8mm Forum: Alias St. Nick

This is topic Alias St. Nick - MGM cartoon in forum 8mm Print Reviews at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Iman Yahya (Member # 5842) on November 01, 2018, 07:07 AM:

Courtesy of the Super 8 Warehouse, here's what seems to be an unusual find on Super 8.

A charming long 10 minute MGM cartoon from 1935. On Christmas Eve, a cat disguises himself as Santa Claus with a stolen bag of toys in order to infiltrate a home full of excited young mice. Unfortunately for him, a rebellious young mouse sees through his disguise and his gifted toys are soon turned against him.

Like many Happy Harmonies, older 8mm/16mm home movie prints seem to be fairly common from Pictoreels, Mountain Films in the UK etc. However this is different, the source material has English sound with superimposed French subtitles (white text in a black box). To the top it off, this has German titles spliced in the beginning and end with the title "Der Verkannte Weihnachtsmann".

The print's on Agfa polyester stock and the colours are exceptional. Sound is unusually crisp as well, interestingly there's no balance stripe. Some very light lines, marks and infrequent jumps around splices crop up, seemingly mostly coming from the pre-print source. However it otherwise feels like I'm watching an original Technicolor print from the 1930s!

I'm really curious who could have released this print, one I'll definitely run again around Christmas. I'd like to give a shout-out again to Bert for his excellent web-shop and taking the time to give a brief description of every print he has listed so far. I was certainly pleased with my purchase arriving pretty much as advertised.

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