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Post by Phantom Engineer on Jan 18, 2004 19:58:17 GMT -5
Speaking of Sandy Frank, there is a side of me that sort of feels bad for him. He produced all of these movies, he probalby tried his best to make these films good, and he failed. Then to top it all off, these films,and himself are all tored apart on a nationally televised comedy show that is seen by many people. So, I could see why he would get ticked off and vow for these episodes to never be shown. Then logic and common sense reminds me that some of the films he produced were Gamera vs. Zigra, Time of the Apes, Gamera, and Fugitive Alien. And to top it all off, he actually thought these films were GOOD. So, due to that, the pity stops and I can return to getting angry at him for refusing to have these episodes aired. ;D Well to be accurate he didn't produce the original movies. He imported them and produced the English dubbed versions. He's just a middle man as I nderstand it.
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Post by Crowjunkie™ on Jan 19, 2004 3:30:01 GMT -5
The rights issues are the heart of the problem. Since there isn't much chance of monetary gain, Jim should "accidentally" lose or in a moment of confusion, mail a dub of the lost episodes to the wrong address. Let's say the address of a fan with whom he meant to send some other piece of memorabilia and/or correspondence to.
I can always dream..... By the way, if Jim cruises this site, my address is: Andre Benderman 1500 E. 123 Terrace @#$^&, KS 66#$!
<snicker>
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Post by Ford Prefect on Jan 22, 2004 14:53:40 GMT -5
The KTMA Series on official DVD? I really don't even think of them as regular episodes of the show because the nationally televised version is so different from the show they produced for KTMA. You can really tell that this series was a work in progress and that the people behind the scenes treated it as a very casual affair. The jokes in the theater were improvised and cast members who needed to leave town for a few days were simply written out of certain episodes without much thought. Joel once referred to those shows as a "40 hour pilot" for the nationally televised series and that's the way they treated it. Host segments from KTMA were redone for Season One and half of the movies from KTMA were re-riffed during Season Three. The characters didn't even acknowledge that events from the KTMA run took place. The overall fictional continuity of the series truly begins with "The Crawling Eye". Personally, I'd rather have the 176 episodes of the national series than any of the KTMA shows. That said, a KTMA episode is STILL better than most of the other stuff on TV right now.
Before I address the view that the "Sandy Frank" episodes will never be released on Rhino DVD, I think I should provide some background information for the benefit of newbies.
For those of you who don't know, Gamera is a giant fire breathing prehistoric turtle. Created at Daiei Studios, this absurd, oddly lovable monster tried to give Godzilla, whose films were produced at rival Toho Studios, a run for his money in the 1960's and early '70s. Like all Japanese science fiction/fantasy films from this time period, the Gamera films endured careless dubbing, re-editing, panning and scanning, and generally became most familiar to American audiences via blurry 16mm TV prints which degraded the films which Japanese audiences saw in theaters even further.
Gamera made his American debut with "Gammera the Invincible", though most of the sequels went straight to television via American International (AIP-TV). AIP-TV bought the rights to it, along with other Gamera movies, and hired Bret Morrison to supervise English dubbing. These versions were well dubbed as such things go, though some of the monster action was deemed too violent and subsequently trimmed. These versions were later picked up by King Features Television.
During the 1980's, Sandy Frank Productions/Hearst Home Entertainment picked up several of the Gamera movies for video and TV distribution. Set up with their own dubbing operation for the many other foreign features they'd acquired, Sandy Frank Productions chose to redub the films themselves, rather than pay for the AIP print. Even though they restored much of the trimmed footage, these were wretched home video releases that replaced AIP's looping with a dubbing cast that was devoid of good acting and their transfer was even worse than AIP's. Sandy Frank Productions also strung together footage from several episodes of Japanese TV programs, hastily dubbed them, and re-released them as additional "movies" for distribution. A few of these so-called movies included "Time Of The Apes", "Fugitive Alien", "Star Force: Fugitive Alien II", and "Mighty Jack".
Copies of these Sandy Frank videos ended up at a scrappy little independent UHF TV station in east central Minnesota called KTMA. When an odd little show called "Mystery Science Theater 3000" premiered on the station in 1988, KTMA's library of movies became the objects of ridicule for a young comedian and some robot puppets.
To the surprise of many, this cheap little show struck a chord and a nationally televised version of the series began airing the following year on The Comedy Channel (which later became Comedy Central). In 1991, the team behind the series, Best Brains Inc. (BBI) ordered and re-riffed nine of the Sandy Frank videos that they'd used for the local version of the series. Like nearly everyone who had anything to do with the bad movies that appeared on the show, Sandy Frank became the target of numerous jokes from the cast. According to some reports, when Frank learned that he was being mocked by name on national television, he was not amused. In reality, Joel and The Bots jokes were not fully justified since Frank had almost nothing to do with the content of these "movies", but it's Frank's own fault for proudly pasting his name in bold letters in the credits to these videos.
By 1996, over 50 of the 128 episodes created for Comedy Central could no longer air on the channel because the rights to the movies featured in the episodes had expired at the beginning of the year. This distressing phenomenon began a few years earlier when the rights to the movie in 204- CATALINA CAPER expired and that episode could no longer be shown. But now the rights to many of these movies were expiring and when staff members at the channel casually attempted to renew the rights, they learned that the movies appearances on MST3K had increased their value in the eyes of the rights holders, and none were willing to sell further rights to the movies without a substantial increase in the price.
Sandy Frank was prominent among these rights holders. The word from his office was that he had been intensely displeased by the mockery of him in several episodes, and that it would be a cold day in Hell before he allowed those episodes to be shown again. The result was that nearly half of the Season Three episodes were now unavailable. The issue became something of a moot point because when SCI-FI announced that they were going to air new episodes of the series the following year, only new episodes would air and they held the exclusive broadcast rights to the series. That was eight years ago.
The question is - does the fact that Sandy Frank wouldn't sell the movie rights to Comedy Central mean that Rhino won't be able to release the MST3K episode of Gamera on DVD?
This is, of course, assuming that Sandy Frank still owns the rights to it. There's no mention of any of the MSTied films on his website. (Yes, his company has a website. Here's a link: http://sandyfrankent.com) In fact, all of the original Gamera films, in addition to the other "Sandy Frank" productions that appeared on MST3K, are out of print in the United States, so it's hard to say who owns the rights to them here. A DVD box set of the original Gamera films was released by Toshiba/Daiei Video, but that was only in Japan. It's a good guess that Rhino may have to negotiate with them.
Also, don't assume that just because Comedy Central couldn't get the rights to movies, Rhino can't get the rights to them either. Roughly half of the episodes in Rhino's catalog feature movies that Comedy Central lost the rights to, including Catalina Caper.
Finally, I think I should point out that one property that Sandy Frank currently owns the rights to, "Battle Of The Planets", is now available on DVD through Rhino Home Video!
In summary, just because Sandy Frank said that he hated MST3K and wouldn't sell further rights to his "movies" being shown on Comedy Central eight years ago, that doesn't necessarily mean that these episodes will "never" be released on DVD through Rhino.
Share and Enjoy, FordPrefect
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Post by vanhagar3000 on Jan 22, 2004 16:41:24 GMT -5
In summary, just because Sandy Frank said that he hated MST3K and wouldn't sell further rights to his "movies" being shown on Comedy Central eight years ago, that doesn't necessarily mean that these episodes will "never" be released on DVD through Rhino. Share and Enjoy, FordPrefect That's true all they have to do is wait another 75 years when the copyright does expire. But I think MST3K has 2 possible choices which would take some work but may be worth it in the end. 1) For the Gamera films buy the rights to the AIP versions rather than Sandy Frank's. It's almost the same thing just different voice patterns so the riffing script wouldn't have to change. Throw in the original host segments and you have it. 2) Buy the Japanese versions of the Gamera films, the TV show Star Wolf (Fugitive Alien, Star Force: Fugitive Alien 2), TV serial Time of the Apes, and TV show or serial Mighty Jack. Re dub them and riff them. I think the first version would work best although you'd still lose half of the lost films.
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Post by Poe33 on Jan 22, 2004 16:50:13 GMT -5
ah....rights shmites.....just download or buy from someone who burns DVDs. It won't be the quality we all want, but at least we'll have the ORIGINALS....
That's all I care about. Same for the K-eps. I just want them becasue I collect the shows. Sure the quality is lower, but I still want them.
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