Ok, so far no jackpot. I received my bootleg UK DVD of "Sitting Target" today and thankfully it played without a hitch on my PC's combo drive. The quality, however, is extremely poor, due to the age and quality of the VHS tape it was digitized from. Whether or not the PAL format of the tape further degrades the image is something I'm not qualified to answer.
This was an unbelievably madenning, frustrating, and exasperating experience... :cry Why? Well, the gun and scope appear in a good
DOZEN SCENES throughout the movie, and in
EXTREME CLOSE-UP, too... However, aside from the poor image quality, the .$#%$*&. lighting and angle whenever they're shown is positively
DISMAL.. The scope bracket is ALWAYS in shadow, or shown from the side we're already familiar with. It's like the entire time I was being taunted and teased, with no payoff. I'm now suffering from the equivalent of freeze-frame blue balls.
But I'd rather show you the "best" shots and let you judge for yourself. Thanks in advance to Whackychimp for hosting.
:thumbsup
First, the DVD itself:
The dubber managed to create 18 navigable chapters, which at least helped me time-index the crucial prop scenes.
The first time the scope is seen, Oliver Reed's character is casing his target without his 9mm Mauser C-96 model 712 select-fire pistol w/detachable shoulder stock and 20 round clip. But he's gripping the entire vertical bracket in his hand from the moment he takes it out of his overcoat to the scene break:
Here is the exact type of Mauser Reed uses throughout the film:
In a later scene, Reed is sitting in the back of a van, smoking and cleaning the oil off the Mauser, bracket, and scope. The damn rag obscures most of the detail, and due to the bumpy ride and his rapid hand movements, not a single frame was sharp. This really was the best pause frame I could save. In it, you see the scope's rear bell to the right, barrel facing the windshield, and just above Reed's hand you can see the front and rear vertical bracket arms and cradle:
Here, in the first of two "assembly" scenes (I was keeping my fingers crossed for just one, and there were two.
), Reed slides the vertical bracket over the dovetail block from the rear to the front, then holds the scope in place with his left hand while tightening down the thumb screw with his right. You can see that the front of the dovetail block is protruding in front of the vertical bracket, not aligned with it, as seen in the B&W publicity still:
A second later:
Two seconds later:
Three seconds later:
In the two shots above, Reed's left thumb is obscuring the "hole" between the front and rear arms of the vertical bracket.
In the second "assembly" scene, had it not been for the gorram darkness, one COULD have seen details of the inside of the vertical bracket where it attaches to the dovetail block, but it's still shown from the top, so no underside details of the cradle... :angry
Here's probably the sharpest and cleanest shot of the bracket in the movie, near the very end, but as you can see, the angle and shadows obscure any useful detail in the transition between the cradle and vertical bracket:
Finally, in this scene, we see the familiar pose of Reed and Ian McShane, captured by a still photographer during one of the takes:
I'll be watching the movie again tomorrow without frame-by-frame jogging to see if somehow I can glean any useful details, but I'm not optimistic. The only hope I have at this time is the 35 mm teaser reel that I'm expecting in the mail. If I find anything promising on it, I'll take it to a photo store and see if they can magnify and digitize the frame(s), and manipulate the contrast to yield more details.
Ideally, if I stumble across a full reel of this film, I'll try and purchase it. If anyone can help with leads, I'd appreciate it. Here's the IMDB link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069273/
I already e-mailed the person who posted the film's synopsis. No response yet.
If anyone thinks they can milk more details out of this DVD, by all means please let me know and I'll mail you a copy. I've never burned an entire film to DVD before, but I could do that too if anyone wants a copy and is willing to pay for the DVD-R & S&H. Please e-mail me at
proprunner@aol.com - no PMs on this request, please.
- Gabe
