8mm Forum: ABC Releases...How uncommon are they?

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Posted by Douglas Warren (Member # 1047) on October 19, 2014, 01:19 PM:

I was thinking about the ABC releases,which included 400' digests and shortened features of many titles.Two I always wanted (in the 400' format) were "Charly" with Cliff Robertson and "Too Late The Hero" with Michael Caine & Cliff Robertson.Do the ABC titles come up for sale very often?
Cheers,
Douglas

Posted by David Ollerearnshaw (Member # 3296) on October 19, 2014, 01:34 PM:

Charley was on UK ebay a few months ago. I too would lke a couple of the releases.

Posted by Douglas Warren (Member # 1047) on October 19, 2014, 01:40 PM:

Hi David,
Thank you for the reply.Back in 1981 I remember getting an insert from Ken Films that had all the ABC releases listed.If I recall correctly,the price for the 400' editions were $59.95 USD.
Cheers,
Douglas

Posted by Timothy Duncan (Member # 4461) on October 19, 2014, 02:32 PM:

Holy Moly! That was no chump change in '81!

Posted by Douglas Warren (Member # 1047) on October 19, 2014, 03:34 PM:

Hi Timothy,
I used the Inflation Calculator,and according to it,that amount would be the equivalent of $157.00 today.A feature at $200.00 in the same time frame would be close to $525.00!
Cheers,
Douglas

Posted by Timothy Duncan (Member # 4461) on October 19, 2014, 04:43 PM:

I would think that there would not be an abundance of these since that would have been right before the videocassette revolution of the 1980's here in the U.S.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on October 20, 2014, 12:26 PM:

The problem with the ABC releases, is that only a few of them were actually the original funning time of the feature. Classic features were sometimes the full length features, but most of them were shortened to about a 75 to 80 minute running time.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on October 20, 2014, 08:15 PM:

I had two ABC black and white feature prints and they were both really excellent quality. The first was Hitchcock's Spellbound which was cut down by a full 14 minutes, which I thought took away some of the impact of the film.The second was The Spiral Staircase which was trimmed by about 6 minutes, and still retained all its impact and creepiness.

Posted by Gary Crawford (Member # 67) on October 21, 2014, 06:56 AM:

I have the feature , Take the Money and Run...color looks just like it did when it was new.....which was ok, but not perfect.
Don't know if it was cut or not, but it is VERY funny.

Posted by Douglas Warren (Member # 1047) on October 21, 2014, 03:07 PM:

Thanks everyone for your input and thoughts.
Douglas

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on October 21, 2014, 04:18 PM:

I have "Suspicion" from ABC and it's a very nice print. I rarely see it up for auction. I'm holding out for "Portrait Of Jennie" with the original green-tinted final reel and the full color shot of the finished portrait that appears in the end of the film. The prints I have seen are usually straight B&W 16mm and normally go for a high price (not surprised being that you hardly ever see it).

Posted by Timothy Ramzyk (Member # 718) on October 27, 2014, 12:46 AM:

I thought Spiral Staircase still plays well, but the missing footage is a shame since there was enough room on the reels for a complete print. Erroneously the box refers to it as ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S

One of my guilty pleasures is the Robert Aldrich produced WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE? Which in amusing BABY JANE variation, this time with Geraldine Page bonking maids on the head with a shovel to pilfer their money. It's also trimmed of a good scene where Page tries but fails to kill the neighbor's dog who been poking around in her garden/cemetery. It still holds together in the edited version though. ABC released it letterboxed.

The ABC features I remember were,
FOR THE LOVE OF IVY, STRAW DOGS, PARADINE CASE, THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE, THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY?, SUSPICION & DUEL IN THE SUN.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on October 27, 2014, 09:15 AM:

Yes I agree Tim, the trimming of 6 minutes from The Spiral Staircase was totally unnecessary. Just another example of the petty penny pinching with footage that was common back when these feature films, and the hundreds of digests, were released on S8.

Posted by Timothy Ramzyk (Member # 718) on October 27, 2014, 12:38 PM:

Running times seemed a lot more liquid in the days before VHS, IMDB, and cable movie channels exposed the trims.

Many, many TV stations would cut title that ran under 80 minutes down to fit a 90 minute space, or simply allow the film to progress during the commercials.

I does seem absurd to me now that you'd whack 6 minutes out of a film that would fit nicely on the the reels without cuts.

As I recall ABC ads stated that only their color titles were "slightly edited" whereas the B/W features were intact. We now know even the B/W movies were cut, and if cutting color films that ran over 100 minutes down to eighty is "slight" editing, I'd beg to differ.

I used to think the 3-reel abridgments were an interesting animal. If well done they still felt like seeing a feature, yet still managed to leave one feeling a bit rushed through and cheated.

I remember my mother feeling that both 200ft. and 400ft. titles were "a waste of time and money" since they could never give much more than a taste of the feature.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on October 27, 2014, 12:58 PM:

On the plus side, the ABC black and white prints that I have seen, have been excellent quality, nice and sharp with good contrast.
People seem to either love or hate digests. I think the MGM musical digests were all excellent, particularly the 2 x 400's, and usually included all the famous musical numbers in complete form, which is really what you wanted to get. Digests of Drama's were obviously much less satisfactory, although Columbia put out some impressive efforts, once they decided to get rid of the narrator!
My favourite digests these days are the Derann black and white prints of the Busby Berkeley musicals, which are really excellent, and of course have not faded like most of my color digests.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on October 27, 2014, 01:59 PM:

I believe "Marty" was one of them to. That film about the cerebrally challenged person who has an operation and he's suddenly as smart as anyone else. it starred Clift Robbertson and was quite touching. Not the full feature, but still nice.

Posted by Joe Balitzki (Member # 438) on October 27, 2014, 02:13 PM:

The film you are referring to is "Charly". The drama stars Cliff Robertson (in an Academy Award-winning performance). "Marty" starred Ernest Borgnine which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. "Marty" was Distributed by United Artists not ABC and to my knowledge has never been available in Super 8mm.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on October 27, 2014, 04:57 PM:

Another good release from ABC was the last valley with Michael Caine & Omar Sharife, 5 x 400 foot but still ubnfortunatly abridged.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on October 27, 2014, 07:17 PM:

Wow! Now I'm going to have to compare my print of "Suspicion" to my VHS copy to see if I was, in fact, jipped of a complete movie. Even a mere few minutes shows that ABC utilized broadcast masters whittled down to allow for commercials and station id breaks. Why edit down color movies intentionally? Is it because the color titles were normally longer? What does cutting 5-10 minutes resolve when a full 400' reel can hold 23 minutes without excess leaders and tails? I always got a kick out of digests that would run only 16 minutes and then you would get 2-4 minutes of leader and tail on the same reel. Nothing like paying for celluloid that has no value.

Posted by John Hourigan (Member # 111) on October 28, 2014, 12:28 AM:

Great point, Brad. I also found it irritating when an advertised "800-foot" digest would fit nicely on a full 600-foot reel (such as my BLUES BROTHERS digest, among others). For some reason, truth in advertising never applied to film footage back in the heyday of collecting. I guess we were too blinded by our enthusiasm to acquire titles. Blackhawk came the closest in stating the actual footage in titles --

Posted by Timothy Ramzyk (Member # 718) on October 28, 2014, 01:54 AM:

I remember Universal 8 giving the running time down to the second. However it's true, 200ft digests could have been 10 minutes but were usually 8 and 400ft digests could have been 20 but were usually 17.

My guess is that ABC cut the color features more, because color stock cost more (at the time). These cuts weren't for TV though. I'd seen complete prints of many of ABC features televised at the same time they were marketing them on 8mm. They also contained footage that would have been censored for TV prints. Also, my print of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE was letterboxed, which was not common for TV screenings.

Posted by Panayotis A. Carayannis (Member # 1220) on October 28, 2014, 12:04 PM:

Here are scans of the ABC catalogue with running times referred.But they are erring.PARADINE CASE is in 5x400 reels in its original box,.Four reels are full and the fifth only about 300 ft,about 90 minutes total.REBECCA is complete at 130 minutes, and not 104 as stated.My copy is in 2x800 and 1x1200 reels.
They all sold for $189.Mind you that PORTRAIT OF JENNIE and THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE were released complete, in the good old standard 8 days,in England. But,no version of JENNY,english or american,has the color ending.

Posted by Brad Kimball (Member # 5) on October 28, 2014, 06:42 PM:

The final reel was also tinted green, too. Such a shame because I prefer to see "Jennie" as William Dieterle intended. O'h well.....

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