Unedited DVD's in the US

[Joe Siegler]

Greetings, all.

Question about ALF on DVD. My wife and I have a long attraction to ALF - in fact, when we first met, the one thing we talked about was Alf. Granted, it was in the first season then, so it was seriously hot on TV. Anyway, when it came out on DVD in the US about 6-7 years ago or so now, we bought the first two series.

Found out they were syndicated, not original cuts. It was released by Lion's Gate, and they didn't use the original versions of the episodes, they used syndicated versions, which are cut to all hell. At the time, Lion's Gate said that the cost required to restore the originals was too cost prohibitive, so they used syndicated, as they were apparently in better shape for conversion to DVD. Or something like that, I forget the exact text. No idea if it was BS or not.

I found out tonight that Warner Bros released Series 1-4 in Europe in 2009-2010, but they're UNEDITED. Has anyone heard anything about getting that released in the US? I'd be interested in rebuying them, as my wife and I still to this day roll our eyes at what's missing from the episodes.

For some reason, the episode with the cockroach seems the most egregious. There was a line about Alf wanting to order donuts from a place that delivered, and they were talking about what flavor. Someone (Kate/Willie) said "Plain", and Alf had a line about "Plain? With all the flavors out there today?" That whole bit was cut, and it was our favorite line, actually. Still bugs me. Even in the pilot the bit with Alf & Lynn singing the CCR song is cut, and the episode with Jody the blind woman (the first one), has the bit with them singing Alvin & The Chipmunks gone. Gah!

Would love to get the uncut ones on DVD, but I somehow doubt they'll be re-released in the states. Any word on this?

[Shumway]

Feel your frustration, in australia they are also unedited and are the full episodes except for a couple of episodes,only fist two seasons available at the moment, the episode where the chipmunks are singing was edited due to the release of the new chipmunk movie at the time and copyrights, go to the ebay australia site and order the first two seasons, get your self a dvd player that is region free and will work a treat, the european disks should also work in the US if you have a region free dvd player, you can also change the region setting in alot of dvd players if you know what your doing.

[Bring Back ALF]

Yep its very frustrating I don't even play the US DVD's anymore as many of the episodes are missing some of my favourite scenes.
They are nice to own for the packaging, menu's and special features but thats about it.

I got the german versions which have english language and credits as default and they are excellent, so good to see full episodes again.

Paul Fusco mentioned in the 25th Anniversary newsletter that if and when the ALF movie opens maybe there would be interest to put them out again (maybe on Blu Ray too) so I would expect some remastering and uncut versions to appear then but nothing is confirmed at this moment.

In the meantime the Australian or European versions are the way to go, still hasn't been released in the UK though and ALF was massive here!

[Joe Siegler]

It has been a few years since I posted this. Anyone ever hear anything new on this? Probably not, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

[samstokes80]

Unfortunately, there is no news on this front. However, it is possible to purchase the DVDs from the German Amazon site with a credit card (one that allows for currency conversion) and use a region free DVD player of change a computer DVD drive to a Region 2. There is a thread in the forum about it with fairly specific details on how I went about it. I have only found one cut so far - the Chipmunk songs on the first episode with Jody. Every other song remains intact as far as I know, and I haven't noted any other cuts yet.