HOME ENTERTAINMENT : Collections Celebrate Classic TV Series
While the fall television season officially kicks off Sunday, several new video collections celebrate classic TV series of seasons long past.
This Tuesday, Paramount Home Video releases its “TV Comedy Classics” collection, featuring four volumes each of the popular comedy series “Cheers,” “The Brady Bunch,” “Mork & Mindy” and “Bosom Buddies.” Each volume ($10) contains two episodes.
The “Cheers” episodes feature the first appearances of Frasier, Woody and Rebecca, as well as Diane’s farewell. Highlights of “The Brady Bunch” include “The Honeymoon” and the classic “Getting Davy Jones” episodes. David Letterman and Morgan Fairchild are among the guests appearing with Robin Williams and Pam Dawber in the “Mork & Mindy” installments. And the “Bosom Buddies” collection features the pilot episode of the 1980-82 cult ABC sitcom starring a then-24-year-old Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari (“Dweebs”).
Also available Tuesday are four episodes of “The Lucy & Desi Comedy Hour” (CBS Video, $10 each). After the end of the 1956-57 season of “I Love Lucy,” the stars opted to try a longer format program. Beginning Nov. 14, 1957, and continuing through 1960, Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance and William Frawley starred in several big-budgeted one-hour specials. The four episodes in the collection are: “Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana,” with Rudy Vallee, Cesar Romero and Hedda Hopper; “The Celebrity Next Door,” with Tallulah Bankhead; “Lucy Hunts Uranium,” with Fred MacMurray and June Haver; and “Lucy Wins a Racehorse,” with guest stars Harry James and Betty Grable. CBS Video will release four more episodes next January.
Sept. 26 marks the release date of MPI Home Video’s 12-volume boxed set “The Honeymooners Lost Episodes” ($130 for the set; $15 individually) and the bonus volume “The History of the Lost Episodes: The First Season.” Each volume features two “Honeymooners” sketches. These sketches were part of the 1952 premiere season of Jackie Gleason’s live CBS variety series, “The Jackie Gleason Show.”
Columbia House Home Video is currently offering discerning couch potatoes three new collector’s editions of vintage TV series. Each volume of “The Adventures of Superman: The Collector’s Edition” includes three original half-hour episodes of the ‘50s show. “The Hogan’s Heroes: The Collector’s Edition” features four original uncut episodes per tape of the long-running ‘60s CBS comedy. Included on the first volume is the rarely seen pilot, “The Informer.” And “Dallas: The Collector’s Edition” features two original episodes per tape of the enormously popular CBS soap. Call (800) 638-2922 to order the collections. The first volumes are $5; subsequent volumes are $20.
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Grand Ladies of Cinema: Barbara Stanwyck and Carole Lombard were two of Hollywood’s greatest actresses and MCA/Universal Home Video pays tribute to them with the release Tuesday of “The Barbara Stanwyck Collection” and “The Carole Lombard Collection.” Each collection features four films ($15 each).
The Stanwyck collection is a mixed bag. Corny, but fun is 1937’s “Internes Can’t Take Money,” which features Stanwyck as an ex-con who enlists the help of noble Dr. Kildare (Joel McCrea) to help her find her young daughter. Stanwyck and McCrea also star in the not-so-great 1942 Western saga “The Great Man’s Lady.” Stanwyck is in fine form in 1953’s melodrama “All I Desire” as an actress who returns to her husband and three children after several years’ absence. The best of the lot is the wonderful 1940 comedy-drama “Remember the Night.” Stanwyck plays a shoplifter who falls in love with a prosecutor (Fred MacMurray) over the Christmas holidays. Preston Sturges wrote the delicate script. A real gem.
The entertaining Lombard collection gives fans the chance to see her and second hubby Clark Gable in their one and only film together, the enjoyable 1932 gangster flick “No Man of Her Own.” (The two weren’t a couple until four years later.) The less said about 1933’s “Supernatural” the better. Lombard plays an heiress possessed with the spirit of a murderess. Randolph Scott also stars in this turkey. Lombard’s terrific comedic skills, though, are put to good use in 1935’s “Hands Across the Table,” in which she plays an ambitious manicurist after Fred MacMurray and Ralph Bellamy. She’s equally deft and daffy in 1936’s “The Princess Comes Across,” which finds Lombard as an out-of-work American actress who pretends to be Swedish royalty on an ocean voyage. Her Garbo-esque accent is a real kick. McMurray also stars.
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New This Week: John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman star in “Pulp Fiction” (Buena Vista/Miramax), Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning dark comedy set in the Los Angeles underworld.
Damon Wayans plays a tough Marine major assigned to an academy’s Junior ROTC program during peacetime in “Major Payne” (MCA/Universal Home Video). The comedy is actually a loose remake of the 1955 Charlton Heston film, “The Private War of Major Benson.”
Milcho Manchevski’s “Before the Rain” (Polygram) is a love story told in three parts linked by characters and events in contemporary London and the mountains of Macedonia. Rade Serbedzija stars. Nominated for the 1994 Academy Award as best foreign film.
Terence Hill (“They Still Call Me Trinity”) and frequent co-star Bud Spencer team up yet again for the silly Western comedy “Troublemakers” (Triboro Entertainment). Hill plays the fastest gun in the West who attempts to lure his mean bounty hunter of a brother (Spencer) to their mother’s (Ruth Buzzi) for Christmas. Painful.
