What was your last Derann feature?

[Osi Osgood]

Different slant here. My last/ latest buy of a Derann feature, is "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", a lovely near mint print from Germany, for 500.00 dollars. A stretch for me, but I had to finally have it, as it was always on my list!

[Rob Young]

The classic Hammer movie, “The Reptile”.

A birthday present from the rest of my family in 2004.

Although I continued to buy lots of other new stuff until the end.

It was a great surprise, although it nearly all went quite wrong. The package arrived from Derann one day but I hadn’t ordered anything?! Actually, this had happened before…I once received two 16mm features meant for another collector by mistake. I very nearly just returned it thinking it was just another mistake. For some reason I just thought, let’s just have a sneaky look inside; can’t do any harm.

Then I see several reels of The Reptile inside. My first thought was, how bizarre that they’ve sent me a movie I’d love to own by mistake…then…oh, hang on just a minute…then it dawns on me, it IS meant for me!!

Imagine if I’d sent it back…

[Steve Klare]

There were two new Derann features I really wanted. There was Toy Story, which my wife bought me, and then there was Fantasia 2000.

Fantasia 2000 is on 4x600'. Derann had this tempting offer: one reel at a time, 6 months to pay with no interest. This became my plan: two years with a new reel every 6 months. At a time when I had a big mortgage, a car payment, a kid in day-care and not super-reliable employment, it was a solid plan!

-but history got in the way and before I got around to it, Derann stopped selling new prints. (-just around the time day-care ended...dammit!)

Of course, being me, this lost opportunity didn't stay a secret: I whined about it on here, probably a couple of times. (It was "the one that got away"!)

A good friend approached me at CineSea a few years later and said he wanted to move his own Fantasia 2000 on, and for a price that said to me "I want you to have this!". It would have been really rude to haggle, and I didn't!

Strange seeing a movie you've never seen before as a Super-8 print. On the last reel, in the last segment (The Firebird Suite), the audio is quiet, and the Water Sprite approaches a withered stump and touches it. Within something like 2 seconds it unfolds into the Firebird, and he fills the screen with flames! Right then, the whole orchestra shows up with kettle drums out front!

-now, I'm sitting there on my living room couch with a glass of wine and all of a sudden the wall in front of me is on FIRE!

I came very close to wearing that glass of wine!

In case anybody tells you Super-8 on-screen simply fails to impress, you send 'em my way! I'll send 'em home soaked in Port!


I very briefly had The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was sent to me by mistake. I told Gary B. about it and said I wanted to send it back. He made the arrangements and said it was OK to watch it first, so we did! It's as close as I will ever come to having a rental print.

[Rob Young]

Crikey Steve, and I thought sending the wrong film a hundred miles up the road from Dudley to Manchester was a big blunder!

Was that the Disney Hunchback? I owned one for a while from new and the print was stunning. One of those that maybe I regret selling…a bold movie for Disney and one of their best films. I also saw this for the first time on super 8. I took a risk on it at Blackpool in the late 90’s and didn’t regret it.

[Steve Klare]

It was the Disney Hunchback.

I watched the used list for a while after I sent it back and never saw it there. I have a feeling it wound up with whoever asked for it in the first place.

Eh!... "York", "New York"...all the same!

[Mark McLaughlin]

I bought Fantasia 2000 back when it came out and like most of my Derann features regret selling them now.

[Steve Klare]

We have a friend who is a huge Disney fan who visits us quite often (-has a park membership, goes there several times a year, has "It's a Small World After All" stuck in her head....permanently!).

I know she loves the 1940 Fantasia, so I invited her to see my Fantasia 2000 print. She flatly refused!

(-A Purist!)

Honestly? Maybe they are even different, but to me '2000 is really great and a worthy successor to the original. For example The Pines of Rome with its Humpback Whales is something ol' Walt himself would have been proud of.

If they'd stuck to Walt Disney's original idea, we would still have a "2000" and also ones like maybe "1947" and "1953" and "1961"...(etc.).

I'm in the mood to watch it now. My ST-1200HD is on Injured Reserve right now, so I'll have to watch...(well, "listen")...monaurally. Even though '2000 is a stereo print, this still works pretty well. The musical sections work fine, but this one segment where Bette Midler introduces 'The Steadfast Tin Soldier", she is mostly in the right speaker and a little muffled. Rather than wait until I can dig into the twin-track machine, I can compromise a little.

[Graham Ritchie]

This would have been my last feature, the color and sound are still excellent and screen it every so often.

[David Monard Ice]

I would love to find a good scope print of LADY AND THE TRAMP

[Paul Adsett]

My last Derann feature print was Disney's Lady and The Tramp. in color and stereo sound. It is an absolutely stunning quality print razor sharp with glorious color, looks like 35mm. The Derann stereo track was OK but I got a superb track by re-recording off the DVD.
If only all super 8 prints could have acheived this level of perfection.

[Osi Osgood]

"The Pines of Rome" was strangely, the only segment I didn't like. I had this feature, but it was so bluish, I had to pass it on. I've seen other copies that don't look quite as bad, so they certainly lucked out. This is one feature that can certainly benefit from a quality rerecord. I so wish that Derann had kept it's deal with a Disney one more year, as Atlantis: The list Empire came out that next year, and I would have LOVED having a scope feature of that. The only other complete Disney feature I have is Snow White, a stunning print, rivals 16mm! Would anyone say that "Fox and the Hound" would be among the rarest Derann/Disney features? I rarely see a print of that come up.

[Steve Klare]

The feature itself and videos struck from it are kind of blue too, and then maybe you add the blue tint that wasn't at all rare in late Derann prints, but this one was destined to be blue pretty much from the beginning.

Pines of Rome on YouTube

Tastes will vary, and that's the way it's supposed to be, but the first time I saw it, my mind was properly boggled!

(They made whales...FLY! )

[David Kilderry]

I can't actually recall the last films I bought direct from Derann, but last year I was able to pick up The Sound of Music and Speed. TSOM is the sharpest Super 8 scope print I have owned. It really is a beautiful print. Not my favourite film, but I just kept watching it. Speed was also good, but a mate really wanted it and given I have a 35mm copy, I sold it to him.