The Couch Potato’s Guide to Lasersound

Beginning this month, we offer a listing of currently available discs that display superior audio quality. We will be going through the existing catalogue label-by-label. While it would be even more useful to provide comments on the quality of video transfer and supplementary programming, we’ll leave that to the other fine journals that specialize in video.

This directory is by no means complete or definitive: it’s an index of recommendations, and we endorse only those discs with exceptional sound quality. For example, the Criterion edition of The Producers has one of the best video transfers ever done, but the analog soundtrack, while very good, is not a dramatic asset to the viewing experience. Paramount’s Seven Days in May, on the other hand, has an analog track that could not be improved with any digital treatment, and therefore is quite noteworthy.

If your favorite film is not on our list that does not mean the disc is inferior. If you are new to the format and have only recently acquired your first laser disc player, we suggest using this guide to familiarize yourself with the best the medium has to offer.

We welcome your additions and comments but reserve the right to publish our own opinion. This issue, we are off and running with CBS/Fox, RCA/Columbia, and Saul Zaentz Co. releases. These are currently available for rent or purchase at your local retailer.

—George Simpson

Fox has a checkered history with regard to its pressings. Most notable is a maddening tendency to announce releases, then deliver them as much as a year later than promised. These are most of their admirable successes:

And just to demonstrate the other side of the coin, these are some of the CBS/Fox duds:

Another outfit with an erratic history. Only lately has Columbia begun to show some real concern for the video connoisseurs who make up the purchasing base in laser discs. Their deal with Voyager to produce Criterion editions of some of their best pictures has resulted in a few commendable releases (Ghostbusters and Lawrence of Arabia,) but the product under their own label is not yet a guarantee of quality. Sadly, these are the only titles we could list without cringing:

Note: also see a very revealing and joyfully muckraking article in the Spring 1990 issue of The Perfect Vision that deals with the incredible confusion in the corporate halls of RCA/Columbia. It confirms what laser buffs have long suspected: them guys don’t know what the heck they’re doing!

Obviously a company limited by its teensy library. Amadeus could stand a better transfer and should be wide screen as well.

Next issue. Voyager’s Criterion Collection… The Good, the Bad, and the Why In The World Did They Do That? In future issues: MCA, MGM/UA, Warner, Image, etc. Nobody will be left out, and if you can’t find something worth listening to in our Guide, turn in your ears.

—GS

The Couch Potato’s Guide to Lasersound

Continuing this month, our listing of currently available laser discs offering superior audio quality. This issue we explore Voyager’s Criterion Collection, which has for some time enjoyed a reputation as the Rolls Royce of laser discs. Again we remind you that this directory is not definitive: it’s an index of recommendations.

Adventures of Robin Hood, The: Would be great, but the dialogue level is lower than the music and effects. Note that we have only checked the original CAV version. New pressings in CAV and CLV have recently been issued and the problem may have been corrected. Investigate before buying.

King Kong: In both CAV and CLV editions, neither has the clear audio available on the old RKO VHS tape.

Twelve Angry Men: Analog track plagued with level drops. Should be withdrawn and redone.

Zulu: Great video transfer, excellent monaural digital sound, but this was a Super Technirama 70 release in 1964, so why couldn’t Criterion locate a stereo audio master?

Overall, the Criterion folks deliver an exceptional product, taking particular care with their video transfers, which are not at issue in this column. The audio “duds” that we grouse about are mistakes that a collector-oriented company should have avoided. But with more than 70 productions to their credit so far, Criterion’s dud ratio is the lowest in the field.

In late July, look for new releases Taxi Driver, Mon Oncle, and King of Hearts. In the meantime, we highly recommend the sonic splendors of Blade Runner, For All Mankind, Ghostbusters, A Hard Day’s Night, Lawrence of Arabia, 2001, and West Side Story.

—GS

The Couch Potato’s Guide to Lasersound

Continuing our listing of currently available laser discs offering superior audio quality, the MCA library maintains a consistent level of excellence and reasonable pricing, though lately they have slowed release of older titles to the rate of three or four per year. This is bad for fans of The Mummy’s Curse, The Incredible Shrinking Man, or The Shakiest Gun in the West (you know who you are), none of which are foreseeably scheduled.

Most of MCA’s older films are not released in Digital Sound, but Universal has kept its audio masters in good condition, so pictures like Psycho and The Mummy won’t benefit much from digital processing. Again we remind you that this directory is not definitive: it’s an index of recommendations.

E.T. is available in a CLV edition with excellent audio and a mediocre transfer, and a collector’s CAV boxed edition with a better pressing but with the right and left audio channels reversed, a little bonus for which MCA has taken considerable heat. It’s easily dealt with by switching the right/left audio leads from the disc player to your audio system. But if your wiring is tucked away in a closet, phone home.

Field of Dreams— same as E.T.— reversed audio

Streets of Fire, even without digital processing, makes an excellent demo disc with powerful analog stereo surround.

Back to the Future II, best demo disc in MCA’s library, superb video transfer, powerful digital audio with great surround effects.

Out of Africa, also a fine demo, with wonderful atmospheric surround effects and some careful detail work. The transfer is soft; it needs to be letterboxed.

—GS

The Couch Potato’s Guide to Lasersound

This month’s installment would have been on Republic Home Video but, after reviewing their product, we have to report that their audio is nothing to write home about. On the evidence, they have made no effort to clean up old optical tracks. While Republic’s version of It’s a Wonderful Life clearly exhibits the best video transfer of four different versions on the market, the audio is unbearable.

Republic has plunged into laser disc production in a big way. How a small operation like this has managed to keep its negatives in such great shape when the big studios let theirs turn to garbage is one of the great mysteries of the last fifty years. They have already released The Enforcer, Force of Evil, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, Blood on the Sun, two compilations of Betty Boop cartoons and the best transfers yet of Angel and the Bad Man, Gulliver’s Travels, and Hoppity Goes to Town. Beware the new Popeye compilation from 16mm dogmeat prints.

Also recently released are four Sherlock Holmes features with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. They appear to have been mastered from inferior dupes, possibly 16mm prints. All four are public domain titles—Dressed to Kill, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, The Woman in Green and Terror by Night. They were originally produced by Universal and the negatives have not been made available for this release.

Republic’s most exceptional offerings are their serials, cliffhanger chapter plays from the mid-1930’s onward, ideally suited to the random access flexibility of laser discs. Republic has already released many of these on tape, and most may eventually make it to disc, where the added quality and convenience makes a striking difference. Each serial is chapter-encoded, allowing the viewer to watch one episode a night and chapter-skip to the next one. All serials are bargain-priced and great fun for adults who still wear their secret decoder rings, though of little interest to today’s kids, who are more attuned to the likes of Robocop and Batman.

Most of the serials, including The Adventures of Captain Marvel, G-Men vs. The Black Dragon, and Undersea Kingdom, have been transferred from nearly immaculate original negatives. The audio is often a victim of cheap original recording techniques and is nothing to calibrate one’s system by. But the use of sound effects, particularly in Undersea Kingdom and S.O.S. Coast Guard, is worth a listen, just to find out what bottom-of-the-barrel creativity is all about.

Zorro’s Fighting Legion has one of the great drop-dead sound effects of all time, the Monty Python-esque “dwoink” of Don del Oro’s death-dealing arrow, used of course in all twelve “thrilling” episodes.

For added enjoyment, check out The Painted Stallion (which has a slightly more sophisticated arrow dwoink), Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island and Zorro’s Black Whip. If you gotta own only one, MSNL recommends Undersea Kingdom, in which Ray “Crash” Corrigan journeys in an atomic submarine to the undersea kingdom of Atlantis and battles the evil minions of warlord Unga Khan. They got chariots, secret caves, silly costumes, a futuristic tank … the eclectic anachronisms abound, o believers.

Warner Home Video seems dedicated to re-doing much of its earlier disc product. They recently released a 5-disc boxed set titled The James Dean Collection, which includes re-mastered CLV letterboxed editions of East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, plus a new transfer of Giant and the full-length documentary, James Dean Remembered.

The two letterboxed films have original 4-channel stereo soundtracks. Giant is mono, as is the documentary. Giant is, in fact, the only disappointment in the package. While it has a better transfer and audio than the old disc, awful things have happened to the print source: it is streaked with white negative scratches.

Twilight Zone: the Movie and Dirty Harry (Warner, Fullscreen, Digital Sound). These are two more in Warner’s re-mastering program. Twilight Zone shows very definite improvements: the picture has far less grain than the old version, and the digital stereo track is an amazing enhancement. The Joe Dante segment, about a little boy who can banish uncooperative family members to a terrifying place called Cartoon-land, is filled with snazzy reworked classic cartoon sound effects. It’s the movie equivalent of Will Elder’s eclectic background references in the old MAD comics.

Dirty Harry has acquired a vast upgrade in picture quality (though not letter-boxed) that actually makes one forget it was made in an era of sub-standard negative emulsions. The Digital track, however, is no longer mono: it’s one of those partly successful reprocessed jobs, someone made the attempt to swing dialogue in the early reels then apparently gave up later on. It’s acceptable but should be displayed as an example of how not to mess with a good track. Trivia note: in this movie, whose giant .44 magnum pistol had a distinctive gunshot that producers insisted all sound editors imitate for years afterward?

Auntie Mame (Warner, Letterboxed, Color, Mono, Digital Sound). One of the great tragedies with Warner is that some years ago they junked or reclaimed most of their stereo masters. So, we don’t get Auntie Mame or a lot of other Warner shows in stereo. Too bad. The mono track on this one is generally very sharp and has that typical Warner quality of almost over-modulated dialogue, which gets especially deadly with Roz Russell’s shout-‘em-down delivery. The track has a tendency to dip and muffle occasionally. How that was accomplished we don’t know. But it doesn’t really hurt; it just keeps this disc out of the demo category.

The video transfer is stunning: rich, clear, colorful and fun to watch. The letter-boxing is wide with no shimmering, no resolution problems, none of the usual anomalies of letterboxing. The most remarkable thing is that this show was shot in Technirama, which was the anamorphic version of the VistaVision process. So why is it that Auntie Mame looks brilliant, while all of Paramount’s VistaVision films look soft and washed-out? If ‘Fifties stagebound comedy is your idea of a party, then come on up to Mameys. Bring your own hat.

Gremlins and Gremlins 2 (Warner, Matted, Digital Stereo Surround). The original Gremlins was a popular demo disc when it came out, but is far surpassed by Warner’s re-mastered version. We hesitate in calling it widescreen: let’s just say it’s matted. But both the video transfer and the digital audio are stunning. As one other reviewer pointed out, he never realized the film had so many colors. This one is an excellent argument for re-mastering.

The companion release, this year’s sequel, Gremlins 2, looks and sounds equally as good and overall is even funnier. MSNL editors worked on it, so we won’t blow our horns too loud here, but we would like to point out that both Gremmie movies are Joe Dante epics and both are shot through with neat little sound jokes (just like we mentioned up above with Twilight Zone: the Movie). Check them out with your multi-million dollar home surround system cranked up. And then enter our contest to see who can spot the greatest number of sound gags.

Collectors note: the laser disc of Gremlins 2 is the original theatrical version with the Hulk Hogan movie-house gag intact. The VHS tape version replaces the Hulkster with a custom home video gag. Collectors will certainly want to own both. Hey, how’s that for an evening of fun?

—GS

The Couch Potato’s Guide to Lasersound

The latest in our continuing service to the laser disc audio enthusiast, our listing of currently available discs offering superior audio quality. This issue we cover the MGM/UA output, notable mostly for its huge selection of re-mastered oldies. Again we remind you this directory is not definitive: it’s an index of recommendations.

—GS