Mosskeeto

There is something strange buried in W.C. Fields Six Short Films DVD from Criterion. A while ago I heard of an issue that someone had in making a backup copy of this and I thought I'd give it a try. I borrowed a copy but no longer have it available so this is from what I recall happened about six months ago or longer.
When I tried to compress it in DVDShrink, the compression was really severe for such a small run time. In fact I think it was too large for backup compression to work. I started to open all the seperate components and discovered a whole slew of Hong Kong martial arts trailers (including I recall, a weird one about a bare breasted assassin ninja!) It also seemed to have a complete HK flick buried in there. Seems like one layer of this disc was devoted to these hidden "bonuses". So what's the story? Unreported Easter Eggs? I couldn't figure this out but thought someone here might. It appears both copies had the same problem.

manicsounds

Yes I remember reading about this from other people too.
Just a strange manufacturing problem in the authoring,
but it isn't rare. I think all the WC Fields discs were pressed like that.

inri222

From the criterion forum:

Time to break the silence on this one. I can't keep it to myself any longer. Check out W.C. Fields: 6 Short Films and open the disk on your hard drive and go to Video_TS VOB File (474,392 KB). What you will get is my favorite Criterion 'Easter Egg' hands down: a 13 minute trailer for the Asia Pulp Cinema (asiapulpcinema.com) catalog without sound. You will see the Criterion and Janus logo followed by a brief color bar blip and then a disclaimer for the mature content in the clips to follow. With titles like Zero Woman, The Ninja Dragon, Weather Girl and many others including anime clips, the content contains much in the way of flesh being peeled back from faces and gratuitous sex clips. It's really not what you would deem typical Criterion content. I'm sure this means I'll never get another question answered again but what the hell, here's the response to my query some time ago:

This seems to be the result of an authoring mix-up. This "easter egg"
was never intended to appear on the disc and should be disregarded. Sorry
about the confusion.

Best,
JM

The Valeyard

If this was an authoring mix-up, why does it start with "the Criterion and Janus logo followed by a brief color bar blip and then a disclaimer for the mature content in the clips to follow"?

Sounds pretty deliberate to me.

Buford T Pusser

Interesting. I'll have to check my disc.

Mosskeeto

Thanks for the input...I thought it might have been some rogue underlings sneaking this mature content into the authoring phase and it really bulked up the size of this disc, it might have otherwise fit onto a single layer disc. I did think it was on every copy but couldn't figure out "Why?" and never was able to track down a response through a search.

Ethan VanSciver

Is there a way to access this easter egg without putting it in a computer?

Mosskeeto

No; because it not really an Egg, just something that someone illegally added during authoring. In fact it doesn't really "play" during decrypting/ripping. I was unable to get it to function like a real extra but did manage to view parts of it and for some reason (size I think), I couldn't rip it to my hard drive.
"Weather Girl" is the full HK flick lurking in there if my memory is correct.

darkside

Guess I know what I'm doing when I get home today. I've had this DVD forever and didn't know about this.

ThatGuamGuy

It sounds, from the statement and the lack of sound on the file and the lack of any sort of way to access it and the fact that it's included on the W.C. Fields disc, like it was something which Criterion/Janus were working on, possibly an internal thing or something for behind-the-scenes marketing work, which was inadvertantly mastered into the DVD.

Damfino

This is fascinating. I hope I have an easier time finding these files than I usually have explaining why The Fatal Glass Of Beer is funny.

Mosskeeto

I do think that there was no sound for these embedded "eggs". I couldn't seem to get the HK movie to load but it's running time, over an hour +, showed up on one of the decrypted preview files. The only way I really got to view these images was to double click on the preview screen when the segment you wanted to view was playing: that opened a full screen image. I do now remember a facial flesh peeling scene in one of the trailers.
It must be over a year that I've been wondering what this was all about. Now I know.