Son of Red Print Theater : JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS ( 1963 )

[David Baker]

Welcome to : Son of red print theater !!



WELCOME - TO THE NEW 8MM FORUM !

HENCE " SON OF RED PRINT THEATER " !
Hello fellow film fiends !
This month's selection is …..JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS ( 1963 )...ON SUPER 8MM !

Yes , that's right...it's the 4 Columbia Pictures Digests , you know , the ones we ALL had...at one time or other ...that ended up with that dreadful " Eastman Fade " !!

The legendary Greek hero leads a team of intrepid adventurers in a perilous quest for the legendary Golden Fleece.

Jason has been prophesied to take the throne of Thessaly. When he saves Pelias from drowning, but does not recognize him as the man who had earlier killed his father, Pelias tells Jason to travel to Colchis to find the Golden Fleece. Jason follows his advice and assembles a sailing crew of the finest men in Greece, including Hercules. They are under the protection of Hera, queen of the gods. Their voyage is replete with battles against harpies, a giant bronze Talos, a hydra, and an animated skeleton army, all brought to life by the special effects wizardry of Ray Harryhausen.











Jason and The Argonauts is a great film to watch and escape reality. This is one of those movies that you know is not real but you just enjoy it and have fun watching it. I think this film is underrated because it was not given one Oscar nomination. I think this film should have been nominated for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration, Cinematography, Bernard Herrmann's Original Score and Film Editing. When I first saw this movie as a 9 year old kid at the drive-in one night, I was TOTALLY excited to see the Skeleton Fight at the end which took Ray Harryhausen and special effects crew three months to create that entire sequence. This is a Great movie and I encourage all of "The Lord of The Rings" fans to watch this and see a great masterpiece of classic fantasy and old fashioned special effects.


Here is my home-made film case for one of my very favorite RED PRINTS !!

[Larry Arpin]

There were a handful of prints on low fade. I wanted to replace the jump cut when Talos rounds the cliff in my Derann feature but there was a noticeable change in quality. So I sold it.

[Douglas Meltzer]

David,

Thank you for the write up. The 4 part cutdowns of Jason & Sinbad were early highlights of my first go round at collecting. Columbia did an excellent edit job on these.

[Philip Hamilton]

I love this movie. Have it on Bluray and it looks great. But.....not as fun as projecting it from an 8mm projector. I wish there were an easy and inexpensive way to 'correct' the EASTMAN fade. I have several color 8mm films that have faded.

[Brad Kimball]

I love the “Red Print Theater” idea. Genius.

[David Baker]

Why THANK YOU Brad , GLAD to hear that ! Check out the NEW Red Print Theater feature over on the 16mm Print Review threads.....

[Osi Osgood]

There are some prints that I literally hang onto because they may well be the only print remaining of the film on super 8, one print being, " They Only Kill They're Masters ".

[Brian Fretwell]

I remember seeing that in 1973 on a double Bill with Soylent Green IIRC.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Let's please stay on topic with Jason, Talos, Triton, the Harpies, and all seven Hydra heads. Thanks!

[Adrian Winchester]

I may be unusual in never having owned any of these, but I have the Derann 'Talos' extract, which is something like 12 minutes. I suppose one thing that made these releases special was that at the time, it might have been unprecedented for extracts from a particular film to add up to as much as 32 minutes.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Adrian,

Absolutely! Compared to the typical cutdowns, these made me feel like I had the whole feature....which I did end up getting, only about thirty years later!

[David L. Baker]

Hello David,
From Greensboro NC. I have a couple of these Jason prints in red, and like you enjoy them regardless. IMHO. Eastman red can find a place in the collectors inventory. Also want to let you know that I am one of the other David Baker's out there. I think that we have a number of mutual friends in this hobby. My son, David Jr. is in Englewood, Fl. and there may be a David Baker in Ohio with 35mm films. Take care, stay safe, stay well. David L. Baker

[Douglas Meltzer]

Hi David (North Carolina)! I hope all is well and it's great to see you posting here, especially in David's (Florida) thread! Now if you can get your son David (Englewood, Florida) to join the Forum that would be something!

Doug

[Gary Sayers]

I have very happy memories of hiring the four Columbia digests back in around 1975/6. They were the standard (regular) 8 B/W sound versions (I'm guessing it was cheaper to hire B/W from the film hire library - some place in Sheffield that I can't remember the name of) and I think I had them for two or three days.

I'd always loved the work of Ray Harryhausen and it was a no brainer what films I was going to order. They were fantastic and we had several showings at our house and even my uncle, who rarely visited, came to watch and experience the novelty of talking pictures projected at home.

Over the years, I've had various copies of each of the four digests in various states of condition (usually poor) and either sound or silent, B/W or colour but always super 8. I've never hung on to them for very long though due to the condition.

I'll always have a soft spot for the grainy B/W standard 8 copies that I projected all those years ago (no turning red problem either).

[Carter Bradley]

Hi David (North Carolina). I also live in Greensboro.