Scrooged (1988) [1990241 NL]

Another in a long list of PAL releases that I have done, "Scrooged" (1988) [1990241 NL] is one of those retellings of the famous Charles Dickens story "A Christmas Carol". But the story is told in such a way as to be entirely modern and with the typical slapstick humour that would be expected from a Bill Murray film from this time period! I absolutely love the scenes with Carol Kane and Bill Murray....Kane plays the part of the ghost of "Christmas Present" in a sickeningly sweet, physically abussive way. In her first scene she flies across the room and immediately kicks him in the nuts to get his attention! What absolute chemistry those two have on screen together and when she hits him in the face with that electric toaster....

This PAL laserdisc from the Netherlands is naturally subtitled in Dutch but with a full English soundtrack. The subtitles are arranged in quite an artistic way around the screen and is most pleasant actually and not at all disturbing surprisingly. This is the only PAL version to have an English soundtrack as the other two were a French and Italian dub.

On my copy there is no rot and I received this disc factory sealed from a man in Germany who threw it into a shipment of other laserdiscs I had ordered from him, so it was a surprise in fact for me since I had never seen or heard of the film before. The video quality is practically reference in all regards. There is no aliasing and no over saturation of colors either. It is extremely sharply focused too, which is something I always appreciate, with only the slightest trace of film grain that makes it look like a film, in my opinion. The sound is equally as nice too.

Those of us who live in PAL-land should take a closer look at those titles released from the Netherlands because a lot of them are really quite good and almost always have English sound with Dutch subtitles.