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(More customer reviews)I've waited many years to see this fearsome foursome of cheese find a decent release in DVD. Sadly, thanks to bad cropping and seemingly random censorship, it still hasn't happened yet.
The four films are, of course, The Silencers, Murderers' Row, The Ambushers, and The Wrecking Crew. (A fifth intallment was storeyboarded but never shot.)
Letting the studio off the hook by saying things like "widescreen areas always crop full frame versions," is being much too gracious in the face of these money-grabbing studio weasels who also CUT entire parts of the film and never even gave you an original trailer.
And I should know about the widescreen concept, since I am, after all, the chairman of the WWS - the Widescreen Watchers Society. (Yes, my organization has a movie site online, but an Amazon review is not the place to plug it by posting links to it.)
Rather I just wanted to point out that it is instead within the "full frame" or "standard screen" format that all cropping takes place. The most dominant style is pan-and -scan, which is done by zooming in on whatever the film editor decides is the most important area on screen at any given moment.
That's why you often end up with the ridiculous sight of one person chattering happily away to the air for long periods of time, since you can't see the other person he's talking to. And because of the zoom effect, naturally you also get a more blurred focus on the overall picture.
But a presentation in widescreen, whether it be a regular rectangle (Vista-Vision style) or a more narrow rectangle (Panavison style), or somewhere in between, never cuts out frames and/or zooms in after the fact at any point. This gives you the vast difference of ultimate picture composition in crystal clarity, resulting in the best total viewing experience possible - which is why the original director filmed it that way for its theatrical release in the first place!
How today's studios stamping out inferior DVDs think the public will never notice such a huge difference is completely mind-boggling! And who buys most of the DVDs of older movies anyway? Film buffs who are very picky about such things to begin with!
RECOMMENDATION: Wait until all four films are put out together in an improved deluxe edition - TRUE widescreen (non-cropped and non-censored), featuring behind the scenes featurettes (which they shot back in the '60s as long commercials for such films), surviving crew interviews, trailers, etc. Otherwise, forget it.
Hey, Rat Pack fans - or just fans of Dean Martin in general - you know ol' Dino deserves far BETTER than this shoddy treatment! Mama mia!
Click Here to see more reviews about: Matt Helm - The Silencers (1966)
In this swinging, space-age spy adventure, Matt Helm (Martin) battles the Big O, an organization that wants to sabotage the American atomic missile system, with a bevy of beauties. Stars Dean Martin!
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