Angel and the Badman (Avenue One) (1947)

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General		Extras
Category	Western	Menu Audio Biographies-Cast
Rating
Year Of Production	1947
Running Time	99:30
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	James Edward Grant
Studio Distributor	Republic Select Audio-Visual Distrib	Starring	John Wayne Gail Russell Harry Casey Bruce Cabot Irene Rich Lee Dixon
Case	Alpha
RPI	$19.95	Music	Richard Hageman

    Quirt Evans is a typical Western anti-hero. He is extremely handy with a six-shooter and his reputation precedes him wherever he goes. He is riding past a Quaker farm when he collapses, both from exhaustion and from a bullet wound. A Quaker family take him in and tend to his wounds, impartial to his background.

    Quirt is touched by the kindness of these strangers, and they in turn are touched by the kindness they see in his heart underneath his gruff exterior. Penelope Worth (Gail Russell) in particular falls for this tall, handsome stranger, despite his chequered past.

    A major turning point in the story is when Quirt rides over to a non-Quaker neighbour of the Worth's and manages to restore the water supply to the entire Quaker community, not by gunplay but by civility.

    Quirt is torn between returning to his former outlaw life or remaining with the Quaker community and becoming a farmer. His struggle between these two diametrically opposed ways of life leads to a thrilling climax where Quirt has to make a crucial choice.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced and has clearly been taken from an analogue NTSC video source which has been converted to PAL.

    This black-and-white transfer is lacking in any clarity whatsoever. The definition of this DVD is so poor as to make the finer print in the opening credits totally unreadable. There are no fine details whatsoever in this image at any time, and it is lacking in the larger details at times as well. The overall black and white levels of this transfer are all over the place, even varying within each individual shot. Whites frequently flare and subsequently lose even more detail, and the black level jumps up and down incessantly. It goes without saying that shadow detail is simply non-existent with this dreadful transfer. Low level noise is rampant throughout, marring any semi-deep blacks that are present in the image.

    Being a black-and-white transfer, there is no colour at all, other than on the menus and during the copyright message which has clearly been taken from a very poor quality VHS tape - the colour bleed and chroma noise exhibited during the copyright message is dreadful.

    MPEG artefacting reared its ugly head at times, with macro-blocking being the main culprit during fade-outs and pans.

    Film-to-video artefacts were frequently present, with a cornucopia of defects on display. Telecine wobble was a constant annoyance throughout this transfer as was a frequent herringbone effect that could be seen marring the darker aspects of the picture. Additionally, betraying the NTSC to PAL conversion of this transfer, there was considerable judder in each and every panned shot. Unforgivably, a number of videotape artefacts were present in the image which lead to severe image break-up and some MPEG artefacting at these times. The first instance of this was at 3:48 - 3:54, but several other instances occurred throughout the presentation.

    Film artefacts were variably present, from relatively clean to copiously present. All manner of film artefacts are on display here in all manner of severity. Scratches, vertical lines through the entire frame, blotches and missing frames are all variably but copiously present and distract from the image considerably.

Audio

    The dialogue was usually easy to understand though there were significant times throughout the transfer when the noise and distortion of the soundtrack got so severe that dialogue was difficult to understand. Thankfully, there were no audio sync problems with the transfer to mar it further.

    Hiss and severe audio distortion were the order of the day and continued throughout the entire transfer. Low frequency hum also frequently intruded into the soundtrack and was quite distracting at times. An additional distraction which was frequently present in the soundtrack was flutter, making the sound very choppy indeed. The usual pops, crackles and skips were also copiously present in this soundtrack.

    The audio occasionally dropped out of one channel, moving the sound either left or right. The first incidence of this occurred at 4:01 - 4:04 where the audio moved into the left channel, but this happened a number of times throughout the transfer.

    The music on this DVD was written by Richard Hageman and was your typical Western fare - nicely melodramatic and symphonic in nature, it enhanced the on-screen action nicely but unremarkably, despite the distortion and flutter being all the more audible in the music.

    The surround and subwoofer channels were not used.

Menu

Biography-Cast

    The video quality is extremely poor.

    The audio quality is extremely poor.

    The extras are extremely limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall