Review Detail

First, I have to say that I owe Tony a sincere apology. When he finished his edit, he sent me a copy in the gold case with a beautiful cover and I never thanked him for it. I feel pretty bad about that. As we used to say in the Army, there is no excuse, but there is an explanation. A lot of the delay was due to my natural procrastination. But the other factor was that my wife is the serious Doc Savage fan in our house. Sure, I am a Doc fan but not at her level. She has all the books, the radio shows, the comics, even a fair selection of the original pulps, and a vast assortment of reference material. She takes Doc Savage very seriously. So, of course, I wanted her to see this fanedit. As any real fan would, she detested the original movie so much that I could never convince her to watch it. So, I finally just showed it to her without telling her what we were watching. That was a long time after I got the DVD. I asked her to write something about this version and she did. Here it is:

"Thank you for getting the Doc Savage fan edit I know that I refused to watch it for a very long time, and I know that you know how deeply scarred I (and other Doc fans) were by that horrible movie. You were wise to start watching it, finally, without telling me what we were watching.

"The text introduction was really good – made me want more. I loved the way they changed the beginning of the movie into an old-time newsreel, too. The rest of the movie was almost painless – I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to Sousa again without cringing. And finally, the extras helped me to relive that old pain in all its glory…and in doing so, to really appreciate what a fine job was done in paring the movie down to its very best parts.

"Please thank whoever the editor was – I didn’t think it could be done!"

I liked it, too. I didn't hate the original as much as she did but it was hard to like it. Tony's edit improved it at least an order of magnitude, arguably several. It is actually watchable now without moaning at the bad parts. There aren't any bad parts, now. It is quite an achievement. I appreciate any fan edit but it is something different to start with a good movie and make improvements than to start with a very bad movie and make it decent.

Technically, I think it is nearly flawless. The video and audio quality are equal to the source and the edits are smooth and hardly noticable. The amount of fixing of small things that add up to a major change in the tone of the movie is hard to grasp. He went so far as to insert new video and sound effects, something I would not even contemplate trying.

BTW, it was my wife who made the request that the kiss at the end be removed as she considered it very out of character for Doc. I appreciate Tony giving her credit for that.

And, very belatedly, thanks for your super job.