As it's now 52 weeks to go to Christmas, I thought I'd start this week with showing a feature film per week to get in 52 in the next 12 months, (or two mini features). No particular order,. whatever comes off the shelf. Will review a few unless already done on here previously.

Good luck with your quest Tom,Mark

Week 1, film one, we put up our print of the classic Sci-fi Forbidden Planet. A good print but never having seen another print ourselves to compare it to, it is a good print with excellent colours, (much more vivid than the screenshots shown), and very good sound. There are a few scenes which have some lab marks but I dont know if this is on all prints or just this one, another oddity is "The End title", there is no splice at all here, but when it goes from the last perfect screen shot to the actual title, the first part suddenly has black lines, as soon as "The End" dissapears for the cast and crew, its all fine again, weird, but again, these are perfect. Overall, a good hard to find feature and number one in our 52 weeks 52 features.

Pervious screenshots here,

Forbidden Planet Feature colour Sound.

A few from today,

Looks great Tom, loving the 52 feature thing, I'm going to watch a few more films too,Mark

Tom,

A great idea to do 52 features in 52 weeks! Forbidden Planet looks extremely nice...Looking forward to the next 51!

Tom,
Like it👍
As 2024 is going to be a leap year,perhaps you should have an extra film on the 29th February 😁😁😁

Your right Gwyn, I suspect there will be a few additions, it will also alternate between 8 and 16mm, I will add each one we view to this same thread.

Forbidden Planet was a lucky buy at our last Ealing visit all those years ago, it was on the bring and buy table for £60 so we took a punt and it was a very good buy. Colours are still very good with no fade and it does fill 2 x 800ft reels. Originally on 5 x 400 reels. I'm not too sure who released this feature, was it Derann or Red fox perhaps? Such a pity it wasn't released in scope. Image is good if a tad softer than Deranns LPP features of the 80s and 90s but I'm guessing this will be due to squeezing it up to 4:3, still very good all the same, fun seeing such a young Leslie Nielson.
Considering this was made in 1956 the effects, (while obviously dated) are very good, it's easy to see where those shots of Obi-Wan Kenobi deactivating the entire tractor grid in the huge deep shaft were influenced from.

Week 2 film 2,
Zulu Dawn on 16 in scope, with an all-star cast including Peter O Tool, Burt Lancaster, Simon Ward, Bob Hoskins, Denholm Elliott, and the list goes on. As always with British history, the Hollywood bash the British BS is in there but none the less, it is a very good film.
The film tonight was preceded by our scope trailers for 2001 a space odyssey and the Hateful 8.
A few images here but also more in the reviews here,

Zulu Dawn. 16mm Scope Feature.

The Hateful Eight / 2001: A Space Odyssey Trailers

Week 2 film 3.
An extra film viewing this week with my scope low fade print of the musical western, Paint your wagon from 1969.
How do you go from enjoying films like Silence of the lambs, Die Hard and T2 to this? Simple, it is a funny film with two huge stars, Lee Marvin, (always brilliant) and Clint Eastwood.
The print is in very good condition and on the scope screen looks superb, unfortunately, the colours don’t show up so well with these screen shots but you get a good idea.
This print, as marked on its original leader, is a “short version” and I believe this to be an alternative, version released after the initial main release had done the rounds, in my opinion I think this 3 x 1600 version is better, it certainly removes a chunk of padding, especially in the first reel as two of the three songs which have been edited out would have been within reel one. The way in which they have been taken out is quite well done, unless you know where these song numbers are, you will not know, dissolves and different music in these parts have been used and the transitions are perfect.
This is what I found about the shorter version,
“On its release to what were then called "neighbourhood theatres" (i.e. theatres which showed films that had ended their first runs downtown), the film's running time was shortened by having three songs eliminated, "I Still See Elisa", "The First Thing You Know", and "Gold Fever". This left both Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood with only one solo song each. The film was restored to its original length for its first television showing, and has remained that way ever since”. I’ll stick with this shorter version.
I’ve not heard of this shorter before I bought it so I have no idea if this is a common version or a rare version, either way a very enjoyable film with Lee Marvin providing some good laughs.




Eivind, As this is a mix of 8 and 16mm film over the next 12 months, are you able to move this to "Film talk in general" please?

Week 4 film 4
Zulu, scope feature 16mm low fade print. A classic film from 1964 British action war film depicting the Battle of Rourke's Drift between a detachment of the British Army and the Zulu in 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War, in which 150 British soldiers, 30 of whom were sick and wounded, at a remote outpost, held off a force of 4,000 Zulu warriors. This battle took place on the same day as the one depicted in Zulu Dawn.

Some great films there tom, with excellent colour, unlike some you see that are obviously faded crap .........

Most Excellent.....................Nearly as good as my copy.......only joking
As said Tom a great film all round one never gets fed up of watching.
Not forgetting "Paint Your Wagon" another of my favorites.

Thanks Gwyn, this print does have some light lines and a around 6 splices which is nothing for a film on 3 reels, but you dont always see the lines on screenshots.
Always a great viewing though, especially reel three, this one could stands alone as a good all action viewing.
I was always surprised that this titles never made it to super 8, it would make a very good 3 x 40 release in scope. A flat print wouldn't do this film justice.

Tom , think that this is a film that stands the test of time.you rarely see a print come up for sale on the open market and I think one that will hold its price.Have to agree reel three takes some beating,John Barry’s music sets the scene especially ove the opening title,and I do think Richard Burtons narration adds to the picture.I owned the LP ,which I still have long before the film.
A super 8 version personally I don’t think would do it justice on3 x 400 maybe a full feature,makes the 16mm version a bit more sought after.
Did you know Stanley Bakers character Lt Chard was born in Plymouth and he attended the New Plymouth Grammer School.
Full of useless information……….
A very good film,one of my favourites.

Whenever we sit through through films like this my Brother will make a comment on the facts and errors in movies depicting historical events, two he picks out every time we view this film which irritate him are that Lt John Chard was half blind at this point in his life which makes what he achieved at Rourke's Drift even more astonishing.
The film depicts Michael Caines character, Gonville Bromhead as a foppish aristocrat, he was actually the opposite to this.
As Gwyn said, Lt Chard was indeed born in Boxhill, which then was on the outskirts of Plymouth but is now firmly within the city limits in Pennyrcoss.
A classic movie which as already said, never dates.

Week 5 Film 5
This week we viewed our 16mm low fade scope print of the John Wayne movie Chisum.
Many parts of this movie are based on true events including the inclusion of Billy the kid and Pat Garrett.
It depicts correctly that during the Kids stay at this part of the country he was going straight as well as the event where Billy wanting revenge for the killing of Governor Samuel Beach Axtell, he was sceptical that justice would be done in Lincoln, knocks out Garrett and kills Morton and Baker. He then rides into town, publicly murdering Brady before fleeing.



For the fuller review go here, for those interested.

Chisum Scope Colour low fade/ IB

Eye popping colour print Tom, what a find, i bet that looks fantastic on the big screen, scope as well, what a find ................

It is pretty good, almost looks like technicolur, il check later, theres two images in there which were added parts to replace a little bit of damage, again, done so well done it matches perfectly.

Week 5, Film 6
Now cleaned up and replaced two splices, I'm adding this one in as we viewed it last week but didn't add it here. It's better the second time around, it's quite strange to see what is now a world respected comedian in these very early days with the raw footage, no comforts other than a bog standard hotel room, the most basic of changing rooms and kipping in a foyer chair while old ladies sit around him drinking their afternoon tea the afternoon of his first show.

Week 5 film 7 Dark Star 1974.

A few extra films of late and tonight I cleaned and viewed my copy of the Iver 4 x 400ft release of the cult Sci-fi Dark Star mounted on 2 x 800s. Written & directed by John Carpenter, who also wrote the music for it, and Dan O Bannon, who also edited the film and plays sergeant Pinback.
The screenplay was written by Carpenter and O'Bannon while they were film students at the University of Southern California.
The "Beachball with Claws" segment of the film was reworked by O'Bannon into the science fiction-horror film Alien. After witnessing audiences failing to laugh at parts of Dark Star which were intended as humorous, O'Bannon commented, "If I can't make them laugh, then maybe I can make them scream.

A very good print in good condition which I bought around 35/40 years ago, there are very few marks on it and it is clearly low fade, this copy has no fade. I did have the double album for many years but found it unsatisfactory as a cut. Good picture and sound although not up to the standards of the LPP prints from Derann but this was a mid to late 70s release on super 8 from Iver along with titles like the Texas Chainsaw massacre, if I remember correctly.



I did a review here.

Dark Star 4x400ft Iver Feature.

Week 6, Film 8. A night to remember feature version.

For my Brothers choice tonight we viewed this old classic 1958 film about the Titanic, the original and best version. This particular feature version runs for an hour and a half and the 5 x 400 reels are mounted on three full 600ft reels, the full length film runs for 123 minutes so this super 8 feature is shortened by around 20/25 minutes. The result is actually beneficial as this version of the film is almost straight into the action with the collision into the iceberg being within the 200 to 300ft of the start taking out some of the padding. I did do a review some time ago here,

A night to remember. Feature, (abridged) B/w Sound

Week 7, film 9
Von Ryan’s express, 2 x 1200ft abridged feature.

Tonight was this classic film from 1965 starring Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard originally supplied on 5 x 400ft reels.
A film we have had for several decades and while it still looks good and still has colours there is some fade in there now, the onscreen image is much better than these screenshots but overall it is a good print with good sound. Like many super 8 films that have been squeezed up from cinema scope to full 4:3 it is a sod to focus, but it is a pretty good with very few marks.

Nice one to have Tom,would not mind this one on 16mm.
If memory serves me the ending is different in the novel as Ryan escapes.
👍👍

Gwyn, that is correct, I'm not really too sure why they decided to change the ending in the movie but it appears it was Sinatra himself who insisted on the change which made sure there was no sequel.
A scope 16mm would be a good find. This print still holds good colour but does clearly have some fade now as I think most prints of this do. I think this was one of our oldest features in the collection, I cant recall when it was released as a feature length but it must be at least 35 years old.

I have this on 8 too tom, not watched in long time now, i believe this revived sinatra's film career, i do like this, entertaining with a good british cast............