8mm Forum: From Russia With Love (optical sound)

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Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on September 09, 2009, 01:15 PM:

Hey, it has been a while since I did a review, and this is as likely a candidate as any feature I own.

I have always appreciated the earlier Bond films, as they were far more cemented in "reality". This one, in particular, is a classic spy vs. spy film.

Our intrepid James Bond (007 to friends and enemies alike!) Is sent out on the hunt for a decoder device. Before this happens, a killer is being trained to take out 007, played by none other than the always excellent Robert Shaw! Meanwhile, a ravishing young woman, a Russian spy, is unknowingly recruited by Spectre to be Bond's love interest. She does her job well.

In the meantime, our intrepid Bond goes through many adventures, coming out of each and every one unscathed, (naturally, though sometimes he appears shaken, yet not quite stirred by the ad-
-ventures; couldn't help it!).

A large portion of the adventure, (after having stolen the decoder), happens on a train trip. Bond's allie is killed, and Robert Shaw gets the best of Bond; briefly, only for Bond to deftly take him out with gas explosive briefcase and a wonderful struggle.

They get off the train, onto a truck, (left for the now dead villian), and they then try to escape a low flying murderous helicopter, (can helicopters be murderous?). The Helicopter loses.

They then board a boat (get it, kind of a "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" theme?) and Bond, after having dumped large barrels of fuel off his boat, explodes them with a handy flare, (with some flare, HAW!), and blows up the pursuing boats, leaving them in flames.

Having successfully made it to Venice Italy, they think they are in the clear, until the woman who recruited Bond's love interest, tries to steal the decoder and kill Bond, with a poisoned dagger in her shoe. She dies, being killed by Bond's love interest ...

" She got her kicks. " remarks Bond.

And the film ends with Bond making whoopee in a Gondola to Matt Monro singing the Theme song at the end. The ending has a slight interest, as after the end credits finish, (and since the song is not finished), we stay on that shot of Venice, rocking up and down. In a lot of modern films, they would have any number of shots, but I found that they stayed on this shot,without anymore credits, and I personally liked it.

THE END

These optical features were slightly abridged, (this print runs 100 minutes), but you do not miss too much of the plot, as Peter Hunt did a brilliant job of the editing. Bricolli, the son of the producer, personally supervised these Bond releases in the early 80's as airline features, as he did a pretty good job ...

All except in one regard ...

I had noted that the color through out this film print was faded, and I could easily tell that it was a KODAK SP print, (due to the browning of the color), but something caught me off guard in reel three ...

Ten minutes into reel three, the color suddenly got pretty darn good, almost perfect. When I finished the reel, I decided to go to that p[oint in the reel and inspect the color. I expected to find a splice from the last owner ...

I didn't. Instead, I found that in the labs, they spliced the reels themselves, (in other words, no actual splice on the actual film, just a lab splice before printing).

This tells me that the seperate negative reels for this varied in color quality sharply, the last twenty minutes dsefinitely being the best. A shame that he didn't have good control over that part of the process.

Tom Pennock, one of our own esteemed members, (and an authority on these "Bond" optical Super 8 features) had these insightful comments in regard to these prints ...

" Bond Co-Producer Cubby Broccoli himself supervised these airline prints. I came to the conclusion that he purposely had them printed on a stock that would fade and fade soon. To get them out of collectors hands. This was the reason why he ALSO insisted on using the optical soundtracks and said an absolute NO to magnetic soundtracks. He knew most did not have access to optical sound playback equipment. Ray Courts was the one who rescued these airline 8mm prints. The airlines in full agreement (binding too) with EON were instructed to destroy ALL these Bond optical features after use. But unknowingly to EON Ray struck a deal with the airlines and rescued these films.

Not sure why these prints fade in different sections at a different rate. They are all on the same stock. Unless the pre-print in some cases was faded to begin with. A print is ONLY as good as the negative used. "

I concur ...

I have a personal theory about these Bond prints. Perhaps another factor in the variable color quality ...

Perhaps each specific feature, (not seperate reels of each feature) were sent to different film labs. One perchance, used Kodak SP; another lab ... L.P.P. If this is the case, this would explain the variable quality of each specific feature which were all released within months, but would have drastic differences in color quality.

That being said, the focus is incredible on this print, as is the grain. There is no wash-out to the print. The sound is also VERY good for mono. I really enjoyed listening to the soundtrack music on this print and I would definitely reccomend this print as a good candidate to show just how good an optical track can sound with the right optical projector.

A fine movie experience.

Print : A
Color : B
Focus : A plus
Sound : A plus

LONG LIVE SUPER 8!!

[ September 25, 2009, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: Osi Osgood ]

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