You tube is taking me back to my very early super 8 days with the films they have uploaded. I watched Kronos the very first film I hired from Derann, a b/w 4x400ft. My memory had faded about this one. After watching the full version the abridged one worked better.

I noticed it was on e ebay last year too. Another one is The Blood Beast Terror. I have the bluray, but the 4x400 works better as does Island Of Terror. Some of course don't work as well.

I think depending on the film 200ft extract worked OK for the Disney titles and some others where they didn't try to tell a story, 400ft never seemed long enough and some tried to get to much plot in. 2x400ft or 600ft were the better, then 3x400ft, but they wasted footage with credits on each reel. 4x400ft at the time when a lot of films had shorter running times was in the main not too bad. Then complete features I liked too,again some could have been abridged but it was proberly cheaper to print them from the negatives than start to cut them down.

I missed buying some titles because they weren't in scope, kind of regret that now. I also missed some good titles by sticking to the main dealers, although Regent Films did have a good selection of imports.

Certain 2x600ft cut downs work out far longer than some of my 3x 400ft abridged features.

Never Say Never Again springs to mind. Really decent running time on this one. Gremlins is another.
It obviously helps the fact these films are on Polyester and some of my older 3x 400ft are on the thicker acetate.

i very much liked the 4 x 400 foot feature lengths, obviously a full film is always prefered, i do enjoy many versions of films, there are some very good 400 footers, some really good 600 and 2x400s but as Andrew said, a few of the 2 x 600s were excellent. A couple we have is Gremlins, really well edited and also the little seen on 8mm 633 squadron, very well edited. one of my favourite films,(and i wish i could get a mint copy) is The wild Geese. Although sold as a 3x400 it does fit perfectly on 2 x 600s and runs for pretty much the same time as gremlins and 633.

I know you do what I do myself Tom as far as searching yourself constantly for your "wants" list, but now you've said, I will keep an extra eye out for The Wild Geese. Two sets of eyes are better than one as they say, especially as we now all tend to work peculiar hours.

cheers,
i think Derann did an outstanding job on this title, ours is ok but we got it very cheap many years ago and it was cheap because it has quite a few black lines. God knows what the previous owner did with it.

Derann did do great jobs on the 3x400 2x600ft of those films. The Wild Geese very good edit as were the others.

I think I will need to find two near mint copies then now Tom! Ha Ha Ha. Yours is first mate.