Always Bet On C.H.U.D. (DVD/ Blu-ray Comparison)

This is a good staple of any 80 horror fan's diet.  It's no Nightmare On Elm Street, it doesn't cut any edges or push any envelopes.  It's never quite exciting.  But it is a smart, entertaining little dish with a few cool creatures, scare sequences, gory bits, engaging acting and mystery.  It's not one of those films everybody should necessarily see, but I'm not sure you can call yourself an aficionado until you've gotten around to it at least once on video or cable.  It's C.H.U.D., and thanks to Arrow, this old school monster thriller is finally in HD.

If you've never seen the film, you may pride yourself on knowing that the titular acronym stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller, but C.H.U.D. fans know it actually stands for something else.  I won't spoil it, go watch the movie.  But the "cannibalistic" phrase does originate in this film, and that's exactly the sort of creep our protagonists find lurking in the New York City sewer and subway systems.  John Heard is a photographer who notices his local homeless population is quietly depleting.  His investigation leads him to a soup kitchen run by Daniel (Home Alone) Stern, who absolutely steals this picture.  They team up to uncover the city's gruesome secrets, hopefully while there are still some people left to save.

What makes this movie for me is the smart script.  It reminds me of Larry Cohen's Q, except darker and more atmospheric, with a touch of John Sayles' Alligator, too.  The monsters sometimes look really cool, but other times they're rubbery and far from convincing.  If you're looking for fast thrills, be prepared for a lot of talking first; but they do sporadically remember to deliver the crowd pleasers.  The underground locations are cool, John Goodman and Jay Thomas turn up for some amusing pre-fame cameos (well, depending on which cut of the film you watch), and overall, it's a higher quality film than most of its peers.  C.H.U.D.'s probably not anybody's favorite film, but if you're just looking for something to watch, it's a safe bet.

C.H.U.D. debuted on DVD from Anchor Bay in 2001.  Even better, they restored the television and diner attack scenes missing from the theatrical version, but with the gore that's usually removed from the cut versions intact.  It was widescreen, had an audio commentary, and overall was pretty satisfying.  Eventually, though, it went out of print and was replaced by Image's Midnight Madness edition in 2011.  They featured Anchor Bay's extended cut as well, but lost the commentary; however it's worth noting that the transfer isn't identical (more on that in a minute).  And later this month, C.H.U.D. comes back once more, this time to blu-ray, thanks to Arrow releasing their brand new special edition in both just the US market [whoops! Minor error; see the comments].  It features the extended cut - or as they call it, the Integral Cut - and if you catch their initial limited edition run, they also include the theatrical cut on a second, bonus disc.  Let's compare everything.

2001 Anchor Bay DVD first, 2011 Image DVD second,
2016 Arrow theatrical blu third and 2016 Arrow extended blu fourth.

So, let's start with the film's aspect ratio, because interestingly, it changes with each release.  Anchor Bay went with a slightly pillar-boxed 1.75:1, which Image fixed up with a more typical 1.78:1, finding that little extra picture on the sides.  Arrow corrects this even further, giving the film the correct theatrical ratio of 1.85:1, and no they didn't just slightly matte the 1.78, they actually found more information on the sides.  Apart from that, the DVDs look pretty similar, with the Anchor Bay disc being just a touch softer and more compressed.  Of course, Arrow's blu looks the sharpest and clearest of all, with very distinct grain; but it's not a wealth of new detail.  Their brand new scan, which they've clearly used for both versions on both of their discs, are 2k takes on a print.  So they're not pulling out much new information, but they are presenting it in the best possible way.  At the end of the day, though, I could see a lot of fans saying it's not a big enough upgrade to justify a replacement, and that the DVD is enough for them.

Both the DVDs offer the original mono audio in Dolby 2.0, and the blu has the same but in uncompressed LPCM.  Arrow also provides English HOH subtitles (to both versions), which the DVDs never had.

In terms of special features, Anchor Bay did a pretty impressive job wrangling up the film's two leading men, Heard and Stern, along with the film's director Douglas Cheek and writer Shepard Abbott.  It's a really good mix of being fun with some joking around, and yet informative; definitely worth the listen.  Apart from that, Anchor Bay just had the trailer, a stills gallery, an insert and an easter egg showing us a slightly extended look at the famous shower scene.  The Image DVD lost all of that, unfortunately, except for the trailer, and only replaced it with some bonus trailers.

Arrow, though, has teamed up with Red Shirt to turn this into a proper special edition.  First of all, they brought back all of Anchor Bay extras, including the easter egg and everything.  Then, like they recently did with the Waxwork movies, they've got secondary audio tracks starting with an interview with the film's composers, in this case Martin Cooper and David A. Hughes, and then the the film's isolated soundtrack for the second half.  For on camera interviews, we get the production designer William Bilowit and special effects artist John Caglione Jr.  But probably my favorite of the new extras is a featurette where they traipse around Manhattan, locating the film's original locations.  Arrow also includes a booklet with notes by famous Fangorian Michael Gingold (who also co-hosts the locations featurette), and reversible cover-art, so you can hide their tacky comic book style illustration with the original poster design.

C.H.U.D. may not be a masterpiece, but it's well known and respectable enough that it deserves the special edition Arrow has finally given it.  I mean, come on, that title is iconic within the genre.  And there's no question this is the best the film has ever looked, there's not even another HD contender, but the marginal image quality bump doesn't make this the highest priority upgrade.  The new features go some way towards justifying it, though; and I'm guessing it's safe to assume that if negative elements were available, Arrow would've used 'em; so we're not likely to see this film looking any better.  This is the definitive release, and it's pretty sweet.

Marx Madness Part 2: The Documentaries!

I bet you didn't see this coming as the second part of my Marx Brothers post!  I actually had the idea to do a post on Marx Bros. documentaries on DVD before Universal announced their new blu-ray set, so when I saw that included a new doc, too; I decided to sit on it and wait.  So now we've got one more for the pile, and in HD even.  Yes, today's post is for the serious fan.

Up first is The Unknown Marx Brothers, released on DVD in 2000 by Winstar Home Entertainment.  This is one of a series of Unknown documentaries, including The Unknown Jimmy Durante: The Great Schnozzola, The Unknown Peter Sellers and The Unknown Jonathan Winters: On the Loose, all of which you could buy separately or together in a box set.  The Marx Brothers one was made long before the other three, however, in 1993, and it's a pretty solid, well-put together documentary on the Brothers.  It gives us all the essential biographical details with lots of pictures, rare clips, and interviews with many of their family and peers.  One drawback is that it relies a little too heavily on the narrator to just tell us everything that happened, like a lecture, with the interviewees just popping in like soundbite interjections to confirm what the narrator told us.  It helps, though, that the narrator is Leslie Nielsen.  The other drawback is that the score seems to have been made with an old Casio keyboard in "trumpet" mode; it's really chintzy.

But The Unknown Marx Brothers definitely fills all your basic Marx Brothers documentary needs, telling us all the standard stuff, like where their names come from, their jump from Paramount to MGM, etc etc.  Considering we didn't have any available up 'till this, it was very welcome at the time, but still holds up well today.  And what sets this one apart is that it spends more time on their television work than their films.  Really long stretches are dedicated to You Bet Your Life, and we almost spend more time on Harpo's beer commercials and Chico's failed television pilots than their famous films.  I guess that's the "Unknown" angle of the film.

Not that the DVD is anything amazing in terms of quality.  It's fullscreen and interlaced, and has some weird stuff going on in the overscan area of the right-hand side.  But otherwise, for an old DVD, it's fine.  Picture quality dips and varies as they include clips from a variety of old sources, but their original footage looks fairly decent apart from the interlacing.

One thing you may've heard, if you're familiar with this film at all, is that the VHS is considerably longer than this DVD version.  Well, I've never owned the VHS to do a proper side-by-side comparison, but I'm pretty sure the difference is in this DVD's rather unique "Zoomlinks" gimmick.  Throughout the film, when they show clips from the brothers' films and shows, a Zoomlink graphic is appears on the bottom corner of the screen.  If you press enter on the remote, you're taken to a much longer clip of that scene than is seen in the documentary proper.  If you prefer, you can also watch the documentary straight through and then watch all the scenes separately under "Outtakes" in the DVD menu.  I would assume the VHS just leaves all the longer takes in the film since you can't do that sort of Zoomlink thing with VHS technology; and so I don't think you're actually missing out on anything with the DVD version.

The next documentary to hit DVD was Inside the Marx Brothers, which you could buy by itself or as part of a 5-disc(!) DVD set called The Marx Brothers Collection.  Not to be confused with The Marx Brothers Collection Warner Bros later put out (and which we'll come to), this set doesn't include any of their films; it's all just "extras."  The main feature is this documentary, which is disc 1, and which is also really for completists only.  It came out on Passport Video and I believe was made just for the label; it's pretty cheap. Basically, an uncredited narrator tells us all the biographical basics in between long stretches of clips from the footage and public domain television material.  The only real interview in this is Steve Stoliar, Groucho's secretary and archivist, who tells a lot of the famous stories.  There are also clips from Ann Miller (she was in Room Service and is this documentary's highlight) and Groucho's grandson; but I can't tell if they were shot for this documentary or were just pre-existing footage.  It isn't terrible, because the clips are still funny and the information's thorough enough for a passable film.  But if you own many of the other releases, Miss Miller may be the only part worth skipping to, and she only talks for a minute or two.

Another full-screen disc, another interlaced transfer.  A lot of the clips are from low quality sources, and it's all about what you'd expect from a low-quality cash grab.  But we've got to talk about the other four discs!  What the heck is on them?  Well, for one thing, about enough stuff to fill two DVDs.  I've never seen a DVD set spread so thin, with most discs running under an hour.  One has the pilot for You Bet Your Life, another has two failed pilots for Chico and Groucho shows, and one has a collection of trailers and odds and ends.  Disc 4 is just some of their radio shows.  It's under an hour of audio only!  There's no way this set needed to be five discs, but they were clearly trying to make an impressive looking box.  Worse still, all the discs (except, at least, the documentary itself) have an ugly watermark over all the footage!  The content itself isn't bad... I mean, it's only thanks to this box that I still have the trailers for the Paramount films since the new blu-ray set inexplicably decided to drop them, and the TV stuff is still cool to own if you're a superfan.  Just go in with tempered expectations, because we're definitely in the public domain budget zone here.

That's an actual, live parrot in his hands there

In 2004, Warner Bros put out a terrific box set, the other Marx Brothers Collection, which included all of their post Paramount films (except Love Happy, I guess, if you want to count that).  The first couple especially had a lot of great special features, like commentaries and vintage cartoons that would've played in theaters before these movies back in their day.  And the set includes two half-hour docs, which are practically one documentary split into two: Remarks On Marx and On Your Marx, Get Set, Go!  All the same people are interviewed on both, including Dom DeLuise, Carl Reiner, and some people who worked with the brothers in their day.  These are quite good, and the first one covers a lot of the Marx Brothers' basics, like their names and origins.  They also, however, focus a lot on the films they're packaged with: A Night At the Opera and A Day At the Races, respectively.  But they're quite good, and combined with the the new Paramount one, almost make a full, career-comprehensive doc.

I'm a little disappointed to note that these are interlaced, too.  2004, newly created and released by a major studio?  This should not be.  But I guess they're just extras, so less care was taken.  Again these are fullscreen apart from the interlacing, look fine for standard def.  If Warner Bros ever gets around to releasing the later Marx films in HD, I hope they fix these docs up, though, because they're pretty good and unique in the depth they go into on Night and Day.

Next we come to the rarest and best of the Marx Brothers documentaries, The Marx Brothers In a Nutshell.  This came out in 2004 courtesy of a label called Direct Cinema, and unfortunately they must've only printed a short run of these, because they almost immediately went out of print and started selling for triple digits used on Amazon and EBay.  It's a 1982 PBS television doc that I used to own on laserdisc, from Image.  The DVD runs about three minutes longer with a little cutting room floor bits re-instated.  Unlike Unknown and Inside, this doesn't put all its weight on the narrator, because it's chock full of great interviews with family members, friends and collaborators, plus celebrity fans like Woody Allen, Robert Klein and Dick Cavett.  It is a little overly clip heavy, which was more valuable when it was originally created, because fans weren't as likely to own or be able to directly stream all the films at will, like today.  Now, you kinda wish they'd spent more time with the interviews and rare footage than the long segments you've seen dozens of times before.  So it's the best made film, and has the most quality interviews, but it's not leaps and bounds better than Unknown.  We are still basically telling the same anecdotes and playing clips of the same famous lines over and over again across all these documentaries, after all.

This film's presented in a rather unusual ratio of 1.47:1, making it slightly letterboxed and no, it's not anamorphic.  I think it's actually horizontally stretched from regular full-screen.  The blacks are rather crushed and milky.  And yes, it is interlaced.  This is not a high quality release, especially when you think of the prices it commands.  It looks like somebody put in some effort to make this transfer look good, but that somebody didn't really know what they were doing.  It would be great to see this film restored properly for HD, possibly as an extra in a new boxed set of the MGM movies - hint, hint, Warner Archives.

And finally, of course, we have Hollywood's Kings of Chaos, the new documentary found in Universal's new blu-ray set of the brothers' five Paramount films.  It mostly interviews the critics who did the audio commentaries in that set, but also includes Harpo's son (who's in a lot of these) and Dick Cavett again.  It does a good if standard job covering their biography, and goes over their Paramount years, but then conspicuously jumps over their later films, coming back around to the end of their lives.  Like I started to say earlier, if you pair this with the two mini-Warner Bros docs, it adds up to a pretty thorough and rather full documentary, and you'll get all those when you buy the movies, as opposed to having to seek one of the other docs on their own.  You won't have the best, but it's probably enough for most viewers.

This one's in wide 1.78:1 (except for the film clips, for which it shifts to 1.35 fullscreen) and in HD on blu-ray.  So it has the distinct advantage of being the only really high quality presentation of a Marx Brothers doc, and the only one that'll look nice in your big, widescreen home theaters.  Heck, it's the only one without an interlacing problem.  Hopefully, however, it won't be the last.  But until them, this may be the only one AV enthusiasts are willing to even look at.

Honorable mentions also go to:

Time Marx Is On, a 2006 UK DVD of a 1997 television program about the Marx Brothers from Delta Home Entertainment.  It's not really a documentary; it's a single interview with Groucho talking about his life, taken from an older television appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, with clips of his work edited in.  Running under an hour, it's basically just a slight re-edit of that one Cavett episode made to look like a documentary.

An Affectionate Look At The Marx Brothers, a 2008 UK DVD from the grey-market label AG Plate of a 1960s Canadian television special where two comedians host clips from the brothers' films.  It also runs under an hour.

The Marx Brothers TV Collection, a 2014 3-DVD set from Shout Factory.  Unlike the other two this is actually a high quality release, and collects a massive ton of their rare television appearances.  It's like that 2003 Marx Brothers Collection, only a million times better.  The only reason I relegate it to an "Honorable Mention" is because it isn't a documentary at all, just a terrific collection of rare Marx Brothers stuff.  And for a limited time, if you bought it directly from Shout, it included a bonus fourth disc with even more.

If you're a real Marx lover, Nutshell is the one to track down.  More casual fans can content themselves with just the Warner Bros and Universal docs that come with the movies themselves, which again, when combined, tell their life stories pretty thoroughly, too.  You can get Unknown pretty cheap, though, and that's a good watch, with the supplemental bonus of including a lot of their off-beat TV stuff, too.  I wouldn't even bother with Inside the Marx Brothers, unless you're of a completist and going for the whole box set, where those old pilots and scraps are more compelling than the documentary itself.  But then definitely get Shout's TV Collection first.

Marx Madness Part 1: The Five Four Marx Brothers

Universal just released the blu-ray debut of Paramount's five Marx Bros. movies - the only five to star the Four Marx Bros, as opposed to the Three - and it's a pretty exciting set.  Besides this being their first time in HD, we've got brand new transfers and all new extras.  And most impressively of all, their second film, Animal Crackers, has been restored to include censored footage not seen since 1936!  This is the new Silver Screen Collection!  ...Not to be confused with Paramount's old Silver Screen Collection of the same five films, which I've also got.  Odd choice to give both sets the same name, but there you go.  Let's see how these released have improved.

In fact, before we start going movie by movie, let me just break down the the multiple Paramount releases. To be clear, these aren't all the Marx Bros movies, but they're always packaged together because these are the five films the Brothers did with Paramount.  After that, they switched movie studios, Zeppo left, and the rest of the Marx Brothers films just feature Groucho, Harpo and Chico.  Those are with a different studio.  These first five films were originally released separately and in a 1999 boxed set by Paramount and Image, which quickly went out of print and used copies tended to sell for crazy amounts of money.  So in 2004, Paramount reissued these in a fancy, shiny silver media book - the first Silver Screen Collection - with slightly remastered transfers and a bonus disc of a few extras.  In 2011, they all each got solo releases, basically just the 2004 discs in single cases.  Then, in 2013, the 2004 Silver Screen Collection was reissued in less fancy packaging.  And now, in 2016, we have the new blu-ray release, the updated Silver Screen Collection, which has the same artwork as the 2013 set.  It's like they're deliberately trying to be confusing, though at least the 2016 set says "Restored Edition" across the top.

2004 Silver Screen DVD on top; 2016 Silver Screen blu-ray bottom.

We begin with 1929's The Cocoanuts.  Technically their second film as their first, a silent entry named Humor Risk, is lost to the world, The Cocoanuts is also the first of two Marx Brothers films directly adapting one of their Broadway hits, scripted by George S. Kaufman and with music by Irving Berlin.  In it, Groucho owns a bankrupt hotel, managed by Zeppo, and they're desperate to sell off some land.  Meanwhile, there's a love triangle going on between Mary Eaton, her good boyfriend, an architect with plans for some of the land, and her bad boyfriend, a high class jewel thief.  And of course we've also got a pair of not-so-high class thieves, Harpo and Chico.  Margaret Dumont's jewels get burgled, Groucho rigs an auction, and Mary teaches us all how to do "The Monkey Doodle Doo." The first two films do feel more stagey than the later films, but unless you're consciously looking for movement and more camera set-ups, it's not a problem.  It doesn't hurt the brothers' comedy, and it doesn't hurt the charming musical numbers.

We start out with a modest but still quite noticeable improvement.  The image is sharper and clearer, which you'll notice more clearly if you click and view the screenshots in full size; and the contrast is a little stronger on the new blu.  A bit of the damage and mess has been cleaned up, too.  A few moments (see the set of shots directly above) have been restored - not for this 2016 edition, but long ago - from a lower quality source and looks it.  Even there, the blu is a little better.  You'll notice the framing is slightly shifted, too; for example, in the second set of shots we see a little more on the left-hand side.  Nothing terribly significant, though.

Next we come to Animal Crackers, the second Broadway adaptation. It's slightly less stagey, but just barely.  You definitely get the feeling like you're seeing a lot of this material just as it was performed on stage, which isn't a criticism at all.  This time Groucho and Zeppo are a famous African explorer and his assistant.  A famous painting is being revealed at his gala return party, thrown by Margaret Dumont, but many complications arise.  Two of Dumont's jealous neighbors decide to replace the painting with a shoddy imitation as a prank.  And Dumont's daughter, played by Lillian Roth, also wants to replace the painting, so that her painter boyfriend can have the limelight.  And of course, two small-time crooks show up to get in the middle of everything.  It falls to Captain Spaulding to solve the case, Harpo goes on a shooting spree(!), and Groucho sings the most famous song of his career.  Things really start to get downright surreal here, and that's another reason why I love the Marx Bros.

A scene on the 2016 blu not shown on any previous home video version.

Now Animal Crackers is the truly restored film in this lot, with the lost footage restored.  I've searched and searched online and couldn't find exactly what was restored, with most reviews cited the same "I think I'll try and make her" example.  So I've broken down all of the differences in this fresh restoration.  There are a few examples (for instance, at 6:50 when Capt. Spaulding is first carried into the house), where only a frame or two has been restored to the ends of a scene.  Everything else, I'm listing below:

9:20 "I think I'll try and make her" line restore to the "Hurray for Captain Spalding" song.

36:20 Harpo biting the woman's top off has been restored[pictured above].

47:59 Restored dialogue between Dumont and Groucho, "oh, Captain, how thrilling!  And then what happened?"  "Oh, it was nothing at all.  I'd rather not discuss it." "Oh, but I can't wait to hear the finish; I must hear it!"  "Well, there I was.  There I was in the top of the tree with this rhinoceros pointing his gun straight at me." "A rhinoceros?"  "Yes."  "Oh Captain, what did you do?" "What could I do?  I had to marry his daughter." "What kind of story do you call that?"  "All right, you tell one."

1:09:10 The missing frames that make Chico's talk with the girl jump are fixed.

1:12:17 Restored lines to Groucho's letter for Zeppo: "Dear Elsie.  No, never mind Elsie." "Do you want me to scratch Elsie?" "Well, if you enjoy that sort of thing, it's quite all right with me. However, I'm not interested in your private affairs, Jamison. Begin this way. Let's start all over again."

1:14:17 More restored lines to the letter: "'Dear Elsie, scratch'." "That won't do, Jamison. That won't go through the mail, the way you got it. The way you've got the letter, you've got McCormick scratching Elsie. Now, you better turn that around and have Elsie scratch McCormick. And you better turn McCormick around, too, Jamison. And see what you can do for me."

1:18:48 Restored footage in the scene of Harpo being interrogated by the girl: "that still isn't what I want!" Harpo hits her with his papers and she points her finger, "you know what I want." Harpo looks bashful, and when she turns around, he smacks her behind with his paper.

Besides having all that lost footage restored, which is terrific, Animal Crackers is also by far the best restoration in terms of picture quality.  The framing is improved to give us additional picture on both sides, and more on the bottom as opposed to the top, which looks considerably better, as there's a lot of floating head space and things are tightly cropped along the bottom of the old DVD (for example, see Harpo's feet in the first set of shots).  Animal Crackers has always been the one interlaced transfer in all the previous Silver Screen Corrections.  The other four films didn't have this problem, but for whatever reason, it hadn't been fixed for this film until now.  Plus it's sharper and so much clearer, and has the stronger contrast that all the blus here have, making this a truly different viewing experience.

I'll also point out here that the subtitles have been considerably improved, too.  Where the DVD subs always short-handed some moments, dropping words and phrases (as in the "highly" and "magnificent" in the second set of shots), the blu is more complete.  The timing is also better, matching the delivery on-screen much more closely.  Somebody really cared in making these improvements.

Next we come to Monkey Business, the first film not taken from a Broadway show (though much of their bits through all the rest of these films borrow from their old stage acts).  The result is a faster pace, even wilder, less predictable story.  This time the four brothers are all stowaways on an ocean liner.  Zeppo meets the girl, who happens to be the daughter of a billionaire, who hires Chico and Harpo as bodyguards to protect him from some gangsters.  Meanwhile, the gangster hires Groucho and Zeppo to take out the billionaire.  But surprisingly little time is devoted to this fun story of cross purposes, which devotes more timer to Groucho romancing Thelma Todd, the gangster's moll, Harpo getting caught up in a children's puppet show, Chico paying one of his most memorable piano solos and everyone trying to pass themselves off as Maurice Chevalier.

Again, a stronger, cleaner image, you really notice it in motion.  This time we actually lose a smidgen on the sides, and trade some bottom for some top.  Animal Crackers is the only one where it matters much, though.  On all these others, it's a matter of slivers, and the blu-rays are basically just your standard jump of roughly the same transfer (though the framing tells us it's not exactly the same one) from SD to HD.

Film four is Horse Feathers, where Groucho is appointed head of his son's college.  Oh yeah, his son is Zeppo.  They get into a love triangle with the college widow, Thelma Todd again, and hire Harpo and Chico to help them rig the big game against the rival college.  Moving away from the Broadway musicals, the films get a little shorter and tighter.  The focus is more on the Marx Brothers than some arbitrary pair of ingénues, though Zeppo sometimes fills that role for a bit now, too.  The songs are almost all by the brothers and Horse Feathers features their greatest song of their career, "Everyone Says I Love You."  Woody Allen even named one of his films after it.

Look how muddy and bland the DVD looks compared to the blu-ray.  In the best shots, these new transfers really do make you feel closer to the cast in the 1930s than ever before.  Again, the framing's shifted a bit, but not so we get any additional picture, just so much as slivers on alternate sides.  There are some dropped frames, including little chunks worth that really make the scene jump and drop bits of dialogue.  It's all in the one scene with all the brothers running through Thelma's apartment, and they've always been missing on all the previous releases and... they unfortunately still are.  After Animal Crackers, I had my hopes up.  But what can you do if better elements don't exist?  Oh well, this is still the best the film has ever looked.

The last film is my favorite, not just of these five but all the Marx Brothers' films, Duck Soup.  It's the shortest and most insane.  Aside from a few running gags, it's impossible to guess what's going to happen from one scene to the next.  The country of Freedonia is bankrupt, again, and Marget Dumont refuses to lend them anymore of her fortune unless they make Groucho their new leader.  He of course appoints his brothers to key cabinet positions, and winds up causing and fighting a war.  Chico becomes a spy, Harpo terrorizes a lemonade stand, and Zeppo is almost cut entirely out of the picture.  The film is short, to the point where it doesn't even have time for Chico and Harpo's regular musical solos.  Tons of extras, big sets, bursting bombs and non-stop gags.  At one point Groucho even shoots his own men - why not? - and Chico and Harpo take on his trademark persona in a scene they'd later recreate on I Love Lucy.

2004 Silver Screen DVD on top; 2016 Silver Screen blu-ray bottom.

This might be the mildest improvement of the five.  Besides Animal Crackers, it's all sort of splitting hairs, but there's still a clear benefit in the jump from SD to HD on, say, Monkey Business.  Here, these shots are virtually indistinguishable.  If I mislabeled the screenshots, I'd have a hard time telling the DVD and blu-ray's apart.  The DVD's a bit paler, and I'm not saying there's no difference; but if this was all the set had to offer, I wouldn't have upgraded.

Audio-wise, all the DVDs had Dolby 2.0 mono tracks, and the blus naturally bump them up to DTS-HD 2.0 mono.  All the sound has imperfections baked right into how they were originally record, so it's never amazing; but it's as good as you'd expect.  The blu-rays drop the Spanish dub, which was always amusing to check in on for a quick second but hardly an important loss. The DVDs also had the English HOH, plus French and Spanish subtitles, while the blu-rays have just the English and Spanish.

The bonus disc in the old Silver Screens DVD set was fairly paltry.  It had three Today Show interviews: one with Groucho, one with Harpo and one with Harpo's son, Bill Marx.  They're amusing and certainly worth watching for any fan.  But they total about five minutes each, for a grand total of just over fifteen; and there's no reason they needed a sixth disc for them, rather then just sticking them on with the movies, except to be able to say that their set now includes a "Bonus Disc."  The DVDs also included trailers for four of the movies (excluding The Cocoanuts), and a 38 page booklet with pictures and biographical details about the brothers.

The blu-ray set really steps the game up.  This time, each film has an audio commentary by a different film historian.  Duck Soup has two, including Leonard Maltin, and the critic on Monkey Business is joined by Harpo's son. They're all quite good, though the problem with having multiple people is they don't know what was already said on the other tracks and tend to each repeat many of the same anecdotes as if they were the first time we'd heard it.  After that, we get the same Today Show interviews, and an all new documentary called Hollywood's Kings of Chaos (in 1.78:1, HD), which is pretty good, but it does get quite redundant with the commentaries, featuring many of the same critics and Bill Marx, although they also add Dick Cavett, Groucho's grandson, and a couple TV writers.  They're also not too subtle about covering the first five films in depth and then jumping right to their post Hollywood careers.  Strangely, and disappointingly, they got rid of the trailers.  Minor, but a bit of a bummer all the same.  Oh, but they do include a nice booklet with excerpts from one of the critic's book on the brothers, which is an improvement on the old booklet.

So any blu-ray lover into the Marx Brothers will have to get this set; and they'll be pleased when they do.  But even more casual viewers who might ordinarily say, "eh, I'm happy with the DVDs" should consider replacing them for the restored Animal Crackers, plus the new special features.  Despite the repetition at times, the commentaries are great.  And really, getting Animal Crackers uncut for the first time ever is just one of those moments we still buy movies for in the first place.