I was just at goodwill today, and i bought a strange looking lion king vhs. The vhs case has a picture with the title "walt disney pictures The Lion King" at the top, in its common title form, but it is on a picture of simba at his adult age on the tip of pride rock with the animals worshiping him, looking up at the sky to see a vision of simba's face in the clouds. on the side of the vhs case is white, and it shows a small picture of the front of the case at the top, with the lion king title in yellow print (as well as the "walt disney pictures presents" above it, but the title is sideways, as other vhs cases have, and to the right of the title, a "the classics" black diamond logo is also sideways. the wierd thing is, the logo isn't even on the tape! on the back of the vhs case, it is blue with a "sketch" of simba's adult form, with the title under it. above the sketch of simba are credits to the movie, that say"

"Prepare to be awed! the lion king' is a triumph -richard corliss. time magazine
"I've never seen anything like it" -joel sieel, good morning america
"Two thumbs up for the lion king!" -siskel & ebert

they don't even show the movie description!
the vhs tape itself has a white label, with all the printing on it sideways (as some fox movies do), and it says in black text:
Walt Disney's the lion king (in its common title)
and it has the black diamond logo, and inside it says "the classics" with the walt disney home video logo under it. under that it says:
color/75 minutes, the rated g logo, and "NTSC standard"
and it has the fbi warning under all of it.

okay, now with the movie.
first, as you first play the tape, it shows a blue screen with a black pinnicle of a castle, possibly the disneyland (world?) castle, which moves to the left, and above it, it says:
A
Tisch/Wendy Fine
Production
but it is hard to make out, because there was a bunch of "lines" going through the screen.
then, on a black screen, in orange text it says:
In Remembrance of
FRANK WELLS
President of the walt disney company
from 1984-1994
and there is a sound effect in the background, which sounds like clapping, and a little boy talking during it, but i couldn't make it out, it sounded like a baby talking, but it must of been in the audience when the sound effect took place. and then it shows the movie, which looks pretty aged and not digitaly remastered (or in other words, not like the common vhs that came out) the colors were lighter and there was a lot of "lines" in the movie, and the music and sound is a bit muffled. i haven't watched the whole movie yet, but i will edit this post when i find out more stuff on this strange copy of the movie.

i don't know if it was a rare version of the first copy or if it was a special addition. the movie is in a clamshell case, just like most of the disney movies are, but it looks pretty rare, because i never seen this version of the movie before!

Hmmm...sounds strange. I have never seen one like that before.

strange indeed, my dad says it might be bootleg. i can't take a picture because i don't have a digital camera, but i did find a pic of the cover thats on my clamshell case, but i don't know how to put it as an attatchment. can anyone help me?

To copy your picture, try right-clicking on the picture you want to post and then click on "copy image location"

Then click on the add image icon at the top under the title bar. It is the icon with the yellow box with the small mountain on the inside of it.

Then paste the "copy image location" link in the box.

Then click submit reply

hope that helped.

This is definitely a bootleg, the kind that got sold off the streets of NY perhaps. Prior to the start of the internet and the current situation, one pay pirates would try to sell movies before they were out on video was to sneak camcorders (usually with extended batteries) into cinemas themselves and record the movie right off the screen, with the camera's mike picking up anything inherent in a movie going experience. Today we would call these "Hand-cam" due to the shoestring nature of said recordings, though some might also be labeled "Telesync", meaning the sound itself was taken from an internal source like the sound system itself (usually these recordings are done at drive-ins I read).

that isn't helping, but thanks though.
here is the image url:
http://www.fpx.de/fp/Disney/Posters/lion_king.jpg
it says it is the movie poster.

i don't know if thats it, because the sounds were only recorded during the credit of the walt disney president. the movie itself also was pretty still, and it didn't look like it was off of a camcorder, even if the camera was sitting on something, because the screen was perfectly positioned, just like in a normal movie, but the only difference is the "very slightly" muffled sound, and the not-so-bright color of the movie.
i haven't watched the whole movie yet though, and i will let everyone know if i find anything else that is strange in the movie.
and i edited my first post. instead of it saying the "walt disney presents" as soon as you play the tape, it actually said:
a
tisch/wendy fime
production
and if it was a bootleg, how was the clamshell case made? even though it looked different, it didn't look like it was printed off of a computer, it even had a scan code on the back!

I think I have that, and if yours is the same as mine, it's definitely a bootleg. A friend of mine bought it off a street vendor in NYC.

Does your say "Two thumbs up" from Siskel and Ebert on the back, or does it actually say "Two thumPs up," like mine does?

correction, it does actually say "TWO THUMPS UP FOR 'THE LION KING'!"
by siskel & ebert! i guess it is a bootleg, but how was the title and all that from the clamshell case made?
and btw, at the beginning of your version, does it say (right as you begin the tape) a blue screen saying "a tisch/wendy fine production" in white text on a blue background? if not, it must of been left over from another bootleg and it must of been recorded over.

I don't have the tape with me, and I haven't seen it in some time, but I don't recall the "a tisch/wendy fine production" screen. But like I said, I haven't seen it in a while, so it could have been there.

i think the production screen was another bootleg being over-recorded. i googled tisch and wendy fine production, and all i found was "Steve Tisch, Wendy Finerman production" from the forrest gump movie, and it must have been translated in some wierd way! someone help me figure this out, or i am going to have nightmares for weeks!

btw, was the street vendor only selling the bootlegs of lion king, or was he one of those hotdog vendors who gave it to your friend for free?

I put the picture on there for you.

I don't know, I didn't actually see him buy the video.

well, i watched farther in the movie, and i think it is indeed a bootleg, because i heard very low voices during some parts so far (the audience watching the movie when the bootleg was recorded), such as people saying "eeeewww" when scar spit zazu out at the beginning, people laughing when simba pounced zazu, and i even heard pretty clearly, two teenage girls giggling when scar said he was going to be a monkey's uncle when simba becomes king. i'll put more up of what i find.

That Weired I never seen that before :?

Neither does the back of the case of my "Team America: World Police" UMD. It (The Team America UMD) is still legitimate, though.

Maybe it's "Lion King 1 & 1/2"??

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318403/

nope, its just the first one. well i guess the tisch/wendy fine production screen was from a forrest gump bootleg, but over recorded by the lion king bootleg (forrest gump came out in theaters around the same time lion king did), but the strange thing that keeps bugging me is the fact that the "the classics" black diamond logo is on the side of the clamshell case and on the label of the video tape itself, and lion king isn't even in "the classics" series! maybe the people who made the bootleg thought it was going to be a part of that series?

Kinda unrelated, but here's a picture of a Chinese bootleg DVD of The Lion King 1 1/2 (Called The Lion King 3 in some countries outside the US).



Is this supposed to be an adult film or something?

Funny. I go to that engrish site all the time.