Elvis Presley: Jailhouse Rock (1957) [50011]

Another of the PAL releases from the Netherlands with Dutch subtitles, Jailhouse Rock (1957) [50011] with Elvis Presley and in a colorized full screen version. Although this is listed as a pan & scan release, I have my doubts because when compared to the wide screen version this has far more visual information in both the top and bottom of the image that the widescreen version crops out completely, which leads me to believe that it was filmed in open matte! There are also many rumours of this floating around on the net as well calling it a fake cinemascope release. Regardless though, this has received the colorized treatment and looks quite nice too as they did a fine job on it. Besides if you want to see it in Black & White all you have to do is turn the color off and there you go basically. This was also the only PAL release on laserdisc of this title.

This is a rot free pressing that has quite good sound for such an old film surprisingly. The video quality is a tad soft on the focus side but looks fine for something this old. There is no aliasing and no smeary looking colors for something that has been colorized. Naturally there is also Dutch subtitles in the picture area at the bottom but this does not take anything away from the film, in my opinion.

The cover is written completely in the Dutch language and is rather a slick presentation with a nice artistic rendition of Elvis on the front from the scene in which he does his famous song. A rather nice laserdisc and a truly enjoyable story and nice songs to boot!