Category Archives: Uncategorized

Serial DVD News–The Return of Hermitage Hill

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Hermitage Hill, which put out some excellent serial DVDs back in the day, but which has been out of action for several years, has returned with a new DVD  of The Hurricane Express, the best of John Wayne’s three Mascot serials, from a new 2k film transfer.  The link is below:

http://www.hermitagehillmedia.com/hurricane.html/

Hermitage Hill has also made their DVD of Don Winslow of the Navy available again; this is easily the best print of this serial out there:

http://www.hermitagehillmedia.com/winslow.html/

Here is Hermitage Hill’s revived home page, as well:

http://www.hermitagehillmedia.com/index.html/

Serial DVD News–King of the Kongo Restoration Project

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Restorationist Eric Grayson, also known as “Dr. Film,” is working on restoring the 1929 Mascot part-silent/part-sound serial King of the Kongo (starring Walter Miller and Boris Karloff). The serial has long been missing the soundtrack for its talking portions–some of which, however, still exists separately from the film print, having been recorded on disc. Eric is working on reuniting all that remains of the soundtrack with the best possible print; his latest update is here:

Update on King of the Kongo

 

Serial DVD News: More on VCI’s Deal with Universal

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April 17, 2019: A tip of the hat and another big thanks to Clifford Weimer, the webmaster of the old-movie site In the Balcony, and a contributor to special features on past VCI serial DVDs. He has provided some more concrete details on the upcoming VCI releases at this link. Particularly exciting is his hint that nine more Universal serials, never before available on video, may be in play; I’m having visions of a good and complete print of The Lost Special finally becoming available, or–even better–some of the long-lost early Universal titles like The Airmail Mystery and Danger Island surfacing for the first time since their original release. Let us wait and see.

Serial DVD News: VCI Obtains Universal’s Original Materials

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April 5th, 2019. The estimable Tom Weaver–serial, B-film, and horror-movie expert extraordinaire–has broken some great news for serial buffs over in two threads on the Classic Horror Film Board Forum. Robert Blair of VCI has informed him that Universal is going to give VCI access to the original film elements for its serials; VCI plans to use these for new DVD releases of those serials (the linked threads refer to Blu-Ray, not DVD, but as you can see from a second post on the second thread linked, at least the first two announced releases, The Roaring West and The Red Rider, are DVD and not Blu-Ray). Continue reading →