Comic Legends (Tim Conway/Phyllis Diller/Dick Van Dyke/Redd Foxx/Groucho Marx/MPI
DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Shows: B
MPI has
taken some of their best DVDs with star comedians and bunched them together in
a new DVD box set simply called Comic Legends, which is the name of the series
these previous releases were issued under.
We have already covered the releases featuring Dick Van Dyke and a
pairing of Groucho Marx and Redd Foxx, so you can read more about them at this
link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5028/Dick+Van+Dyke+%E2%80%93+In+Ra
The two
volumes we have not covered before are Phyllis
Diller – Not Just Another Pretty Face and Tim Conway – Timeless Comedy.
Diller is another one of those great performers that unless you catch
her on a game show rerun, you are likely to miss out on her work, while Conway
is still active (like his infomercials for Dorff
and the reissue of The Carol Burnett
Show on DVD) as well as some feature film appearances and of course, McHale’s Navy.
The
Diller disc offers an hour of her usually doing stand-up comedy, but there are
a few musical numbers to give you an idea of what made her so in-demand at the
time. Dean Martin, Terry-Thomas, Don
Rickles, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are among her guests and those
wild outfits she wore are all here.
Extras include a long soap commercial she did and her appearance on the
great game show What’s My Line?, both
in black and white. The show is in
color.
The
Conway DVD is a mix of shows he did in black & white and color, including
skits in his McHale’s Navy clothes
and guests including Gene Barry, Bing Crosby, Steve Lawrence and a skit with
David Janssen called The Warden,
which is remade in color with Joan Crawford, included here as the disc’s sole
supplement. It is funny both ways and
the highlight of a good disc.
The 1.33
X 1 image (color or monochrome) can be soft and/or have aliasing errors at
times, but color footage tends to look better.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono throughout all the discs are better, yet also
show the age of the sources used and programs overall. All taken together, this is a really good set
and the slender cases each is included in makes the box version a plus over the
single releases.
- Nicholas Sheffo
