8mm Forum: Very Rare Flying Leathernecks. Colour

This is topic Very Rare Flying Leathernecks. Colour in forum 8mm Print Reviews at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on May 29, 2014, 03:08 PM:

Now here is a film we have had forever, its one that is very common on super 8 as a 4 x 400 foot feature but 99.9% of the time it is only in b/w. This one is in glorious colour and what a print, not a hint of fade at all.
Starring John Wayne, Robert Ryan & Don Taylor and directed by Nicholas Yay and produced by Edmund Grainger. This film is edited from a 102 minutes to around 70 and unless you have seen the full feature you would not know where the cuts are, it's been very well edited, the action is fast n furious and is a great mix of acting and actual war footage, all in excellent colour.
Major Dan Kirby arrives at VMF-247 (wildcats) as the new commander, he is strict and makes this clear from day one. They have few planes at there disposal and come under Japanese attack constantly, Kirby is also a big fan of low ground attack to support the Marines, but until many are lost HQ do not approve of his tactics. In his most successful mission he leads his squadron in an attack on a huge Japanese fleet based on the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.

We did have a b/w feature of this movie but this one came up at our local dealer Movieland International, we had never seen it advertised anywhere as being available in colour but picked it up for £50. I have to say in colour this really is a whole new film and I simply could not watch the b/w versions again.
Just look at these shots,(incidentally, these shots as always are taken with a simple digital camera as it was projected so the image is much better again on screen).
Can anyone enlighten me on this release? Was it also from Mountain film? Barry Attwood was chatting to me some years ago at Ealing and did mention that he would love to get hold of a colour copy of this movie.

Posted by Mark Williams (Member # 794) on May 29, 2014, 04:06 PM:

Great Review Tom [Smile]

Yes Mountain Films released this colour version too but in a ltd number as the B/W prints were more common.

Nice to hear the colour is holding up well on your print too.

Posted by Keith Ashfield (Member # 741) on May 29, 2014, 05:28 PM:

I also have a COLOUR print of this title and again the colour is very good.

The film stock is AGFA.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on May 30, 2014, 06:24 AM:

Brill, I was beginning to think we were alone [Big Grin]

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on May 30, 2014, 01:10 PM:

Very nice color and AGFA besides! No wonder the color has held up so well!

Posted by Adrian Winchester (Member # 248) on May 31, 2014, 01:55 PM:

Considering how bad the fade is on many Mountain releases, you're both very lucky!

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on June 01, 2014, 02:53 AM:

That's what we thought when we viewed it Thursday evening, its the first time through the projector for over five years.

Posted by Mike Newell (Member # 23) on August 03, 2015, 05:22 PM:

Derann printed copies of Flying Leathernecks for a while which is why there are a low fade prints about. They had access to negatives from Mountain. King Kong and Citizen Kane would be other examples.

Posted by Winbert Hutahaean (Member # 58) on August 06, 2015, 05:16 AM:

Then I think the above prints are from Derann.

Some Ken's 400' and MGM's 3 x 400'are also found to be reprinted by Derann and they are as good as the above screen shots.

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 06, 2015, 03:49 PM:

well, ours was genuinely from mountain, it came in an all in one box with the spools fitting neatly into separate sleeves within the box. The box cover had the mountain films logo in the middle and cartoony like drawings of various characters including John waynes true grit character.We had the same box for several old mountain films.
The only one we ever had from mountain in clam shells was another very rare print which we still have and that was Run of the arrow, full length in colour supplied on (i think) 6 or 7 400 foot posh boxes. And the colour on that one is also still very good.

Posted by Mike Newell (Member # 23) on August 10, 2015, 08:41 AM:

Tom you would know with the film stock. The mountain prints had good colour but were slightly softer than the Derann prints..

Posted by Tom Photiou (Member # 130) on August 10, 2015, 11:42 AM:

I shall try and find out the stock, your right on that one though, the image is slightly soft, a pain to focus.

Posted by Mike Newell (Member # 23) on August 10, 2015, 02:26 PM:

The Derann print ironed out a few of the kinks but the battle sequence at the end using real footage caused most of the focus problems. I was able to get film onto 1 x 600 and 1 800 reel. That said it has great colour, great story and is very repeatable.

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