MovieChat Forums > Captains and the Kings (1976) Discussion > Question about the DVD

Question about the DVD

posted 9 years ago by AnnetteJS
1 reply | jump to latest

I'd like to buy the DVD, but it's unfortunately out of print now and used copies are being sold for around 100 dollars. I can't afford that, which is why I'm eyeing the Region 4 release. However, the runtime of that set is very different! 454 minutes versus the 494 minutes on the American release.

Does anyone know what's up with that? I'm familiar with PAL speed-up, but I don't think that's it (the DVD set states "NTSC", and the time missing is way over 4%). Is the DVD cut or censored? I really want to buy it, but if that's the case...

[–] kducklin2 9 years ago

Do you have a multi-region player?

I'm in the UK and just bought the PAL French (official Universal) edition (Captaines & Rois). This tells the story in 2 x 90m and 6 x 50m segments, a total running time of approximately of 480m. A quick look on the NTSC to PAL calculator suggests 494m accelerates to 473m, so I'm guessing that the episodes haven't been cut. However the French version retains the original dizzying 'Bestsellers' intro and snippets at the beginning of every episode; I imagine if you subtracted these you'd lose quite a lot of 'padding' timewise...

The PQ on the disc is reasonable, but there's been no restoration so it's hardly pristine. You can watch it in English and switch off the French STs (on my player, anyway).

Forty years on the show still stands up pretty well, largely thanks to Richard Jordan's wonderful performance, but the direction and editing are shoddy, and there's an awful lot of stock footage from older movies thrown in to open things out.

Took me back, though...

Duck, I says...