Monday, September 06, 2004
IF I CAN'T HAVE FREE, I'LL SETTLE FOR CHEAP: Since there was nothing doing this weekend, and I had far too much money in my wallet for comfort, I decided to dip into the newest Walmart/Dollar General phenomenom, the dollar DVD. Keeping in mind that most of the time, you get what you pay for, here's a rundown:
Dragnet Vol. 1 & 2: These are the "good" episodes from the 1950s, when Jack Webb was still doing the radio show at the same time, the reactionary version of Joe Friday still a decade in the future. The most unfortunate part is while the shows on the disc are apparently in the public domain, the music ("dum-da-dum-dum") is still under copyright, so the discs' producers sloppily dubbed some sub-Law & Order knockoff music in its place. Yeah, yeah, it keeps the cost down, but it's so wrong. Instead of marching resolutely in the direction of justice, the new music makes the show slink off like a thief in the night. That's a shame, since the prints they used are fairly decent quality, as these cheapie releases usually go.
These DVDs were released by DigiView Productions. Click here to visit their non-functioning website!
Tales of Tomorrow: The next two DVDs come from a company billed as PMB 421, who pack their merchandise in card-stock envelopes. Very chintzy. Tales of Tomorrow was an early ABC series from the era where adult sci-fi was first coming into its own, and this live program was a video attempt to jump on the bandwagon. Of course that's not the reason I bought it; this DVD has the infamous adaptation of Frankenstein, where Lon Chaney Jr. (possibly drunk, definitely disoriented) wandered incoherently through the role of the Monster. The idea here is that he had no idea this wasn't a dress rehearsal, so instead he keeps looking off-camera at the director, picking up breakaway furniture and putting it back down, and generally doing in whatever TV career he might have had. Apart from that, we also find numerous reasons why it's a bad idea to chop a full-length novel down to 25 minutes.
Jack Benny: Yes, my hero. This collection gives us two filmed half-hour episodes of the Jack Benny series and an hour-long special (on muddy kinescope, which may have been dubbed off of a worn out video) from 1965 with Bob Hope, Walt Disney and the Beach Boys. He also manages to send up three-quarters of the current TV Land schedule in one sketch, and he's not even in it. Of course, Jack's not in the current TV Land schedule, either, which is a whole other ripoff.
(9/13 Note: You're not imaging things; I forgot to post this last weekend...go figure...)
Dragnet Vol. 1 & 2: These are the "good" episodes from the 1950s, when Jack Webb was still doing the radio show at the same time, the reactionary version of Joe Friday still a decade in the future. The most unfortunate part is while the shows on the disc are apparently in the public domain, the music ("dum-da-dum-dum") is still under copyright, so the discs' producers sloppily dubbed some sub-Law & Order knockoff music in its place. Yeah, yeah, it keeps the cost down, but it's so wrong. Instead of marching resolutely in the direction of justice, the new music makes the show slink off like a thief in the night. That's a shame, since the prints they used are fairly decent quality, as these cheapie releases usually go.
These DVDs were released by DigiView Productions. Click here to visit their non-functioning website!
Tales of Tomorrow: The next two DVDs come from a company billed as PMB 421, who pack their merchandise in card-stock envelopes. Very chintzy. Tales of Tomorrow was an early ABC series from the era where adult sci-fi was first coming into its own, and this live program was a video attempt to jump on the bandwagon. Of course that's not the reason I bought it; this DVD has the infamous adaptation of Frankenstein, where Lon Chaney Jr. (possibly drunk, definitely disoriented) wandered incoherently through the role of the Monster. The idea here is that he had no idea this wasn't a dress rehearsal, so instead he keeps looking off-camera at the director, picking up breakaway furniture and putting it back down, and generally doing in whatever TV career he might have had. Apart from that, we also find numerous reasons why it's a bad idea to chop a full-length novel down to 25 minutes.
Jack Benny: Yes, my hero. This collection gives us two filmed half-hour episodes of the Jack Benny series and an hour-long special (on muddy kinescope, which may have been dubbed off of a worn out video) from 1965 with Bob Hope, Walt Disney and the Beach Boys. He also manages to send up three-quarters of the current TV Land schedule in one sketch, and he's not even in it. Of course, Jack's not in the current TV Land schedule, either, which is a whole other ripoff.
(9/13 Note: You're not imaging things; I forgot to post this last weekend...go figure...)
|| Eric 10:54 AM#
