kitti

jerryshadoe said:

I don't speak either language, but was curious to see if the transfer suffered from the same issues as the UK VHS release. Does anyone know whether the German release used the same video as the UK release?

 Hi jerryshadoe

I'm from Austria, almost Germany. I have the german video too. When I was a child late 70s early 80s, we had a cinema across the street which played Disney double features every Saturday late in the morning. One of our bi-monthly highlights where either Pete's Dragon/Song of the South or Bedknobs and Broomsticks/Song of the South. So I've seen the movie plenty times in my youth. Over the years it played a lot on TV too, last time in 2001 before it was "banned" and forbidden to be shown internationally too. I can't be 100% sure but I'm pretty sure that the German video comes from the German TV version source from the late 80s because they look identical. I'm almost certain- also many years have gone by- that it's identical to the old cinema version too - at least the one used for the reruns. It's not uncommen that german versions of foreign real-life movies don't change the cast cards. Most of the time only the title cards were changed. Animated movies are a different subject - cause of the dubing actors.  Hope that helps a bit.