`The Wizard of Oz,” already available for home video in handsome and extensively supplemented “Collectors” and “50th Anniversary” versions, hardly seems a logical choice for yet another special edition on laserdisc. But the release this month of “The Ultimate Oz” (MGM/UA ML103990, three discs, $99.98; a similar version, with fewer supplements, also is available on tape at the same price), a high-ticket item done up in a gift box with emerald green printing, offers some good reasons for re-examining the familiar movie.
The package includes a printed reproduction of the film script, five black-and-white stills, and a disc laden with supplements on the movie’s history, including a “making of” documentary.
However, the real justification for the “ultimate” in the title comes in the exquisite reproduction of the movie itself. Remastered from the earliest generation film elements available and processed in the new THX system that assures top frame-by-frame quality in sight and sound, the Technicolor fantasy fairly glows and shimmers, outclassing even the excellent earlier editions of the movie.
MGM also has extensively chapter-indexed the two discs containing the movie. Alternate soundtracks made possible by laserdisc’s technology offer commentary by historian John Fricke and an array of music recordings, including selections on alternate lyrics and snippets of rehearsal sessions.
Not nearly so lavish but almost as pleasing to the eye are two more “Technicolor restorations” from MGM/UA: “The Barefoot Contessa” (ML102116, two discs, $39.98), director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s overheated 1954 Hollywood melodrama, with Humphrey Bogart and a radiant Ava Gardner; and “Good News” (ML104511, $34.98), a 1947 version of the peppy college musical, with June Allyson and Peter Lawford leading the gang in the “Varsity Drag.” Added at the end of the feature is a deleted musical sequence and two excerpts from a 1930 talkie based on the same Broadway show.
The old three-strip Technicolor used in these films also shines brilliantly in “Arabian Nights” and, to a slightly lesser extent, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” (MCA/Universal 41616, two discs, $59.98), a double feature of campy adventures from the ’40s starting Jon Hall, Maria Montez and Turhan Bey. The color is beautiful; the dialogue is unbelievable.
Perhaps the most revealing of these illuminating restorations is the new disc of “Nothing Sacred” (Lumivision LVD9318, $39.95), the 1937 screwball comedy with Fredric March and Carole Lombard. The color wobbles a little in spots, but this disc, transferred from original 35 mm Technicolor materials, is so superior to the smudged brown-and-orange version familiar from repeated TV showings that it happily restores to life the film’s Class A photography and design. Lumivision, a Denver-based firm that has filled a laserdisc niche in releasing lovingly restored editions of offbeat features and documentaries, also offers:
The “Bela Lugosi Collection” (LVD9326, two discs, $49.95), two Grade-Z horror movies consisting of the 1940 “The Devil Bat” and the 1946 “Scared to Death,” a mystery satire in Cinecolor (Lugosi’s only surviving color film), in which the star is joined by the malevolent George Zucco and the comical Nat Pendleton.
“The Last of the Mohicans” (LVD9310, $49.95), the 1920 silent version, with Wallace Beery as the evil Magua, directed by Clarence Brown and Jacques Tourneur, mastered from the original nitrate negative and delicately tinted anew, with an irritating electronic music score added.
“Simba: The King of the Beasts” (LVD9247, $39.95), an extraordinary black-and-white documentary on the African wilds made in the ’20s by the husband-and-wife team of Martin and Osa Johnson and newly bolstered by a rich music score by James Makubaya.
Another glorious black-and-white laserdisc presentation comes in the six short Charlie Chaplin silent comedies on “A First National Collection” (Fox Video 3433-80, $69.98)). These, as with all movies in the ongoing “Chaplin: A Legacy of Laughter” collection, have been transferred from Chaplin archival material and come with extensive notes and supplements.
