In the year of Barbenheimer, The Canterville Ghost—animated in a style similar to but more accomplished than the popular Barbie direct-to-video movies for youngsters—offers a strong female character that girls can identify with in a life-or-death adventure that prominently features science and progress. Think Scooby-Do! mysteries, but with a real ghost that, despite having a history of haunting people for hundreds of years, meets his match when an American family visits and isn’t a bit scared. In fact, they torment him.
Has he lost it, or are these Americans something quite different from Brits? And will this ghost sink into depression or be lifted up by the family’s brave and compassionate daughter?
Though aimed at children, this Shout! Studios release holds appeal for adults as well, since it’s a fairly close adaptation of an Oscar Wilde story.
Out of the 30 Canterville Ghost films and TV movies/episodes that have been made since 1944, only a literal handful have been animated. This entry is one of the best because it offers a more hardened and hearty version of the teenage daughter that drives the narrative, but softens the crime that’s at the center of Wilde’s 1887 story. In the original and in other film/TV versions, the genial and hapless ghost, Sir Simon, is doomed to haunt his mansion, Canterville Chase, because he killed his wife. In this UK version, he’s deeply in love with his wife, and related circumstances caused him to forever wander the grounds until someone like Virginia came along.
This animated version features distinctive characters and rich nonverbal depictions. Crisply paced, it holds no-scare appeal for all ages because the ghost encounters are played for laughs. It’s only toward the end of the film that the daughter, who has befriended the ghost, decides to fulfill the prophecy that will allow the Canterville ghost to rest in peace.
To tell the story, director Kim Burdon and co-director Robert Chandler enlisted top voice talent Stephen Fry (The Morning Show, Danger Mouse) to follow in the footsteps of such actors as Charles Laughton, Patrick Stewart, and David Niven in playing Sir Simon. Emily Carey (House of the Dragon) voices the other main role of Virginia, while additional voice talents include Imelda Staunton (The Crown, Harry Potter films), Hugh Laurie (House), and Freddie Highmore (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).
Released for Valentine’s Day, while laughs and mischief predominate, The Canterville Ghost does have a little romance in it: Sir Simon’s centuries-old love for his wife, and a blossoming love between Virginia and the heir of Sir Simon’s rival.
Female characters in children’s movies have come a long ways, and Virginia emerges as a strong character who isn’t artificially so. Her actions and attitudes are a reflection of today’s young girls and teens who, at the very least, are the equal sex.
Rated PG for thematic elements, peril and some violence
Language: 1/10—I didn’t catch anything offensive
Sex: 1/10—Nothing here kids can’t see
Violence: 3/10—Comic for the first two-thirds, after which there’s one party scene where guests are genuinely terrified and a third-act sequence where Virginia confronts Death personified; some swordfighting, objects hurled, etc.
Adult situations: 2/10—Some drinking in a social situation, the discovery of a skeleton, and a scene in which Virginia and Sir Simon both appear to be doomed
Takeaway: The Canterville Ghost 2023 is a solid animated film that should get plenty of replays. Though not available on Blu-ray, you can get it at Walmart and other retailers and purchase/rent from digital platforms like AppleTV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft, DirecTV, DISH, et alia
Elvis Presley made 31 movies between 1956-69, and 16 of them are currently available on Blu-ray from U.S. or European distributors (the latter via eBay).
Of those films currently on Blu-ray, King Creole has been broadly acclaimed as the best of the bunch, followed by Follow That Dream. After that there’s disagreement, but I would rank the rest currently available in this order: Jailhouse Rock, Viva Las Vegas, Blue Hawaii, Flaming Star, Love Me Tender, Kid Galahad, Spinout, Clambake, Charro!, Tickle Me, It Happened at the World’s Fair, Change of Habit, and Frankie and Johnny. The best films yet to be released in high definition are The Trouble with Girls, Girl Happy, Girls! Girls! Girls!, Loving You, Wild in the Country, G.I. Blues, Roustabout, Fun in Acapulco, and Live a Little Love a Little.
You may have noticed that Double Trouble hasn’t been mentioned yet. That’s because along with Easy Come Easy Go, Kissin’ Cousins, Harum Scarum, and Stay Away Joe, this 1967 film ranks as one of the worst that Elvis made. It’s for hardcore fans only. And even those fans might feel a little uneasy watching it.
Double Trouble is about an American performer in London who dates a girl who he thought was “legal” but is actually still months shy of her 18th birthday. He goes to Brussels and she pursues him. He doesn’t put up much of a fight, instead vacillating between rejecting this “little girl” and embracing her. It’s not just the groupie thing. Further discomfort comes from knowing Elvis’s own story. Double Trouble was released in April 1967, just one month before Elvis married Priscilla Beaulieu—whom he was drawn to and dated intermittently (albeit with chaperones) since meeting her at a party at his rented house in Germany. He was 24; she was 14.
So yeah, while it’s a little creepy watching Elvis romance a fictional underage girl, it’s even more unsettling when you know the story of his relationship with Priscilla. Yes, it was chaperoned . . . but still.
Even if the character played by 19-year-old Annette Day were 18, Double Trouble would still be one of the worst Presley films. Though it’s helmed by frequent Elvis formula pic director Norman Taurog, the screenplay itself is a bomb. The writing is sillier and the gags are cornier than usual. Scenes with three bumbling policemen—echoes of The Three Stooges—are even painful to watch.
Elvis plays Guy Lambert, a small-time touring musician playing London who is dating a young woman named Jill (Day) and pursued by an older, more sophisticated woman (Claire Dunham). While the opening credits visually announce that Elvis is in Austin Powers Land and while many of the characters dress the Carnaby Street part, Elvis sports the same hair and look that he’s had in all his films set in contemporary times. In short order we learn that Jill, who continues to pusue Guy, is not only underage, but she comes from a wealthy family. Her uncle forbids her to see Guy, and thinks he’s solved the problem by sending her away to Brussels. Unbeknownst to him (but knownst to us), that’s exactly where Guy’s next gig is. But someone keeps trying to kill one of them, with Bond-era spy types lurking and the police also involved . . . somehow.
As for the songs, it doesn’t help the underage thing to have Elvis sing “Old MacDonald” to Jill as they ride on the back of a hay wagon—the kind of song parents everywhere sing with their children to get them to make different animal sounds. It also doesn’t help that they ruin a perfectly good song—“I Love Only One Girl”—by dragging it out and having Elvis prance around a festival singing to costumed women from different countries. That leaves “Long Legged Girl (With The Short Dress On)” and the title song as the upbeat songs worth mentioning.
Not rated (would be PG for some peril and adult situations)
Language: 1/10—Maybe something slipped past me, but I doubt it; Elvis flicks are pretty clean-cut affairs
Sex: 2/10—As always, nothing explicit or even highly suggestive; here, it’s just the awkwardness of a 17-year-old groupie in pursuit of an older man who doesn’t really fight her off
Violence: 2/10—Everything is done with a certain level of campiness, not unlike the pianos that would be dropped on cartoon characters
Adult situations: 2/10—Some smoking and drinking in club settings, and the 17-year-old thing
Takeaway: You have to wonder what goes into a decision to release an Elvis flick on Blu-ray, and how a stinker like this got to the front of the line when more entertaining films are still only available on DVD; Girl Happy or The Trouble with Girls ought to be next up
The “formula” Elvis Presley picture was a thinly plotted, quickly filmed excuse to string a few new equally slapdash songs together so audiences hungry for All Things Elvis could get their fix at a time when “The King” wasn’t touring. Elvis movies were a phenomenon in the sixties—a part of the cultural milieu before Vietnam and Civil Rights demonstrations rocked the American landscape so much that wholesome light and fluffy escapist fare like these instantly became extinct.
But back in the day, rare were the teens that didn’t go to movie theaters to see Elvis, although (or perhaps because) they knew what they were going to see: a number of songs (some good, some not so good), at least two pretty women pursuing Elvis, lots of silly-to-watch-now dancing, and a light tone that was an important part of the formula.
Elvis made 31 movies between 1956 and 1969, with the first “formula” picture coming in 1960 with G.I. Blues. Spinoutwas released in 1966, when the Elvis films were already steering toward self-parody, with more silliness, overused running gags, and minor characters leaning closer to caricatures.
Spinout was the second of three movies that Presley made opposite former teen star Shelley Fabares, who played daughter Mary on the popular TV series The Donna Reed Show and scored a #1 hit in 1962 with her song “Johnny Angel.” Fabares actually plays well off Presley, so it’s easy to see why producer Joe Pasternak went to that well more than once. Onscreen she has a wholesome perkiness tempered by impertinence. In this one she plays a spoiled rich girl who flat-out tells racecar driver Mike McCoy (Elvis) that she always gets what she wants, and she’s set her sights on him. So has an older woman (Una Merkel, in her last film) who does undercover research for how-to tell-all books about understanding American males. And he’s the intended subject of her next book.
Fans of Westerns will recognize the former star of Sugarfoot, Will Hutchins, who plays a cop with a food fetish and also turns up in a more major role in Clambake in a Prince and the Pauper variation as a rich Texan who trades places with poor water skiing instructor Presley.
The formula had been getting so old and obvious that the filmmakers felt compelled to throw in a third love interest: the band’s tomboy drummer Les (Deborah Walley, of Gidget Goes Hawaiian fame). Figuratively speaking there’s even a fourth person who’s after Mike: the rich girl’s father (played by Fabares’ TV dad from Donna Reed) who wants him to drive the racecar he designed in an upcoming race—with nary a seatbelt that I could see.
It didn’t matter how much they tried to freshen up the formula. Despite moments when Fabares and a couple of Presley songs brighten things up, Spinout isn’t in the same class as the best of the Fabares-Presley films, Girl Happy (1965), and isn’t even as good as Clambake (1967), a film that provoked mixed reactions. Maybe fans need to clamor a bit for Girl Happy, because MGM does seem to be listening. With this release they added a song index where fans can watch all the songs being performed, without having to try to guess the scene selection chapters.
Auto racing fans should enjoy seeing a Cobra, Cheetah, and McLaren Elva being put through their paces before CGI, and Elvis fans might relish seeing him play a twin-necked guitar. But Presley’s best racing film is Viva Las Vegas.
Entire family: Yes (see below)
Studio/Distributor: Warner Bros.
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Featured audio: DTS-HDMA 2.0 Mono
Bonus features: C
Trailer
Amazon link
Not rated (would be PG for implied adult themes)
Language: 1/10—Euphemistic swearwords if anything; Elvis movies were pretty clean and wholesome
Sex: 2/10—Elvis kisses a number of women and it’s implied that he spent each night with a different woman apart from the three who are after him in the film; there’s also a pool scene with lots of skin and bikinis and briefs
Violence: 0/10—Usually there was a fist fight in the typical Elvis picture, but not this one; just a few cars run off the road
Adult situations: 1/10—Some characters have champagne, and the whole idea of women scheming to marry Elvis is adult, though the situation now is dated and sexist
Takeaway: Come on, Warner Bros. Put Girl Happy in your Elvis queue, and Girls! Girls! Girls!—both of which are more entertaining formula flicks than this one
First, schools across America absolutely ruinedNathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter for readers by force-feeding it to them when they were disinterested children. Then Roland Joffé spoiled it for film buffs by giving them a weird and distorted 1995 version starring Demi Moore—a film so bad that the essence of its badness stays with you years after you’ve forgotten what made it a stinker.
But there is some redemption for the American classic in this newly restored and released talking 1934 adaptation starring Colleen Moore, one of the biggest stars of the silent era. While the film didn’t do well because sound was still in motion picture infancy, it might look and sound better now than it did when it was first released, thanks to Film Masters’ meticulous restoration and digital advancements. The black-and-white film looks visually stunning for a film that old, and the sound is distortion-free, with respectable clarity.
For fans of classic films like The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, what jumps out instantly is the familiar face and onscreen persona of character actor Alan Hale, who played Friar Tuck in that swashbuckler and offers the same type of performance and comic relief . . . in The Scarlet Letter! Hawthorne would be horrified, of course, but Hale’s recognizable presence and that unmistakable period touch adds an element of interest to this early sound offering. It was one of 14 films (you heard right) that Hale made in 1934, and what that suggests, of course, is low budget and quick turnaround time. This one was shot in a month.
I’m not sure how accurate the depiction of Puritan life is in the film, but Puritans were big on public humiliation for any infraction, and in opening scenes we get examples of someone in stocks and another with wooden splints clamped to her tongue with a sign that reads “Ye olde gossip.” Again, there’s that blend of interpreted history and the preferred light touch of Hollywood films from the thirties. We also see an engaged couple using an “engagement horn” that was essentially an eight-foot long device that they had to use to talk to each other at a respectable distance. I could picture this film being used by teachers in addition to Hawthorne’s novel. It would make for a nice comparison discussion. Is the punishment for “malicious gossip” too strict? Is Hester’s punishment sexist?
The makers of this 1934 film chose to depict the Puritan culture within the broader context of early settlers and pioneers. And after all, Puritans were extremists who tried to impose their rules on entire communities. Too often in film and discussions of the text we tend to get Puritans in self-contained homogenous communities (I’m thinking TheCrucible). But in this version, Chillingworth (Henry B. Walthall), who studied medicines with the American Indians, actually comes to town dressed like someone who lived with the Indians. He’s a bearded frontiersman wearing buckskins and a coonskin cap. Other traders and trappers walk past the camera with a dead deer on a pole, and when the Puritan city fathers hold an event in the town square there are non-Puritans dotting the audience landscape as well as the bunch in austere black-and-white and their armor-plated enforcers.
As Hester is publicly shamed for bearing a child out of wedlock and must begin wearing an “A” on her chest, Dimmesdale (Hardie Albright) is appropriately duplicitous. He also acts a bit like Ralphie when the boy’s teacher asks what happened to Flick, the friend that the Christmas Story main character abandoned when his tongue got stuck to a metal pole. Hester? Who’s she?
Hawthorne’s novel was a psychological drama of the heart and concerned the tormenting power of guilt, not unlike Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. And Dimmesdale’s hypocrisy would have resonated even more with audiences in 1850 because the Puritan way of life—husbands as spiritual heads of the household—would not have been as far removed from them. There is less implication that Dimmesdale’s torment comes at the hands of Chillingworth than in the book, but the basic principles remain the same.
Although director Robert G. Vignola gave viewers a very watchable version of The Scarlet Letter that showcases the severity of Puritan extremists in a Hollywood backlot environment of drama and spot humor, I have to admit that the Film Masters’ bonus features are almost if not more riveting. Teachers might like to augment their reading assignments with the 17-minute “Hawthorne on Film” bonus feature. Another extra, the 13-minute “Salem and The Scarlet Letter,” is a nice contextual history made during the sixties and narrated by John Carradine.
I’m usually not into commentary tracks, but when you have a film this old that features contributions from Cora Sue Collins, the young actress who played Hester’s daughter, Pearl, it’s worth watching the film all over again to listen to her and Colorado Christian University professor Jason A. Ney, who also contributed liner notes.
But the bonus feature that I thought was as entertaining as the movie was the 19-minute Revealing the Scarlet Letter, in which producer Sam Sherman shares the story of how he came to dedicate himself to this project. It’s actually quite engrossing.
Entire family: Yes (but what small children would want to watch?)
Violence: 1/10—Things are thrown at Hester and Pearl
Adult situations: 1/10—Kids would have to know where babies come from to even grasp that there was anything adult in this, and there is one death near the end
Takeaway: Hawthorne lives! Ironically, in retrospect. I’m not sure that a faithful adaptation could be made these days, given the audience expectations for skin, language, and violence, all gratuitously inserted because they were lacking in the book; this version remains the best choice for classrooms
After watching Scrapper a second time, I found myself scratching my head that British director Charlotte Regan was able to craft such a likable feature film her first time doing something more than music videos and short films. It confirmed for me that the “flaws” I perceived initially were really just stepping stones for this director’s different sort of journey. I liked it despite:
—a gentle tone that comes dangerously close to meh territory,
—a quirkiness that’s understated even by indie standards,
—a narrative that has conflicts you’d also have to call gentle or understated,
—a crisis point that’s relatively calm in a story with no real antagonist, and
—emotional content that’s so understated (there’s that word again) it borders on matter-of-factness or apathy.
Altogether, it adds up to a different kind of daddy-daughter story—one that’s endearing in a non-cloying way and that tells a story of human interaction without relying on standard tropes and audience manipulations.
Amazon link
Scrapper might work just as well as a play, because it revolves around two flawed characters who learn to put up with each other and peacefully coexist. They’re their own antagonists, as we watch them take baby steps toward an understanding that both of them seem to want, deep inside. Except their outsides don’t know it yet, and so they resist or fall short of full commitment.
Here’s how simple the plot is: Georgie’s mum died, and while aren’t supposed to question the logistics of why she wasn’t taken away when the body was, we see her fending for herself in the flat. She pays the rent by stealing bicycles with her best (and only) friend Ali (Alin Uzun) and selling them to a fence. One day she looks out the window and a strange man is hopping her fence. It turns out that he’s her dad, returned from a carefree life in Ibiza. He heard her mum passed away and decided to see how she was doing. Though Georgie isn’t about to let any stranger who calls himself “dad” in her house, he blackmails her by telling her he’ll phone social services.
Once he’s in, she sends him on an errand and then changes the lock. Again, pretty swift work, unless a locksmith owes her a favor or she just happens to have a new lock ready to install right there at the apartment. But he doesn’t get angry—no one, really, expresses feelings that run high on the Emotion Meter—and they continue to tolerate each other. Small things happen in small ways to help them get to a point where they’re ready to accept each other. That’s the film in a nutshell: subtle, and far from the kind of heartstring tugging that a director could have opted for with a daddy-daughter-reunion-‘cause-mommy’s-dead story. Except that they’re really more like older brother and younger sister as they try to negotiate a relationship from scratch.
In retrospect, that’s kind of refreshing. The wildest or most expressive elements in the film seem to be leftover ideas from Regan’s music video days—a few visual tricks and modern sitcom-style “interviews” to impart quirkiness in a different kind of way. To me, though, they didn’t add to the film, and, overdone, detracted from it.
But the tentative relationship between Georgie (Lola Campbell) and her dad, Jason (Harris Dickinson) is strong enough to weather the stylistic storm. Overall, this film really has a gentle vibe—no tantrums, no shouting, no swearing, and no “go to your room”s. But it was strong enough to win the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance.
Not rated (would be PG for petty theft and adult situations)
Language: 1/10—Nothing verbalized that I caught, but there was one prominent middle finger
Sex: 0/10—Nothing, other than Ali’s concern for his friend sleeping in the house with a strange man roaming about
Violence: 2/10—One incident involving one child giving another a black eye
Adult situations: 2/10—A child steals bicycles and “dad” advises her to file off the serial numbers before painting it—there are no role models here, only characters trying to figure things out
Takeaway: Scrapper sticks with you because of the casting of the two main characters, the understated direction, and the way those two make you believe you’re watching life as it’s really lived
These days the media is full of stories about writers, artists, and people working the film industry who are worried that their livelihoods might be threatened by the new AI technology. But stunt actors everywhere whose demand has been diminished by CGI work have got to be thinking, Welcome to MY world. While this Larry Yang film is yet another vehicle for the ageless Jackie Chan and his creative martial arts sequences, it’s also a loving tribute to the Kung Fu stuntmen from Asian films, and, in fact, is dedicated to them. Yang was said to have begun working on this film after being inspired by the Kung Fu Stuntmen documentary.
In Ride On, a sentimental action comedy in Mandarin with English subtitles (or dubbed English), Chan plays Lao Luo, a washed-up old stuntman who, along with his stunt horse from recent years, has been put out to pasture. He and the horse have been reduced to working studio lots trying to get tourists to pay money for a photo—money Luo needs to keep debt collectors from trying to break his legs. That’s only the tip of the manure pile that his life has become. Years earlier Luo lost custody of and contact with a daughter he hasn’t seen in forever. Now he’s in danger of losing the most important thing in his life: the stunt horse he bought from his producer after the injury.
A new businessman and his company have acquired Luo’s old studio and they’ve decided to auction off all of that studio’s assets—including Luo’s beloved Red Hare, a horse they say was owned by the studio since he has no paperwork to prove otherwise.
The X-factor in the film is Luo’s estranged college-age daughter, Bao (Liu Haocun), who with her boyfriend/fiancé (Guo Qilin) is studying law. Reluctantly she agrees to help her father, though she has all sorts of daddy issues, and understandably so. Things don’t get any better when her father has to meet her fiancé’s parents, nor when Lao battles a debt collector (Wu Jing) and talks him into helping him against the others. That fellow has a connection to a film in production that has need of a stuntman and stunt horse. We’ve already witnessed him putting the animal at risk because of his pride and his stuntman’s creed. And yes, some of his stunts involve the horse fighting with him. Will this end badly?
It does, if you ask me—and I don’t mean because of anything that happens to Lao or Bao or Red Hare. For me, what might have been a C+ all the way through loses at least a half-grade because of an ending that takes the sentimentalism running through the film and amplifies it in the third act so that you can’t help but think, Ok, stop tugging at the heartstrings, already.
Perhaps it’s that sentimentality and the focus on rider-horse and father-daughter relationships that make Ride On feel like a family film. Aside from action that’s mostly comic, as has been the case with so many of Chan’s movies, this 2023 film is pretty tame and suitable for almost all ages.
In the end, just as Ride On pays tribute to Kung Fu stuntmen, it also honors the stunt-heavy career of Chan, and fans will revel in seeing people onscreen watching a compilation of “Lao’s” greatest stunts—all of which will be familiar to Chan buffs. It’s like watching an aging John Wayne play an aging gunfighter in The Shootist, where you realize that the actor and the character have much in common. There’s a poignancy to it all that would have been enough to create a powerful emotional reaction in viewers, even if Yang decided to dial back a bit on the sentimentality.
Entire family: No (Age 8 and older?)
Run time: 126 min.
Studio/Distributor: Well Go USA
Aspect ratio: 16:9 widescreen
Featured audios: Mandarin w/English subtitles, Dubbed English
Not rated (would be PG for adult drinking and smoking)
I Love Lucy was one of the early TV series that made the leap from vaudeville and radio to television. It began as My Favorite Husband, a radio program starring Ball and Dick Denning. But Lucy suggested that her TV husband be played by her real husband, who was then appearing as a panelist on the game show What’s My Line? The rest is TV history. I Love Lucy was an immediate fan favorite, finishing #3 in the Nielsen ratings its first year, and #1 seasons two through four, #2 their fifth season, then back to #1 again for the sixth.
Lucille Ball set the gold standard for physical comedy and character comedy playing opposite real-life husband and band leader Desi Arnaz in a sitcom that revolved around only four characters: Ricky Ricardo (Arnaz), his wife Lucy, and their neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz (William Frawley and Vivian Vance). That is, two housewives prone to get into trouble, one fuddy-duddy who wore his pants up to his chin, and a Latin lover whose love for Lucy was sorely tested in just about every episode.
All of the episodes are fueled by Lucy’s frequent paranoia, jealousy, and her tendency to misunderstand things, to blow things out of proportion, or to scheme behind Ricky’s back to try to get her way—which often involves her best friend and her not-so-secret desire to break into show business, although she has no talent except unintentional comedy.
In 2002, TV Guide named the 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, and I Love Lucy ranked No. 2 behind Seinfeld. Season 2 earned a Primetime Emmy for Best Comedy Show—one of four the show would receive over its 6-season run.
Season 2 includes one of the all-time greatest I Love Lucy episodes, “Job Switching,” and this Ultimate Blu-ray has it in both black-and-white and as a colorized bonus extra. This season the show made TV history with Ball’s pregnancy and two very funny episodes, “Lucy Is Enceinte” (when she tries to figure out how to tell her easily excitable husband) and “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” which drew the largest TV audience to date: 71.7 percent of American TV sets were tuned into the show so that people could see Lucy give birth.
To put that into perspective, more Americans watched this episode than the Eisenhower inauguration and Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation combined. It was the first birth on television, though censors wouldn’t allow the show to use the term “pregnant.” “Expecting” was the preferred genteel term in January 1953, and Little Ricky appeared on TV just 12 hours after Lucy gave birth in real life. So call this a comic reenactment.
Other notable Season 2 episodes include “Redecorating,” “Lucy Wants New Furniture,” “Never Do Business with Friends,” “The Camping Trip,” “The Handcuffs,” “Club Election,” and “Lucy Becomes a Sculptress.” And it is a treat seeing one of the all-time great episodes in color.
All of the episodes are fueled by Lucy’s frequent paranoia, jealousy, and her tendency to misunderstand things, to blow things out of proportion, or to scheme behind Ricky’s back to try to get her way—which often involves her best friend and her not-so-secret desire to break into show business, although she has no talent except unintentional comedy. A number of episodes each season deal with the battle of the sexes that was fought in kitchens and living rooms across America, and all of the episodes will now seem sexist.
Some of the episodes also include what is now called “unfortunate cultural stereotypes.” In other words, this isn’t just TV history; it’s cultural history. This was the early years of television when not every family had a television set and relatives gathered to watch together during the Eisenhower years. The values are totally ‘50s, with Ricky’s relationship to his wife so paternalistic that the episodes might spark a few family discussions about then and now. And that’s not a bad thing.
All 31 uncut Season 2 episodes are included here on five discs, housed on plastic “pages” in a slightly wider Blu-ray case. Disc contents are listed on every disc label, and episodes and brief descriptions are also printed on the inside of the paper cover (which can be tough to read through blue plastic). As with the Ultimate Season 1 release, fans have the choice of watching the episodes with or without original commercials (some tobacco, by way of warning).
Not rated (would be PG, for adult smoking/drinking)
Language: 1/10—A few mild expletives, is all
Sex: 1/10—Some kissing, but that’s about it
Violence: 2/10—Any “violence” is mild by today’s standards and tied to laughs
Adult situations: 2/10—Other than beer or cigarettes, some viewers might be shocked that verbal abuse and, once, spanking was used for humor purposes, and there are those outdated cultural depictions
Takeaway: It’s a mystery why CBS hasn’t come out with a complete series Blu-ray, unless there are negotiation issues with Desilu Productions, because I Love Lucy is a classic as classic TV gets; in fact, how’s this for a classic TV fact: Desi Arnaz was the one who invented the rerun, airing several Season 1 episodes after the birth of their son in order to give his wife time to recover
When Hogan’s Heroes first aired in 1965, it quickly became a hit. Though the show never finished higher than the 9th place it earned its first season, it fared better than most sitcoms that ran multiple years. While other shows suffered from tired or rehashed plots or felt the need to add new characters, situations, or sites to hold audiences’ attention, the writers for Hogan’s Heroes never seemed to run out of creative new ways for ranking POW officer Col. Hogan (Bob Crane) to get the best of his captors and sabotage the Nazi war effort. Hogan’s Heroes was a success in every country but one: Germany.
But in 2002, TV Guide released a list of the worst TV shows of all-time, and guess which show was No. 5 on the “bad” list? Yep. Hogan’s Heroes. So how can a smartly written show that was thrice nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series and earned two supporting actor Emmys end up on the same list as the consummately bad My Mother the Car and The Brady Bunch Hour? For the same reason that CBS chief William S. Paley balked at the series concept when it was first proposed. He thought the idea of Nazis as comic characters was reprehensible. Hogan’s Heroes aired three years before Mel Brooks gave us that hilarious “Springtime for Hitler” bit in The Producers. But more pointedly, Paley didn’t know the difference or draw the distinction between concentration camps and POW camps.
Paley couldn’t shake the image of emaciated human beings and crematoriums. But there was a distinction. POWs were mostly aviators shot down behind enemy lines, and they were kept in camps operated by the German air force, the Luftwaffe—not the SS, who ran the Jewish concentration camps. And as it turned out, all four actors who played the main German characters were all Jewish and more than happy to make the Nazis look ridiculous.
Political correctness aside, Hogan’s Heroes was popular then, and it’s obviously popular now, or else CBS/Paramount wouldn’t have produced this complete series Blu-ray. It’s still hovering close to 8 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database, and I would submit that even if you haven’t heard of this show, the cast and smart writing are going to be enough to win you over.
For six seasons Hogan’s Heroes aired during the Vietnam War years, adding a little pro-Allies humor to the public consciousness. Crane was a natural as the affable but devious Col. Hogan who led a group of prisoners of war at a camp famous for never having had any successful escapes. Col. Wilhelm Klink (Werner Klemperer) held that record only because of Hogan’s help. It’s in the prisoners’ best interest to have the Germans thinking the Kommandant is the toughest in all Germany (though he’s really an incompetent,easily manipulated pushover), because it allows them to use Stalag 13 for a base of operations that would boggle the Germans’ minds, if they only knew.
Lift up a bunk and a staircase drops down to the second level. Lift up the dog house inside the “vicious” guard dog compound and there’s access to another series of tunnel operations. Sections of barbed wire fence raise and lower with the convenience of blinds, and a tree trunk outside the camp opens to admit people with the regularity of a revolving door. Hogan and his men have bugged Klink’s office and listen in on a radio that’s disguised as a coffee pot—the same device they use to communicate with an Allied submarine that picks up prisoners they help to escape. Think of Stalag 13 as a WWII version of the Underground Railway. Hogan’s voluntary POWs helped other prisoners, defectors, and the local oppressed evade capture and safely get out of Germany. As it turned out, they weren’t really prisoners, because they could leave any time. They were stationed there.
The two most lovable characters weren’t even part of Hogan’s team. Just as Don Diego/Zorro had the portly and comic Sergeant Garcia to “fraternize” with, Hogan gets along so famously with Sergeant Schultz (John Banner) that they could be brothers-in-law. Schultz’s trademark “I see Nuth-thing, NUTH-THING!” became a catch-phrase as popular as Fonzie’s “He-ey!” or Jimmie Walker’s “Dy-no-MITE!” It was also his code to live by: See nothing, report nothing, and just get through the war in one piece without being sent to the Russian front. That was his strategy, and so every week that Hogan and the gang would commit outrageous acts, Schultz would develop a deaf ear or a blind eye.
Klink, meanwhile, was a man who was promoted far beyond his natural intellect or ability. Compared to the scar-faced General Burkhalter (Leon Askin) or Gestapo Major Hochstetter (Howard Caine), the monocle-wearing Klink was as much of a pussycat and ally-in-spirit as Sergeant Schultz. Having those two incompetents caught up in a world beyond their control was a stroke of genius, because it made the show acceptable.
Over the years, loonies came and went—none more so than the “what, what?” by-the-book Colonel Crittendon (Bernard Fox), who didn’t quite get the point of the operation. Romantic interests included Klink’s secretaries Helga (Cynthia Lynn) and then Hilda (Sigrid Valdis), as well as spies and underground leaders like Marya (Nita Talbot) and Tiger (Arlene Martel). Even Klink had a love interest, though it was over his dead body: Burkhalter’s sister, Frau Linkmeyer (Kathleen Freeman). But from 1942 until the end of the war, Hogan’s heroes kept doing their part and enjoying life as best they could in the process.
The complete series Blu-ray collection features all 168 episodes on 22 discs that are housed in plastic Blu-ray cases according to season, with a protective slipcase holding them together. Those who bought the DVD complete collection will find the packaging alone to be reason to upgrade, but the picture quality is also more consistently sharp.
Fans weren’t all that thrilled with the bonus features on the DVD complete series release, but CBS home video added a few more bonus features to this set, among them radio segments, Air Force recruitment spots, some funny promos, and even a home wedding video shot near the set. The video quality is marginally better, while the sound remains not very dynamic. As with other boxed sets, the Blu-ray collection does take up less shelf space than the DVDs—but only by an inch and a half. The real reason to buy this set as an upgrade is the slight upgrade in video quality; the reason to buy this set if you don’t already have it is that as novelty sitcoms go, this one was darned good.
Hogan’s Heroes was also unique because the plots weren’t just hooks to hang the jokes on. Binge-watching all the episodes, you realize that the writers worked with a formula but successfully varied it week after week. Each episode involved a convoluted scheme to sabotage the Nazis that was as much fun to watch as the ensemble characters.
Entire family: Yes
Run time: 4281 min., Black-and-white (Episode 1) and Color (remaining episodes)
Language: 1/10—Hell, damn, and German words like “dummkopf”
Sex: 2/10—Some less-than-passionate kissing, sexual innuendos, and flirtations
Violence: 3/10—Shooting, bombs exploding, tanks crashing buildings, but mostly done for comic or summary narrative effect
Adult situations: 2/10—Some smoking and drinking, especially in scenes in the town
Takeaway: Though McHale’s Navy got there first, Hogan’s Heroes was the better show and also superior to other military sitcoms that came out of the sixties—shows like Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. or F Troop.
People who grew up watching Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, In Search of the Castaways, Summer Magic, The Moon-Spinners and That Darn Cat! no doubt think of Hayley Mills as a Disney actress. But other than those early films and much later sequels to The Parent Trap, Mills made far more movies and TV shows with other studios. And the coming-of-age comedy The Trouble with Angels (Columbia, 1966) still stands as one of her best ‘tween and teen films.
Mills gets second billing behind Rosalind Russell (His Girl Friday) in this story of students sent to live and study at the St. Francis Academy for girls, which is located in a convent and staffed by nuns. Russell plays the droll longsuffering Mother Superior, who, like Peter Pan’s shadow, seems to be everywhere the girls are, no matter what hijinks they’re trying to pull. And this is most certainly a hijinks film.
It opens on a train headed for St. Francis, with an openly rebellious Mary Clancy (Mills) lighting up a cigarette despite the no smoking rule. Onboard she meets Rachel Devery (June Harding), who seems “simpatico” and delighted to have found a friend. From that moment the two become inseparable . . . and insufferable as they begin their first year at St. Francis Academy.
The film documents their antics over the four years that they spend in the nunnery, whether it’s pranks and practical jokes, defiance of rules, or the kind of simple shenanigans that many teens pull when they haven’t prepared for class or are trying to get out of P.E. Mary and Rachel aren’t bad girls, mind you, but they behave more like hares than the tortoise approach Mother Superior seems to take, clearly hoping that over time she might make some difference in the girls’ lives. As a result, The Trouble with Angels has more depth than the typical light comedy, and viewers are encouraged to see things from both sides. It’s a surprisingly subtle transformational film in the Going My Way mold.
Columbia certainly picked the right director for the job. Not only was Ida Lupino one of the few female directors working in Hollywood, but she was also a bit of a rebel herself. She bucked the studio system by refusing roles and films she thought were not strong enough—so much so that she was frequently suspended by Warner Bros.
So how does a 1966 film about Catholic schoolgirls hold up today?
It’s still fun and entertaining becauseof the depth, the subtlety, the intelligent writing, and the crisp pacing. There’s also something inherently timeless about a wise adult who tries to mentor semi-resistant young people, whether we’re talking about Yoda and Luke Skywalker or a nun and a Catholic schoolgirl she identified as the ringleader. The pranks and antics keep it fun, while the relationship between the nuns and the girls keep it interesting.
In the irony department, famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee turns up as an outside instructor that Mother Superior hired to teach the girls graceful movement. Russell had played Lee’s mother in the musical biopic Gypsy in the film she made immediately before this one, and film buffs will find such additional layers fun. Some familiar faces turn up, too, like Mary Wickes, who also donned a habit in the Sister Act films and played the secretary to TV’s mystery-solving priest, Father Dowling.
Collectively, this group of nuns is as entertaining as the ones from The Sound of Music, with individual personalities (eccentricities?) that shine through their habits—whether it’s teaching the girls how to swim, how to play an instrument, or any of the subjects that make school a beneficial burden.
Mills was 19 when Angels was shot, and perhaps the biggest surprise of the film is that the actress who plays Sundance to her Butch was 28 years old at the time—older than some of the actresses who played nuns. But the two work well together and are plenty convincing that they are in need of both maturity and understanding. The Trouble with Angels remains good fun and a great choice for family home theaters.
Sex: 1/10—Some revealing band uniforms, girls en masse shopping for bras (and trying some on over their blouses) and brief allusion to one parent having an affair
Violence: 0/10—Nothing at all; you were expecting rulers across the knuckles?
Adult situations: 3/10—Several instances of juvenile smoking (cigarettes and cigars)
Takeaway: The Trouble with Angels remains current because the Catholic church remains constant in so many ways, and the characters under Lupino’s direction aren’t caricatures
It’s hard to believe people ever lived slower lives—especially at a time when folks can’t seem to spend a single moment without multitasking or yakking on cell phones in walk-and-talks that, despite their content (“I’m on my way to the grocery store now”), are conducted with West Wing importance. If you need a refresher course in slowing down, watch The Andy Griffith Show.
If Frank Capra had worked in television, I’m guessing he would have produced something along the lines of this folksy, feel-good, homespun situation comedy that offered an idealized portrait of small-town life. Never once during its eight-season run did the series finish outside the Nielsen Top 10, and its final season the show ended as the No. 1 watched show in America. I Love Lucy and Seinfeld were the only other shows to accomplish that feat.
The series, which ran on CBS from 1960-68, was ranked No. 9 on TV Guide’s list of 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. One thing that contributed to the show’s success was that it appealed to both rural and (sub)urban people, and white-collar as well as blue-collar workers. The writing was much sharper than other rural comedies that aired on television before or after it, and the aw-shucks sheriff without a gun solved problems with common sense and wit that was broadly entertaining.
The Town of Mayberry, North Carolina was a sleepy little backwater where Sheriff and Justice of the Peace Andy Taylor (Griffith) doesn’t drink, refrains from using harsh language, and seldom raises his voice. Before The Cosby Show got all sorts of love for modeling a kinder, gentler parenting style, the widowed Sheriff Taylor was showing an earlier generation a better way to raise kids and relate to people. With an aw-shucks demeanor, a bushel full of aphorisms, and a smile that could disarm all but the most hardened criminals, Andy spent much of his time dispensing common-sense advice to family, friends, residents, visitors, and yes, sometimes even criminals.
The writing for this character-driven comedy also featured some very funny lines, and a killer ensemble cast delivered them with verve. When you saw bumbling Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife (Don Knotts) and Floyd the Barber (Howard McNear) week after week, it was almost like living in a small town. You felt as if you knew them, and the show had a comfortable feel to it. Andy’s son, Opie, is played to perfection by a very young Ron Howard, while Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier) is introduced in the first episode as the one who raised Andy and will now do the same with Opie. Fans of Father Knows Best were treated to Elinor Donahue (“Princess” from that earlier TV series) as a druggist and possible love interest for Andy in a five-episode arc.
This first season Griffith played Sheriff Taylor more folksy than he would in later years, and more than a few episodes ended with him sitting on the front porch with his guitar, serenading his “kinfolks.” In one classic episode, a state police task force uses the sheriff’s office as headquarters for an operation to catch an escaped convict, and they exclude Andy and Barney. But Andy plays a hunch and he and Barney end up catching the fellow, with the help of Andy’s leaky rowboat. Of course, the state officer in charge changes his tune about Andy and small town “sheriffin’.” That pattern would repeat itself with fun variations over the next seven years.
It’s tobacco country, so there’s occasional smoking, and fictional Mayberry is in the foothills of Appalachia, so there are poor folks who are accustomed to making their own liquor, no matter what the law says. But to underscore how relatively innocent it all is, in an episode titled “Alcohol and Old Lace” Barney and Andy follow a moonshine trail that leads them straight to a pair of sweet little old ladies. Meanwhile, town drunk Otis lets himself in and out of the jail, and Andy treats him as he is: a friendly neighbor who happens to have a problem with alcohol. Over time, even Otis becomes more than a town drunk, and viewers begin to embrace him as much as the other characters in this endearing ensemble.
For the first several seasons the producers clearly tried to give the show a boost by featuring a string of guest stars that included Bill Bixby (The Incredible Hulk), Buddy Ebsen (TheBeverly Hillbillies), Barbara Eden (I Dream of Jeannie), Alan Hale Jr. (Gilligan’s Island), Edgar Buchanan (Petticoat Junction), and Arte Johnson (Laugh-In). They were interesting, but in truth unnecessary. Fans would have kept tuning in regardless, just to see the Mayberry regulars.
After two solid seasons, CBS added more Mayberry characters, among them dim-witted mechanical wizard Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors), schoolteacher/love interest Helen Crump (Aneta Corsaut), the rowdy, bluegrass-playing Darlings (real-life bluegrass band The Dillards), and rock-throwing, poetry-spouting nut-case Ernest T. Bass (Howard Morris).
The 249 half-hour episodes (plus a faux pilot episode of Andy on The Danny Thomas Show and Opie on Gomer Pyle: USMC) are on 32 discs, with each season having it’s own Blu-ray case and a slipcase holding them all together. The first five seasons aired in black-and-white, and that’s how they’re presented here. The introduction of color coincided with Knotts’ departure, so it felt like an attempt to compensate fans for the loss of the three-time Emmy winner. As if to reinforce how much he meant to the series, Knotts earned two more Emmys for a pair of guest appearances that he made, bringing his total—and the show’s—to five.
This show would easily have been an A-/B+ had Knotts stayed and had Nabors not left the show to star in his own spin-off, replaced by a game George Lindsay as Goober, not nearly as interesting a character as Gomer. But the series had a knack of elevating minor characters so that they had the kind of depth that made people care about them, and that helped the show continue to evolve and stay relatively fresh over the years.
For fans, it will be a real pleasure to pop in a disc and sit back and watch 6-9 episodes per disk, plus eclectic bonus features that include behind-the-scenes clips, the Howards’ home movies on the set, opening clips, and original sponsor ads. Blu-ray is a visible improvement over the DVDs, and can be enjoyed even when streaming signals or Internet connections are spotty. I have only two complaints, and they have nothing to do with the show or quality of presentation. One is that the boxed set includes no master list of episodes or any annotated descriptions. All we get are lists of hard-to-read titles on the discs themselves. That’s it. My other complaint is that the plastic “pages” that hold each disc have pretty flimsy points of attachment. When my set arrived, at least two discs from each season case were loose. When you pay over $100 for a set, you expect better. Paramount/CBS, are you listening?
When you watch these episodes you’ll see so many that you don’t remember, simply because relatively few of the episodes are shown on TV in rerun. It’s like discovering the show all over again.
Entire family: Yes
Run time: 6343 min. (249 episodes, 105.7 hours), Black-and-white (Seasons 1-5) / Color (Seasons 6-8)
Not rated (would be G or PG for adult drinking and smoking)
Language: 1/10—Only occasional sanitized versions, like “dad gum it”
Sex: 1/10—Wholesome as can be, though there is a bathing suit contest in one episode
Violence: 1/10—Some “wrasslin’” and scufflin’, some black eyes, but the actual violence is mostly off-screen, just as guns are pulled but fired only occasionally
Adult situations: 2/10—Some adult smoking, drinking, and drunkenness
Takeaway: This complete set came on the heels of the Blu-ray release of The Andy Griffith Show: Season 1; while those who bought that set might think they wasted their money, savvy classic TV fans know that when a studio tests the waters, if fans don’t respond there might not be another Blu-ray release
Family Home Theater 