William A. Wellman's The High & The Mighty (1954) might very well be called the 'Grand Hotel' of the wild blue yonder. For it stacks a commercial airliner with an all star crew and passenger list then forces everyone to interact when a mid-air malfunction puts everyone's life in peril. Top billed is legendary hero, John Wayne as co-pilot Dan Roman. Seems Roman is living with demons of a fiery plane crash lurking just beneath the surface. The pilot, John Sullivan (Robert Stack) is a stoic, troubled and neurotic mess who eventually has a complete melt down forcing Roman to rise to the occasion, take over and land the plane safely. Ah, but will he? The rest of the cast reads like a who's who of forgotten or nearly forgotten character actors, including Sidney Blackmere, Laraine Day, Phil Harris and Claire Trevor. Despite being one of the most sought after titles requested by DVD consumers, the film is really little more than a sensationalist precursor to the highly popular 70s disaster series, Airport. The one curiosity of this disc is that it is a Warner Brothers film presented by Paramount DVD. Apparently a rights issue has allowed the copyright to lapse in the latter's favor.
Advertised as meticulously restored, the transfer represented on this disc is something of a disappointment to the expectation of pristine image quality. Although the DVD starts out relatively strong, with a very bright and strongly contrasted print element, it quickly degrades into various levels of quality the worst being near the end of the film when the plane makes its emergency landing in Frisco. In those final reels, the image is overly soft, exhibits some minor edge enhancement and even has a touch of color bleeding. Throughout, flesh tones are not very accurate at all (an inherent flaw of all Warner-Color film stock of the period); they're either excessively pink or a flat orange. Most of the color spectrum tends to mute along a greenish gray, hazy brown balance. At times contrast levels can seem a tad pasty. Blacks are rarely deep or solid. Whites are bluish or yellowish but never a true white. Transitions between scenes exhibit the inherent flaw of all early Cinemascope transfers, with momentary blooming of excessive film grain. Yes, compared to the way this film has looked on television this disc is a resounding improvement. But it does not come anywhere near to the level of quality one would expect from a disc advertised as 'restored and remastered.' The audio is a 5.1 attempt at recapturing the original six track stereo, but it's generally strident and not very natural sounding at all. Extras are too numerous to go into any great detail. There's an overkill of featurettes and newly created documentaries, a bunch of vintage material, stills gallery and theatrical trailers; comprehensive to say the very least.
Advertised as meticulously restored, the transfer represented on this disc is something of a disappointment to the expectation of pristine image quality. Although the DVD starts out relatively strong, with a very bright and strongly contrasted print element, it quickly degrades into various levels of quality the worst being near the end of the film when the plane makes its emergency landing in Frisco. In those final reels, the image is overly soft, exhibits some minor edge enhancement and even has a touch of color bleeding. Throughout, flesh tones are not very accurate at all (an inherent flaw of all Warner-Color film stock of the period); they're either excessively pink or a flat orange. Most of the color spectrum tends to mute along a greenish gray, hazy brown balance. At times contrast levels can seem a tad pasty. Blacks are rarely deep or solid. Whites are bluish or yellowish but never a true white. Transitions between scenes exhibit the inherent flaw of all early Cinemascope transfers, with momentary blooming of excessive film grain. Yes, compared to the way this film has looked on television this disc is a resounding improvement. But it does not come anywhere near to the level of quality one would expect from a disc advertised as 'restored and remastered.' The audio is a 5.1 attempt at recapturing the original six track stereo, but it's generally strident and not very natural sounding at all. Extras are too numerous to go into any great detail. There's an overkill of featurettes and newly created documentaries, a bunch of vintage material, stills gallery and theatrical trailers; comprehensive to say the very least.