The good news is, "The High and the Mighty" is finally on video.
The bad new is, it's a bootleg dub of poor quality, and it may be illegal.In fact, the quality is so poor that even the untrained eye will notice that this videocassette release is a tape-to-tape dub that has lost a couple of generations. The picture is fluttery, the color is washed out and the sound is tinny. The original source was a 16mm television print, and the original tape may have simply come from a TV broadcast. (At the end of the movie, there is a quick blip of Donald Duck - a glitch for which I have no explanation.)
The company label is Classic Home Video, which is not listed in video-company catalogs. The wholesale price of the tape is $25, which means if you buy it, you'll probably pay upwards of $30 - about twice the price of most sell-through videos these days.
Still, because "The High and the Mighty" is possibly the No. 1 most-requested movie that has eluded video release, it's a hot item and will likely be coveted by collectors and renters who remember it fondly - even in this condition.
The 1954 thriller is the predecessor and standard-bearer for the spate of disaster movies that dominated the industry nearly two decades later, and an obvious, specific inspiration for the "Airport" series (which began in 1970).
John Wayne stars in and co-produced the film (in Warnercolor and CinemaScope) for his own production company, Batjac. Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, Robert Stack, Jan Sterling, Phil Harris and Robert Newton co-star; William A. Wellman ("Wings," "The Ox-Bow Incident") directed. The familiar, haunting score, with its theme whistled by Wayne's character, won an Academy Award for composer Dimitri Tiomkin, and Trevor, Sterling and Wellman were all nominated for Oscars.
Leonard Maltin, in his 3 1/2-star review in the 1996 edition of his "Movie & Video Guide," likens "The High and the Mighty" to "Grand Hotel," and suggested the color epic is more fun than most of the subsequent airborne disaster films put together, adding that it's "corny and predictable but great fun."
Batjac, now operated by John Wayne's son Michael, owns "The High and the Mighty," along with three other pictures that were produced by the company. Two of those - "McLintock!" and "Hondo" - have been released on cassette through MPI Home Video. And Wayne has been promising "The High and the Mighty" ever since. (The fourth film is "Island in the Sky," a black-and-white World War II survival epic, which also stars Wayne and was directed by Wellman.)
In April 1993, during a telephone interview from his California offices to promote the release of "McLintock!" Wayne told the Deseret News that the master negative of "The High and the Mighty" had suffered water damage and was being restored. He estimated at that time that all four films would be on video within the next year. "Hondo" followed, but the other two remain in Batjac's vaults.
A phone call to MPI home video revealed that "The High and the Mighty" still isn't ready, and Malik Ali, an attorney in MPI's legal department, said it might not be released until 1997.
Ali added that Wayne is aware of the bootleg version, which is just starting to flood the national market, and that legal steps are being taken to stop it. He declined to say much more because litigation is on-go-ing.
In addition to the "Classic Home Video" label, the tape carries the usual FBI warning, and has reportedly been in East Coast video stores for a couple of months. Some Salt Lake video stores were contacted for the first time this past week by a couple of out-of-state wholesalers, offering the tape for $25.
The wholesalers say that "The High and Mighty" has fallen into public domain because Wayne allowed the copyright to lapse. When that happens, anyone with access to a print can legally release a film on video.
But Ali said definitively, "It is not in public domain," meaning Wayne retains copyright ownership.
Wayne had a similar problem in 1993, just prior to his release of "McLintock!" GoodTimes Home Video released an inferior cassette of that film, claiming the copyright had not been renewed and lapsed in 1991. Wayne rushed MPI's release, and his "official" version was indeed much higher in quality.
It appears that won't happen with "The High and the Mighty," however. And there seems little question that whenever MPI is finally allowed to release the film, its sales will have been undercut by this version.
Video Vern's in Holladay purchased a single copy more than a week ago and it has been renting every day. The Avalon Video Store just got five copies in, to sell and rent. And if videophile interest is any indication, both stores may purchase more.
And other local stores will no doubt follow suit.
Although, if "The High and the Mighty" is still under copyright, a restraining order to take the tape off the market may be in the offing.