Family Home Theater

The best bets for family viewing this week may well be new complete-series releases of old TV shows, starting with the wildly popular Western/spy/sci-fi/adventure series The Wild Wild West, which aired from 1965-69. Robert Conrad starred as suave U.S. Secret Service agent James T. West, who, with master-of-disguise sidekick Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin), worked for President Ulysses S. Grant from the comfort of a private train that they used as their moveable base. The two had as many gizmos and gadgets as James Bond, that other popular secret agent who debuted in the ‘60s, but their exploits seemed totally original, transplanted to the American West. As with the Bond films, the villains varied, but the most popular was a little person named Dr. Miguelito Loveless (Michael Dunn). It was great tongue-in-cheek fun, and the series still holds up, though later episodes went a little too far into the Twilight Zone. CBS TV/Paramount is releasing it in a space-saver complete series DVD set this week (Amazon link).

Battlestar Galactica debuted on TV more than a decade after the original Star Trek and just one year after George Lucas’ Star Wars came to the big screen. I still don’t know why it only lasted one season, because it had the campy qualities of Star Trek and the kind of special effects that made Star Wars so popular. And heck, it even starred beloved Lorne Greene, the patriarch of the popular TV Western Bonanza. But it turns out that those wonderful production values were the series’ downfall. It was just too expensive to produce, given that the show wasn’t in the Nielsen Top 30 and it seemed that the show appealed mostly to children. It’s still plenty entertaining, though you’ll have to decide whether the price tag for this Blu-ray release—Battlestar Galactica: The Definitive Collection (featuring the original full screen presentation with nothing cropped AND the widescreen version that was previously released)—is too high. The series also starred Dirk Benedict as Starbuck, Richard Hatch as Apollo, Maren Jensen as Athena, and Laurette Spang as Cassiopeia, and it’s pretty easy to get interested in these campy mythic characters (Amazon link).

There’s more campy fun in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, a 1963 B-movie from the legendary Roger Corman starring Ray Milland as a doctor who gives himself x-ray vision . . . but, in true sci-fi horror fashion, with less than desirable results. There’s period drinking and smoking, but otherwise this horror-thriller is pretty tame by contemporary standards, though still entertaining. It comes to Blu-ray for the first time this week (Amazon link).

Milland also appears in the one Corman Edgar Allan Poe adaptation that didn’t star Vincent Price: The Premature Burial, which, again, is dark and moody and chilling mostly to young people who fear death. Buried alive? I saw this in the theaters when it first came out and despite a slow first act it made an impression. It too comes to Blu-ray for the first time this week (Amazon link).

This week Adam Sandler turns up in the dramedy-fantasy The Cobbler, a PG-13 rated film about a shoe repairman who discovers a magic heirloom that allows him to literally walk a mile in another man’s shoes—to experience their lives through their eyes. It didn’t get very good reviews, but then again most Sandler movies are panned. But for families who like Sandler, it might be worth a try (Amazon link).