‘Mad World’s’ Filmic Sprawl

Not all films deserve the full laser-disc treatment: restored film sequences and interviews with the director, stars and other participants.

A case in point may be Stanley Kramer’s 1963 comedy “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” recently released in wide-screen letterbox by MGM/UA Home Video in a stereo digital video transfer with two-track Dolby Surround ($50). The three-disc, five-sided set includes approximately 20 minutes rescued from a warehouse scheduled for demolition and painstakingly restored and reinserted.

For fans of the film--and they are legion and loyal--this has been a long time coming. For those who aren’t so enamored of this so-called comedy, the restored film at 3 hours, 8 minutes is a tedious, only occasionally amusing affair.

The film, Kramer’s first venture into comedy after a distinguished career in social-issue filmmaking, features an overwhelming list of comics. Almost every quipper alive when filming began seems to have gotten a shot--from Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Mickey Rooney and Ethel Merman in featured parts to Jimmy Durante, Arnold Stang, Terry-Thomas, Dick Shawn and Buddy Hackett. Spencer Tracy gets top billing.

But the real stars in this Keystone Kops-like race for buried, stolen money are the stuntmen who are well served in this wide-screen transfer, which also includes the original trailer, the 1970 reissue trailer and TV spots.

The pan-and-scan scenes seen in the trailers reveal how badly a wide-screen film--this was shot in Ultra Panavision--can be mangled.

There are no analog track interviews illuminating the film as you’re seeing it, but separate interviews with Kramer, the stunt director and many of the stars still alive hopscotch all over the place after the film’s exit music. The more than 120 chapter stops should be enough to keep any fan’s finger on the chapter-search key.

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Laserlists: If you’re a big laser distributor and want to entice your customers, what do you do to gussy up your catalogue? Image Entertainment put its entire catalogue on one mini laser disc, and pressed 70,000 copies for release to its biggest retailers, who can sell them or give them away to selected customers.

Trouble is, without those moving, talking pictures, all that’s up there on the TV screen are still pictures of each catalogue item. If you want to remember it, you have to write it down. Here’s one time you might want to pass up modern technology and go for the printed word.