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DVD : The Beverly Hillbillies - Ultimate Collection, Vol. 2 |
- there are but 5 new episodesI love watching the BH's and wish all episodes would be on the market.
These "new" collections are not new, but a few episodes, that have been out there for quite a while. What a disappointment.
A pity. I would have loved to have watched new episodes.
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- Problems overcome?I see by reviews almost a year old, that those customers got defective copies. Does any one know if the current set still has defects? Thanks.
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- Great dvdI had no trouble with the audio or video that some pepole spoke of. I watched them on a 50' plasma and they were of suberb quality. Still funny after 45 years
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- Great extras, fair to poor print condition for the shows.I was excited to watch the extras so I immediately put in disc 4.
I watched the 4th disc and was horrified to see multiple white emulsion scratches in most of the episodes. This transfer was made from Paul Henning's personal 16mm film collection which has gotten scratched over the years. Too bad they didn't work a deal with Paramount for access to the 35mm fine grain negatives!
That said, the extras are great! And I am glad they restored the origional sponsored titles! "K E doulble-L O double-Good Kelloggs best to you" is sung by Earl as part of the opening theme as the Clampetts drive past a Kellogg's billboard (in Beverly Hills?). Other episodes have the Clampetts pass a large truck with a WINSTON ad on it's side, the goodness of cigarettes is sung as part of the opening theme.
The cast commercials have been removed from the shows and stuck back-to-back on disc 4 as an extra. I am glad to have these as they brought back fond memories, but since these were story specific (the story line is carried over as the concept for the commercial) I would have prefered these to be left intact in the episodes they played in.
It is quite out of character to see the Clampetts talking of the goodness of Winston Cigarettes!
The 1966 interview with Irene Ryan on Art Linkletter's show is also priceless. This is something that could have been lost forever, thankfully it has been saved!
We should be glad for these wonderful extras!
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- I Paid 30 Dollars For This?!!!First thing out of the gate, I understand that the estate of "Hillbillies" creator Paul Henning owns the rights to roughly the first 55 or so episodes of the series, and I understand the desire of his family to cash in. But instead of brokering a deal with Paramount (which apparently owns rights to the remainder of the series), and releasing complete, quality, season by season sets for a percentage of the royalties, we're left with this swill: all of the first season, and about 85 percent of the second season, spaced out between two four disc sets. This of course, minus the Christmas episode, which MPI has decided to market as a separate disc, to make more money!!
That being said, the thing that irritates me most about this set, is the picture quality. Where did these film prints come from? They are of substandard quality. As with volume one, nearly every episode has a series of scratches in the film, that leave trailing lines up the center of the screen, for the first 30 seconds of so of each show. They are so distracting, that one can't even enjoy the episode without being distracted by jumpy picture, lines, washed out black and white contrast, or other issues pertaining to the film. One episode, the Thankgiving one, has a big blurry spot that appears on the left side of the screen. This is unacceptable. Especially when you see the same episodes on televison, in BETTER quality than they appear on the DVD set! The producers of this set have obviously gone to a lot of trouble to dig up lots of bonus material for both volume's 1 & 2. If they really cared, they should have remastered the picture and sound from the original film negatives OR lowered the price of the set to around 13 dollars or so. This set is so cheap, that is doesn't even include a booklet. So you have no information about the episodes, nor any idea which ones are even on the thing.
I feel absolutely fleeced by this purchase, and hope that Paramount will do a better job on future Hillbillies releases.
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