COLUMBO Coming on Blu-Ray From Kino

[AndyDursin]

I bought the Japanese set years back -- I'm sure this will be cheaper!

[mkaroly]

Might have to buy that set.

[Eric Paddon]

Long overdue since so many other Universal shows of the 70s have gotten to Blu-Ray. When the show made it to DVD Universal wasn't doing the bells and whistles treatment on their releases so that meant opportunities to have heard commentaries by the likes of Falk, or co-creator William Link were lost but this should be great, and the episodes will certainly look better. I hope they integrate the Mystery Movie open back into these prints.

[Monterey Jack]

Still hoping for Amazing Stories at some point. It was only two seasons, c'maaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnn!!!

[AndyDursin]

Wow that's a shame. Guessing some Falk talk got the lawyers out.

I'll probably just keep my Japanese BDs at this point (though I will hope to review it)

[Eric Paddon]

I am furious to hear this. They've not only removed all of the commentaries, they've removed all the music/effects tracks promised and that means this is going to be as barebones a release as you can get from a company that's supposed to give us more than that (I have no interest in a shorter version of "Etude In Black". To me that's as irrelevant as all those "Mrs. Columbo" episodes that were included as "bonuses" in the old DVD set). The only reason I'm going to hold my nose and still get this is for the remastered picture quality. This is still one of my top three shows in TV history, and I certainly want to see Gretchen Corbett's bikini scene in remastered quality and other great moments that have made this my favorite of detective shows. But for the most part the old Felix Unger Password declaration, "BOY, WHAT A GYP!" comes to mind.

There is no question in my mind that the commentaries have been blocked because they had to go into all the dirty laundry that's come out in the last couple years about Peter Falk's totally unprofessional behavior behind the scenes in the making of so many episodes (which you can read about in David Koenig's outstanding book on the series). The story of how he turned the episode "Old Fashioned Murder" into a train wreck of near-Ishtar like proportions because he allowed Elaine May (who of course was responsible for "Ishtar" a decade later) carte blanche control to do things no one in TV should have been allowed to get away with in a million years.

I have never felt a more disappointing moment in my life when it came to a TV release on home video since the music replacement debacle issue with "The Fugitive".

[AndyDursin]

All I can think is it's content on the commentaries. Too bad but they must've started going through the commentary tracks and started taking apart different elements on them. Is Kino dropping the price on the set?

Did Universal ever have legal issues with Falk or other elements of this show previously? All of it is worth asking, but it's sad to see that amount of work expended and now tossed out...guess they had no choice.

[Monterey Jack]

They couldn't have investigated what they could legally delve into BEFORE recording all of these commentaries and interviews...?

[AndyDursin]

Doesn't really work that way. Because the scope of this project is so vast, you really don't know what they might have an issue with.

I can only imagine they did a bunch of commentaries, they didn't like this or that, too many of these tracks had issues and instead of delaying the whole set, "fixing" the segments they didn't like, they just decided to dump all of it.

It's a lot easier when you're doing just a single commentary on a movie. Here they were recording tracks for, what, over a dozen shows with a myriad of different speakers and topics. Probably too much stuff in there Universal wasn't comfortable with.

[Eric Paddon]

All I can think is it's content on the commentaries. Too bad but they must've started going through the commentary tracks and started taking apart different elements on them. Is Kino dropping the price on the set?

Did Universal ever have legal issues with Falk or other elements of this show previously? All of it is worth asking, but it's sad to see that amount of work expended and now tossed out...guess they had no choice.

No, there were never any issues in the past, but the difference is that all the DVD releases were barebones with nothing that would have involved people knowing a thing about the behind the scenes acrimony that took place over many years between Falk and Universal and NBC. The only reason we know so much now is because one of the later producers of Columbo kept a detailed production diary that Koenig got access to when he wrote his book and that's how all the stuff we never knew about before regarding the Elaine May catastrophe came out into the open. And with commentaries on all 45 episodes, you just KNEW that those issues were going to come up.

[AndyDursin]

Exactly. What an incredible waste of money. I assume they must pay those commentary tracks out like liner notes? Even if its like $200 a pop, that's thousands and thousands of dollars down the drain unless there's some stipulation that they don't have to pay if the track isn't used.

[Eric Paddon]

I touched base with Gary Gerani who did a couple of them (he's needless to say quite shocked). I even offered to host the audio of what they did on Dropbox so they could be shared on the Columbo message board I've been part of for twenty years. He said he hoped he'd hear some follow-up from Kino in a few days (not sure what there could be unless a few commentaries end up being salvagable)

Losing the music/effects tracks for each episode is another bitter blow. I have always wanted Gil Melle's Season 1 work on CD and this would have given me something close to it for certain cues.

[Eric Paddon]

Doesn't really work that way. Because the scope of this project is so vast, you really don't know what they might have an issue with.

I can only imagine they did a bunch of commentaries, they didn't like this or that, too many of these tracks had issues and instead of delaying the whole set, "fixing" the segments they didn't like, they just decided to dump all of it.

It's a lot easier when you're doing just a single commentary on a movie. Here they were recording tracks for, what, over a dozen shows with a myriad of different speakers and topics. Probably too much stuff in there Universal wasn't comfortable with.

There were literally 46 commentaries listed. One for each episode and the second pilot with two commentaries. That is how massive this loss is.

[AndyDursin]

It certainly is, hard to think of a more disappointing occurrence on a release like this.

Doing a commentary on every episode is a daunting task in the first place -- figure it's $200-$300ish each (might be higher, who knows) and that's upwards of $10,000+ just for commentaries that now will never be used!

I wonder why they scrapped all the extras. My guess is they had too many issues to fix just one problem, and didn't want to be bothered having to spend time and money editing them all, resubmitting them, etc., then delaying the release.

The hard part, to answer MJ's post again above, is there's no predictability in dealing with studios like this.

Years back I wrote liner notes for Quartet's release of INTERSECTION and simply wrote something like the movie did "not perform up to expectations" and won a few Razzie awards. Paramount's legal department didn't like that, and I remember -- and remember it well because it was the day we finalized Theo's adoption -- having to rewrite a few paragraphs, send them back to Quartet, who got immediate answers back like "good job, just take out one more word".

The thing is -- I didn't think I was saying anything out of line. I thought I was modulated in terms of saying the movie was a terrible waste of time. lol. And we've all read liner notes on other albums where they had no problem saying FAR "worse" about a movie's commercial performance. It's entirely dependent on which studio, what the property is, who you are dealing with probably on that specific day, etc.

The only thing I'd say from Kino's perspective is this is an awfully big problem to happen on a single release -- it's one thing to have issues with a commentary but to dump 46 of them...wow. This is undoubtedly why labels probably don't attempt a release like this in the first place.

Perhaps they could have recorded one commentary -- maybe one that really dealt with Falk's off-camera behavior -- to "test the waters" and see what Universal thought of it before recording all of them. But maybe they haven't had a lot of "unforseen" issues in the past like this either. Lessons learned, sadly...

[AndyDursin]

Music/effects tracks are included. Commentaries were all tossed.

COLUMBO: THE 1970s
SEASONS 1-7
• RESTORED IN 4K BY UNIVERSAL PICTURES
• Includes the 1968 Movie-of-the-Week "Prescription: Murder" and the 1971 Pilot "Ransom for a Dead Man"
• Shorter 71 Minute-Cut of ÉTUDE IN BLACK
• Optional Music and Effects Tracks for all Episodes
• Episode Guide Booklet
• Newly Commissioned Slipcase Cover Illustration by Tony Stella
• Optional English Subtitles

Color Approx. 3800 Minutes 1.33:1 Not Rated
Columbo is the landmark series that set the standard for the murder mystery genre. Remastered in 4K by Universal, Columbo: The 1970s includes the first seven seasons of this enduring classic on Blu-ray! Starring Peter Falk in his four-time Emmy-winning role as the cigar-chomping, trenchcoat-wearing police lieutenant, this 20-disc collection includes every criminally entertaining episode from the series’ first seven seasons.