I’ve already reviewed the other two Walt Disney Treasures in Wave VIII, and this is a great way to finish them off. Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh is the story of a Robin Hood-type character that traverses the English countryside stealing the king’s goods and keeping the peasants safe.
The Show
By day Dr. Syn (Patrick McGoohan) is the vicar of the village of Dimchurch. By night he becomes the Scarecrow. He wears a mask, and rides around with his band of men making trouble for the king. Both the Scarecrow and the vicar are loved by the townsfolk. Not many people know the Scarecrow’s true identity, and it’s good it stays that way once the king decides enough is enough and sends General Pugh (Geoffrey Keen) to capture the Scarecrow.
Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh originally aired on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, as a three part mini-series (150 minutes). Later on it was re-edited, to 98 minutes, and released as a feature-length film under the name Dr. Syn: Alias the Scarecrow. What’s so great about this set is that you get both versions.
Most people may know and recognize the 98-minute feature-length film version, but the three-part series has been kept locked away in Disney’s vault until now. When Leonard Maltin, Disney historian extraordinaire, introduces the show at the beginning of disc one he explains that this show has been one of the most requested Disney features to be put on DVD.
The Quality
A few goodies await you in this section.
In Maltin’s introduction of the show he as tells us a few of the technical aspects that await us. First, he tells us that we will be able to see more of the show than was ever seen before. That’s because the show was shot in a widescreen format, but was then cropped to fit TV sizes for the day. But, now the original 1.66:1 widescreen aspect ratio can be seen.
Each episode is introduced by Walt Disney himself. The introductions accompanied with each episode are in full screen ratio, but hidden in the special features you can see the never-before-seen widescreen introductions by Walt. It would’ve been nice of them to make the widescreen introductions the ones that accompany the episodes.
If you are looking closely you can catch a few defects in the transfer, but just slight blips. These are to be expected from such old film, and as with all of Disney’s old films I’m surprised it isn’t in worse condition. Disney takes such fantastic care of their films, when they are transferred to DVD they are almost flawless.
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