ClassicFlix Newsletter - Volume 2, Issue 4

THE PROUD REBEL

The big news today is that we will be restoring The Proud Rebel (1958) and releasing it on Blu-ray and DVD. Starring Alan Ladd (Shane), Olivia de Havilland (The Heiress) and Dean Jagger (Twelve O'Clock High), the Technicolor Western was helmed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) and produced by Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. (Man With a Gun).

The film also features a young David Ladd (Alan's son), as well as Cecil Kellaway, Henry Hull and Harry Dean Stanton.

Extras will include an interview with David Ladd shot this year and conducted by Alan Rode. Rode, a Curtiz biographer, will also be doing an audio commentary for the film.

About the film elements: The Proud Rebel material we have acquired is a 4K scan of an IB Tech print. It has some inherent flaws, but will be, by far, the best presentation of this beloved western once we're done restoring it. The clip below is from our first restoration pass and it shows the relative sharpness of the material. The clean up thus far has been very minimal and there is a long way to go. No color grading or correction was done to the clip, either.

Release is expected later this year or early next.

HI DIDDLE DIDDLE

A screwball comedy with few rivals, Hi Diddle Diddle (1943) and all its madcap glory officially streeted yesterday and is now shipping!

Starring Dennis O'Keefe, Adolphe Menjou, Billie Burke, Martha Scott, Pola Negri, June Havoc and Walter Kingsford this one-of-a-kind film features animated wallpaper, breaking of the fourth wall and an actress who shows up in almost every scene playing different characters because she's "a special friend of the director's"—Hi Diddle Diddle has to be seen to be believed.

Buy a copy today and see a clip from our restored release below.

SILVER SERIES SALE

Our Silver Series line turns five this month and to celebrate we're holding the line's first-ever sale!

It all started with our hugely popular June 2018 release of The Complete Hal Roach Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly Comedy Collection, and now, 27 releases later, the line is still going strong and will ramp up even more in the coming months and years.

Titles on sale for the first time include Life With Father (1947), The O. Henry Playhouse, Vol. 3, The Night Has Eyes (1942) and The Human Monster (1939)

Thanks for supporting this line and enjoy the savings in this sale!

Sale ends this Sunday, June 18th.

SILENT LITTLE RASCALS

We continue to work on the restorations for Volume 1 of our upcoming of the silent Little Rascal (Our Gang) collection. Scans on over 60 silent Our Gang shorts (of the surviving 88) have been performed to date and we continue to look for additional material to fill in gaps of missing footage from the scans we already have.

We hope to announce the release soon with a likely fall 2023 street date. Below is the cover art for Volume 1 as well as a restoration in progress clip we just posted from the 1923 Our Gang short The Cobbler.

FAQ

Just one FAQ this edition and it has to do with subtitles on our Silver Series line. We do get questions about this from time to time and would like to clear the air on this issue.

The purpose of our Silver Series line is to release longed-for classics on home video which sit in studio vaults and other archives collecting dust—shining the light of day on such lesser-known titles by making them available in affordable, no-frill editions. To be able to do this, budgets must be kept as low as possible so the line (unlike feature films on our top line) does not include subtitles.

And because the physical media market is shrinking by 30% a year, many more of our releases will be Silver Series in order for us to continue to keep the label alive and put out as many classics as we can on BD. The more support for our Silver Series BD releases the more likely we'll be able to continue putting neglected titles on BD. The less, the more likely those releases will be put on DVD or not come out at all.

In short, the market won't support both budgeting for subtitles and the higher price we'd have to charge to pay for them, so we'd rather release the films without them than not at all.