Not long ago, I passed along a tip that 7th Cavalry (1956) was coming on DVD in the UK from Ellstree Hill Entertainment.
Starring Randolph Scott, co-starring Jay C. Flippen and Frank Faylen, and directed by Joseph H. Lewis, this would be a great addition to anybody’s collection of 50s Westerns on DVD.
If only the DVD looked like something.
The word is that the DVD looks terrible. (The tip I received wasn’t quite as nice in its description.) Ellstree Hill releases a lot of public domain titles, which makes you wonder what’s going on with this film’s rights.
It’d be great to see 7th Cavalry ride onto our TVs looking as nice as the print above. The picture typically has beautiful Technicolor. But with this current release, that’s sadly not the case.
Yes, I bought the PAL format DVD from Elstree, it does look bad. Color faded, audio muffled, typical bad print of a film. But it’s got one thing going for it, it’s better than nothing! I recorded this movie off of TNT some years back, and TNT’s print wasn’t all that much better than the new PAL DVD. Is there a good print around? Who’s keeping it under wraps? I’d love to see this movie in a beutiufl print like the caption title card shown here. Who do I gotta moiduh to get the whole movie like that?
A couple of years ago TCM ran this film and I burned a dvd of it and, if I remember correctly, the transfer was at least good, if not excellent. I really like TCM….they are top-notch.