Orson Welles Great Mysteries has gotten an official DVD release – in Germany.
The two-disc set, released on January 27 by Pidax Film Media, features 10 episodes of the British anthology television series, which was hosted by Welles. It retails for €17.99, less than $20.
The discs are Region 2 encoded and in the PAL format, which means they will not play in most North American DVD players. (We are unaware of a U.S. home video release in the offing.)
Wellesnet cannot report with complete certainty on the set’s Dolby audio track. While Pidax Film Media‘s website, Amazon Italy and Amazon UK report that the episodes are dubbed in German, Amazon Germany has (perhaps mistakenly) listed the DVD set as an English language release.
The Welles-hosted anthology series – with its John Barry theme – features performances by Joan Collins, Patrick Macnee, Victor Buono, Jack Cassidy and Dean Stockwell. None of the episodes were written or directed by Welles.
The two-DVD set includes only 10 of the series’ 26 episodes, leaving the door open for an additional volume.
Produced by Anglia Television, the 25-minute long episodes were originally broadcast by Britain’s ITV between September 1973 and February 1974.
Hardly top shelf Welles, Orson Welles Great Mysteries no doubt paid the bills and helped fund some Welles-directed projects.
A decade later, Welles hosted the short-lived NBC anthology series Scene of the Crime.
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