Ok, that reaction actually occured in the first few min but lasted the whole film. This is an absolutely monumental release. The only other home video version of any kind of this film is from the 1987 vhs/laserdisc. Anytime Howard aired on tv it was essentially taken from this lousy vhs print (you can always tell the vhs print by the small black bars seen during the credits). Watching this version of Howard brought up many questions in my mind. First off, its obvious that at some point Universal or Lucasfilm did a complete THX version of the film, which I would say this print is. Its gorgeous.
So who owns the rights to this film? Did it revert back to Lucasfilm? Someone made a decision to restore the film and then keep it in a vault for some laserdisc/dvd release that simply didn't occur. I guess we can all be lucky that Universal had this print and probably without thinking sold it in some hd movie package to the uk cable station it was shown on. And now we have a near perfect version of the film. My suggestion to anyone even slightly interested in getting a copy of this is to jump on the torrent asap. You should be able to get a nice fast download since there is plenty of seeders right now. I have a feeling that if Universal or Lucasfilm sees this print in wide release, they're going to freak.
My only nitpick on this near perfect release is that I wish the actual shooting script was in the dvd rom section and that we had all the trailers. Its not DarkJedi's fault there is only one trailer there (the tv trailer that aired during primetime a day or so before release) since thats literally the only version you can find anywhere on the net. There were about 3-5 different trailers for this film, including the famous Lea Thompson one where she faces the camera and talks about a hot guy for a min then ends with "and I love rubbing my hand through all his feathers" Then the title. Classic trailer, but lost unless someone can make a copy off of a 35mm print, if anyone even has that.
So major thanks to DarkJedi for this release. One of my favs, commercial or fan released, of this year to be sure
