Well, what a balls up of a film this was by U8. How the hell they managed to get this on the market with such a disappointing image is beyond me, especially when you consider these were £59.95 new when released. It's disgraceful that this past the quality test and actually got out. In my opinion all the film dealers should have refused to sell unless U8 did something about it.
This had the potential to be a very good super 8 release of an otherwise long drawn out movie. A great host of stars in this one, Roger Moore Antony Perkins, James Mason, Jack Watson, George Baker, the lost goes on.
Dont get me wrong, the actual edit of this package film is actually quite good, U8 also used fades and dissolves to avoid sudden cuts which makes the film flow very well, and on my own print, the colours are all still in there, the disappointment, (and this is very well known in our collecting world), is the utter crap picture quality, i remember reading something about this, it was to do with the process used to get the film full frame for Super 8. They should have done is as a flat 16:9 image. It's a bit like watching a film the a frosty window, just really annoying that this got out past the so called quality control. Very unusual for U8. The image is better than these pictures look but it's one we wont be hanging onto.
Anyway, the plot is very simple,
Counter-terrorism consultant Rufus Excalibur ffolkes (Moore) is asked by Lloyd's of London to develop a contingency plan should any of the North Sea oil installations they insure be threatened.
Months later, a North Sea supply ship takes on board a group of men posing as reporters who are to visit the oil production platform Jennifer. The leader of this group, Lou Kramer (Anthony Perkins), hijacks the ship and attaches limpet mines to the legs of an oil drilling rig, Ruth, then issues a ransom demand for £25 million
ffolkes, who has anticipated this kind of action, is tasked to recover the drilling rig.

Got this two parter too. Do not remember my colour condition, but think it was reddish

Found few pics frpmbefore

I've never watched this film Tom but having once got evacuated from one of these beasts for fear of the next Piper Alpha catastrophe, I'd be frightened to death to watch it I reckon!

It's just as well this one passed me by.

That's a very good film; my only knowledge of Universal 8 is when they first appeared and brought out about 5 B&W features; they were priced at £80, compared to the £55 or so I had been paying then. The only title I remember was 'Paul Muni and George Raft in 'Scarface' (1932), and I was persuaded to buy it by my father. I was disappointed by the quality, and expected a studio to produce better prints. What I have read since in the forums is that after they took over Castle Films, the quality dropped.

I think your right there Robert, some of the 2 x 400 footer are actually very good but there are a few that are well below par. This one is probably the very worst when it actually could have been very good.

Andy, yes i think you best avoid this one mate

I've had quite a few of the others first time around and most were fairly good cutdowns I thought.

Prints weren't bad at all for the era they were released as I remember them. On parity with the Marketing cut downs I'd say.

Nearly all are fading now unless stored in Antarctica or the UK just for tonight.
Brrrrrrr.

Vidar, out of curiosity, what do you use to take your screenshots with as thats exactly what mine looks like, my old digi camera just doesn't show the colours.

These pictures was either with a Sony DV camera or the Nikon D3200 camera, not the awful IPad camera I use now (it is simpler, but not better)

A camera is a camera, a phone is only ever a phone and the same for any other gadget pretending also to be a camera.

In this era, purpose built and designed solo use equipment is always the best route to take for any given intended purpose.
All else, is is little more than a gimmick.

I'm not a huge fan of camera phones i have to say, i would use my Nikon D5100 but thats for real photography not taking screenshot.

I've found that if I take screenshots with my camera, the screen is yellow, possibly because I'm using obsolete bulbs, not halogen. I get better results from the camera in the smartphone.

You should be able to correct this Robert using your white balance adjustments on a digital camera.

I'll look into that, thanks Andrew. I'm just having a problem at the moment with the camera, my computer upgraded to Windows 8.1, and now, when I want to download pics of the camera, it won't recognise the USB connection, saying it's out of date, but it recognises the smartphone, connected the same way?

You may need to find the latest software for your camera and install it onto your computer for it to recognize your device using 8.1 unless it is a very old one Robert.
Even 8.1 (2013) now is a few years old so you may be in luck. Windows 10 is the latest (Release date 2015).

Presumably your phone is newer and will be instantly recognized by the later software.

Agree with your post #5, Robert. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the “heyday” of Super 8 digests, and when these prints were mass produced, quality control wasn’t the hallmark of the package film industry at that time. For example, ALL of my MGM digests suffered from soft focus and poor sound quality. (And most of these were musicals, for Pete’s Sake!). Those and others are the prints I’m pruning and giving to some of my film-collecting colleagues.

During those years, one held one’s breath when first projecting a just-purchased (expensive) Super 8 print, given it was a total crap shoot as to the picture and sound quality.

I recall Universal 8 also releasing Jet Pilot and Hell’s Angels (?) as features, and the serial Pirates Treasure, but I could be wrong on any of those.

It was OK with just Windows 8; maybe I need to download the driver again. My desktop has Windows Vista. I'm not keen on Windows 10, which the wife has.

Hi John, those two titles you mentioned from U8 certainly sound familiar. We were buying in the dark, sometimes you got good picture and poor sound or vice versa. You paid your hard earned money and never knew what you were getting in return. I don't how others felt, but when I started out with a silent projector, and bought some L&H films, and I hadn't seen these on TV, I just thought how lucky I was to actually own it, even if the quality was not so good, it was that or nothing.

Agree on all your points, Robert — and I think at times the companies releasing these films knew that, too; that is, “it was that or nothing.” Outside of Castle, and occasionally Blackhawk, it seemed that overall print quality for one’s hard-earned dollars was not a priority. It appeared they employed the “just churn ‘em out” mentality.

Customers of other products were not expected to put up with what we collectors then were expected to put up with. For example, during that time, if a new record album was defective, customers promptly returned it to the store for a replacement/refund. Not so with what was a much more expensive product that film collectors were purchasing during the 1970s.

That has always been impossible to rectify in my mind.

That is true John. Niles prints are not that good in my estimation. I have one feature and some shorts from a company called Wing Films of Brooklyn; but no one seems to have any knowledge of them. The quality of them is pretty poor. The feature is a rare one, 'L&H in 'Nothing but Trouble', made after they left Hal Roach. I have the trailer from Canterbury films, and that shows you what could have been obtained.

Niles is the perfect example — In the late 1970s, I bought some Mack Sennett shorts from Niles, and I thought they were defective given the washed out quality. I then learned this was par for the course for Niles. Honestly, what some of these companies were foisting on collectors would not be tolerated by customers in any other industry. But we collectors weren’t the most discerning customer segment back then. And some of the film companies took advantage of that, in my view.

Fully agree there John.

We had a lot of verbal run ins with mail-master in the late 70's. The amount of times we sent back the 200ft colour sound Part one of Jason and the Argonauts was ridiculous, and part 4 as well.
We were sent no less than 6 of each, each one had various faults, part one even had different cuts which we could not believe. In the end they sent us one of each with a letter stating that both had been run and were considered as good average prints. We sent them back and demanded a full refund and stated, we didn't pay this much for average prints, we want good prints. This was our last dealing with them.
The annoying thing that really gripped my nuts was the fact that we rarely got our postage costs back and this did add up over the years. No company would get away with that now.
This cut down , North sea Hijack is a good example of the poor quality us collectors sometimes put up with.
With this in mind, it is a wonder that so many of us have stayed with it. I shudder to think what we have spent over the years on sub standard films.
Fortunately the good stuff takes the sour taste away.

Excellent points, Tom — I, too, shudder when I think of how much money I spent on new prints that were “average” or just outright “bad” during those years. But no more. It’s one reason why I’m now a stickler when it come to image and sound quality. The other reason is that my entire career has been in the communications field, during which I’ve work in the film and other formats. In my field, we wouldn’t even entertain some of the atrocious quality that collectors were/are expected to put up with, and pay large sums of money for.

All this, plus I’m not getting any younger, makes me have no tolerance for some of the expensive yet shoddy quality of supposed “new prints,” regardless of whether the sound heads are worn out, etc., at companies who were/are supposedly catering to collectors ....

Tom , as one who has been in the hobby a long time, you would remember when ordering from Mailmaster, that they wanted you to give an alternative title in case the first was out of stock. I ordered a feature at £35, and listed my second choice. What I received was neither, it was Cameron Mitchell in 'House of Wax' or something similarly titled. I'm not a horror fan. I sent it back received nothing, and contacted them, they claimed they didn't receive it back. I didn't give up, and eventually got my £35 back. Two weeks later, I got up after working nights, and outside the door was a parcel; inside was my second choice. My father asked me what I was going to do about it, and I said 'Keep it, they were prepared for me to lose £35'. Another problem I had with two prints, was that after a lab splice, the sound was out of sync.