Search - Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon on DVD

A Missed Opportunity---Stay Away!

bella | New Jersey USA | 04/21/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I've always liked this occasionally amusing attempt to duplicate the success of "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines". In the USA this film was retitled "Those Fantastic Flying Fools." It's periodically shown on cable in a grainy, color-faded horrendously pan-and-scan version (the film is in Cinemascope, or its 1967 equivilant).



So I was overjoyed to discover an official widescreen DVD release. This feeling changed once I watched the movie. It is properly letterboxed, but that's the only good thing I have to say.



Problems? Let me count them:

1. it's apparently a PAL transfer and a clumsy one. The movements are jerky whenever someone crosses the screen or the camera pans, which is frequently;

2. The print is murky; it's almost always too dark;

3. the color fades in and out and rarely looks true;

4. the soundtrack is out-of-sync through most of the movie, making this British production look like a bad English-dubbed film;

5. even considering the time difference with a PAL-to-NTSC video transfer, the film runs no more than 108 mins. (103 mins. real time), which means there are at least 10 mins. missing from this version.



Stick with the pan-and-scan cable version (which runs 118 mins.) until someone does this one on video correctly! Wham!USA certainly didn't."

Disappointment

Michael L. Kenslow | Denton Texas | 09/25/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Oh my gosh, what a piece of junk. The cover claims it's digitally remastered. What they did was video tape the movie as it was shown by film on a large screen (apparently out of focus). The resolution is so bad, I can hardly watch it. The video camera was setting low, so the dept perception is altered in your version. When you see tall walls in the movie, they look like they are leaning backwards and not really standing straight up.



The audio is not sequenced with the video, so you hear the actors talking after their mouths have already stopped.



The color and contrast are bad too. It's a shame they had to mess up a movie I've loved since I was a kid. But, they did. Don't waste your money.

"