Blackbeard's Ghost (1968)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1968
Running Time	102:36
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Robert Stevenson
Studio Distributor	Disney Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Peter Ustinov Dean Jones Suzanne Pleshette Elsa Lanchester Joby Baker Elliott Reid
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Robert F. Brunner

    I will always remember my sister raving about how funny Blackbeard's Ghost was when she saw it many, many years ago. Well, the passage of time might well have worked against the film as this is not the funniest film you will ever see - but it is at least still quite a pleasant view that at least will raise a grin or two.

    The film starts with the the arrival in Godolphin of the new track coach at Godolphin College, Steve Walker (Dean Jones). Nothing unusual about that except that the track team at Godolphin is fairly wretched. Arriving in town, he finds that the college have booked him a room at Blackbeard's Inn, run by the Daughters of The Buccaneers. It so happens he arrives on the night of their big bazaar, as they are trying desperately to raise the cash to pay out the mortgage on the property - the price for failure being the inn falling into the hands of the local businessman of dubious repute. As Steve desperately tries to get his room, he happens to meet Jo Anne Baker (Suzanne Pleshette), on the executive committee to save the inn as well as being a member of the faculty at the college. Ending up attending the auction of heirlooms, Steve finds himself bucking the pressure of the businessman and his associates to encourage bidding on the items available. He ends up with a bed warmer that was once owned by the tenth wife of Edward Teach (Peter Ustinov), one Aldetha who so happened to be a witch. As she was being burned, she placed a curse upon Edward that ensured he was kept in limbo until he could prove goodness in his heart.

    Well, Aldetha's bed warmer holds a secret - and Steve of course finds it, reads it and is promptly blessed with the company of Edward Teach. Now a more disparate pairing it would be harder to imagine - and that is not made any easier by the fact that only Steve can see Edward. What results is mayhem and madness, that slowly devolves down to one place at one time: Broxton Relays, a time honoured tradition of a track meet at which Godolphin has been less than successful for many, many years. All that is wanted is for Godolphin to triumph - despite the staggering ineptitude of its track team. Upon the result of the track meet rests everything.

    It is a pretty banal story in most respects and is terribly Disney, right down to such quintessential Disney stars as Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette. Good solid performers they are, but with material like this it needs someone with a little more distinction to really lift proceedings. Enter Peter Ustinov. His performance as Edward Teach (a.k.a Blackbeard if you hadn't worked it out) is where this film starts and ends. His performance is what lifts the film out of the doldrums and at least makes it watchable. Robert Stevenson directed a few Disney films (Darby O'Gill And The Little People being one recently reviewed that springs to mind) and whilst thoroughly competent, certainly does not have the distinction to lift this story. Just about everything outside of Peter Ustinov's performance in fact lacks distinction.

    Not an uproarious laugh-fest but an amusing enough divergence for 100 odd minutes that could perhaps have been cheerfully cut down to around 95 minutes without too much trouble. One of the better efforts from Disney in live action film in the late 1960's. Unfortunately, Disney have chosen to avoid spending any money on the film or the DVD and we have a worthwhile film on a very unworthy DVD.

Video

    Okay, this is where we start with some of the bad aspects of the DVD. Primarily amongst those is the actual ratio of the transfer itself. Whilst lacking definitive information as to the original theatrical aspect ratio, the look of the film at time certainly suggests that this is not in the original ratio. The opening credits are slightly cropped left and right, suggesting that this is a widescreen film cropped to fit a 1.33:1 ratio. If you look at some of the framing of shots in the film, there is some evidence that there is not that much information missing, so I would be tempted to suggest that this was originally shown in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1.

    However, if you check out the screen captures at Ultimate Disney they seem to be differently framed than the Region 4 release... If we take the example of the shot in the Dean's office at 40:29, the screen capture of the Region 1 release has distinctly less information top and bottom, as well as less information on the left side of the screen. The Region 4 certainly is much better framed, so the suggestion is that the Region 1 release is Pan and Scan whilst the Region 4 is opened out, nearly Full Frame - as there seems to be a slight windowbox effect throughout the film (that is, there are small black bars left and right of the image). Any definitive information would of course be very much appreciated to resolve the puzzle of the ratio.

    Certainly things don't get much better once we push the conundrum of the aspect ratio aside. The transfer tends to be a little soft, lacking in detail and definition. The extraordinary Blackbeard's Inn for instance just cries out for a detailed transfer to really show the mish-mash of stuff that makes the building so distinctive. You will just have to guess how distinctive it is as the transfer does not help at all, especially with the poorish shadow detail. There is plenty of evidence of grain to be seen, especially in the close up of Edward Teach at 21:51. Clarity is not the best and there is some evidence of minor low level noise in some of the darker scenes (of which there are plenty as the contrast is not good in the night time scenes).

    The colours are not the best either but these are about the best thing about the transfer. Whilst the saturation could have been a little better, and certainly tonal contrast much better, the overall look is not too bad and reasonably consistent. Lacking a little in vibrancy, which does not help things much, you really just wish that this had some sort of stand out colour to provide an effective counter to the darkness. There are no real issues with oversaturation or colour bleed. Skin tones could have been a little better and some reduction in black levels might have aided things at times.

    There is some minor loss of resolution in camera movement but this is almost certainly inherent in the source material. Everything starts to go pear-shaped in the film-to-video artefacts, with aliasing and moiré the main problems, with cross colouration tossed in for good measure. Some of the aliasing gets very ugly, such as in the stands at 41:48, but the sheer consistency of the problem just grates no matter which way you look at it: in the windscreen at 2:50, the pistol at 13:04, the car at 30:10 and so on. Cross colouration crops up mainly in jackets, such as at 15:54 and 52:23, whilst moiré artefacting crops up slightly at 45:04 and 52:23. If you actually can get past the film-to-video artefacting, which I admit is difficult, then the film artefacts are going to get you. Whilst mostly of just the small annoying veritable star field of twinkling little specks variety at times, scratches and other larger problems occasionally turn up to add to the general dreariness of the overall transfer.

    Part of the reason the transfer probably does not look the best is because they have not even used the full space available on this single sided, single layered DVD. At least this means there is no layer change to worry about.

    There are eight subtitle options on the DVD, and the English efforts are pretty good with nothing major missing in the dialogue. The DVD actually has Finnish and Swedish subtitles that are not listed on the slick along with Spanish titling, but does not have the French and Dutch subtitles as claimed by the slick.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two soundtracks on the DVD being Dolby Digital 2.0 efforts in English and Spanish. You should note that despite what the packaging might say, there is certainly NO French soundtrack on the disc.

    The English effort at least is rather problematic, and has several very noticeable drop outs in the audio. Perhaps drop outs is not an accurate description, for what it is is really noticeable variations in the audio level that last for extensive periods. One of the examples comes at 33:30 and is most disturbing. It is very disappointing that Disney have seen fit to find this acceptable for release - especially as the Region 1 release is also so afflicted.

    The dialogue comes up fairly well in the soundtrack and is generally quite easy to understand. There did not seem to be any significant issues with audio sync.

    The original score comes from Robert F. Brunner and is pretty much the sort of by-the-numbers stuff that we tend to expect from Disney releases in general. It simply lacks any distinctiveness at all.

    So what else ails the transfer in addition to the audio drop outs? Well, not a fat lot really but there certainly is ample evidence of the unrestored nature of the sound. This really is nothing special at all, almost to the extent of revelling in its ordinariness. Obviously most of your speaker system is on holiday for this effort, which is quite frontal sounding without any surround encoding whatsoever.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Nothing on offer here.

Menu

    The equivalent Region 1 release hit the shelves about two years ago and it appears from all accounts that they are as equally stiffed as Region 4, other than the obligatory language and subtitle differences, if not more so depending upon the theatrical aspect ratio of the film. The transfer sounds on a par with the Region 4. Region 2 (Europe) appears to have the same DVD as we have. So basically you go with whichever is the cheapest - unless Region 3 or Region 2 (Japan) turns up something better - although the better framing of the Region 4 release would perhaps make it the slightly preferred version.

    Blackbeard's Ghost is by no means great filmmaking and in general is very limited by a rather banal story. Unfortunately a product of its time, when Disney barely stretched to showing smoking in its output, it does mean that things tend to jump around a little with the blanks to be filled in by imagination. However, the film has always stood on the strong performance of Peter Ustinov and this is still the case. Not uproariously funny but still quite amusing, in itself the film is still worthwhile checking out. However, the transfer does it no favours whatsoever. Frankly, I would give this a miss until we get a much better version that does the film justice - including a full restoration.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall