Hanky Panky (1982)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1982
Running Time	102:58
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Sidney Poitier
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Gene Wilder Gilda Radner Kathleen Quinlan Richard Widmark
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	Tom Scott

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English German French Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Most people seem to associate Gene Wilder with Mel Brooks films such as Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Others remember him in The Woman In Red. Well, Hanky Panky was the movie he made prior to that film. He starred alongside Gilda Radner and they eventually fell in love and got married so all the on-screen chemistry is probably real.

    If you can somehow stomach the idea of a comedy thriller, then you'll be comfortable with the film. Basically Gene Wilder stars as Michael Jordon (not to be confused with Michael Jordan), an architect visiting New York who is unwittingly drawn into an intrigue involving military secrets and lots of running around.

    The film starts with a very Hitchcock like sequence complete with suspenseful music, unusual cinematography and a shock scene. Then we enter the storyline proper. A man - Hiram Calder (Robert Prosky) - enters a posh club and is poisoned just before a frightened woman - Janet Dunn (Kathleen Quinlan) - approaches him. The woman then runs from men who are pursuing her and ends up sharing a taxi with Michael (Gene Wilder). Michael tries to flirt with her but perhaps not surprisingly she's not in the mood. She does, however, give him a package to post.

    Next thing you know, the men chasing her kidnap him but he manages to escape. He encounters Janet again but unfortunately she is murdered - but he is being accused of killing her! In an effort to clear his name, he teams up with Kate Hellman (Gilda Radner) as they try to retrieve the package that was sent and find out why people are willing to kill for it. The chase takes them to Boston, and then to the Grand Canyon, and along the way the film provides both funny and thrilling moments. Richard Widmark plays the leader of the baddies and has a suitably menacing persona.

    I'm not sure why this film did not do well in the box office during its theatrical release. It's corny, but watchable.

Video

    The transfer is in widescreen 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced, based on a 35mm print with an intended aspect ratio of 1.85:1.

    The overall transfer is soft and grainy with faded colours giving the film an overall yellowish tone. The film from which the transfer has been taken has obviously seen better days but least is reasonably clean and devoid of film marks.

    Thankfully I did not notice any instances of compression artefacts.

    There are a number of subtitle tracks on this disc, including secondary subtitles. I turned on the English subtitle track briefly to verify its existence. The accuracy is reasonable, but there are no hearing impaired cues.

    This is a single sided single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are a number of audio tracks on this disc: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192kb/s), French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192kb/s), German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192kb/s), Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192kb/s), Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192kb/s). I listened to the English audio track.

    I was expecting the audio track to be in mono, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it is in fact in stereo, or at least the background music was. I did not notice any significant panning of foley effects.

    The audio track is somewhat tinny with slightly distorted dialogue, but at least the dialogue was easy to understand and there were no audio synchronization issues.

    The original music score is by Tom Scott and seems standard thriller fare.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    Apart from a theatrical trailer there are no extras on this disc.

Menu

    The menus are static but 16x9 enhanced.

Theatrical Trailer (1:29)

    The trailer is open matte/full frame and is presented with a Dolby Digital 2.0 (192kb/s) audio track.

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on:

• 1.33:1 transfer
• Additional trailers

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on:

• Additional foreign language audio tracks and subtitle tracks

    I would rate them as being roughly equivalent.

    Hanky Panky may sound like a raunchy comedy but it is in fact a comedic thriller starring Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner. Worth watching if you have nothing else better to do. It is presented on a disc with a mediocre audio and audio transfers, and minimal extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall