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Briefly, the colorization of this film is rather weak. (The colorized version of SHE put out on the same label is much more impressive.) It has that rather pastel look reminiscent of the early days of the process. The "restored" black and white version, also included on this disc, is also a disappointment. Although not as bad as many of the public domain DVDs out there, it pales in comparison to the Image DVD, which still remains the benchmark at this time. Besides the slightly dupey look, the beginning of the opening credits is clipped, and the climactic last chord of music at the film's finale is missing. Most importantly, the film runs 92 minutes, NOT the 100 minutes promised on the DVD case.

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There's only one explanation for all this: Wade Williams. Hailing from Kansas City, this film collector began announcing that he had rights to a number of Science Fiction films in the early 70's, including favorites Rocketship X-M and Kronos. Like a latter-day Raymond Rohauer, Williams began the dicey practice of altering prints of 'his' films, as Rohauer had once done to the classics of Buster Keaton, as a way of re-registering them under new copyrights. Rohauer just retyped some title cards, but Williams had much bigger ideas. Like the worst of film revisionists, Williams seems to have been interested only in the 'improved' versions he re-edited, and may not have retained elements to preserve the originals. The original Rocketship X-M had some pretty crummy V-2 rocket stock footage that didn't match models seen elsewhere in the show. Williams hired some Cascade alumni (including cameraman Dennis Muren) to shoot replacement footage featuring a proper-looking rocket. It is excellently done; there might even be some matching astronauts marching in the new footage. This is the version that appears on television, VHS and Laser, and presumably on forthcoming DVDs. But the original unaltered 1950 Rocketship X-M has been a no-show for decades, if it exists at all.

Wade Williams reissued Invaders from Mars to theaters in the middle 70s, with the changes listed above in versions 3 and 4. The dialogue lines were (reportedly) excised because audiences laughed at them, putting Williams in the category of earlier producers who cut scenes out of foreign imports like The Mysterians, Reptilicus, Gorath, and Varan the Unbelievable because screening audiences laughed 'at the wrong places.'

The rape of Invaders from Mars is one of the worst examples in modern film preservation of the trashing of a significant title. The 1993 Image laserdisc has a wonderful selection of extras and posters, cut scenes and even a comic book, but its copy of the film is an appalling mishmash cobbled together from a number of wildly divergent sources. The Image producers threw their net far and wide to find decent source material for this 'labor of love' disc, yet their presentation jumps from patches of excellent quality, to ones with heavy damage, to passages that look like a bad color xerox. Clearly, they were trying to reconstruct what someone else (W.W.?) had chopped up.

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The colourized version is based on the restored black and white print and is a major improvement over the previous 1991 colourization. This time, the colours look much more natural, with only a few exceptions (crocodiles do not have green skins), but at the same time less saturated that they appeared on the previous version. This makes the film look rather like an early Technicolor film from the mid-30s, when colours were being consciously suppressed a bit because bright colours were considered to be too much of a strain for an audience still used to black and white. Moreover, the new colour version displays the same fluctuations in image brightness that are found in the black and white version, which make the colours appear to be really in the film, instead of superimposed on it. Because this is a Hal Roach production and overall bright lighting was employed to mask any wrinkles in the boys’ faces, the faces occasionally look a bit pale in the colour version as well.

The few minor remarks above do not detract from the fact that the new colour version is a triumph, both technically and artistically, and has become our favourite version of this Laurel & Hardy classic. It’s a joy to finally see Stan with red hair and blue eyes.

There are scene selections for both film version, but only for the colour version can these be accessed through the menu. There are no subtitles.

The bonus materials are remarkably abundant:
- First, we are treated to two trailers for this film: the 1934 original and a new one from 2006, specially created to promote the colour version. There are also trailers of other Christmas-related films;
- A ‘rare Laurel & Hardy film’: this is the shortened version of The Tree in a Test Tube from 1941 (containing only the Laurel & Hardy material). It seems that some of the colours have been digitally enhanced, such as the boys’ faces, the car, and Stan’s socks;
- Also on the disc: two cartoons (including one featuring Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), three Christmas-themed shorts, produced by Castle Films, and old toy commercials: all of them ideal to watch on a cold winter evening by a fireplace (fireplace not included). The Christmas package is completed with a message from Santa himself, a karaoke version of ‘Jingle Bells’, and, last but not least, ‘Merry Christmas’ sung by Our Gang (The Little Rascals), including Spanky, Darla and the unique vocal talent of the unsurpassed Alfalfa.

Thank you, Legend Films and in particular Mr. Barry Sandrew, for your kind cooperation and the quality treatment you have given this film. Other companies can learn something from this. Warmly recommended!

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The original end title, absent on the KirchGruppe version, is intact here, although oddly, the black and white version contains the ‘Samuel Goldwyn’ copyright notice from 1991 (also found on the first colour version, still available on the GoodTimes DVD). The source print was probably missing the original title, so the older one was substituted. The new colour version’s end title bears a recent copyright notice.

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Sure, full digital filmmaking would have been awesome when making Wizard of Oz but they didn't have it then. And the movie stands as a triumph because of what they worked with.

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But if so, let the great black-and-white crusaders stand up and boycott and protect us from other debased and debasing junk in our culture. Otherwise, we have a right to conclude that they are not serious, just a bunch of effetes moved by nostalgia, snobbery and fear. A Puritan, goes the old joke, is a person who lives in mortal fear that someone somewhere is having fun. A Hollywood Puritan is a person who lives in mortal fear that someone somewhere is watching Ingrid Bergman blush red in Rick's Cafe

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