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Info & Info Wanted: 'Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp' (1982) - collection project and info hunt

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This is going to be a little weird and a little long-winded, so please bear with me.

About 4 years ago, a friend of mine not on these forums said he was looking for a movie he used to watch, because his tape wore out. We were able to identify it as “Aladdin to mahou no lamp”, a 1982 anime film from Toei Animation, but we couldn’t, at that time, find the localized version he was looking for. We did, however, find it in English (as “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp”), and shortly after, another friend turned up a copy in Polish.

So we got to digging, and we found another English dub (this one called “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp”), a Spanish dub, a Dutch dub, a French dub, a Hungarian dub…and eventually the Portuguese dub we were trying to find in the first place. What we couldn’t find was the original version, in Japanese. Eventually we found that too - but only on a DVD from Italy.

We’ve been collecting these resources for a project, which will also include English subtitles. It’s fairly far along, but I’ve got no idea on an actual release timetable.

Now here’s the other part…

It’s hard to get any information on this thing. There’s 2 English dubs - one was released on VHS in 1988 by “Media Home Entertainment” and seems to be the base for most other dubs, and the other is from the 1990s and seems to be connected to “Samuel Goldwyn Films”. sometime between 1982 and 1988 when one of the VAs died and released by The Samuel Goldwyn Company. (Edit 2015/08/06)

The “Media” version appears to be a made-in-Japan English dub from the early 1980s, sharing voices with old dubs of the first Lupin III film and Arcadia of My Youth. Don Johnson is credited as providing a voice. I’m mystified as to what the actual production info is of this. Also, where are web sites getting the claim of Rankin-Bass being involved? The names Dale and Jane Baer appear in the credits for “Original Characters”… There seems to be a lot of mystery, or perhaps just misinformation, surrounding this film.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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IMDb gives the original title as Arajin to maho no ranpu, but that might be an error.  If I ever come across any information, I'll let you know.

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It's not an error, merely a difference in transcription. (I usually transcribe non-Japanese words in their original forms, rather than as strict romaji. Even so, I use a stricter Hepburn method of romanization, so I would have transcribed it as "Arajin to mahou no rampu" (or variant, "mahô"). ;))

This forum doesn't support Unicode properly, forcing me to use romaji.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Fascinating!  Thanks for the explanation.  :-)

I have found a PAL disc (UK). Let me know if you need anything from it.

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O_O

I wasn't aware of an R2UK? What does it have (credit language, audio languages, subtitle languages)?

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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The DVD has English AC-3 2.0 at 192kbps and no subtitles.  Unfortunately, it's a field-blended NTSC-to-PAL conversion.  I suppose that you might find a use for the audio though. 

EDIT: Forget the above.  Whoever made the IMDb page used the image of the wrong film.  The picture for the 1982 film Aladdin and the Magic Lamp shows the image for the 1970 film Aladdin and the Magic Lamp.

I have the DVD of the 1970 film.  I also have a VHS rip of the 1982 film with English audio and Finnish subtitles.  There's a Greek dub on YouTube that you might want to add to your collection.

What's the Italian DVD like?

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It's pretty good quality. Video is converted to 25 fps (though not daftly; it's an interlaced telecine), the credits are in Japanese but the title and "THE END" have been repainted from Japanese into Italian. It's got Italian and Japanese audio, both 192 kbps 2.0. The subs appear to be dubsubs. Lots of dirt and grain. Publisher was Yamato Video.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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My friend who has been collecting audio provided me with more detail.

A lot of the audio we have is from YT rips or whatever low quality encodes, though the first English dub, Italian, Japanese, Polish and Dutch at the very least we have decent rips of, the first from VHS and the rest from DVD.

As far as we know there's only 1 Portuguese dub, done in Brazil, which makes the out of print and apparently next to impossible to find R2PT DVD intriguing; it claims to be 1.85 anamorphic with Portuguese and Japanese audio. All our sources are 4:3 and seem to be open matte.

The English dub credits misspell "Baer" as "Bear" (logical; the Japanese credits have the name transcribed phonetically in katakana).

The opening and closing themes are performed by Godiego (pronounced "Godaigo" - don't ask) - they're apparently somewhat known in the UK for "Monkey Magic", the theme song to a live-action adaptation of "Journey in the West" that got an English dub there.

ETA: I was wrong about the time period of the second dub. 1992 is impossible, since one of the VAs had been dead for years by then. First post has been edited accordingly.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Molly said:As far as we know there's only 1 Portuguese dub, done in Brazil, which makes the out of print and apparently next to impossible to find R2PT DVD intriguing; it claims to be 1.85 anamorphic with Portuguese and Japanese audio. All our sources are 4:3 and seem to be open matte.

That is intriguing.  Let's hope that you can track it down.  I take it that you are using an NTSC DVD as your main source for the video.

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PAL DVD, backconverted. I'm not even aware of the existence of any NTSC DVDs.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Just found out this film never got a home video release in Japan. Which means we're DAMN lucky to have the original audio...thank you Yamato Video!

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Yeah, that's something else. :/ Pekkle is apparently a character created by Sanrio (Hello Kitty) in 1990.

Japanese Wikipedia states that the movie never got a home video release (at least on VHS, LD or DVD) in Japan. I'm pretty sure it never got a legitimate DVD release here (we have a conversion of a VHS, but that's all).

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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It's a shame that there was no NTSC LD, because it would great to have the audio. There's not even an entry on dvdcompare.net, the LaserDisc Database, or DVDBeaver for this film, so it really does seem to have slipped through the cracks.

I've been searching for an HDTV broadcast but drawn a blank.  I'll keep looking.

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I suspect you'll only find upscales if anything. :/

The sources I've currently settled on - Italian DVD for video and Japanese audio, patched with Polish DVD for two cards that were painted out on the Italian DVD (the Polish DVD is relatively poorly mastered, where the Italian one is mastered quite well) - are my current best known.

I'm not aware of anything other than YT uploads for at least some of the stuff (like the Goldwyn dub). The "Media" dub we have a DVD conversion a friend did for us that is probably as good as can be expected for coming from a low-budget VHS release. We've got a third DVD release on the way (from Germany) and will be checking that out.

The Portuguese DVD is apparently out of print and holy hell to find and the "stats" leave us with a lot of questions.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Yeah, we found out about it, haven't been able to get the actual DVD yet.

I wonder why there's so many European DVDs, then we and Brazil got VHS, and Japan got zip.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Perhaps it's a question of distribution rights.

Maybe Harmy can let you know if he sees the Czech DVD. :-)

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Great to hear about this project, as Aladdin was one of those films I remember fondly as well. It is often very hard to come by information on these lesser known animated features, especially originally foreign ones (like Toei stuff - the Swan Lake film was another of my favourites). I didn’t realise there were even official DVDs out there, as too often (as is often the case) listings show the wrong image or a very poor artist rendering that has little, if anything, to do with the actual film product. I only ever saw it on VHS, from a recording in the 80s. I unfortunately can’t add anything to help out the project right now, but would like to offer my thanks and good luck with it. I am eager to see what you guys can come up with.

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Molly said:
The English dub credits misspell “Baer” as “Bear” (logical; the Japanese credits have the name transcribed phonetically in katakana).

That should be Dale Baer, he’s quite a talented animator in his own right (recently he did the 2013 Mickey Mouse short “Get A Horse!”, I just wonder how in the world did he get stuck on this film! I think June is his ex-wife.

The opening and closing themes are performed by Godiego (pronounced “Godaigo” - don’t ask) - they’re apparently somewhat known in the UK for “Monkey Magic”, the theme song to a live-action adaptation of “Journey in the West” that got an English dub there.

Another film they did a couple tunes in is “Galaxy Express 999” (“Taking Off” and “The Galaxy Express 999”). True those in the UK would best know them for “Monkey Magic” while the US may recall the songs in GE:999 (though the Roger Corman “New World Pictures” edition drops the tunes anyway).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW0yrDTvmNc

ETA: I was wrong about the time period of the second dub. 1992 is impossible, since one of the VAs had been dead for years by then. First post has been edited accordingly.

It would have to be during the time Samuel Goldwyn Television was still active, I would think the mid-late 80’s myself. Interesting though that Toei would license out a film to be dubbed into English when they already had one prepared by William Ross (I think the same crew also worked on Swan Lake, which also saw a secondary dub through Samuel Goldwyn TV).

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I have the french dub, if interested, just PM me.

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I’m really interested in this project. Is it still active, or possibly completed? As a kid, I watched the Goldwyn version many times on a Betamax tape I recorded from the Disney Channel. I recently captured the tape to digital format. The video quality is not good, but it is complete (the Goldwyn version I found on YouTube is missing some of the opening credits). I don’t have a date on the tape, but it (most likely) would have been between 1984 and 1987.

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It’s…complicated. A friend of mine is the one who knows what’s going on, and my understanding is the hold-up is finishing up a fansub which is taking a long time for various reasons.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

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Molly said:

It’s…complicated. A friend of mine is the one who knows what’s going on, and my understanding is the hold-up is finishing up a fansub which is taking a long time for various reasons.

Well at least something’s happening.

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I want to ask, I’m trying to do some research on this movie for a wiki project I run. For the Samuel Goldwyn Dub, anywhere does it credit what the web claims to be the main cast (Chris Atkins, Kristy McNichol, John Carradine and June Lockhart) because I looked up the video of this dub on YouTube and they’re not credited on the end credits.

Only these names:
Ardwight Chamberlain, Jan Rabson, Mike Reynolds, Ted Lehmann, Patty Foley & John Hostetter

The first part with the opening credits is cut off so I can’t tell if they just credited them at the beginning or not (which would be understandable with bigger names, but why no end credit either?). Listening to the villain character, I can buy it’s John Carradine but the fact that I don’t see any reliable sources is telling me that it might just be rubbish.