The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams

As far as I know, "Life and Times" is only available on old VHS tapes, where no doubt it was a pan-and-scan transfer. That is really too bad. I haven't seen it since it originally came out, when I was 13, and I doubt it would be any major revelation now--at the time it was meandering, episodic, nothing very special but a pleasant family-friendly variation on "Jeremiah Johnson," with Dan Haggerty an appealing presence in the title role.

But what I really remember about it was that while nothing else about the film was all that memorable, the wilderness photography was gorgeous. That's exactly the sort of thing you lose in decades of crappy transfers to TV and VHS without a major studio upgrading the quality of the home-format releases. (And while I have no idea who owns the rights now, they probably aren't interested in making that investment, and god knows Sunn Classics is probably looooooong gone. Particularly since none of their other films seem to have gotten DVD/Blu-Ray treatment, either.) The same year, I also loved another (somewhat better if less commercially successful), "Where the Lilies Bloom," and while you can find that on YouTube easily enough, it's also in sore need of restoration--I remember how stunning the photography of Appalachia was in 1974, and you can't tell that from the existing transfers.

Anyway, I enjoyed the original "Grizzly Adams," but won't risk revisiting it until the unlikely day that somebody puts out a letterboxed digital restoration. Because whatever the film lacked in plot or finesse, it made up for in beautiful photography of spectacular scenery, and I'd hate to see that reduced to pan-and-scan and faded colors.