Where can I find Disney's  "Song of the South" on VHS or DVD. In
English, too, Please

I love this movie! It is a pity that the Disney organization withdrew
this beautiful, tuneful family entertainment from distribution after
being pressured by groups that (wrongly, I believe) felt the film was
racist.

You can find several interesting links related to "Song of the South"
here:

Google Directory
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Animation/Movies/Titles/Song_of_the_South/

Here is a discussion of the reasons for the film's unavailability:

Snopes.com
http://www.snopes2.com/disney/films/sots.htm

As my colleague markj-ga has pointed out in a comment, there are
numerous copies of this movie available on Ebay, but all are in the
PAL video format, which is incompatible with the video format used in
the United States. The film is not available on commercial video in
the United States (and possibly never will be.) Fortunately, there is
another option.

"Song of the South" is listed under "New Additions" on the page below:

Classic Movies
http://members.tripod.com/classic-movies/ 

Classic Movies specializes in providing non-commercial releases of
movies that are not otherwise available to the public. Here's a
statement from Classic's home page:

-----------------------------

"Offered for sale here are non-commercial releases of classic movies.
Sources vary, such companies as Cinema Classics, Hellfire Video,
Creepy Classics and more. Some classic movies are from 16mm film
transfers, broadcast TV, satellite networks. A few contain network
logos. Since these movies are not commercially available in any other
way, we viewers have to put up with a few imperfections to see them!

NOTE: I will not sell gray market copies of commercially available
classic movies. There are many classic movies available commercially;
please support their sale, so more classic movies we know and love can
be released."

-----------------------------

I have personally obtained films from this source, and was very
pleased with the service and the value. There is no fancy packaging
(the movies come in a plain box, without cover art,) but the video and
audio quality is as good as I have seen, considering that most of the
movies are quite old, and first-generation prints are often
unavailable. The site is now offering DVDs as well as VHS tapes. I
cannot vouch for the quality of the DVDs, since I have not yet ordered
a film from Classic in this format.

Most of the "Net Executive Classic Movie" titles are $12. "Song of the
South" is a new title; it is $20, plus $4.25 shipping.

Although you cannot order online, a convenient order form can be
printed from the site:

Classic Movies Order Form
http://members.tripod.com/classic-movies/form.htm

If anything above is not clear, or if the links are nonfunctional,
please ask for clarification before rating my answer, and I will be
glad to provide further assistance.

Happy viewing!

Best regards,
pinkfreud

---

Clarification of Answer by pinkfreud-ga on 30 Oct 2002 15:49 PST

Here is another option:

http://www.songofthesouth.co.uk/

The site linked above will include a "complimentary" videotape in NTSC
format (this is the video format used in the US) when you buy a PAL
tape of "Song of the South." The cost is $230, shipped to the US.

~pinkfreud

vernegiles - 

There are several current auctions on eBay for English-language videos
of the movie in the European PAL standard. No video has ever been
released in this country, but this version apparently was legally
available in Europe until fairly recently. See the link below:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&krd=1&from=R8&MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&query=song+of+the+south

You would have to have the video converted to VHS.

If you consider this lead to be fully responsive to your question,
please post a clarification or comment to that effect and I will
recast this as an answer.

markj-ga

Hi~

I recently saw an English NTSC VHS copy of Song of the South for sale
in a cool used CD/Video store in Chicago.  Can't remember the name but
it was on Clark near the Century Centre Cinema.

Also, just rented the DVD of Disneyland USA, which contains old
episodes of the show Disneyland from the 50s, and one of the episodes
included a lengthy excerpt from Song of the South.