‘Fiddler’ Plays Again

On the 30th anniversary special-edition DVD of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof” (MGM, $20), director Norman Jewison and star Topol offer a heartwarming story about the old horse who pulled Tevye’s milk cart in the movie.

Jewison recalls that the owner of the horse was considering sending it off to the glue factory when he auditioned it in the small town in what was then Yugoslavia, where the film was shot. The director hired the animal because he thought it looked a bit like Topol, who played the poor Russian Jewish milkman, Tevye. Topol says he immediately bonded with the calm, gentle horse, which seemed to know instinctively when to walk, when to stay still and where to hit its mark.

After filming was completed, Jewison paid a farmer in the village to take care of the horse. Both he and Topol report that the horse lived a long, happy life in retirement on the farm.

“Fiddler on the Roof,” which was based on the stories of Sholom Aleichem, was a huge hit on Broadway, with Zero Mostel as Tevye. The Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick score features the standards “If I Were a Rich Man” and “Sunrise, Sunset.”

The lavish big-screen adaptation received eight Oscar nominations, including best film, director and actor, and won for cinematography, music and sound.

The handsome DVD features a nice wide-screen transfer, the audio of a song (“Any Day Now”) that was deleted from the film, a photo gallery, storyboards, trailers, a vintage documentary on Jewison, and the director’s renditions of Aleichem and the Tevye dream sequence, presented in full color for the first time, with commentary by Jewison.

A VHS without any extras is available for $10.

*

Producer Gale Ann Hurd admits on the special-edition DVD of “The Terminator” (MGM, $27) that O.J. Simpson was considered to play the futuristic cyborg assassin in the 1984 James Cameron blockbuster. Even Lance Henriksen, who appears as a police detective in the film, was in the running for the role before Arnold Schwarzenegger came on board. Early on, Schwarzenegger was considered for the role of Kyle Reese, the soldier from the future eventually played by Michael Biehn.

The digital edition features a crisp wide-screen transfer, a new 5.1 stereo mix, plus the original audio track, two documentaries, deleted scenes with Cameron commentary, a chummy discussion taped in 1992 between Schwarzenegger and Cameron, the script, storyboards, trailers, talent files and TV spots.

*

Universal’s digital edition of this summer’s box-office hit “The Mummy Returns” ($27) initially seems more like a commercial for next year’s spinoff, “The Scorpion King,” starring the Rock, than a feature film. There’s an interview with the wrestler, a preview of the film and a DVD/CD-ROM feature. There are also promos for the Universal parks and a “Mummy Returns” video game. Co-star Oded Fehr also appears in a request for viewers to donate money to help children with cancer.

The extras connected with “The Mummy Returns,” which stars Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, Arnold Vosloo, John Hannah and Fehr, include a serviceable behind-the-scenes documentary and an intriguing explanation of the creation of four special-effects scenes, from the conceptual stage to the animation tests to the plate photography to the final sequence. There are also the requisite trailers, outtakes, talent files and a brief history lesson called Egyptology 201. Writer-director Stephen Sommers and executive producer-editor Bob Ducsay supply the breezy commentary.

*

Another film from this past summer, the offbeat, youth-oriented “A Knight’s Tale” (Columbia TriStar, $28), gets the digital treatment this week. Written and directed by Brian Helgeland, this medieval tale set to rock music stars Heath Ledger, Mark Addy and Paul Bettany. The rather ho-hum DVD features production notes, the trailer, 11 featurettes on the production, deleted scenes with an intro by Helgeland and the editor, an HBO “making of” documentary and passable commentary from Helgeland and Bettany, who steals the movie from heartthrob Ledger as the cheeky writer, Geoffrey Chaucer.

*

A good comedy really shouldn’t run more than two hours; “Heartbreakers” is longer. Enough said? Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt play mother-and-daughter con artists; Gene Hackman and Ray Liotta are two victims of their sting operations. The special-edition DVD (MGM, $20) includes two documentaries, 22 deleted scenes with commentary from director David Mirkin, trailers, talent files, a commentary from Mirkin (who is quite a funny fellow), and another with Mirkin, Weaver and Hewitt that is a bit too precious.

*

The 1990 tongue-in-cheek sci-fi thriller “Tremors” has developed a cult following over the past decade and spawned a made-for-video sequel, “Tremors 2: Aftershocks.” This week, Universal releases another entry in the monster franchise, “Tremors 3: Back to Perfection” (Universal; VHS is priced for rental; $27 for DVD). In this wafer-thin adventure, Burt Gummer (Michael Gross), the gun-toting survivalist from the first two films, ends up having to battle the vicious ground-dwelling monsters, the Graboids, who have mutated into even nastier creatures that fly on their own internal gas.