W. C. Fields: Six Short Films



W. C. Fields' prolific career placed him at the forefront of slapstick comedy. Gathered here are six gems that feature the comic genius at his peak: The Golf Specialist, Pool Sharks (silent), The Pharmacist, The Fatal Glass of Beer, The Barber Shop, and, of course, the notorious The Dentist. This unique collection will delight new generations of viewers with Fields' hilariously sardonic routines.

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Does anyone who owns this DVD experience any playback problem?

54 minutes 24 seconds into the DVD (amidst 'The Fatal Glass of Beer') the picture pixelates (if I play it with PowerDVD on at least 2 different computers, or freezes if I play it with my Pioneer DV-626D player) for about 1/2 sec (during the line 'I'd be ticked to death') and then back to normal. Everything else works fine.

This is what the pixelation looks like (I've slightly darken the rest of the frame cos the pixelation may be hard to make out of):



I sent two copies of the same DVD back to JM, and got two replacements back (took months to go through the process since they have to be sent to a US address). Unfortunately both of the replacements have the same problem. So it must be an encoding error.

What baffles me is that no one has said anything about this error before(could this title be that unpopular?) and Criterion seems not knowing since there's no second-printing correcting the error.

I'd be ticked to death if someone can tell me I'm not unlucky enough to get 4 faulty copies of the same title.

Well I checked mine and before I noticed your added screen shot, I did my own.
It is most likely encoded into every copy of the disc. Generally this kind of artifact shows up as a variety of colors. On this disc it appears strickly with the spectrum of b&w tones, which to me seems to mean that the problem was part of the image before pressing to disc. The color was probably digitally removed to make it appear less obvious.
Here is my cap, which is more or less the same, but it is untouched:

Well, that really sucks for Criterion.

You thought they dropped the ball since Jule et Jim. But looks like they have already jumped the shark quality-control-wise when this was out. Too bad no one noticed until now.

On a positive note, it's good to know (in a way) that everyone has the same faulty disc in their CC.

EDIT: Did I say 'quality-wise'? I meant 'quality-control-wise'.

I think that is a huge overstatement, but the situation with this disc is a little disappointing. To be honest though I watched this disc when I first bought it and didn't notice the problem. That's not to say it wasn't there, I'm sure it was, I just must have blinked.

Oh well, shit happens.

More important to me personally is the question of whether there are more complete (uncensored) versions of several of the shorts than the ones on this disc.

I tried to special order this from my local DVD store and the phone rep said it was out of print?Has anyone heard anything on this?I didn't see an announcement from Criterion

According to hometheaterinfo.com the sucker went OOP on 11/25/2004. I remember something being said about this, so I bought a copy. Nothing was said on Criterion's site so I didn't think anything of it. It appears that DVDPlanet, DDD, and DVDEmpire all have copies still.

Hmm, perhaps it will be updated/upgraded? (hopefully tomorrow will be a new announcement for it). I'd say that Cohen Media are claiming them (perhaps dubiously) as part of the Rohauer catalog, but the films are very much in public domain. So Criterion would really be sticking to their "licensed content only" guns if they would take this OOP just because Cohen wants a share.

It has gone through an "OOP phase" (my term for temporarily OOP, but never actually being OOP - more like out of stock/between pressings) before, so who knows.

I had been meaning to post this:

A fate not fit for man nor beast.