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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 2 2013, 01:19 PM (2,499 Views) | |
| Pa Stark | Mar 15 2016, 09:47 AM Post #16 |
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Charter Member
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Bafore there were tapes, our only option to buy serials was 16 mm. Standard price was $50 for chapter one, $35 for remaining episodes, and $425 for complete 12 chapter serials, $450 for 15 episodes. The Nostalgia Merchant was much more expensive, about $650 for 12, and about $750 for 15 chapters. I believe I had around 15 complete serials on 16 mm. |
| Honest and Lovable Pa Stark | |
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| The Batman | Mar 15 2016, 10:28 AM Post #17 |
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Do you still have those 16mm serials, Pa, and if not, what did you do with them? |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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| CliffClaven | Mar 15 2016, 02:51 PM Post #18 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Back in the 80s I scooped up a handful of Republic serials including Nyoka and the Tiger Men, a bootleg of The Shadow (a few years before Columbia released it), the inevitable bad PD Phantom Empire, and Blackhawk's silent Woman in Grey. Now I have dozens, acquired much cheaper. Special thank you to VCI. VHS always seemed more of a crapshoot than DVD, because you worried that the tape cassette itself might be overly frail even if the content was decent (anybody remember EP releases with what looked like 15 feet of tape?). Somehow junking a lousy DVD was less painful than tossing a bad cassette. Peculiar memory: Ordering a King Features official VHS release of Flash Gordon, and sending it back because it sounded like a second musical track of newer "space" music had been added. Years later, the DVD releases sounded fine. Did I hallucinate that? |
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| Lamont Cranston | Mar 15 2016, 03:47 PM Post #19 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Well, now that you mention it. I don't the appliances or the wife. I guess it was a bad trade. |
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| The Batman | Mar 15 2016, 03:52 PM Post #20 |
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LOL - you got me, beer flew out the nose when I read that one. |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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| Inspector Carr | Mar 15 2016, 04:06 PM Post #21 |
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Charter Member
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I think I just soiled myself..........LMAO |
| "Life is a Crapshoot however you need a pair of dice to participate" | |
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| riddlerider | Mar 15 2016, 05:27 PM Post #22 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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A collector friend of mine once found himself in a similar dilemma. He posted a list of 16mm prints for sale in The Big Reel, with this declaration at the top of the ad: "Films or Family — A choice I pray you'll never have to make!" I remember drinking coffee and having it come out my nose when I read those words. I was laughing that hard. And this was 30 or more years ago. |
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| Pa Stark | Mar 15 2016, 06:41 PM Post #23 |
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When tapes started becoming popular I saw that 16 mm would soon die out, so I sold almost all my film. We just bought a house, and used the money to knock down the mortgage. There are a lot of serials I never dreamed I would ever see because no one in their right mind would pay $450 for CHICK CARTER DETECTIVE, YOUNG EAGLES, ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN AFRICA, or HOP HARRIGAN. Hell, I saw only one chapter of HOP HARRIGAN, and I passed up buying a DVD of it for only $5. What you guys were joking about above is like the old joke about the man who said he got a puppy for his wife. He thought he got a good trade. Edited by Pa Stark, Mar 15 2016, 06:41 PM.
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| Honest and Lovable Pa Stark | |
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| Lamont Cranston | Mar 16 2016, 03:43 PM Post #24 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Now that I think of it the last serial I bought on film was Secret Service in Darkest Africa. It was a beautiful original print that was part of the post media library at Fort Benning. I suppose that it had been declared "surplus" because I bought it from a Supply Sergeant who got my telephone number from a "friend of a friend." I know it sounds strange but that was how film collecting was in the 1970s. There was lots of undercover trading. It wasn't unheard of for the FBI to knock on a collector's door because a lot of the films were black market movies that were stolen from film libraries, TV stations or walked out the back door of film labs. Disney was the worst. They'd track who was selling one of their films and hit both the seller and the buyer with a court order. On the positive side, if it wasn't for the film collectors a lot of the titles on DVD wouldn't be available. I like Hopalong Cassidy and had a number of excellent prints. I sold several films to William Boyd Enterprises and later the U.S. Television Office Inc. I think they might have used them for the early VHS tapes while they were restoring the 35mm video masters. When the majors started restoring films a number of collectors loaned them prints to help piece together the best possible video master. |
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| The Batman | Mar 16 2016, 04:07 PM Post #25 |
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Thanks for the recollections, Lamont. It can't be said enough about the debt film fans owe to guys like you and RR who helped to preserve so many films through your passion and dedication. So I will say it again. Thanks. |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Mar 16 2016, 08:06 PM Post #26 |
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Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
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On a related note, I recently came across a bunch of stuff Republic had sent me in March, 1995 - 21 years ago! Yikes! Among their material, a personal letter that announced that late that year, they intended to release the final four serials in their vaults: Dangers of the Canadian Mounted, Hawk of the Wilderness, King of the Carnival, and Man with the Steel Whip. The letter was from Jim Grace; I suspect Mr. RR knows him. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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| Pa Stark | Mar 16 2016, 08:16 PM Post #27 |
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Lamont, the problem with the FBI was worse than what you said, They were told by the film industry that it is illegal to own copyrighted films, and they didn't verify the claim. I'm sure Riddle Rider could add a lot on this subject. I was on the mailing list of someone who turned out to be a film pirate, and he was busted by the FBI. They came to my door just to ask questions, and to put it mildly the FBI agent was full of crap. Every time he would make a false statement, I would challenge him and throw it back at him. He tried to bullshit me that it is illegal to own copyrighted films, and I immediately shot back, "Oh no it isn't. It is not illegal to posses copyrighted films." He asked me what type of films I collect, and I threw it back at him, "If you are investigating him, why do you want to know what films I collect?" He then danced around the questions. I'm sure I made it onto his shit list big time. Later on I was at a film convention in LA, and an FBI agent gave a seminar on film piracy. Like the other agent, this one was also full of crap, and his entire presentation was like listening to a used car salesman giving a slick sales talk. Later on I went to another seminar by a good friend who happened to be a professor of law, and his specialty was copyright law. He came right out and said that the FBI doesn't know what they are talking about. He said there was an amendment to the copyright law for something called "right of first sale" which means that if you buy, say a book, you can turn around and sell that book. Films are no different. Studios sold movies to TV stations, film rental libraries, and just junked the,. It is perfectly legal to buy those prints. There was one well known film collector named Clyde Carroll who owned 1,600 B westerns, every one of them was an original print bought from film libraries, and he had bills of sale for them. The FBI heard about his collection and started harassing him, but there wasn't anything they could do to him. I told the FBI agent at the LA seminar about that, and he said, "Oh, we wouldn't do that." |
| Honest and Lovable Pa Stark | |
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| Lamont Cranston | Mar 21 2016, 12:37 PM Post #28 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I was very fortunate to have Clyde Carroll as a good friend for over 20 years. I spent many afternoons sitting in his den, drinking his wife Juanita’s excellent coffee and watching old movies. Clyde seemed to know details about every B-Western and had endless stories about all the stars who dropped by to visit down through the years. Even though westerns were his favorite he always seemed to have every mystery or serial I asked to see. Clyde was also constantly on guard about the FBI. About 5 days after we met agents came knocking on his door trying to prove that he had bought or sold illegal copyrighted movies. It took me about three weeks to convince him that I wasn’t a Government spy. About a month later we were watching a Hoppy when the FBI came back. The two guys had a list of films that they claimed Clyde had bought out the back door of the Consolidated Film Industries lab in Los Angles. Clyde lived south of Atlanta. This was 1975. How they figured that Clyde has driven across the country, packed up over 200 films and driven back in two days was a bit of a mystery. Clyde had a bunch of notebooks with the bill of sale for every film. He brought one out, the agents flipped through and said they had to take the notebook with them. Clyde asked for their federal warranty. They didn’t have one so they left. I don’t think Juanita liked the FBI because she didn’t offer the agents any coffee. |
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| The Batman | Mar 21 2016, 04:38 PM Post #29 |
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Charter Member
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Great stories, guys, keep 'em coming! |
| Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman! | |
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| Lamont Cranston | Mar 24 2016, 08:54 AM Post #30 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Let me quickly mention one more name before I sink back into the shadows. Another guy who deserves a ton of kudos is Earl Blair. I met him in 1975 at HoustonCon. A lot of us went to the Charlotte and Memphis Western shows but the Houston event was in a different dimension. It was comics and movies so it was big.When I was there in 1975 films and serials ran around the clock, the dealer’s room was huge and the yearly auction was legendary. Jock Mahoney, Don Barry, George Takei and Captain Marvel creator C.C. Beck just relaxed and hung out. In the auction I was outbid on an original Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge painting. Barks was the most famous Disney comic book artist for Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. My limit was $600. It sold for $650. Boys and girls that painting sold last year for $1-million dollars! Hey, I’m lovable but not too smart. Earl Blair was one of the organizers of HoustonCon and the former head of The Nostalgia Merchant with Snuff Garrett. I won’t go into the history of NM but Earl and I talked for a long time in Houston and he told me how he was inventorying the National Telefilm Associates library. NTA was a TV syndication company who provided shows and movies to local TV stations. NTA had the original Republic Pictures library at that time. Thanks to Earl’s inventory we have so many of the serials and westerns we have today. No one really knew what Republic films and serials actually survived before Earl dug through NTA. I can’t image how tedious it was to list and check the contents of literally thousands of film cans. That’s how NM was able to provide the excellent quality 16mm prints and VHS tapes they sold. I don’t know for sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if Paramount, Viacom or who has the rights this week are still using that original inventory. Hey, thanks for the chat! |
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