Car 54, Where Are You? – The Complete First Season (1961 – 1962/Shanachie DVD Set) + Dallas Movie Collection (Warner DVD Set) + Dragnet 1970 – Season Four
(Universal/Shout! Factory DVD Set) + H.R.
Pufnstuf – The Complete Series (w/Pufnstuf Bobblehead/1969/Vivendi DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ (Car: C) Extras:
C+/C+/C/B- Episodes: B- (Dallas:
C+)
And now
for some classic TV on DVD long overdue and wrapping up a long road of DVD
release.
It has
taken a very long time for some shows to arrive on DVD or in any format and one
of the most successful classic hits has hardly been seen since it disappeared
in the 1970s. Car 54, Where Are You? – The Complete First Season (1961 – 1962)
was never syndicated heavily like many of its hit contemporaries due to rights
issues and the fact that color TV was driving all the TV stations to forget
black and white series were ever made.
Like Mr. Peepers, it faded
and a later theatrical film (which sat on the shelf for three years before
being dumped) in the early 1990s.
The
original show not only took place in New York, but was totally shot there
(using the Biograph Studios) and that alone makes it a very special series, but
it also happens to be a truly funny, charming, entertaining show that is so
long overdue for rediscovery that it is shocking it is only hitting DVD on its
50th Anniversary.
Joe E.
Ross and Fred Gwynne play Toody and Muldoon, good cops who get involved in the
wackiest hijinks driving the famously enumerated cruiser. Created by Nat Hiken of Sgt. Bilko/You’ll Never Get
Rich/The Phil Silvers Show fame
(another hit show just now hitting DVD that was a huge hit in its day (reviewed
elsewhere on this site) lost in the shuffle to color), there is chemistry to
spare, the talent is amazing (including Charlotte Rae, Hank Garrett, Al Lewis
(later Gwynne’s co-star on The Munsters),
Paul Reed, Beatrice Pons and Nipsey Russell among them) and even the guest
stars (Wally Cox of Peepers, Maurine
Stapleton, Jan Murray and Hugh Downs among others) are of great note.
The
comedy is pure and authentic, not forced and it is definitely urban for its
time, as well as very, very New York. I feel there is a huge audience for this show
just waiting for it and is a set worth going out of your way for. The 1.33 X 1 black and white image looks
really good throughout from 35mm prints in fine condition (wish there was a
Blu-ray set) and the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is good, though the audio can sound
compressed depending on the episode. There
is also a little dropout in a few spots, but overall, this is impressive for a
show its age that is essentially a near-orphaned series and it holds up well to
TV shows on DVD from the same period released by other companies all around,
including imports.
The only
extra is a good one and a new one.
Megafan (and hilarious stand-up comic) Robert Klein interviews two of
the stars who are still with us from the show: Hank Garrett and Charlotte Rae,
the latter of whom is known for later playing Mrs. Garrett on Diff’rent Strokes and even longer on
spin-off The Facts of Life. I recommend seeing it after watching the
series and hope further seasons have more extras.
With the
new Dallas Movie Collection, Warner Bros.
has finally issued every single part of the classic catalog of shows and
reunions on DVD after getting all 14 (!!!) seasons out on DVD, which you can
read more about starting at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10702/Dallas+%E2%80%93+The+Complete
This set
has all three TV movies and a reunion special where the cast talks about the
success of the show. The best of the
three dramas is The Early Years
(1986), showing how The Ewings came to power and how all of their struggles
were set up. Rightly set up as a one
shot telefilm, it has been retransferred here in a new HD 1.33 X 1 transfer
centered in an anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 frame and looks good. It is smart, more serious than the show
eventually became and worth revisiting.
J.R. Returns (1996) is the first of the films
with the cast after the show was cancelled and despite J.R.’s fate at the end
of the final episode, he is back in the mortal world to raise some new
hell. It is not bad, but can be uneven,
though the ending works. War Of The Ewings (1998) gets silly
early and never recovers, down to its ridiculous ending and the franchise has
been pretty dead ever since. That leaves
Return To Southfork (2004) is better
with a fun reunion of the actors being more fun as themselves as they had been
on the show.
Of
course, a new Dallas series is on the way after an
ill-fated theatrical feature film with John Travolta as J.R. and Jennifer Lopez
as Sue Ellen imploded badly. When the
new show debuts, it will extend the record of the original returning actors as
some of the longest-running characters in TV history. See this set now to compare.
Another
long running character is Sgt. Joe Friday, the classic policeman created by and
played by Jack Webb, starting in the radio drama years. Friday became a hit in the 1950s when the
show moved to TV and was later revived in a very successful color series. Dragnet
1970 – Season Four was the final season of that final run, fun as ever in
the last 26 episodes he would ever made.
You can read about the show at these links:
Two/1968
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10392/Dragnet+1968+-+Season+2+(Shout
Three/1969
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10611/Dragnet+1969+(Shout!+Factory+DVD
The show
looks and sounds as decent as a DVD in a 1.33 X 1 presentation with Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono could be, presented on 4 discs. Harry Morgan was with him to the end as Bill
Gannon and they had a fun chemistry that made the show always watchable. A nice extra includes their last appearance
in character and together in a great skit in Jack Benny’s Second Farewell Special.
Vivendi
has picked up the Sid & Marty Krofft catalog and starting at the beginning,
have reissued H.R. Pufnstuf – The
Complete Series (1969) in the same transfers (sometimes missing the very
opening part of the credits on show episodes) with new art and our edition
includes a Bobblehead of the title character.
One of the episodes of this show was recently included in the terrific
DVD compilation Saturday Morning Hits
which we covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10577/Sid+&+Marty+Krofft%E2%80%99s+S
The show
has aged well and was shot on film, so this is a rare case where maybe a
Blu-ray of the series (plus maybe the Pufnstuf
theatrical feature film) could be issued on Blu-ray, but this is fun either way
and you can see why the company had such a great launch. The comedy is amusing, it is a family show,
it remains child-friendly and it includes semi-memorable songs sung in the
middle of the stories that became common on all such shows of the time.
The 1.33
X 1 image is sometimes rough, but is usually not bad and color is decent to
really good, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sounds pretty good. Extras include the Bobblehead, downloadable
Coloring Book with Vintage Sheet Music and a clip from the Krofft Superstar Hour (hosted by The Bay City Rollers!) from the
internal show Horror Hotel with Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes) reprising her role
from this show. Nice packaging overall
and hopefully the beginning of all the Krofft series finally making it to DVD.
- Nicholas Sheffo
