German widescreen DVD of The Deerslayer (well, most of it, anyway).

My copy of the recently released German DVD of the 1957 version of "The Deerslayer" arrived today from amazon Germany and here’s the lowdown on it. The whole DVD runs 72 minutes. It starts off with ten minutes from some unidentified 1965 Winnetou the Warrior film, then this cuts (for no apparent reason) to ten minutes from the 1957 The Deerslayer film, then to another ten minutes from the Winnetou film and then the last forty minutes or so is all The Deerslayer. What a truly odd way to make a DVD. All dubbed in German and The Deerslayer is minus its opening and closing titles and all the spectacular music score by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter has been removed and replaced with an electric guitar background that has nothing to do with what’s happening on the screen. The Deerslayer ran 76 minutes at the cinema, so that’s 73 minutes at PAL running speed. As all of The Deerslayer on this DVD runs about 50 minutes, it’s obvious that a third of the film isn’t on the DVD.

Now the good news. This is a beautifully clear 2.35:1 transfer of an absolutely pristine CinemaScope print, anamorphically enhanced for 16 x 9, with not a mark on it. So, as far as what there is of the film is concerned, some marvelous frame captures can be made from it at least...and to tell the truth, that's really all it's good for at the moment, although the image quality is most certainly a vast improvement on that on my old pan and scan VHS video of the film.

The Verdict: It sounds terrible and looks wonderful. Dear 20th Century-Fox: Can we please have the original 1957 English language version of the full length film of The Deerslayer?

Included in the DVD case is an eight page glossy booklet about The Deerslayer with a number of stills from the film and a write-up about it...all in German, of course.

Until the original English language version of this film is given a proper DVD release, I'm afraid that this DVD will just have to do.