"It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" Gets The Criterion Treatment

Great news! Thanks to a tip by Mike Schlesinger (a major player of the U.S. version of Godzilla 2000), it has been announced that Stanley Kramer's It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World will be receiving the Criterion Collection treatment.

The movie will be released January 21, 2014 as a set of 5 Blu-ray and DVD discs.

The synopsis:

Stanley Kramer followed his Oscar-winning Judgment at Nuremberg with this sobering investigation of American greed. Ah, who are we kidding? It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, about a group of strangers fighting tooth and nail over buried treasure, is the most grandly harebrained movie ever made, a pileup of slapstick and borscht-belt-y one-liners performed by a nonpareil cast, including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Jonathan Winters, and a boatload of other playing-to-the-rafters comedy legends. For sheer scale of silliness, Kramer’s wildly uncharacteristic film is unlike any other, an exhilarating epic of tomfoolery.

The movie was released in November 1963. The Pacific Cinerama Dome in Hollywood was just completed that year and It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World premiered there at the Dome's grand opening night on November 7, 1963. I was lucky to be able to see it at the Dome during its engagement with my Cub Scout Pack, my parents and grandfather.

It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was not shown in the 3-camera Cinerama process, but shown in 1-camera 70mm Ultra Panavision.

For more info, go here.