The
Andy Griffith Show: Season 1
(1960 - 1961)/The
Honeymooners: The
Classic 39
Episodes (1955 - 1956)/I
Love Lucy: Ultimate Season 1
(1951 - 1952/CBS Blu-ray Sets)/New
Adventures Of Superman: Seasons 2 & 3
(1967 - 1968/DC Comics/Warner DVDs)
Picture:
B/B+/B/C+ Sound: B-/B-/B-/C Extras: B-/B/B+/D Episodes:
B-/A/A-/B-
Four
TV classics are back on home video, all of which we have covered
before. Three are TV comedy classics arriving in superior Blu-ray
sets and the other is an animated classic finally finishing its
journey to DVD.
After
a very successful launch of the entire series on DVD, The
Andy Griffith Show: Season 1
(1960 - 1961) finds itself one of the first U.S. TV sitcoms arriving
on Blu-ray. Griffith remains popular including with Matlock
and the not only has spin-off Gomer
Pyle USMC been a DVD hit,
but this show's own continuation in Mayberry
RFD started surfacing on
DVD as an online-only exclusive. Here is my coverage of that first
season DVD set years ago:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1594/Andy+Griffith+Show+-+Complete+First+Season
Unlike
that set, this one has extras to go with its upgraded picture and
sound including sponsor material on select episodes, the Return
To Mayberry TV movie in
HD (!!!), nearly 9 minutes of terrific home movie footage in color
that The Howards (Ron's parents) took on the set of the first season
and the Season 7 Danny
Meets Andy Griffith
episode of The Danny
Thomas Show in HD that
served as an into to this show. That is first rate all the way and
fans will be stunned at al of it.
Next
is my personal favorite, which says something, The
Honeymooners: The
Classic 39
Episodes (1955 - 1956),
the only filmed episodes of the legendary, groundbreaking show that
started as a series of live skits and returned in color and even with
musical shows. The DuMont Network (bigger than ABC at one point)
pinned their hopes on the show to be a big hit, but scheduled it
against a show too big to take on and this was cancelled only after a
season. Of course, the DVD set has been out for years and we covered
it at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/497/Honeymooners
Of
all the shows here, they have all stood the test of time and have
episodes that hold up well, but these 39 Honeymooners
shows shot on 35mm film have actually appreciated in value and even
with I Love Lucy
in its huge Fifth Season,
this season was somehow actually stronger and funnier if that was
actually possible. Lucy herself, good friends with Jackie Gleason,
is the one who rightly named him The
Great One. More proof
that she got it all.
All
the extras from the previous set are here, plus we get some new
extras. The recent 50th
Anniversary Special
hosted by Kevin James joins the 35th
Anniversary show, Promos
in HD, 1956 Best Buick Yet industrial promo film with the cast made
for dealers of the car in HD, a 1984 Gleason profile from CBS' 60
Minutes in HD including outtakes also in HD, a low definition
(apparently a kinescope) 1956 Person To Person episode hosted by
Gleason and 3/26/55 episode on black and white (videotape) of The
Jackie Gleason American Scene Magazine
series with Art Carney as Ed Norton in the skit The
Adoption.
Of
course, there are endless collectibles not featured here and many
more to come, but this is a strong set of expanded goodies that fans
will love. Of course, the Lost
Episodes (on low def
video or kinescope) are not included and will never need a Blu-ray
release. A solid DVD collection of those has been issued and you can
read more about it at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11196/The+Honeymooners+Lost+Episodes+1951
I
Love Lucy: Ultimate Season 1
(1951 - 1952) continues to be as strongly popular, but what strikes
me about the debut season is how strong it is since they still had
limited budgets and how the scripts were unusually strong for any
debut season for any TV show. All of the original Lucy TV shows
(this one, The Lucy Show
and Here's Lucy)
finally arrived on DVD after years of waiting, more restoration work
than you might think and with a demand that will not go away. Having
been issued on DVD before the advent of this site, we reviewed the
original six season of this show at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3676/I+Love+Lucy
Besides
some classic episodes that have more layers than it first would seem
(Lucy thinking Ricky wants to kill her, Lucy doing a TV commercial,
Lucy a possible kleptomaniac, Lucy gets Ricky on a quiz show,
craziness trying to get into Ricky's stage act, plus The Mertzes
always adding a new layer of madness to it all including Lucy and
Vivian Vance becoming one of the greatest comedy teams ever), it is a
time capsule of a happy America that always had a bizarre context and
the makers of the show knew this and ran with it. A deceptive
intensity is a plus and the result is a quartet with chemistry like
hardly anyone else ever had on the history of TV or even motion
pictures. Their critical and commercial success land up being
forerunners of The Kennedys, The Beatles and so much more, which is
why the live never ended for the show or its stars.
Extras
here include a standard definition show on the original filmed pilot
being discovered in 1990 (hosted by Lucy Arnaz) that is included here
on HD as restored as possible, a nice HD block of make-up tests
filmed on 35mm film, Before
& After HD clip of
how the shows were restored, Flubs
in HD, all-audio Lucy On
The Radio shows, Photo
Gallery, low definition 1951 promo clip for the show, Behind
The Scenes from an audio
book, HD guest cast profiles, HD production notes, HD Sponsor Talent,
Meet Marc Daniels
in HD, On-Set Color Home Movies in HD (3:20), Sunday Lucy Show clips
used to do early reruns of the show in HD, Clowning
Around in HD stills,
Fancy Editing
in HD to show how two shows were changed for reruns and two
1991 audio commentary track on Lucy
Thinks Ricky Is Trying To Kill Her
and Lucy Does A TV
Commercial from the old
12-inch Criterion Collection LaserDisc on the show with Lucy, Desi,
writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer, co-writing superteam Bob Carroll
Jr. & Madelyn Pugh Davis, director William Asher, actors Mary
Jane Croft, Doris Singleton (on Kill
only) Jerry Hausner (on both) & Ross Elliott (Commercial
only), stage manager Herb Browar and TV historian Bart Andrews.
Last
but not least is The New
Adventures Of Superman: Seasons 2 & 3
(1967 - 1968) which concludes the 1966 set that was the debut of any
animated DC Comics character on TV, launched the Filmation company
and a classic series of DC animation on the 1960s:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5638/The+New+Adventures+Of+Superman+(1966)+++T
This
may be more of the same for those who are not as amused or
entertained by this early hit as I am, but these additional 32
adventures remained as fun and with the right tone for a Superman we
could take seriously without the strange yelling, screaming and
boredom of recent live action incarnations. His main villains show
up (vintage Brainiac, a fat Lex Luthor, The Toyman), but the show was
aimed at a young audience and the makers respected that. Some shows
are unintentional howlers, of course, but this was state of the art
for the time (though limited budgets made this inferior to the
Fleischer Superman animated theatrical shorts reviewed
elsewhere on this site) and provides a time capsule for the character
as well as TV and superhero comics of the time.
There
are sadly no extras, but we'll see if Superboy will get
announced soon.
Film
prints of all four of these shows are regularly collected, bought,
sold and even watched in 16mm and even 35mm by fans who enjoy them,
but that still leaves most people having never seen them at their
best. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black and white digital High Definition
image transfers on Griffith, Lucy and Honeymooners
can show the age of the materials used, but these are easily far
superior transfers to all previous releases of the episodes on DVD
and lower-definition formats (VHS, Beta, etc.) with superior Video
Black, Video White and some depth, detail and gray scale that will
surprise many.
Griffith
is the newest of the three but has some minor detail issues and print
flaws that show a little more work could be done of some of these,
but they make their DVD version more aged by comparison. Lucy
also has some of the same kinds of flaws, but looks slightly better
over all, though this is the initial season and for no one ever
expecting a format that would be so revealing to viewers, hold their
own just fine. A little more money has been spent on saving and
preserving this show and that does not hurt.
However,
it is Honeymooners that manages to be king here, also having
some age issues with the print material, but they looked just that
much better on DVD versus the Griffith and Lucy DVDs
versions past. Ralph gets to be king with even more depth, detail
and cleaner overall presentations (we don't know if this is a matter
of film stock (DuPont vs. 3M vs. Kodak or the like) or how they were
shot or how they were preserved or anything else you can think of,
but from the opening when Ralph In The Moon rises up over the
night sky, you're in for a surprise and they become the most vivid
episodes after episode throughout. Nice!
The
1.33 X 1 image on Superman can vary from nice color and
definition as originally intended to other copies that are a little
softer with color issues.
As
for sound, the PCM 2.0 Mono soundtracks on Griffith,
Lucy
and Honeymooners
are all a noticeable improvement over their older, lossy Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono DVD versions with each show just being too soft and
missing a bit something even analog optical soundtracks on film
prints seemed to have or PCM 2.0 Mono on their 12-inch LaserDisc
versions (where applicable) had. Griffith
tends to be the quieter show of the three, so it is Lucy
and Honeymooners
where the improvements can be heard. In all three cases, hearing the
actors and their lines, especially the jokes, play off much better in
the Blu-ray sound presentation of all three.
Like
the last DVD set, some of the lossy Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono on some
Superman episodes are passable while other are distorted,
warped, brittle and need serious work. Guess Blu-rays of these shows
could mean that gets corrected.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
