ckjarrett

TCM played this last night. It's cheap and shallow Saturday matinée stuff as the other comments suggest. I noticed two things: the day-for-night shots look good but the director(s) rarely used closeups. Most of the shots are long or waist shots, or two shots.This was an early CinemaScope production and perhaps they were limited by the lenses they had (the lenses were not plentiful at this time, especially to non- Fox producers). "Sitting Bull" was the first independent production to be shot in CinemaScope. This was W. R. Frank's last feature film production; he was a Minneapolis, MN theatre owner. The world premiere was held August 19, 1954 in Sioux Falls, SD. What did the Sioux Falls cinema-goers think of this picture being shot in Mexico?! It opened October 7, 1954 at the State Theatre in Minneapolis and Paramount in St. Paul. Both of the cities' film critics, Will Jones and Bill Diehl, hated the film. Comment cards were handed out at both theatres. A trade magazine item in April 1953 said that Frank had set May 20 as the production's start date, but decided to put it off until July when CinemaScope equipment was available. As early as 1950 actors such as Victor Jory were announced as being signed for this production. Later, names such as Boris Karloff and Dennis Morgan were mentioned in the trade press.

From Box office magazine 6/18/79: "The Capture of Bigfoot", the Bill Rebane production from Studio Film Corp., will be delayed for an unknown amount of time, due to the recent disappearance of 400 feet of film negative. According to Rebane, the disappearance of the footage, out of which 200 feet was to be used in the actual movie, will delay the mid-July openings previously scheduled for Arkansas and Memphis . . .How long that delay will be depends on the results of laboratory tests currently taking place in Denver. Insurance adjustors have made a duplicate negative from the work print, and the results of the lab tests will determine whether it is commercially feasible to use it in place of the missing footage...

I wish IMDb would allow for some TEXT/COMMENTARY about release dates because it is not as clear-cut as they would like it to be sometimes. Many pictures from this era were released regionally, and it was not a matter of 1500 prints nationwide all at one time. 1500 prints in the late 1970s was a HUGE saturation. Nowadays 3500 prints is common! Big epics of the 1960s and blockbusters like GOLDFINGER were released with 400 prints or fewer! JAWS was about 450 prints.

Anyway, in the case of Outlaw Blues, the first dates were in the South and Southwest US, starting July 1, 1977; it opened in New York City on July 15; and in the midwest the release was July 22.