Muppets The Jim Henson Hour RESTORED The Today Show / The Soldier and Death / Ted Danson / Lighthouse Island

The Jim Henson Hour: Power / The Today Show / The Soldier and Death
with
The Jim Henson Hour: Oceans / Ted Danson / Lighthouse Island

Painstakingly restored from VHS and other sources. Starring Jim Henson's Muppets.

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The Jim Henson Hour Episode 3

Power / The Today Show / The Soldier and Death

April 28, 1989, NBC. Director John Blanchard.

Guest Stars: Willard Scott and Jane Pauley from The Today Show. Musical guest The Nylons.

Gonzo and Leon talk Kermit into letting others help run things at the studio, but when Kermit decides to take a vacation, nobody knows what to do. Meanwhile, Fozzie decides to give up comedy and become a weatherbear on The Today Show, and the monsters host a telethon.

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The Storyteller's Dog takes the Thought Lion's place while The Nylons sing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

The Monster Telethon interrupts the Time Channel and a Soap Opera.

Fozzie Bear attempts to become Today's new Weather Bear, and meets Willard Scott and Jane Pauley.

Bootsie and Brad (Jennifer Lee and Andrew Wilson) run for president.

Gonzo and Leon send Kermit off on vacation and attempt to take control of the show.

Bean's Storytime tells a tale of a kingdom without a king. The King, working as a hat sharpener, is convinced to take power by an eccentric military officer (Chris Langham).

Kermit and the cast sing "Sweet Vacation." (Written by Philip Balsam and Dennis Lee)

With Jim Henson, Fran Brill, Kevin Clash, Dave Goelz, Frank Oz, Dan Redican, Gord Robertson, Steve Whitmire

And Jennifer Lee, Andrew Wilson, Erica Lancaster, Chris Langham

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Restoration Notes:

The majority of this episode is three VHS tapes being played at the same time, composited over one another for improved quality, and with fixes done in Photoshop and Final Cut Pro whenever any source had a major issue. Noise and grain on all sources was removed in After Effects via Neatvideo, and the final video was sharpened in After Effects.

We were lucky with this episode, as three good VHS sources and two lesser sources were available. All of them were used on this DVD. This didn't make the restoration easy, though, as our cleanest source is missing some footage and glitches at least twice every thirty seconds for several frames, the playback stuttering and bouncing up and down. The vertical bouncing was fixed frame by frame as much as possible, then another source was usually faded in for a few frames to cover the jump.

The "Sweet Vacation" segment is even luckier, as I had previously restored this segment using - I believe - three VHS sources including a commercially released "Sing-Along" tape. This had lyrics displayed onscreen which were removed one by one in Photoshop and FCP.

I overlaid my previous restoration over the new restoration, so the effect is that of six VHS tapes playing at once, and looks as good as VHS is ever going to get!

My better sources are missing footage during the opening and closing scenes, so other sources were used to cover the gaps, with digital trickery to clean them up further. The clearest source is also missing footage after commercial breaks, and is missing the entire scene where Gonzo decides to leave (before Sweet Vacation).

Two different audio tracks are provided on the DVD, from the two best audio sources. This was a last-minute decision when I realized one audio source was better than the one I'd been using!

The opening titles and "Jim Henson Hour" bumpers were restored using the Dog City and Monster Maker laserdiscs. The Kermit bumpers were restored using about a dozen VHS sources. These appear on almost all my Jim Henson Hour restorations. My choice of which bumpers to use, and what audio goes with them, is an artistic choice and does not reflect the episodes as aired.

The Storyteller: The Soldier and Death appears from the official Storyteller DVD, although the first shot of the Storyteller sitting by the fire had to be very carefully reconstructed using some digital trickery to insert some new credits over it. (All the Storyteller episodes, as aired in The Jim Henson Hour, have different opening credits than appear on the DVD.)

I could have used the much lower quality VHS version for this, but decided to reconstruct the shot instead, because the shot already has a lot of strangeness in it that I didn't want to be blamed for.

In any version, there is some very strange compositing in the first shot of this episode. Part of a different take has been superimposed over the center of the shot, and is faded in and out, possibly to cover some sort of filming error. The result looks very peculiar.

My version of the shot fixes most of this using animation created in Photoshop and After Effects (to estimate between frames). Apart from The Storyteller's hands, everything now looks much more normal, and I was also able to composite new credits over the shot.


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The Storyteller: The Soldier and Death

A Russian hussar is rewarded for his kindness to beggars with a special sack which can force anything inside it, as well as a deck of lucky cards that guarantees he wins every game. When he learns of a palace that is haunted by devils who play cards all night, the soldier goes to the castle to play a game with them, capturing a devil to serve him. But when Death comes calling, the soldier makes use of the sack again, with unforeseen consequences.

Written by Anthony Minghella, from an early Russian folk tale
Director Jim Henson

John Hurt as The Storyteller
Brian Henson as The Dog
Bob Peck as the Soldier
Stuart Richman as Fiddling Beggar
Walter Sparrow as Card Trick Beggar
John Franklyn-Robbins as Tzar
Ishia Benson as Tzar's Wife
Jan Chappell as Soldier's Wife
Gavin Knights as Soldier's Son
David Fleeshman as Innkeeper
Alistair Fullarton as Death/Devil
David Alan Barclay, Michael Bayliss, Marcus Clarke, Richard Coombes, John Eccleston, Geoff Felix, Brian Henson, Mike Quinn, Francis Wright as the Devils (puppeteers)
Tony Jackson, Peter Hawkins, and Peter Marinker as the Devils (voices)

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The Jim Henson Hour Episode 2

Oceans / Ted Danson / Lighthouse Island

Air Date April 21, 1989
Director Peter Harris

An underwater-themed show, taking place while a number of water-related issues occur at Muppet Central. A cast of Muppet fish take center stage - which Kermit calls "Friends in relation."

Bean Bunny has taken the satellite dish from the roof. Kermit tries to put it back, but falls off, busting a hole in the roof. Lindbergh tries to fix the roof, but only makes things worse. Muppettelevision is being flooded.

A fish sings Bobby Darin's "Splish Splash."

Ted Danson stars in a pirate sketch.

Rowlf the Dog as Merlin, M.D. meets a man with a fish in his head. Ta-da!

Trailer: "Karate Squid 3"

The Extremes and a shark sing "Maneater."

"The Underwater Life of Jacques Roach"

With a leaky floor, Kermit dances in a puddle to the tune of "The Blue Danube."

Ted Danson, evolving from a fish, stars in an environmental fable, narrated by Clifford.

Jim Henson and the Thought Lion present an atmospheric fantasy story of the sea, Lighthouse Island - where a young man must assist an eccentric older woman in retrieving a powerful jewel, in order to get a pair of shoes for his fiancee. But all is not as it seems.

With Jim Henson, Fran Brill, Kevin Clash, Dave Goelz, Rob Mills, Jerry Nelson, Gord Robertson, Steve Whitmire

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Restoration notes:

This was a hugely difficult episode to restore. One source was in decent-ish shape, apart from major color fluctuations at the top of the screen. The other source was in awful shape and required all the skills I have to remove noise, dirt, sparkle, instability, and all sorts of other issues. Both sources were composited together, with a few other sources used for color, sound and short missing sections. A sing-along video was also composited in for "Splish Splash," with onscreen lyrics removed one by one in Photoshop.

Lighthouse Island is included as released on iTunes. It has never had a DVD release.

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Lighthouse Island

Lighthouse Island is a half-hour telefilm which aired as the second half of The Jim Henson Hour's episode 102 on April 21, 1989. It later appeared as part of the Muppet Matinee programming block on Nickelodeon.

Jim Henson describes Lighthouse Island as a town where everyone and everything seems to be magic.

Zeb Norman comes to a strange small island town in search of the perfect gift for his fiancée, Rosalie. But all is not as it seems. Zeb has never met Rosalie, but has fallen in love with her through an exchange of letters. He finds just what he's looking for in a pair of silver slippers at a local antique/curio shop owned by Clara Buford, but before he can obtain them, Clara insists that he accompany her to nearby dark, mysterious Hog Island so she can retrieve a pearl stolen from her by her rival, Fred. As it turns out, the pearl bestows upon its owner the power of transformation, and when Fred sees them coming, he takes action. As he takes on the form of a sea monster, a flying beast, and a giant tentacle, the success of Zeb and Clara's mission is suddenly very much in question.

Chris Makepeace as Zeb Norman
Helen Burns as Clara Buford
Carolyn Dunn as Rosalie
Jerry Nelson as Fred
Margaret Moore as Fortune Teller
John Dunsworth as Sam
Marty Reno as Jake
Bruce Armstrong as Carl
Gordon Robertson as Polar Bear

Written by Jerry Juhl
Directed by Eric Till
Jim Henson's Creature Shop Creative Supervisor: John Stephenson
Production Designer: Russell Chick
Music: Eric Robertson

The special was recorded on October 12 and 13, 1988, in Novia Scotia. The concept of Lighthouse Island was thought up by Jerry Juhl in 1971. Juhl had pitched the concept as an anthology series, and had asked Jim Henson to direct.


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Special Features:

Alternate audio on The Jim Henson Hour Episode 3
(Power / The Today Show / The Soldier and Death)
The restored audio was taken from several different VHS recordings. I've included mixes based on the best and second best audio sources, for comparison's sake.


Episode Trailers: The Jim Henson Hour
Ted Danson / K.D. Lang / Buster Pointdexter/ Dog City
The Ted Danson trailer is unrestored. The others are restored/recreated.


Eight alternate intros: "The Jim Henson Show" (web quality)
Eight episodes of "The Jim Henson Show" aired in Canada. This was a half-hour version of The Jim Henson Hour, including all the MuppetTelevision episodes with Kermit and company, minus the cold openings (and closings) and without The Storyteller and the other fantasy features. (Dog City, Secrets of the Muppets, Living With Dinosaurs and Monster Maker were not included.) Jim Henson's introduction to each episode was different (though shot at the same time). Here are all of those alternate introductions.