The Legend Of Prince Valiant: The Complete Series
Volume One
(1991/Animated)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Episodes: C+
Hal
Foster’s Prince Valiant is an all-time iconic comic strip character and hero,
created back in 1937. There are fans of
the 1954 Robert Wagner film to the point that both a DVD and CD soundtrack of
the film (both reviewed elsewhere on this site) have been issued and a failed
1997 feature did not revive the character.
Still, approaching its 70th anniversary, a more interesting
incarnation happened towards the end of the life of the animated studio
Filmation. The Legend Of Prince Valiant: The Complete Series, Volume One covers
the first half of the two season of the show.
The
character is part of the King Features Syndicate/Hearst Publishing family, one
Filmation did interesting work with.
Back in 1979, their animated Flash
Gordon (also reviewed elsewhere on this site) was a hit and until the
latter season, was some of the most cutting edge animation on U.S. TV. Filmation had created an amazing series of
hit animated and live-action children’s shows.
This time, they had Patty Duke join their in-house crew and the result
was a decent show.
Like Flash Gordon, the complex art of the
comic strip had to be simplified to make the show affordable, but this show did
even more rounding of angular designs than its predecessor for a more
naturalistic variant of the classic strip.
Known for their great use of color back when Technicolor did their
earliest prints when their animation was simplest and cheapest, the studio kept
higher color standards long after Hanna-Barbera, newcomer DIC and other studios
threw in the towel.
This set
has 33 shows on nine sides of five DVD with extras, we join Valiant as the son
of a King who is attacked by the evil Cynan.
They have to flee their castle, but a dream of Camelot and King Arthur
lead shim to aligning with Merlin The Magician and the hunt for Camelot
begins. You can imagine the rest is a
set up for action and adventure. Though
even the recent Antoine Fuqua King
Arthur feature film (also reviewed elsewhere on this site) did not do as
well as expected for eliminating the magic angle, though cutting it from R to
PG-13 was a mistake by Disney, there is constant interest in the subject long
after The Lord Of The Rings films
concluded.
This is a
good version, if not great. As compared
to the 1979 Flash Gordon, whose
earliest episodes hit the nail on the head about the characters and storyline,
this Prince Valiant is not exactly
perfect, but creator David J. Corbett was very ambitious and sincere in taking
the characters in new directions and that is why it holds up so well over 15
years later. At least Filmation went out
on top in the quality department.
The 1.33
X 1 image is in decent shape for its age, even if there are some slight detail
issues. Though the color is not knockout
beautiful, it is not overly dark, cheap or phony, showing the conclusive
evolution of what the company was doing.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is not bad for its age, has no surrounds,
but is pretty clean and clear. Extras are
many and include a nicely-illustrated episode guide inside the DVD case, five
episode teleplays in the PDF format for DVD-ROM, storyboard gallery, slideshow
of character & background art, an interviews featurette and two audio
commentary tracks. Corbett and writer
Brooks Wachnel can be found in both of the latter, with comic strip Rick
Norwood talking about the original strip on camera and voice actor/artist
Noelle North on the commentaries with first hand observations about the making
of the show.
Once
again, BCI Eclipse has done a great job releasing a show long overdue on DVD
and loaded it with terrific extras everyone can enjoy. I did I mention how child-friendly the show
is?
- Nicholas Sheffo