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Yeah, I know it was the only film he directed. That's what I meant when I said I wish he had started directing sooner. If his first film was a good as it was, we can only imagine what other great films he may have made if he only had the time.

I'd love a Laughton festival. Always thought he was a great actor. I only wish he had started directing sooner. "Night of the Hunter" is a gem.

Slappy: Glad I could help you find it. If you want to buy it, I saw it listed on both Amazon & deepdiscountdvd.com for about $14. Now that you've got me thinking about it, I may just get it myself. It has sentimental value to me. When I was in my teens, which is more years ago than I'll admit, I upgraded from collecting movies on 8mm film to collecting them on 16mm. This was the first 16mm feature I bought. I can't recall why I picked "Target Earth" except in those days there wasn't much available. I kept it for years, but eventually sold off it off and haven't seen it since. Thanks for giving me a fond memory or my early collecting days.

Perhaps you're thinking of the 1954 Allied Artist film "Target Earth "starring Richard Denning, Kathleen Crowley,Virginia Grey and Richard Reeves. I haven't seen this in at least 20 years, but I seems to ring a bell. As I recall there were alien robots running around too.

Leo, time marches on and so does technology. As silents gave way to talkies, and b/w to color, tv gave way to cable and satellite, so must VHS to DVD. Actually, the fact of the matter is money. The studios sell far more DVDs now than they do VHS tapes. Most of us who still have VHS (I do) use it to record movies or play the ones we've bought. While I'll buy a movie on VHS, it will only be if I can get it VERY cheap. As for anything new, I want the quality of DVD. Go ahead, take the plunge, you won't regret it. Go to most any discount store and you'll find bare-bones models for about $40. I'll bet you'll be won over.

John Ford's "The Quiet Man". He purchased the rights to the story in the 1930s and couldn't get any studio interested. It wasn't till his "cavalry tilogy" made so much money for Republic Pictures that its president Hebert J. Yates agreed to make the film as a favor for Ford. If you can imagine, he wanted to make it in black & white on the back lot. Thank goodness Ford held his ground and insisted on filming in Ireland and shooting in color.

Oops! My mistake. It wasn't the "Brigadoon" SE DVD that I was thinking had the alternate version on it. It was "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"

I only caught a bit of it and realized it was indeed the alternate "flat" version. What I saw didn't look bad to me, but I imagine it wasn't given the restoration the other version did. Since I didn't see it from the start, I don't know if Robert O. explained what version they were showing, but I'll bet he did. I think it's important to show an alternate version of "scope" films when they exist. By the way, this version is on the two-disc special edition DVD that was released last year along with the other one.

Hey fella, we come here to discuss movies not to read spam. Go somplace else to sell your stuff. Besides I'm sick and tired of guys like you who grab up good web names just to make a buck.I find your message offensive and hope it yanked!

There is certainly nothing wrong with saving them, but as for me I just collect too much movie related stuff now as it is. If I started saving anything else, I think my wife would divorce me. Seriously, if you enjoy saving them and find them helpful then go for it.

In the old days, it simply meant that the film was improperly threaded in the projector. Today it's highly technical and I won't try to explain it, because I don't really understand it myself. The signal goes from TCM (or any network) up to a satellite and then back down to your cable company which actually takes about four seconds. For whatever reason, once in awhile the sound and the picture don't arrive at the same time. I'm talking a fraction of a second, but enough to be obvious.

This might be right up your alley. Check out The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman House in Rochester New York. In case you don't know it, Eastman House is one of the foremost film archives in the world. The Selznick School is an international program in archival training and could lead to a career in film restoration. You can e-mail them at selznickschool@geh.org and ask for information. Good luck.

I would think that MGM would prefer to lease them to a commercial channel or a pay channel like Encore or HBO where they can demand and get higher licensing fees than TCM would be willing to pay. After all, we sure don't want TCM to "make a pact with the devil" like AMC did just to get the Bond films.

Wow! Having been involved in film collecting for many more years than I like to admit, I have to say that the spider sequence in King Kong is one of the "holy grails" of collecting. I was under the impression that it was cut prior to the first release and was never in any of the prints. Sadly, as far as it is known, the footage no longer exists. I'm sure if Turner had it, it would have been restored and added to the movie. No archives seem to have it so I guess we have to keep our fingers cross that it will turn up in some private collection somewhere. If your father saw it, he was a very lucky man.

I'm pretty sure shainabluegirl is correct and this film has never been released to home video. Even with the tens of thousands of films now availble on VHS and DVD it's a sad reminder of what still isn't available. All the more reason to watch TCM.

I'm sure that the tcmprogrammer won't mind if I take his place and give a plug for "Now Playing" TCM's great monthly program magazine. Well worth the $11.95 subscription price. You can also go to the top of this page and click on "schedule" and you can see all the listings a month at a time. Right know you can go all the way to the end of April.

I think the part about the American eating with the wrong hand has been used in several films. The one I was thinking of was "13 Rue Madeleine" the 1946 Fox film starring James Cagney and Richard Conte. I know the Fox Movie Channel shows it from time-to-time and perhaps now that some Fox films are running on TCM we may see it here. It's out on DVD too. Even if it's not the one you're looking for, it's well worth watching.

Thanks tcmprogrammer. I'm sure that while disappointed, most of us understand that mistakes do happen. This leads me to a couple of questions about TCM's technical operations. I remember reading someplace that all of Time-Warner's networks are run out of the same operations center. If that's the case, are all of TCM's tapes co-mingled with all the others in one main library? If this is the case, I can see where there could be several different versions of a movie on the shelf, thus making it an easy mistake to grab the wrong tape. Secondly, do you even run tapes anymore or is everything loaded into servers and run directly from them? I just read and interesting article about how all the HBO channels have gone "tapeless". I know a lot of old movie buffs have the vision of film cranking through a projector as we watch TCM, but time and technology marches on. Would love to see TCM do a "behinds the scenes" show about how the network operates. Keep up the good work.

It's a fair question and hopefully the tcmprogrammer will get around to answering it, but it happens so rarely it doesn't really bother me that much. Since something like 99.9% of the films shown on TCM are in their original aspect ratio, when a P&S does slip by, I can live with that. Don't get me wrong, I don't like P&S, but if TCM does show one, from time-to-time, they must have a good reason. With TCM's track record, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

I disagree that the hosts aren't needed. While many of us are "old-timers" when it comes to watching classics, and don't need the details, each month TCM exposes these films to a newer and hopefully younger audience who may not be as knowledgeable about classic films as we are. The more they know about them the more interest they will have and the more likely they are to watch more classics.. It's important to develop a continuous growth in viewers so that TCM will prosper and continue what it does best. After all, we wouldn't want them to become an other AMC. Besides, when I tune in and see Robert Osborne it's like seeing an old friend showing me a film from his own collection.

Having grown up in the '50s and from the earliest of years been a film buff, I've seen many, many movies over the decades. When I think of a film I've seen, not only can I remember the film, but I also remember the theatre where I first saw it and usually what the second feature was and who I saw it with. I'm not just talking "special" films like the first time I saw "Ben-Hur" (1959, Ritz theatre in Albany NY, with my Dad and we sat in the first row of the balcony) I mean just about every film I've ever seen. I'm sure this is no special talent, but it just amazes me that I can remember all these details from 45 years ago yet I'm lucky to remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Maybe it's just because films have played such an important part in my life thatI can remember the details.

We already have a Warner's classic film channel. It's called Turner Classic Movies. I can't imagine another channel doing as good a job since they have just about all the Warner titles available. When TCM shows films made by other studios, it's just the icing on the cake. True they may not be showing every title made by Warners for various reasons (legal, print quality, etc.) but they sure do a great job. Of course, I wouldn't mind seeing a TCM2 channel.

I think rather than show films that were my favorites, I'd search through TCM's library inventory and find four films that I'd never seen and maybe have never been shown on TCM. You never know what films I might come up with

While of course you're free to enjoy whatever you like, you sure came to the wrong place to complain about letterboxing. Watching a film in a "pan & scan" version is like reading a book, but only reading every other sentence. Considering that most other channels run don't run letterboxed films, there should be plenty of movies out there to keep you happy.

I didn't watch this showing, but I assume they either use the same tape each time or else the movie is stored in a digital server so there shouldn't be any difference from showing to showing. However, there are some scenes in the film that are not the same quality as the rest of it.One of them is in the early part of the film which takes place in the general's office. It's like this in every version I've seen including the DVD. Seems to me I recall reading that the original negatives were damaged for these scenes and they had to "dupe" footage from 16mm prints, thus causing the drop in quality. I don't think this replacement footage accounts for more than 4 or 5 minutes of running time.