Day the Earth Stood Still Ken Digest

[Douglas Meltzer]

Getting back to the digest, I remember thinking that the edit was a big disappointment. Ken decided to feature the event that the title refers to, when the world's transportation comes to a halt. We hardly see Klaatu's spaceship and the worst part is Gort the robot barely makes an appearance. To top it all off, there's no "Klaatu barada nikto!"

[Mike Newell]

Really was a title that deserved a 400ft digest release. Suppose it is lucky the release was sound and not silent. Ken did make some strange title releases choices . The Planet of the Apes digests were all released as 200s and would have been best sellers if issued as 400 digests.

Yet, they released “dealer list perennial awfuls” like Desiree, Love is Many Splendid Thing, Turning Point, Farewell to Arms and Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother (bought that for 50 pence) plus the infamous F61 we don’t talk about.

[Adrian Winchester]

I bought one of the full length prints from CHC, and I believe only 10 were printed. It certainly didn't have a video look and it would have been quite a nice print if not for all the imperfections. Apart from the missing frames on the master, it had more white specks in dark scenes than I've ever seen on any other print! The sound on mine was dreadful, with frequent wow, so I opted for a partial refund and a mute print, but I underestimated the difficulty of getting it recorded. When I asked Keith Wilton if he could help, he said "I already have a full time job!" Eventually, Phil was able to put me in touch with an Italian collector who was looking for a mute print and so I happily sold it to him, having warned him about the drawbacks.

[Rob Young]

Thanks for clarifying that Adrian.

Just to prove I'm not totally losing it, I checked the original review in Film For The Collector No. 46, Autumn 2000.

"Visitors to my home cinema are always impressed by the clarity of the pictures. I don't think they would be quite so impressed with this. It has an almost video projected nature to the picture so that should keep many collectors happy as they consider that medium to be superior to film (burks!!!)."

This was subsequently edited out of the review on the BFCC site, so maybe this was a review print with issues that were corrected for the release prints?

[Mike Newell]

Be interesting to see if one of these prints turn up on eBay at a silly price.

[Osi Osgood]

F 61?

[Adrian Winchester]

Rob - to be honest, I can't guess what prompted the words "video projected nature to the picture", especially as despite this clearly not being a compliment, video projection had reached a pretty high standard by 2000! I think the distractions caused by the specks, splices and sound made evaluating the print quality unusually difficult, but my recollection is that it was at least reasonably sharp, and if the sound had been recorded better, I think I could have lived with the flaws. I have the 200' and I think it was sharper than this. I believe the release happened as a result of CHC being able to borrow the negative, so perhaps there are some 16mm prints in circulation derived from the same negative.

Fortunately, I subsequently obtained a nice 16mm print. It's not difficult to find on 16mm as there are far more prints around than apply to most titles, although some are dupes of mediocre quality.