Public Domain Highlights: Starling Films

Our next highlight from the Public Domain Grey Market was one of the last to promote the Looney Tunes, and ideally one of the worst companies to put out cartoons ever.

Starling Films was formed in 2004.  Their mission: release the greatest cartoons ever made for the family to enjoy, and fortunately for them, those greatest cartoons, or at least some of them, somehow or other ended up in the public domain allowing grey markets such as Starling to put out.  The main cartoons usually featured were Looney Tunes, Popeye, and sometimes Casper, Woody Woodpecker, and Mighty Mouse (the latter two only had one cartoon in the public domain).  The next step was to restore them to make them look better than ever.  Did they do a good restoration job however???  We'll keep you hanging as we find out on the next Dragonball Z............

Obviously we have to look at the art covers.  They appear to have been traced off of the cartoons themselves which is fine considering they truly represent how they looked in the cartoons.  A few characters may look a little off model since they seemed to have taken a random screenshot, but overall at least they look good on the covers.  However, save for Popeye and at least one Bugs Bunny, you may notice they never say "Looney Tunes Collection" "Woody Woodpecker Collection" or anything related to that.  Instead you got "Timeless Cartoons" "Cartoon Gallery" "Cartoons a Plenty" and "Cartoon Magic".  Perhaps this is to not gain attention to the copyright holders of these characters.










So you pop the disc in and turn on the cartoons.  Your first problem begins with the opening titles.  Starling claims these films as their own (hey...public domain, right???).  They went so far as not only putting their own copyrights on the cartoons, but also went through the trouble of renaming them.  For example:

This is the original title card to Fresh Hare as seen on the James Cagney set from Warner Bros.  But on the Starling Films DVD.....

"Fresh Hare" has been erased and a new title it typed out on the card calling it "This Hare's Fresh".  That's not all that they did, there's more........

But first, a background on cartoon restoration in general:  Cartoon restoration is something that is sometimes underappreciated since they are dealing with very delicate moments in animation where if done in a cheap manner, it can ruin pieces of the visuals.  If done correctly, which is enhancing the quality with new transfers, color correction, film dirt and scratch clean up, and leaving everything else alone in order to preserve how it originally looked, it'll look great and makes the cartoon hold up well.  Yes, trial and errors have occurred such as Disney's cleaning of the cel scratches that were filmed on or DVNR used in more than one occasion, but overall they've been preserved when restored and not altered in any way, shape, or form.  IF DONE INCORRECTLY.....like with Starling Films.....it looks WORSE than not being restored at all.

Hey Elmer, you're finger's on fire due to bad film altering.

Everything wrong you can think of is here. Freeze frames everywhere except when something is moving (causing it to look weird), enhanced sound effects on some of these, added effects on some scenes (a la George Lucas restoration of Star Wars), placing their own names on the cartoons themselves, censorship galore, and compressed imaging.  The black and white Popeyes are color-toned, the Porky Pig cartoons are of course the redrawn versions.  Everything else varies from print to print (if left alone).  Some look like they came from laserdisc (maybe), but who knows, maybe they did INTENSE cleaning to keep us guessing (and that's bad if they restored too much because then it no longer feels like on film).  Which brings us to today's DVD Review.....

DVD Review: Bugs Bunny That Wacky Wabbit!

Here, we take a look at the cartoons on this disc specifically to see how horrifying these releases are.  First off:

The Unruly Hare: Not in the public domain but what the heck.....incorrect opening and closing titles, original intro music gone, re-titled Wailroad Wabbit, edited, enhanced graphics throughout, cheap product placement. 

  

Fresh Hare: Incorrect opening and closing titles, re-titled This Hare's Fresh, original intro music gone, enhanced graphics, censorship (especially the last scene).

The Wabbit Who Came to Supper: Original intro music gone, renamed Bugs Bugs Go Away, enhanced graphics and imagery, smearing to censor background imagery, bad freeze frames, wrong end title

Foney Fables: Original intro music gone, renamed Funny Fables, enhanced graphics, Wartime references changed

Hamatuer Night: Original titles replaced with the AAP logo and Blue Ribbon titles (a la MGM's Vi-De-Oh for Kids VHS line), renamed Ham Night and with Starling branding, one of the worst censorship I've ever seen...a gunshot heard in the background was replaced with a badly dubbed over "Stop it NOW!!!!"

The Wacky Wabbit: renamed The Wabbit's Wacky, Starling branding, enhanced graphics

Pantry Panic (Woody Woodpecker cartoon): renamed Bleak Bleak, bad freeze frames, enhanced graphics, subliminal....messages in the end????????

Sports Chumpions: renamed Sports Legends and with Starling branding, enhanced graphics

Piss poor quality print.  You could do better, Starling

Gopher Spinach (Popeye cartoon): AAP print (to be fair, as with most copies circulating), renamed I Go For Spinach, enhanced graphics, bad freeze frames

Insect to Injury (Popeye cartoon): renamed The Termiteinator (really?????), enhanced sound effects that over modulate the original track (turn down your TV's if viewing), bad freeze frames, enhanced graphics

Floor Flusher (Popeye cartoon): renamed Popeye the Plumber Man, bad freeze frames.  This one Starling claims as their best restoration because of them getting rid of one big spec of dirt.  Not even close.

Falling Hare: Original Bugs Bunny WB shield opening replaced with typical one for Merrie Melodies, renamed Hare Power, bad freeze frames, censorship, and by far the worst quality of this cartoon I've ever seen

With all the bad edits, this DVD seems like a joke.  The entire company seemed like a joke.  However, the joke didn't last long.  Starling is long gone.  In the end, it was just a fly by night company that released cheap products.  There are much better official (and unofficial) sets out there on DVD and Blu-ray of Looney Tunes, Popeye, and others with proper restorations.  Another reason why to never buy anything unauthorized.