Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, The (1976) [16-011]Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, The [16-011] NTSC/OPEN MATTE/ANA (1976)
Picked this up for $3 at Static Tape Video in Muskegon, Michigan while on the west side of the state. They have hundreds of LDs, some priced at fairly high retail prices, and other for only $1. I should have bought all the $1 titles I didn't already have.
The Movie: At a running rime of about 110 minutes, this movie starred Billy Dee Williams as the lead, with a supporting cast of James Earl Jones, Richard Pryor, Otis Day, and many, many other prominent black actors of the time.
It takes place in 1938 and is about a batch of players who go rogue and form a traveling baseball team in an attempt to play ball and make money without a corrupt owner basically not paying them what they're worth. They encounter racism, play reasonably play well, and do well, until the former owner sends his goons to assault them, rob them, torture them, etc. in an attempt to discourage their actions. Even Richard Pryor makes an attempt to learn Spanish so he can pretend to be Cuban because even dark skinned Cubans aren't considered black. Isn't racism fun?
The movie is fairly light hearted, fun, and entertaining.
The Packaging:. This is an early DiscoVision title, with a 1978 packaging date, and consisted of 5 sides across 3 discs with side 6 still lacquered covering up a dead side likely made up of one of the typical titles mentioned on blam1's website
here. The packaging was a box-style with the hinge at the top, as opposed to the side. I replaced the sleeves with new ones as the originals were not poly-lined.
The Transfer: Blam said he was impressed with the colorfulness of the transfer and audio and so was I. This technicolor print was vibrant and looked great on my CLD-1030 player. The red car and green ballfields stood out. I didn't notice much dirt or defects of the print in the transfer with the exception of some gating and framing issues where the picture bobbed and jumped a few times, possibly near the ends or beginning of the separated reels. There with no cue marks in this print. Originally 1.85:1, this print is listed as open matte and it appeared to be so.
The Discs: Blue labeled DiscoVision discs are CAV. Side 1 had a few specs of potential rot. Side 2 was likely a bad pressing as my CLD-D505 choked switching to side 2 with a P5 error and refused to eject without a power cycle. The CLD-1030 played it with lots of color video noise and static and terrible helicopter noise over the audio until about halfway through disc 2 where it got better. Sides 3, 4 and 5 played great and looked great.
I'd watch this again. It may look great in HD.
Thanks list
