so it may get a release that way. Or the people running the limited-edition outfit Twilight Time (which releases one Fox film a month, exclusively through SAE) might one day come out with the movie, though most of their film choices have been poor and they now issue only Blu-ray discs. So the film will probably come out eventually. In the meantime, this was an acceptable alternative.

There are many American films from Fox (and other Hollywood studios) that have gotten DVD releases in Region 2 -- often Spain -- but not in the States. (The Spanish Woman's World DVD had a pamphlet inside showing many such movies.) Has anybody ever figured that one out?