Hold on to your poinsettias, Christmas-movie lovers. "A Christmas Carol" - the 1984 made-for-television version with George C. Scott - will finally make its way to video for the first time on Nov. 7.
What's more, it will be available at a "sell-through" price, which means you can buy your own personal copy, if you like. (The "suggested retail price" is $14.98, so it will sell for $11 or $12 at most stores).What makes this some kind of big deal, you ask?
Believe it or not, this umpteenth adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic yuletide yarn is among the most-requested movies never released on video. No kidding. Every year around this time I get quite a few calls asking about it - especially when it isn't scheduled to show up on the tube.
What makes this particular "Christmas Carol" so appealing is the combination of a literate script, gorgeous English locations and a first-rate performance by Scott as our old friend Ebeneezer Scrooge.
Aside from the fact that this specific picture is now available, and I won't be getting those calls anymore, in a larger sense it also offers some hope for film buffs that, as cable station TBS might put it, "the movies we love" will eventually make their way to video.
A few weeks ago in this column I noted that "Count Dracula" - the 1977 BBC television production with Louis Jourdan - is also among the most-requested titles that have never seen the light of video. (The film is still not available for rent or purchase, but it has been on KUED, Ch. 7, this month, and has one more showing scheduled - for Monday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m.)
That story prompted a number of readers to ask about other movies they would like to see but which have not yet been released on video. At the top of the list these days are a few Disney animated features, and as noted in a recent Deseret News Weekend story, "Oliver & Company" is scheduled to return to theaters in the spring and will probably be followed by a video release during the summer, but "The Aristocats," "The Black Cauldron," "Song of the South" and "Saludos Amigos" are not scheduled for release at this time.
Others that remain in movie limbo, but which fans desperately want to see on video, include:
- "Beauty and the Beast" (1976), with George C. Scott as the beast and his then-wife Trish Van Devere as the beauty. (A Hallmark Hall of Fame TV production.)
- "The Slipper and the Rose" (1976), a musical rendition of "Cinderella," with Richard Chamberlain as Prince Charming.
- "The High and the Mighty" (1954), the granddaddy of the "disaster" genre, with John Waye piloting a passenger airliner headed for trouble. (This one is supposedly going to be released on video next year.)
- "Annie Get Your Gun" (1950) and "Porgy and Bess" (1959), two classic musicals being held up by the estates of the films' respective composers. (The Irving Berlin family won't let go of the Betty Hutton "Annie," and "Porgy," with Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier and Sammy Davis Jr., is being stalled by the Gershwins.)
- "Move Over, Darling" (1963), a remake of the Cary Grant-Irene Dunne classic "My Favorite Wife," this one starring Doris Day and James Garner.
- "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (1966), a spoof of horror movies with Don Knotts as an aspiring reporter who must spend the night in a haunted house.
- "36 Hours" (1964), with James Garner as a World War II spy who is captured and brainwashed to think the war is over. Rod Taylor and Eva Marie Saint co-star.
- "Gigot" (1962), a sentimental yarn with Jackie Gleason as a deaf mute in Paris, directed by Gene Kelley.
- "Tight Little Island" (1949), a British farce, originally titled "Whiskey Galore." (This one was once on video but is now out of print.)
- "Come September" (1961), "If a Man Answers" (1962) and "That Funny Feeling" (1965), three comedies starring Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin, who were married at the time. ("Come September" also stars Rock Hudson and Gina Lollobrigida.)
- "The Mad Adventures of `Rabbi' Jacob" (1974), a French farce about a bigoted businessman who is forced to masquerade as a rabbi.
- "The Girl Most Likely to . . ." (1973), a dark TV satire (written by Joan Rivers) about a homely young woman (Stockard Channing) who is made beautiful by plastic surgery and plots revenge on the men who spurned her before the change.
- "The Phantom of the Opera" (1983), a TV version with Maximilian Schell and Jane Seymour.
- "The Innocents" (1961), a scary adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw," starring Deborah Kerr. (It's playing this week at the Avalon Theater.)
- "Sergeants 3" (1962), a Western reworking of "Gunga Din" starring Frank Sinatra and his "rat pack" (Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop) and filmed in Southern Utah.
There are plenty of others, of course, but these are generally the most asked-for.
And it does seem bizarre that so many "golden oldies" remain on studio shelves, unavailable to fans, while dozens of more recent sleazeball efforts - like "Virtual Assassin," "Body Chemistry 4: Full Exposure," "Triplecross," "Midnight Obsessions," "Nightscare," `Killer Babe for the CIA" and "Deadly Sins" - find their way into rental stores every week.
Or, to put it another way, you know there's a problem when it's easier to go into your friendly neighborhood video store and find dozens of titles starring Shannon Tweed than it is to find one or two starring Barbara Stanwyck.
It's still a struggle, but the good news is that quite a few films that were once very high on the list of movies-that-have-never-been-on-tape have found their way to video's second-life in the past couple of years.
Most of these are not "classics" in any artistic sense, but they are films whose popularity has endured and, for whatever reason, they are so fondly remembered that audiences clamored for them so long and so fervently that the studios finally relented and released them:
- The "Ma and Pa Kettle" and "Francis the Talking Mule" films, enjoyable, if silly family comedies that flourished in the '50s. A couple of years ago, none of these films were available - now they all are.
- Likewise a number of specific Abbott & Costello titles were frequently requested for many years, but now all of the comedy team's films have been released on tape.
- The most-requested Laurel & Hardy title that had never been on video in its entirety was "Big Business" (though an abbreviated version does show up in the "The Golden Age of Comedy"). This silent short has Stan & Ollie selling Christmas trees door-to-door during the summer and ends with them destroying a house. That title and 21 other Laurel & Hardy silents that had never been on video before were released in September.
- "The Promise" (1979), a sappy soap opera starring Kathleen Quinlan and Stephen Collins - and the No. 1 most-requested title for the longest time. (Leonard Maltin hated this movie so much that he reviewed it this way in his "Movie & Video Guide": "Boy loves girl. Girl loses face in car accident. Boy thinks girl dead. Girl gets new face from plastic surgeon. Boy falls for old girl's new face. Viewer runs screaming from room.")
- "Brigham Young" (1940), probably asked for more in the Mountain West than it was on a national basis, but when it finally came to video earlier this year it managed to sell quite well locally.
- "All That Heaven Allows" (1955), a soap opera May-December romance with Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson, released for the first time just last month.
- Two Ingrid Bergman classics finally came to video this year, "Anastasia," with Yul Brynner, and "For Whom the Bell Tolls," with Gary Cooper.
- "The Bourne Identity" (1988), the TV miniseries adaptation of Robert Ludlum's book, starring Richard Chamberlain, which came out for rent last year and got a price drop from "rental" to "sell-through" last month.
- We also got "Compulsion," with Orson Welles, and "No Highway in the Sky," starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, during the summer.
- A collection of Hammer horror movies released in July included the 1962 adaptation of "The Phantom of the Opera," which has been very high on the list for years. Also released were "Kiss of the Vampire," "Nightmare," "Paranoiac," "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed," "Dracula, A.D. 1972," "Phantom of the Rue Morgue" and Christopher Lee's first three "Fu Manchu" movies - "The Face of . . .," "The Brides of . . ." and "Vengeance of . . ."
- Around the same time Universal released some Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi horror films on tape for the first time, including "The Black Castle," "Night Monster," "Black Friday" and "Murders in the Zoo."
- A Vincent Price collection of horror/comedy titles released in August included "The Tomb of Ligeia," "The Conqueror Worm," "Cry of the Banshee," "The Comedy of Terrors," "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" and "Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs."
- Several titles starring Carole Lombard ("Hands Across the Table," "The Princess Comes Across" and "Supernatural") and Barbara Stanwyck ("All I Desire," "Remember the Night," "The Great Man's Lady" and "Internes Can't Take Money") hit video for the first time last month, as well as "To Each His Own," with Olivia de Havilland; "Love Letters," featuring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten; and "Trail of the Lonesome Pine," the first full-Technicolor movie shot on outdoor locations, with Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda and Fred MacMurray.
- "How to Steal a Million," a '60s caper comedy starring Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn was finally released this month, along with several other oft-requested titles: The Judy Holliday vehicle "The Solid Gold Cadillac," Anne Bancroft's attention-grabbing "The Pumpkin Eater" and Joan Crawford's "Queen Bee." Another film with a memorable Crawford performance, "The Best of Everything," will be on video for the first time next week.
- And the French classic "Belle de Jour," with Catherine Deneuve will be on video in mid-December. (The film is now playing at the Tower Theater.)
The moral here? Don't give up hope. If the studios think you'll buy it - sooner or later, they'll release it.