Customer Reviews

BLONDIE-COLLECTORS EDITION-9 DISC BOXED SET-28 MOVIES W/ INTERACTIVE DVD MOTION MENUS

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This box set was my second purchase of a Blondie set. This set includes what I believe are all the films made between 1938 and 1950. The last of the set has a new Mr. Dithers (not Jonathan Hale) who suddenly reappears as Dagwood's boss. In the previous film, Mr. Radcliffe was the boss, as he had been since the business was sold to him by J.C. Dithers. It made me wonder if there was a missing film.

Neverthenonetheless, this is a wonderful box set. The Bumsteads go from the parents of one child, Baby Dumpling, and one Dog, Daisy, to the parents of Alexander, the grownup name of their son, who's insisted on it since he started school, Daisy, and her little family of five pups, and Cookie, their daughter who was accidentally named by a policeman who stopped them for traveling too slowly on their way home from the hospital with their new addition. He called her a cute little cookie and Dagwood and Alexander picked it up, protested by mother of course, but it gradually became her name.

In my earlier review I've extolled the virtues of the talented performers in this series. Arthur Lake, the perennial klutz who still manages to hold on to his job as the assistant designer of a construction firm through creative ideas and the help of a very clever wife. Penny Singleton, a talented young actress with a great singing voice and a brilliant sense of comedic timing carries her little family through the Depression and the War with humor and humanity, and Larry Simms, who grows from a cute little toddler, identified in the credits for Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as "Baby Dumpling" into a young man. Daisy, the "pin-up pooch" who seems to turn up in films all over the screen in this period of time (in Capra's Meet John Doe, she's the dog who creeps out of the way when she hears Gary Cooper apologize for dripping his wet raincoat on the floor, like she thought she'd be blamed for the puddle)manages everything from fetching the paper to helping coax a little girl out of her wheelchair and learning to walk.

The supplier of the DVD set was very helpful. Her service was prompt and courteous. While it took only a short time to receive the set after I ordered it, I found I was savoring the viewing over a course of weeks.

All in all, it was a very pleasant way to spend the summer.

I have waited for years for the complete Blondie series. I was not disappointed. However, the DVD seems to consist of DVD from video with curious occasional timing adjustments. It was claimed the sound was enhanced, but I believe the timing adjustments may have been made to synch the video and sound.

While the effect was strange, if you are the kind of person who wants the Blondie movies you will be the kind of person who will put up with the timing adjustments just to enjoy the opportunity to have them.

I read up on this product before purchasing on Amazon, as I am an ardent Blondie-phile. I taped most of the series on VHS when shown on various networks about twenty five years ago. When one of the tapes recently came unwound I decided to purchase this set. I had read various reviews of this stating that the sequencing was off somewhat and that these DVDs were recorded from VHS versions. They are not the movies released by Columbia, they are recorded from the versions released by television. It was also stated that many people found this problem with the pacing irritating, (by the pacing it means that the film may slow somewhat - it's not playing at normal speed). Also the soundtrack was a little creaky as well. I played the first Blondie episode from this set and found the pacing problem very irritating. I have much better quality in my VHS tapes. The second and third episodes that I played from this set weren't as bad as the first, but, there were some pacing problems as well. However, I can live with it as I really love this series. Wish that Columbia would release a REAL version DVD set from their master copies. THAT would probably be superb. Buy this set if you are a true Blondie-phile but be prepared to be irritated.

The BLONDIE films are well known.
Thanks to Amazon Market Place, I received the full collection.
Of course, the quality is he quality of a VHS, but it's good enough for now.

We Love Blondie! But the box set we received is almost unwatchable. The picture quality is terrible.
We have VHS tapes from years ago that are about 90% better quality than this digital DVD copy.
Maybe we got a bad set, but how do you know unless we purchase another set to compare.

As mentioned by others here, these BLONDIE programmers don't contain their original opening credits. Picture quality varies, with none being either poor or pristine.

BLONDIEANA--

Penny Singleton co-starred with Arthur Lake in 28 BLONDIE comedies that were based on Chic Young's popular comic strip. Simultaneous to the movie series, they both had a decade-long "Blondie" CBS radio show. After the movie series ended in 1950 and with the demise of the Blondie television sitcom, this catalogue found renewed life on TV and ran for many years, most often as an hour-long Saturday afternoon show.

Miss Singleton began in vaudeville, where she was part of a children's act with Milton Berle and Gene Raymond. Outside of Blondie, she is best remembered as the voice of Jane Jetson.

Originally a child acrobat in the circus and then a dancer, Arthur Lake (along with Barbara Britton) helped resurrect 'Blondie' as a short-lived 1957 TV sitcom. It was his last Show Biz job. Lake's older sister Florence was the motor mouthed wife of long-suffering Edgar Kennedy in dozens of RKO "Average Man" shorts.

Larry Simms played toddler Baby Dumpling in the early Blondie films and stayed with the series to the end. In '43 his character name was changed to Alexander. Simms appeared in a handful of films outside of Blondie, receiving screen credit as "Baby Dumpling" for MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939). Under his own name he also played the youthful Pete Bailey in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946). Larry's career essentially ended with Blondie.

The 1943-50 screen résumé of Marjorie Ann Mutchie (Cookie Bumstead) consists solely of 16 Blondie films.

These are of HORRIBLE quality! I understand that these were made long ago, but they play as if they have been copied form other DVDs'.I wish I would have watched them much sooner so I could have returned them! I will NEVER NEVER NEVER order from this place again.

The movies are great but the condition of the product was not how it was represented,it was said to be in excellent condition yet there where many scratches on most of the DVDs!

All the video transfers have timing issues that are annoying, and found the disc storage case unsatisfactory. Still, I enjoyed the films and appreciate them being made available.

These DVDs are obviously poor quality copies from other dvds or vhs tapes. If you have seen the Blondie volume 1 and 2 dvds, you will see the much poorer video and audio here, especially the major background noise. That said, the Blondie volume 1 and 2 dvds only have ten epidodes so if you must have/see the other eighteen episodes, I guess there is no other choice, but to watch the low quality versions here.