On The Threshold of Space
I am looking for a copy of the 1956 Guy Madison movie "On The Threshold of Space" can anyone help me?
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MovieChat Forums > On the Threshold of Space (1956) Discussion > On The Threshold of Space
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e-2 -- Do you know anything about this outfit? I've seen them mentioned several times all over IMDb but have no idea as to Roberts's quality, etc. Have you dealt with them yourself? hob
PS -- "Zodiac"!
Alas! -- but, no. They have a long and impressive list of "hard to get" titles and I don't know their sources or their presentations, but they seem to be the only game in town (on a regular basis). Like you, hobnob, I think their products are a mite steep in price.
Still, if over a barrel I might have to swallow hard and fork over the ransom.
I've never checked them out, so have no idea as to their prices. And on a film like OTTOS, a big question is whether it's widescreen or simply a dupe of a pan & scan. But I may look into it. Thank you!
shareYes, I think this title was going for something like 25 clams, but its a pig in a poke. Maybe the site has better descriptions of the products. I'll have to go have another look myself.
Here's hoping that TCF will wise up and release it on DVD soon.
That was fast! (I was logging off when I saw you'd replied.) Well, we'll have a look-see, as they said in the 50s. As for Fox, I'd be happy if they resumed releasing anything. Later.
I guess Roberts Video is the Chief Justice's sideline business.
I have some work to do on the PC and came on-line to take a stroll before getting back to it, caught your note. Head-scratcher stuff I must do but you know how such things can get frustrating.
Anyway, thanks for the note. Serendipitous extra.
I'm going to stop in on the Chief Justice's site before I log off and see what's up with them.
To Infinity and Beyond!
Here's an entry with a long list of providers. They include the following description:
"Robert's Hard to Find Video (www.robertsvideos.com)
Canadian-based, long list of titles, many obscurities, some foreign formats; prices vary, usually high."
http://www3.sympatico.ca/bmovieguy/Sources.html
Look's like I'd need more time to go through the long long list but it looks like a good resource.
And another thing, on Roberts Hard to Find Video's web-page Home page click the "NASA" catagory to find On the Threshold of Space quickly.
Apparently RHTFV only has it on VHS.
I just checked Maltin's book. Robert's (of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan!) is listed, with the comment, "Especially good for tapeheads," which would seem to confirm your info that it's much more VHS than DVD, though it lists both. (Maltin's book calls it a "search service". Hmmph.) Well, I may take a gander. No, wait, that's Newfoundland.
shareWell, that's good to know (Maltin's reference) as it gives Roberts Hard to Find Videos some credibility, Canadian address or not. I don't mind VHS copies of such titles. I have a commercial copy of Wavelength (1982) (not available in stores!) on VHS, a movie I liked and I'm glad to have it in any form (I may have mentioned that title before to you).
In fact, most people are dumping their tapes -- and I understand they are bulky and often Pan & Scan -- and I like finding them in thrift stores, video outlets, public libraries (I bought a copy of F for Fake (1975) for a buck) and yard sales. They usually are had for a song. I am the cheapskate.
I picked up a copy in a fancy box of a movie I had never seen called Ice Pirates (1984) for about 80 cents at the local mission. Worth every penny and not a penny more! Absolutely not worth a penny more!
So, as long as the old VCR works, that's all right with me.
"Gander"? Holy cow! How did you know about THAT!? Is that what they're teaching in Geography class these days? Is that where Captain Dooley and company were stranded?
Well, of course, if a VHS is all one can get, it's okay by me, too. There was that little thing called Captive Women.... (For which I'll always be grateful, and astonished at the confluence of timing.)
I saw Ice Pirates -- not long after it came out. 'Twas okay. 80 cents sounds about top-gouge price. Once was enough.
Remember the 1951 Jimmy Stewart movie No Highway in the Sky? (Original British title simply No Highway, the same title as the book, by Nevil Shute, later of On the Beach fame.) The airliner in that one landed at Gander. Once a very busy place, pre-jet. A lot of US-bound aircraft were grounded there on Sept. 11, so it's still a handy-gandy.
Ah, yes -- the Captive Women (1952) connection. That worked out very well. We sure enjoyed it (on the heels of that statement I have yet to see the second half of Sunrise at Campobello (1960) but my wife and the eldest son got to see it and they enjoyed it. I look forward to the Winter when things slow down).
Funny that you would mention No Highway in the Sky (1951) because another friend of mine from around these parts loaned me a copy (in the fancy pants, ultra-modern, George Jetson D-V-D format!) of The High and The Mighty (1954) and that movie always reminds me of the other.
So, I take it that my meager reference to Island In the Sky (1953) did not escape you, just as I figured. Well done. Bravo, good sir!
Back to On the Threshold of Space, would you ever describe, to the best of your recollection, the last scene of the movie? My feeble memory holds a picture that I've kept since I saw it in the 60's that I always liked. As far as the story was concerned, it ended there for me. I won't muddy the waters but I would like to compare that memory with your first and fresh viewing of the film in recent time. Tenx.
Well, I did get your Dooley reference, but since I neglected to make any mention of it in my reply, you give me too much credit for recognizing it! I'd never seen Island in the Sky until the DVD came out. It's good, though pretty verbose, and too much family stuff. Needed a better music score too, I think.
I've always liked The High and the Mighty, especially (speaking of music) its Oscar-winning music by Dimitri Tiomkin, but the DVD was a bit of a disappointment to me, for one minor glitch: in the scene where Jan Sterling removes her make-up and recounts the bitterness of his life to the drunken Paul Kelly, the DVD inexplicably has lost about 10 seconds of the film. After she's done removing her make-up and the camera zeroes in on her, and she asks Kelly, "So does that answer your question, mister?" (which I believe is still in the DVD), she then adds the line, "Or do you feel like -- like a bored priest sitting in his confessional?" Wow! Quite a line for 1954. But for some reason that short bit has been cut from the DVD. I remembered that line from seeing the movie even as a kid in the 60s (it startled me even then), and I have an off-the-HBO take of THATM from about 1982 still in my possession (pan and scan and not in great shape, but complete!), and the line's there, so I know I'm not mistaken. I posted something about that on the film's IMDb site. It's just a few words uttered in about 10 seconds, and everything else is intact, but it is a loss, and I still hope that somehow, someday, it will be put back in.
As to the final scene of OTTOS, I'm not sure where you want me to pick it up, but.... They send Guy up in a high-altitude balloon, over 100,000 ft., to test the effects of thin air and solitude on him, see how well or quickly he responds, and other guinea-pig chores. He reports, in his best monotone acting technique, sitting in this pod, describing the world far below, even as he can look up into the fringes of space, seeing "meteors" and such. His balloon drifts more slowly than anticipated, and over hazardous terrain, so they don't bring him down too soon, while his wife sits in the control room (right!) knitting him a new spacesuit or something, and John Hodiak looks pensive and Dean Jagger can't wait for him to accidentally hit the moon, and he gives them a few bad moments when he loses radio contact until he figures out how to plug the wire back in (slow reflexes that high), until finally he bothers to check his oxygen gauge and discovers he's got 30 minutes of air left, cuts the pod free from the balloon, falls to 70,000 feet before his auxiliary balloon can properly puff out, and drifts down till he hits the side of a mountain, rolls down and lands between a rock and a pine tree. Later a helicopter crew finds him bounced and jounced around but otherwise no stupider than he was when he went up. In a preemptive post-mortem statement he had made them them tape on his way down (his thick wife asks softly, "Is that in case he doesn't make it?" and Dean Jagger merrily nods yes), he states that the one thing he found was that the loneliness, the separation from humanity, was the hardest thing Man would have to overcome if similar balloon voyages were to be successful in the future. This is the only thing they decide to tape? Well, no one said they were launching Einstein. The scene where he cuts the ballon free uses a model and is pretty fake, but the interiors of him spinning around like he was on the rinse cycle are pretty unnerving, and his reflections on what he sees so far up, including the wonder of seeing the curve of the Earth, are kind of cool.
Anyway, I suspect all this may not relate what you want to know, so spill the beans and let me know. I re-watched the end of it before answering just to refresh my memory, so I'm almost conversant on the subject now.
But no, Guy didn't have a tape of The Fifth Dimension to listen to. A decade-plus too soon, anyway. Also way too hippie.
"...Guy... reports, in his best monotone acting technique, sitting in this pod, describing the world far below, even as he can look up into the fringes of space, seeing "meteors" and such...
"...his reflections on what he sees so far up, including the wonder of seeing the curve of the Earth...
Yes, that's the picture I have in mind. I don't remember the descent at all, but, like I said before, the movie ended for me at the last part you described. I thought that was fantastic. Even in grainy B/W, it worked for me. It took me away. And unless stuff looked really fake -- Plan 9 from Outer Space fake -- I never gave special effects much notice back then.
Thanks for going to all the trouble and the very fine description, hobnob.
My pleasure, escalera-2.
!
Actually, very little in the way of true SFX -- basically just the little model pod and chute in this one sequence. Only four or five shots -- not too bad. Ed W. would be, no doubt was, dumbstruck by the verisimiltude.
My favorite cheap special photographic effect as a boy was the ***(SPOILER!)*** demise of the titular Giant from the Unknown (1958).
What a hoot!
Maybe if Fox releases On the Threshold of Space on DVD they'll ask their old buddy, old pal George Lucas to get his boys on doing a little clean up on it. "On the Threshold of Space: Super-Terrific Edition!"
Ah, the cartoon Buddy Baer tumbling into the falls. Matched only by the cartoon Danish farmer swallowed by Reptilicus, tumbling around in his mouth -- blue plaid shirt and all.
Yes, I'm sure Lucas would relish the prospect of "improving" On the Threshold of Space by adding dozens of balloons, helicopters, rocket sleds, jets and a few mystery flying saucers onto the screen...just the way the original makers of the movie really would have wanted it to be, if only they'd had the money and technology in 1956. We know this for an absolute, incontrovertible, uncontested, unarguable, irrefutable fact.
You'd made mention of Wade William's tinkering with Rocketship X-M (1950) and, though I have not seen this version, from what I read he had replaced all the V-2 rocket shots with new scenes using model work that featured a replica of the X-M Rocketship. That sounds good to me (although I used to look forward to seeing the Atlas and V-2 in such films -- they were neat).
But Lucas has too much time and money and, for me, over does things. Still, if he could could restrain himself and was up to the task, it would be nice to see a boss insert of the gondola as it could be.
I heard that there is a re-make of Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) afoot and with that, the original version might make a comeback on DVD. Once again, here's hoping that The Pre-Astronauts (2010) prompts a release of On the Threshold of Space.
Williams originally made a lot of changes to RXM, but fortunately the DVD version has removed all but his substitutions of the V-2, in three portions, which I've described in tedious detail on the RXM site. Only two of these involve a model; the third inserts nighttime footage (which seems to have been originally in color) of an actual launch of a rocket from Cape Kennedy/Canaveral, for the nighttime launching of the RXM. (All you see is the flames against the dark, no ship at all.) These substitutions all sucked. I want the original film!!!
Lucas is like a lot of modern filmmakers -- they're of the school that thinks, if one spaceship/car/monster looks cool/is funny, then fifty have to be better. That's why Lucas's rehashing of the original Star Wars trilogy was so lousy. John Landis is of the same school, except he didn't tamper with pre-existing films. Remember The Blues Brothers? He went berserk, thinking that showing dozens of police cars crashing mindlessly was hysterical. These guys have no clue that showing only one, or at most a few, is far more affecting for the audience. Anything more is just mindless visual noise.
I share your hopes for On the Threshold of Space. But I am, unhappily, resolutely pessimistic.
I always thought that maybe Mr. Lucas had bitter feeling towards the former Mrs. Lucas because she walked away with an Oscar for her work on it and he came up empty handed himself. So, he "improved" on her work (and the other two editors) by adding scenes that were totally unnecessary.
For example, one of my favorite moments in the original version of Star Wars (1977) came when the Millennium Falcon "blasted" its way out of the space port. That quick cut of the ship taking off and that Storm Trooper turning to see it go worked very well. Great cinema there. In the new edition, the urgency and flow was interrupted by the superfluous shot of the Falcon rising.
I will scope out the Rocketship X-M (1950) page and specifically your comments. I don't know how I could have missed going to it before.
Perhaps my hopes for a DVD release of On the Threshold of Space are foolish, especially since the market is changing so much I don't know if any studio is willing to invest in the production of any film on disc any more.
Not to mention Lucas's addition of superfluous creatures and hundreds of starfighters instead of ten. This moronic mindset that excess = "better".
One day disc production will improve, but considering the odd choices they make as to what and what not to release...well, maybe that enhances OTTOS's chances!
See you in a few....
I saw your comments on Rockethip X-M page and if you haven't submitted it as part of the Review section I wish you would.
Hitting the dusty trail again?
More sand than dust, though some of that too. I could use OTTOS's rocket sled just now. Glad I caught your message before my scheduled lift-off! Later, my friend. Have a good weekend yourself. Do something interesting. Ballooning, that kind of thing. Brrr.
shareBow-wow! The IMDb is now offering the Full Movie!
I came back to this here and saw the offering at the top of the title page.
Yes, I just saw that coming over here. I only hope it's in color and not the b&w seen in the still.
Black-and-white would just ruin the movie's entire atmosphere.
Belated and embarrassed update...I looked again and saw that the still shown is indeed in glorious COLOR...well, actually, kind of wishy-washy color, at least as seen on the main page here. However, read on, and you'll discover the shocking -- and dismaying -- secret of this print of ON THE THRESHOLD OF SPACE.
Oh, zone!
Maybe by now you've found out, but if not -- This is the Hulu presentation (Tenx, Hulu!)-- IN FULL COLOUR!
But do not be deceived. Like most WIDE-SCREEN epics, the credits are W I D E, but the movie is Pan & Scan.
Well, I've had nothin' for about 40 years. This is far better than nothing!
I hadn't checked yet, so thanks for the heads-up. I didn't expect that this would come via hula, but then it doesn't really surprise me, either.
It sounds the same as my off-the-air recording from FMC -- widescreen credits at the beginning and end, p&s the rest of the time -- so I'll just stick with that and pray for better things. (I can hear the laughter of the gods!) I have a theory that maybe we get to see all this stuff "as it was meant to be seen" after our death, so I can always hope that's true as well!
I also erred when I said before that the picture on the main page of this film was in black & white. I looked more closely this time and now see that it is indeed in color. It just appears a little washed out. But that shot also looks letterboxed, so who can tell what they're peddling? Anyway, I'll fix my previous post to reflect reality.
Actually, most classic w/s films these days are shown in widescreen all the way through -- on channels dedicated primarily to older movies. I'm talking mainly TCM and even FMC, its occasional lapses -- like OTTOS -- notwithstanding. It's the abysmal AMC, and channels like the otherwise good Starz Western, Drama and other channels, that insist on running these things with w/s credits but otherwise full screen, most or all of the time (plus the occasional oldie run on one of the Cinemaxes or HBOs). Of course, it's normal that newer films run on mainstream cable channels like HBO, Max, Showtime, TMC, etc., have widescreen credits but p&s for the remainder of the film...though with most movies today in aspect ratios of 1.85:1, this isn't a huge picture loss. But still regrettable, and worthy of public execution.
Reality: Check!
For me, since I grew up seeing most of these things on the box instead in the theaters (our local theater, the Starland, didn't have the stuff to present Cinemascope productions), I never knew that I was gittin' gyped with Pan & Scan offerings. I think the first Wide-Screen movie I ever saw was on TV. NBC tried a little experiment with some Sword & Sandal flick (was it maybe Ben Hur (1959) or possibly The Ten Commandments (1956) --- more a Staff & Sandal, though. Anyway, I don't remember what the picture was) and the Peacock network would have a little placard before the show and after commercial breaks saying something like "This is a presentation of a a Wide-Screen theatrical production. The horizontal bars at the top and bottom of your screen are necessary to show it in the original format. There is nothing wrong with your television set."
To further calm the viewing audience, the horizontal bars had curlicue's drawn on them, jazzing things up a little. I thought the fancy margins were even more distracting. And, of course, the image was much smaller. I don't think they or any of the other networks back then tried to do anything like that again.
OK, now I'm a fancy guy and P&S has grown irksome along with other failings including "Edited for Content", "Formatted to Fit Your Screen", "Some Scenes Deleted for Time", etc.
But, I remember my humble beginnings and so I'll take what I can get. I am certainly getting old. In fact, I'm taking my humble carcass and I'm heading to Hulu for a Full Movie presentation of No Highway in the Sky (1951) also through the courtesy of the IMDb. I haven't seen that title in years and look forward to watching it again.
And, more on the subject, it was a real treat to see the equipment used in On the Threshold of Space after reading the Craig Ryan book, The Pre-Astronauts. I appreciate what was going on back then all the more.
That took guts!
Universal used to make TV prints of its w/s films with the credits "invisibly" letterboxed. They'd show them in their original widescreen format (instead of squeezing them into a 4x3 frame, as was done by Fox and others), but so as not to panic people with dire black bars or anything untoward, they decorated the "bar areas" with curlicues and other gay [sic] patterns at top and bottom, making it look as though these designs were part of the original picture. That way, when they switched to p&s for the body of the picture, no one really noticed. It was clever, if deceitful.
I happened to watch No Highway in the Sky just yesterday, on FMC, which has been running it once or twice a month of late. I have the old VHS of it, but for some astoundingly inexplicable reason this is one major title Fox never brought out on DVD, and as they appear to have stopped all classic DVD production cold since last year, with absolutely no sign it'll ever be revived, this may be one we'll have to go without on disc, at least for a long time to come. More's the pity in that Fox had been one of the two best studios (with WB) in releasing its library, and the fact that they also now produce the DVDs for (and have stopped this too) the UA library (out of MGM/UA, to add to the confusion), now controlled, but not issued by, Sony/Columbia. Huh?
Anyway, enjoy No Highway -- its British title, and the title of the book, which I bought the other year. (By Nevil Shute, of On the Beach fame.) We've had some discourses on that site too, so hop in when you're in the mood!
I did also repair my brief post that erroneously stated that the shot of OTTOS on the main page here was in b&w, and directing readers onward, if you'd care to check it out.
Yes, I had noticed that usually the titles were presented in letterbox since they apparently would have chopped them off otherwise. Actually there was an otherwise and that was to squeeze the titles. If anyone or thing was under the titles, they'd get the treatment, too, and come off looking like the way I'd read about and imagine Stanley Kubrick's failed experiments to produce alien beings for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) looked like.
Nowadays, TV shows and commercials are shot wide to suit the large screen flat TV's (and get old timers like me to rush out and buy one so I can see the whole picture. Get a horse!). Products and their brands are always dead center of the screen to make sure everyone gets the message. TV shows cut off about 1/3 of each body if two characters are walking shoulder to shoulder.
No great loss, just annoying to the trained mind.
And on the subject, that picture from On the Threshold of Space on the IMDb page that fooled your trained eye does look washed out, a bit like a freeze-frame, and does, indeed, look like a B/W photo.
Widescreen TVs distort the picture -- squeezed and flattened bozos, no thank you. I changed the picture on mine to a standard 4x3, so that my w/s films come out looking realistic, if not as broad (and stretched, flattened and pressed) as technology, God bless it, permits.
I'm still waiting for the TV guy to come to my tenement and fix the aerial on top of the roof. Too much Honeymooners.
Maybe in the upper reaches of the ionosophere everything does look washed out, black & white. Just the way it seemed with Sputnik, a year later. On the Threshold of Laika.
One thing: Tin foil
You know -- I was at a friends house here in town and he had a DVD going and I noticed that his flat screen had fattened the people. Holy cow, they looked like Munchkins. I didn't say anything about it -- you know the old saying about laughing at a man's horse after he's bought it -- I thought that maybe he hadn't set it up right.
By the way, I guess my then youthful imagination would later prove to be a bit contrary to Paul Simon's Kodachrome song ("...everything looks worse in black and white..."). Watching On the Threshold of Space in B/W back then I imagined the color of space (Tip o' the Hat to H.P.) a lot brighter than in the color version of the movie. Of course, the fellows that did actually make those flights had some trouble describing what they saw.
Very beautiful. Far out, man...
I Laika that. Buy a duck?
Most people I know set their flatscreen, w/s TVs on the widest possible picture, I guess because they feel if they've shelled out for one, they might as well exploit it to the fullest. I sometimes wonder whether they even know they can set it in several different-sized frames, at least one of which will remove the distortion. I never particularly wanted one (although since they're now the inescapable only choice for future TVs I suppose it was inevtiable), but last summer my uncle bought us one. It was a few weeks before I finally decided to reset the picture so that, while it doesn't stretch across the entire screen, it at least provides me with a normal-sized picture, including for letterboxed movies.
I've also met people who think that they can buy a pan-and-scan DVD instead of a widescreen one (Oh my God! Black bars!!) and still get the widescreen version of a movie by virtue of the fact that the TV is widescreen! I've had to disabuse a couple of people on that one -- no, if the DVD doesn't have the widescreen version of a film, you won't get the w/s verion when you watch it, no matter how wide your TV screen is.
Technophiles.
Of course, Guy Madison's Christmas ornament would've looked really cool as a big, flat bauble, plummeting down through a very wide sky.
I suspect the Skyhigh would have lost it's spherical shape and been oblong, like a football.
Until I started messing about with a PC, the most technical I had gotten was a four-slice toaster. I don't like to brag, but I must say that know how to operate those Bagel settings. We're ahead of those Rooskies now!
Thanks for sharing the known facts about wide-screen TV's. Maybe I can broach the subject with my friends out here and amaze them with my new-found prowness. Then maybe we can watch Everybody Loves Raymond the way it was meant to be seen.
I remember shelling out for a color TV and after I had it hooked up to the aerial I turned it on and CHIPS came on.
Why, I felt like throwing the set out the window!
Maybe that TV was in fact a Twonky.
Know that one? Check out the site here for the 1953 movie The Twonky. Exceedingly, unconscionably bizarre!
Yes. Just another movie I haven't seen in years and years (along with ZOTZ! --1962).
In fact, I say that now and then --
"Did you like the fish? It was a bit twonky, don't you think?" .
Nobody ever gets the reference.
(I wrote a long note on The Twonky (1953) today but the page vanished and I refuse to re-fuse. Maybe I'll do it again some day, but not today)
B-b-big deal.
Yeah, that's happened to me, too.
I'm tellin' ya, these things be twonkies, they be.
It's these blasted machines, Spock. Ya cain't argya with a machine!
(Hey -- since I'm getting married in six weeks, does that put me On the Threshold of Spouse?)
I would very much like to blame it on the infernal machine, but I suspect it was my less than nimble hands that sent the posting awry. Rats.
(Truth is, having some troubles with the spine, my arms and hands get tired and going back to the well one more time is often nigh impossible. The problem is all spine)
Six weeks 'til bliss. Well, good man, hobnob. Don't forget to carry the lovely Catherine over the....I won't say it!
Hold hands, you lovebirds!
If I tried to perform that legendary newlywed chore, my spine, along with a number of other organs, would be in the same shape as Guy's Xmas ornament.
I have, however, assured Miss C. that I shall carry her figuratively over a space of some time and/or dimension.
The final frontier..........
But then, I'm ten years ahead of myself, this being 1956 and all.
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas.
You're traveling into another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. There's a signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!
Well, we've gone over the line here -- jumped the shark on this thread.
I think I'll try doing The Twonky (1953) again
Wow! Both opening TZ narrations in one! As Mr. Serling himself might have said, "Submitted for your approval...." I heartily approve, and applaud!
But right you are, we are well past the boundaries of the outer limits of On the Threshold of Space here...in an unexplored realm wither, at the time of the film's release, only John Hodiak had blazed a path. So, hereafter, only OTTOS-appropriate posts preferred.
Like how it feels to be the first man to gaze upward at the panoply of stars winking in the blue-black of that twilight region twixt Earth and Space...as if the entire sky were some sort of...of...of a night gallery of some kind...painted and hung by Rod, The Olde Master.
Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Roberts has since converted a lot of his stuff to DVD. Not cheap but if you have to have that rare movie, then go for it. I didnt like the DVD version of The High & the Mighty, so I got a copy from him. It was taken from a 16mm film print probably recorded off the air in the 1970s or 80s. I was satisfied with it--just as I remembered it when growing up.
shareIs Roberts' video of OTTOS letterboxed? (I'm guessing not.) I recorded it from Fox Movie Channel in the pan & scan form they insisted on running, and aside from the lack of widescreen, it's acceptable. Hopefully the film may one day come out -- letterboxed -- on the new Fox Cinema Archives line.
I'm surprised you didn't like the DVD of The High and the Mighty. I thought it was very well done -- with one exception. There's about ten seconds of memorable dialogue delivered by Jan Sterling in her big scene with Paul Kelly that is inexplicably missing from the DVD. I would bet it's on the Roberts video (she asks if Kelly feels "like a bored priest hiding behind a curtain"), since it was probably recorded off the air when HBO ran it in the early 80s. (I still have a tape of an HBO showing.) But that print wasn't widescreen, and again, I'll bet the Roberts Video DVD isn't either.
Roberts really does have title that others don't. Not cheap but they're there. Many were likely off-air tapings in Canada but that's ok with me. Some quality issues on some films but they are good fillers until a more decent copy can be found. Recently found the long sought "Lights of New York" (1928) from him. He has some himself, others he obtains from other collectors.
shareI ordered a couple of titles from Roberts a couple of years ago. I wasn't particularly impressed by the quality of his stuff. Not very good recordings and so-so source material, one off the air from AMC. In my case both films soon became available in vastly better or legitimate copies, so it was basically a waste, though you can't know that ahead of time.
It's mainly a balancing act: how badly do you want something in exchange for dodgy quality? Unless it's something you absolutely have to have and you can't get it anywhere else, I'm leery of bootlegs. For example, I can't believe you're happier with Roberts's bootleg of The High and the Mighty over the legitimate DVD. It's not possible it could be of better quality -- even if it has the missing ten seconds I mentioned back then.
As I said a year ago, I'm sure Roberts's video of On the Threshold of Space would be pan & scan and off-the-air, and I can -- and did -- get that much for myself.
I don't know if anyone is still followig this great thread but something that impressed me is how few support craft and personel were available to Colonel Stapp and to the high altitude balloon projects. Unlike The Space Program ( you know, with rockets) those programs really were like low budget classics where it was the actors that made all the difference.
Interesting analogy, churchr-1. Glad you liked the thread too!
sharehttp://aghosthouseproduction.com/face-of-fire.html
It's pan and scan with a bad red shift in the Deluxe Color, but it is watchable and relatively cheap ($12.99), buy 3 movies, get one free.