Search - The Roy Rogers Collection on DVD

K. K. (GAMER)
Reviewed on 6/2/2023...

The picture and video quality are so bad that it takes away from the solid old school plotline.

Mixed track record on 6 film transfers - some are decent, so

Mr. Get Real | Long Beach, CA USA | 08/10/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This review is only for the Madacy issued set of 6 Roy Rogers films on DVD (see all the titles listed below). Amazon tends to paste these reviews on unrelated product or similarly titled DVDs - so beware!

After seeing several fuzzy Roy Rogers film transfers on the "50 Western Classics" DVD set, I set out to find better copies at least for two of my favorites, "The Carson City Kid" and "My Pal Trigger".

Without having exhastively searched the entire planet for the best quality transfers available, I can say that these Madacy DVDs are at least not any worse than any others I have found. And for some of the films there is a definite improvement to where two or three of them in this collection are "good enough." The good ones appear to be copied from film while the fuzzier ones tend to look like they were copied from old VHS tapes.

For "The Carson City Kid", "Lights of Old Santa Fe", "The Cowboy and the Senorita" and "Old Caliente": these film transfers seem to me to be from film as opposed to VHS. They are sometimes slightly fuzzy and then sharper at other times, but overall these are far, far better than much of the typical stuff you find out there in the bargain bins. You can watch these movies and totally enjoy them without being overly distracted by the film quality - again, not pristine, but I would judge them to be very acceptable in terms of the overall quality of the transfer. While "In Old Caliente" is generally acceptable in terms of the film quality, I do have a complaint about the sound quality for that film which is o.k. until about the middle when it gets distorted at times. You can still understand everything said o.k. but you can tell something is wrong with the sound. Maybe about 10 to 15 minutes of the movie is affected by the sound problems - but this is only slightly annoying at times.

For "My Pal Trigger: here the film quality is not nearly as good as the others. I would guess it is probably transfered from VHS and there is not much to differentiate it from the below average transfer I mentioned above in the "50 Western Classics" set. The best I can say is that this version in this collection is not any worse, but perhaps not significantly better either. On the other hand, I also have the Platinum issued version and the picture quality on that one is easily and by far the best of all, but the sound quality also happens to be the worst! Certainly, "My Pal Trigger" from this Madacy collection is watchable, but the quality is somewhat like a 20 year old wornout VHS movie - loss of highlights in some scenes and generally fuzzy to boot - not at all sharp. I guess I will have to continue the search for a perfect copy of "My Pal Trigger" that has both a great picture and a great sound.

The "Bells of San Angelo" is in color, but is just an o.k. film transfer - nothing great. You get the sense that there just has to be a better print out there somewhere and the sound is sometimes a bit muffled, but nothing too seriously flawed. I think the sound quality was a bit better on the "50 Western Classics" set, but perhaps the image is just slightly better here in this collection.

Here is a list of the six films included in this set:

Bells of San Angelo - This one is in color. Dale Evans has some great song sequences here. She actually gets to act in this one!

Carson City Kid - my favorite early (pre-Dale Evans) Roy Rogers film. Also stars Bob Steele in a great bad guy role!

The Cowboy and the Senorita - just another typical Roy Roger film.

In Old Caliente - I like this one a lot. One of the better ones.

Lights of Old Santa Fe - a really slow film, not much action.

My Pal Trigger - another favorite of mine out of these films.
"