The Movie:

The latest entry in the Happiness Is Peanuts… series of DVD releases from Warner Brothers, Go, Snoopy, Go! repackages the 1996 straight to video special It’s Spring Training, Charlie Brown as its main feature (it was originally available on the Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown! DVD). Directed by Sam Jaimes and written by Charles M. Schulz, the story takes place in spring time as the Peanuts gang starts turning their thoughts to baseball. Despite Charlie Brown’s past track record with his team, he’s nevertheless determined to give things another shot this season and so he once again gathers together his rag-tag group of players to head out to the diamond for some good old fashioned spring training.

Moral, however, is low and the team doesn’t even have proper uniforms, something that they desperately want. To make this happen, Charlie Brown hits the streets and eventually finds a sponsor in the form of Mr. Hennessy, who is generous enough to fund the uniforms but only if the team can win their season opener. Given that the team has never been particularly good at baseball in the first place, Charlie Brown knows that this is going to take every ounce of strength he has as a team manager, but complicating matters is the addition of a new team member, a little kid named Leland who can’t even manage to tie his own shoes.

At twenty-five minutes long, It’s Spring Training, Charlie Brown (the thirty-fifth animated Peanuts special) cruises by pretty quickly even if it’s not the best that the series has to offer. The show was originally finished in 1992 and intended for television broadcast but was then shelved until it was released straight to video in 1996. A big part of the reason this entry doesn’t really catch on the way some of the more legitimately classic entries do is that the creators seem to have tried to update the Charlie Brown universe, to blatantly ill effect. At roughly the half way point, the kids break into a rap and start dancing to bad funk/hip-hop sounds… which doesn’t really seem to fit in with the established feel and tone of Peanuts as most of us know it. Maybe the hope here was to reach out to a larger demographic and diversify things a little bit – certainly a noble ambition – but it winds up coming across as desperate and clichéd.

The story itself, however, isn’t half bad. It has moments where, yeah, this feels like the Peanuts we all know and love. Charlie Brown, voiced here by Justin Skenkarow has his typical conflict with Lucy, played by Marnette Patterson. Linus, performed by John Christian Gaas, shows up with blanket in tow and of course, Snoopy, voiced by Bill Melendez, is on hand to bring his talents as a ‘problem solver’ to the field. The addition of Leland, played by Gregory Grudt, seems unnecessary when you consider the wide cast of characters already established in the series, but it’s harmless enough and there are moments where you can’t help but feel for the little guy.

In the end, It’s Spring Training, Charlie Brown is a minor, lesser entry in the Peanuts pantheon but it’s watchable enough with its heart obviously in the right place. If it can’t and doesn’t hold a candle to the classics, it makes for a half an hour’s worth of harmless, if forgettable, fun for kids of all ages.

The DVD:

Video:

Everything in this set shows up in 1.33.1 fullframe, just as it should be. The quality is very good and there’s really very little to complain about. Colors look nice and bright without appearing overcooked and there are only minor instances of any noticeable serious print damage (just specks here and there). Some mild grain is visible in some spots but that’s completely forgivable, it just looks more film like. There aren’t any problems with compression artifacts or edge enhancement to complain about and overall the material looks pretty impressive, though the fact that the transfers are interlaced is irritating.

Sound:

The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtrack is clean and clear and as simple as it should be. Dialogue is always nice and easy to understand and there aren’t any problems with hiss or distortion. Levels are properly balanced and everything sounds fine. Optional 2.0 Mono dubs are available Dolby in Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and Thai while optional subtitles are supplied in English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and Thai.

Extras:

The extras on the disc include five shorts in the form of an episode of The Charlie Brown & Snoopy Show originally broadcast on December 3, 1983 under the It’s That Team Spirit, Charlie Brown. The first story, Vulture sees Snoopy take on the persona of a bird of prey, swooping in on the Peanuts gang and doing his best to freak them out as he jumps from one tree to another in the neighborhood. In Blanket Linus gets annoyed when Snoopy steals his security blanket and retaliates but stealing the dog’s food bowl. The third story follows Peppermint Patty on a day when she decides no way no how is she going to school. The Rerun story finds the little kid of the same name enjoying the sites from the back of his mother’s bicycle and in the final story, Rainy Day, Charlie Brown tries to keep his friends entertained on when the weather outside gets bad. These are fun to see but again aren’t on the same level as the more hallowed Peanuts specials. Aside from that, we get menus and chapter selection.

Final Thoughts:

Happiness Is Peanuts… Go, Snoopy Go isn’t an essential purchase if you already have Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown but judged on its own merits, it’s okay. Not classic Peanuts material but still decent light family entertainment. The presentation here is pretty solid and while there aren’t a lot of extras the inclusion of an episode of The Charlie Brown And Snoopy Show will make this appealing to collectors. If you don’t fall into that boat, rent it.

Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop! and has contributed to AV Maniacs. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.

Familiar but well-done U.K. WWII documentary series. Athena has released Narrow Escapes of World War II, a 4-disc, 13-episode collection of the 2011 U.K. television series (which has aired here in the States on The Military Channel) that focuses on battle/mission/campaign “close calls” during the Second World War. From looks at familiar operations like Dolittle’s raid on Tokyo and The Battle of the Bulge, to more obscure (but no less thrilling) events such as Moore’s March and Operation Hannibal, Narrow Escapes of World War II gives the viewer concise overviews of these Allied and Axis operations, with the added benefit of first-hand accounts from the soldiers that participated. A few extras help with this good-looking transfer.

To be honest…Narrow Escapes of World War II certainly isn’t going to surprise fans of Second World War cable documentaries. From a production standpoint, it utilizes the now thoroughly familiar conventions and structuring you see in every other basic television documentary; Narrow Escapes of World War II doesn’t look all that different, really, than The World at War (just as an easily recognizable example) from 40 years ago. Copious amounts of newsreel footage (now cropped to widescreen for Narrow Escapes of World War II) take up the majority of screen time as an off-camera narrator (here, Colin Tierney) authoritatively sets the time and place of the mission/action/battle being described, before facts and theories are presented and weighed. Inbetween the stock footage, a few new recreations are attempted (they’re not of much use here, frankly) while participants in the battles are interviewed, along with authors and other experts. Animated maps, appropriately dramatic music, and fast cuts and edits fill out the 50 minute run times (which Athena advertises on the DVD box as the “uncut U.K. broadcast editions”). Anyone who’s ever watched a TV documentary, particularly a war-related one on History or Discovery or The Military Channel, will instantly recognize Narrow Escapes of World War II‘s thoroughly conventional shape and tone.

That feeling of over-familiarity might have been a drawback for Narrow Escapes of World War II, had those conventional schematics been poorly produced. Fortunately, the opposite is true here; Narrow Escapes of World War II‘s tech credits are first-rate, with always interesting, appropriate (and rapidly cut) selections of newsreel footage giving the docs. some juice. I also enjoyed the overviews of some of the battles/missions I wasn’t very familiar with; so many of the TV WWI docs. of the past 20 years have focused on the same major campaigns. Even a complete WWII novice like myself could repeat reams of data on D-Day, Pearl Harbor, Operation Market Garden, and the Battle of Stalingrad after years and years of multiple variations on these subjects. So I was quite intrigued by the inclusion of episodes like The Black Battalion, a fascinating exploration of the all-black 333rd Field Artillery battalion that fought so bravely during the Battle of the Bulge (I don’t remember hearing about “The Wereth 11” in any other docs on that battle), or Manstein Holds the Line, a gripping account of Russian General Georgy Zhukov’s defeat at the hands of wily German General Eric von Manstein’s “elastic defense” withdrawal, or The Siege of Kohima (which I had never heard about), where the Japanese Army tried to invade India, only to be beaten back in vicious trench warfare by “The Dirty Half Hundred” and the brave indigenous Naga people, or Evacuation in the Baltic, where “Operation Hannibal” attempted to relocate 2 million Germans from East Prussia, at the head of the advancing savage Red Army. These stories were mostly new to me, and Narrow Escapes of World War II, smoothly and professionally, brought them to life for me.

Best of all, Narrow Escapes of World War II‘s extensive interviews with the soldiers who fought these battles prove to be the documentary series’ greatest asset. Whether it’s Maxwell Sparks, pilot during the infamous Amiens Raid/”Operation Jericho”, recounting flying a Mark VI Mosquito bomber 10 feet off the ground as he approached his target, or smooth Bill Smyly describing his absolutely horrifying physical ordeal as one of Wingate’s “Chindits” in the jungles of Burma, or American artillery gunner George Shomo matter-of-factly describing what he had to do to survive the Battle of the Bulge (killing three men with his trench knife for starters), or jaunty Peter Doresa who joined that “cracking battalion,” The West Kents, and fought so bravely during the unimaginable Siege of Kohima, or Ray Ellis of “the Rats of Tobruk,” recounting a terribly moving story of releasing balloons during the trench fighting, only to have the enemy first stop in wonder, and then “play” with him by shooting them down (a story told well enough to match anything in All’s Quiet on the Western Front)―these ordinary men who performed extraordinary feats of courage and endurance, these are the real attraction of Narrow Escapes of World War II. Their insights, their stories, their testimonies, are alone worth seeking out Narrow Escapes of World War II.

Here are the 13 episodes of the U.K. WWII documentary, Narrow Escapes of World War II, as described on their individual slimcases:

DISC 1

EPISODE 1: The Amiens Raid
In advance of the Allied landings at Normandy, the British plan the aerial bombing of Amiens Prison, where a hundred Resistance fighters await execution.

EPISODE 2: The Dolittle Raid
Seeking to hit back at Japan, Col. Jimmy Dolittle puts B-25 bombers on aircraft carriers for a mission that the crews have little chance of surviving.

EPISODE 3: Wingate and the Chindits
To take on the undefeated “supermen” of the Japanese army advancing toward India, the British call on Orde Wingate, who forms a special “Chindits” unit for sabotage inside Japanese-controlled Burma.

EPISODE 4: The Black Battalion
When Hitler launches his final major offensive on the Western front, everything turns on the ability of the U.S. Army to hold the town of Bastogne. Outnumbered 10 to one, an artillery unit of African American gunners must stand fast against the battle-hardened troops of the Waffen-SS.

DISC 2

EPISODE 5: Lucky Laycock’s Escape From Crete
After the German invasion of Crete in May, 1941, Winston Churchill orders the 25,000 British and Commonwealth troops stationed there to defend the island at all costs. A force of specially trained commandos under Col. Robert Laycock arrives to sabotage the Germans, but their mission soon changes.

EPISODE 6: Manstein Holds the Line
By the spring of 1943, the German army is on the run across southern Russia. Gen. Erich von Manstein has plans for a new, highly mobile form of defensive warfare that might reverse the course of the war in the East. But first he has to convince Hitler, who is adamantly opposed to any kind of retreat, strategic or otherwise.

EPISODE 7: The Siege of Kohima
In a bid to topple the British Raj, the Japanese invade India from neighboring Burma in March, 1944. Their route takes them through Kohima, a sleepy village in the Himalayan foothills. The troops in Kohima’s tiny garrison know that if the village falls, the wealth of India’s natural resources will be in the hands of the Japanese.

DISC 3

EPISODE 8: Roy Urquhart’s Escape From Arnheim
In September, 1944, 40,000 Allied troops descend on occupied Holland to secure the bridges over the country’s many waterways, pave the way for an invasion of Germany, and bring about an end to the war. But for British soldiers under the command of Maj. Gen. Roy Urquhart, the new mission is one of survival.

EPISODE 9: Morshead Holds Tobruk
By Easter, 1941, all that stands between Afrika Korps commander Erwin Rommel and Egypt’s Suez Canal is Tobruk. Australia’s Gen. Leslie Morshead and his defenders are ordered to hold the Libyan port for eight weeks while the defenses of Egypt can be strengthened. The “Rats of Tobruk” are convinced that if they fail, the war against Germany will be lost.

EPISODE 10: Evacuation in the Baltic
As the war enters its final months, the nearly 2 million Germans living in East Prussia flee an advancing Red Army no longer distinguishing between German soldiers and civilians. Hundreds of thousands make for the Baltic ports―the start of the single biggest evacuation of WWII.

DISC 4

EPISODE 11: Moore’s March
With the Italians preparing to invade Egypt in the summer of 1940, the British army’s Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) causes havoc far behind the front. But after an LRDG patrol is attacked, a tough New Zealander named Ron Moore leads the survivors barefoot through the desert, 300 miles from Allied lines.

EPISODE 12: Operation Pedestal
By 1942, the fight between the Allies and the Axis for control of the Mediterranean is focused on tiny Malta. From there, British aircraft and submarines have been preying on enemy supply ships. When Hitler and Mussolini decide to crush Malta, Churchill dispatches a huge convoy to run the gauntlet of Axis air and naval power to reach the beleaguered island stronghold.

EPISODE 13: Breakout Through Hell’s Gate
With their backs to the Dnieper River in January 1944, 60,000 German troops face encirclement by the Soviets. After an airfield supplying the defenders falls to the Russians, the Germans head for a corridor flanked by Russian soldiers, tanks, artillery, and cavalry―known thereafter as Hell’s Gate.

The DVD:

The Video:
The anamorphically enhanced, 1.78:1 widescreen video transfer for Narrow Escapes of World War II looks good. Purists, of course, won’t like the old newsreel footage cropped for widescreen, but when you watching this on a big, big monitor, it is nice to have some continuity with the newer-filmed widescreen materials. Still…that does blow up the grain a bit on the original materials….

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo audio mix is quite healthy, with no hiss and a hefty bass line. English subtitles are included.

The Extras:
Text bios for some of the escapees are included on each disc, along with a 16-page color booklet that gives a brief overview/timeline of the WWII, for context.

Final Thoughts:
No new ground broken here, but tech credits are top shelf, the material is put over with some snap, a few lesser-known events are highlighted, and best of all, the men who actually took part in these astounding military campaigns get to tell us their story in their own words―and well-spoken they are. I’m highly recommending Narrow Escapes of World War II.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published film and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

In your faaaace! Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. piss off more goofs who can’t just enjoy a simple DVD full of toons with the release of Regular Show: The Best DVD in the World* (*at this moment in time), a single-disc, 16-episode collection of Cartoon Network‘s hit Monday night show (and my current favorite toon on television). Created by J. G. Quintel, Regular Show is a beautifully surreal, deadpan hilarious mixture of workplace sitcom and wild slacker/gamer flights of sci-fi fancy, frequently blown up to hysterical, epic proportions. A show kids instinctively adore, and one their parents can actually sit and watch (and laugh along) with them, Regular Show, no matter how it’s represented on DVD, is, as Pops might say, as sweet as a frozen ice lolly.

The show’s set-up is simple. 23-year-old, six-foot tall blue jay Mordecai (voice talent of J.G. Quintel), a former art school student, now works as a groundskeeper at a city park. His best friend, 23-year-old raccoon, Rigby (voice talent of William Salyers), a high school drop-out, works alongside him…although “work” is a relative term for the two slackers. Constantly harangued to finish their assignments by their rage-filled boss, park manager and living gumball machine Benson (voice talent of Sam Marin), Mordecai and Rigby look for any excuse to ditch their meaningless, menial labor chores in the search for distraction, which usually comes at the end of a pair of video game controllers. Also working at the park are Skips (voice talent of Mark Hamill), an immortal yeti who can fix anything, Muscle Man (voice talent of Sam Marin), a little green gnome with a pudgy physique in direct inverse proportion to his macho, insulting self-image, High Five Ghost (voice talent of J.G. Quintel), a body-less ghost with a hand sticking out of his head, and Pops (voice talent of Sam Marin), a quavery-voiced older man with a head the size of a giant lolly, and the son of the park’s owner, who naively lives in his own quaint, antiquated world. Mordecai is more responsible than Rigby (only just), and he has a crush on Margaret (voice talent of Janie Haddad)), a five-foot tall red-breasted robin who works at the nearby coffee shop with her friend, Eileen (voice talent of Minty Lewis), a mole. But that matters little since impulsive, violent Rigby often predicates a cosmic disaster in each episode, frequently involving bizarre, strange beings from other worlds unwittingly unleashed by the boys, ready to destroy the unlikely duo, the park, and Earth.

 According to what I’ve read about Regular Show and its creator, J.G. Quintel, the animator originally pitched the show visually, through storyboards, to Cartoon Network executives, rather than verbally describing a concept that seemed at first glance indescribable. The same seems to go for concretely nailing down why it’s such a funny show, in a written review. I can try and dance around elements of why it works…but I’m afraid those thoughts add up to something distinctly less than the sum of the show’s parts. You can explain humor all day long, but experiencing it is something different entirely: funny just is, as the saying goes. And that’s enough for Regular Show (…beside, if you’re reading this review, you don’t need me to tell you why it’s funny: you already know). My younger kids first discovered Regular Show a year or two ago, and when, in the background, I started to hear my older boys laughing along, too, I took notice: it’s a rare TV show that can get them all going. Ever since then I’ve been hooked on it, never missing a new show on Monday nights (hey, I’m just a fan, not an “expert” on it…so bloggers don’t email me with snotty corrections and comments). I’ve seen all the episodes multiple times, and while I’d rather have full season DVD releases, something like Regular Show: The Best DVD in the World* (*at this moment in time) will do just fine in the interim. I’m not going to get pissy about it like some of the ridiculous stuff I read online―if you think it’s unfair of Cartoon Network, if you don’t want to buy it…then don’t (in the completely screwed-up world we live in today, the outraged sense of entitlement by online fanboys over something as stupid and inconsequential as a DVD release, is absolutely astonishing).

 As for this particular collection…almost all of them hit the bullseye. Culled mostly from season three (only More Smarter is from season two), the Regular Show toons here in Regular Show: The Best DVD in the World* (*at this moment in time) consistently deliver those curiously calm-then-frenzied storylines that never stop being simple, basic goofs at their core…but that then somehow explode into hilarious parodies and epic-sized riffs on, and permutations of, clichéd 80s action/sci-fi/fantasy/horror movies, workplace sitcom television, and 80s techno/hip hop/rock anthem/funk music, filtered through a modern slacker/gamer mentality that is able to elicit a simple catchall “whoa!” for situations as diverse as a big pile of leaves to rake up…and the sight of giant baby Guardians of Eternal Youth floating in space.

 Slam Dunk, written by Andres Salaff & Ben Adams, has some shattering funk lines laid down when the boys learn how to play hoops from cosmic B-ball master, Basketball King (voice talent of Carl Weathers). A perfectly-structured storyline, big laughs come from Muscle Man squealing like a pig when he rides the rim, Mordecai woofs, “Denied!”, Rigby trash-talks, “Stay out of my kitchen!”, and the boys battle in space for two months (“Hey, time slows down out here,” a funny, smart twist), before Mordecai sets off an A-bomb explosion slam dunk. Cool Bikes, written by Benton Connor & Calvin Wong, is a perfect example of a Regular Show episode that starts small―the boys go “carting” and lose their driving privileges―and winds up big: they overcompensate so much for their uncool bike riding, through a funny clothes horse montage, that they’re eventually taken to the Intergalactic Cool Court, where Judge Brosef Chilaxto-o-o-own (classic) says stuff like, “Just roll with it, brah…I’ll allow it.” The Best Burger in the World, written by Andres Salaff, has “The Ulti-Meatum” burger (two cheeseburgers stuffed in a cheeseburger, then deep-fried with two cheeseburgers as the buns), and one of Pop’s best line-readings, “I can taste the Himalayas!” before he starts whining/laughing/mewling in delight (Pops, hands down, is the funniest character on the show).

 More Smarter is a good showcase for the abrasive Rigby, whose lack of education leads him to drink the “Brain Max” system, where he’s reborn like the Terminator, with super intelligence (the final sequence is quite clever, where Mordecai and Rigby are so smart, existing in some kind of Tron/Matrix graphic world, they can’t understand their grunting cavemen friends). Rap it Up, by Sean Szeles & Kat Morris, is a classic Pops episode, where the sweet character takes on the nasty Legendary Crew Crew rappers, and wins (if the sight of Pops in a hoodie and askew ball cap isn’t good enough, his shrieking and crying, “I’ll do it your way!” over and over again will put you on the floor). Weekend at Benson’s starts out conventionally enough, riffing on the popular 80s comedy (when Mordecai, seeing an unconscious Benson, says they’ve only one chance not to get fired, Rigby replies, “Okay…I’ll get the shovel,”), before going off into a hilarious trip-out scene after an “Iron Stomach” eating contest, where the boys flip out to Mississippi Queen (just the aggressive loudness of the music cues are enough to make my little kids laugh―they’ve never even heard that song before). The best part of Camping Can Be Cool (I’m not sure I like all the Friends-like Mordecai/Margaret romance that’s beginning to dominate the toon) is the end, when the rangers unceremoniously dump the half man/half deer they ran over, into their truck bed. Trash Boat starts out well but peters out at the end with standard epic-sized revenge action (the band names are funny, though: Barracuda Death Wish, Crocodile Death Spin, Velvet Overkill). Even though Butt Dial, by Sean Szeles & Kat Morris, again deals with the Margaret/Mordecai romance, it’s one of the funnier entries here, with the inspired setting of the outer space “Virtual Messaging Control Center” manned by various means of historical communication, passing a death sentence on the boys for hacking (I love the Indian smoke signal fire/blanket yelling, “Burn them!”). Pops gets to talk on Mordecai’s “magical telephone brick while eating a frozen ice lolly, and Rigby sneers, “I saw that one coming,” when he discovers Margaret’s password is “Daddy’s girl.”

 0Think Positive gives Benson a chance to yell a lot (his flashback to his yelling family is a gem: “Pass the salt!”). Video Game Wizards shows what a little dick Rigby is (and how needy he is for Mordecai’s friendship), when he torments Mordecai over picking Skips rather than Rigby for a gaming tournament (best moment is when Skips deliberately hurts his hands and tells a skeptical referee, “Wanna check again?” as he holds up his mangled fingers). Skips vs. Technology is the kind of funny, outsized episode Regular Show does so well: Mordecai and Rigby can’t navigate their balking computer…and Mr. Fix-it Skips doesn’t know what to do with it. Techmo is an amusing character, getting laughs when the writers (Calvin Wong & Toby Jones) go into Tron territory again for a battle against the Doomaggedon virus (“Resistance is dumb!” it warns…along with a threatening haiku it sends to the printer). Eggscellent is a pretty straightforward episode, with a funny 80s action/inspirational montage, set to I Need a Hero, at its center. Muscle Mentor is a solid episode, with big laughs coming from abusive Muscle Man “mentoring” fired goof-off Rigby (their fight, with Muscle Man squealing, is a highlight). Fists of Justice, by Andres Salaff, is a suitably bizarre, hysterical episode, with the giant Guardian of Eternal Youth babies battling Klorgbane the Destroyer (I love the shock gag of Archibald mouthing off to Klorgbane about making him eat a diaper sandwich…before Klorgbane puts a giant hole in him with his devil rattle, killing him on the spot). And of course for an 80s spoof of action/sci-fi spoof, Mordecai gets to deliver an appropriately lame one-liner rejoinder when Klorgbane is defeated: “Let’s cross this chore off the list.” Finally, Trucker Hall of Fame is a surprisingly touching little entry from Regular Show―albeit still off-kilter and weird―where Muscle Man learns his idolized father wasn’t everything he said he was. Good action at the end (the “special delivery” cement block, with trucker ghosts “Huge Marg” and “Dog Face” helping out), and a nice, understated (and kinda sad tone), mark this effort by writer Calvin Wong a disc highlight, and one that shows Regular Show is more than just a cynical goof.

1 2The DVD:

The Video:
The anamorphically enhanced, 1.78:1 video transfer for Regular Show: The Best DVD in the World* (*at this moment in time) looks digitally perfect: razor-sharp image, solid color values, no compression issues to speak of here.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo mix is heavy on the bass…which is perfect for all the funk jam/techno/rock ballad lines that are dropped throughout the episodes. English subtitles are available.

The Extras:
Some text “resumes” of the characters are included as extras.

Final Thoughts:
Of course full season releases would be better…but in the words of Intergalactic Cool Court Judge Brosef Chilaxto-o-o-own: just cool out, dude. Currently the funniest toon on cable, you can’t go wrong with these 16 Regular Show offerings. I’m highly recommending Regular Show: The Best DVD in the World* (*at this moment in time).

Paul Mavis is an internationally published film and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

3 4

When both girls were children, Jane was the star of the Hudson family, touring the country as Baby Jane. Audiences packed dance halls to watch her sing and dance in a double act with their father, while Blanche and their mother watched from the sidelines. Fame went to Jane’s head, causing her to become abusive to their father and anyone else who tried to resist giving Jane whatever she wanted. Just over a decade later, the tables have turned, with Blanche finding a career as a movie star while Jane struggles to get her pictures released (financed only through the clause in Blanche’s contracts stipulating her Jane receive a starring role for each of her sister’s). Yet Blanche’s time to shine is cut short by an accident that leaves her paralyzed from the waist down, bringing about a present day in which Blanche is confined to a wheelchair in her room, and a bitter, vindictive Jane tries to make her sister’s life miserable.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is sort of like the Heat of the 1960s, pairing Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (who, at the time, were both out of the spotlight) in a film that brought their off-screen rivalry to theaters. Rumors of romantic jealousy and a professional rivarly between the two actors had swirled for decades, and the promise of seeing them go head-to-head on the big screen made Baby Jane a must-see. 50 years later, the film has a reputation as a classic (possibly leaning toward cult), and Warner has decided to offer it up in both Blu-Ray and DVD Anniversary editions (more on this in the next section). The performances hold up, but some nagging issues muted the experience somewhat for this first-time viewer.

What I had heard of Baby Jane over the years had me expecting a different movie: a catty, bitter battle between two old crones about the glory days — kind of like Sunsent Boulevard with two Norma Desmonds that hate each other (the overly grotesque cover art on this edition certainly doesn’t help). In reality, it’s more of a tragedy, with Blanche trying her best to do right by her sister and Jane doing whatever she can to resist her sister’s kindness (I wonder if Davis thought it was “funny” that Crawford kept the martyr role and offered the “wacko” role to Davis). Despite all that’s implied in putting two reportedly contentious actors together and giving them the opportunity to fight it out, the script isn’t really written in a way that allows for sparks to fly; Jane is too crazy and Blanche too timid.

Still, both women are excellent. Crawford’s Blanche has a fragile sadness to her that makes the audience wince a little extra whenever Jane goes after her — the perfect victim. She seems so helpless, it’s no wonder she relates to the wimpy little caged bird she keeps in her room, but it’s a helplessness that stems from her desperate desire to be nice to her sister. Of course, if one must take sides (and I think, in the spirit of the film, one must!), it’s Davis who steals the show, starting out bitter and hateful and slowly adding more shades to Jane’s insanity. She infuses her terrible performance of “A Letter For Daddy” with both the internal earnestness of the character and the subjective sadness of the result without breaking a sweat.

What doesn’t work so well about Baby Jane is the story, which requires three supporting characters (a doctor, a piano player, and worst of all, the sisters’ housekeeper) to do three agonizingly stupid things in order for the story to continue. There’s conveience and being naïve, but the leaps of logic that screenwriter Lukas Heller and director Robert Aldrich require in a few segment goes far beyond suspension of disbelief. Even Blanche is surprisingly dim, attempting at least one strategy to get away from her sister that she attempts in the least efficient way and then gives up on for a poor reason. It seems to me that there must be a way to rework these elements without losing any of the film’s eerie impact, but in the finished product, they stick out like a gigantic sore thumb, significantly impacting my overall enjoyment of the movie.

The DVD, Video, Audio, and Extras
Warner Bros. provided DVDTalk with their “Anniversary Edition” DVD of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. It was released to coincide with the new Blu-Ray edition of Baby Jane. However, despite new cover art and a new “edition” title, the two discs inside this case are the same two discs released back in 2006 as a “Two-Disc Special Edition.” I don’t know if I’d normally be as bothered by this as I normally am, but the change to the edition title is misleading, suggesting this two-disc set is updated to reflect something about the Blu-Ray (also an “Anniversary Edition”). They haven’t even changed the disc art, which reflects the superior cover art on the previous edition of the DVD. Some research suggests that the old edition of Baby Jane has been out of print, but I have no way of knowing how long.

In any case, this is the same 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer from 2006, accompanied by English and French Dolby Mono tracks. Special features include a commentary with Charles Busch and John Epperson and the featurettes “Bette and Joan: Blind Ambition” (29:44), “Behind the Scenes With Baby Jane” (6:36), “All About Bette” (48:07), “Film Profile: Joan Crawford” (28:33), and a clip from “The Andy Williams Show” with Davis (2:04), as well as the movie’s original theatrical trailer.

Conclusion
Although parts of the film are frustrating, the allure for fans of Crawford or Davis to see the real-life rivals pair up is still strong. Newcomers without Blu-Ray players may be happy to have the film’s fine two-disc set re-released on DVD, but this is exactly the same product released in 2006, with a different wrapper. Lightly recommended, if you fit the bill.

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“Da plaaaaane! Da plaaaaane!”
“My dear guests, I am your host, Mr. Roarke. Welcome…to Fantasy Island!”

As Eugene Levy of The Ricardo Montalbán School of Acting would say: “Jeeeesssssss!” Shout! Factory, salvaging another potentially lost television series from “Underwhelming Sales” oblivion, has released Fantasy Island: The Complete Third Season, a 6-disc, 23-episode collection of the hit ABC drama’s 1979-1980 season. Starring Ricardo Montalbán and Hervé Villechaize, Fantasy Island is one of those can’t-miss series that “television critics” (yeech) love to hate, and unconcerned viewers wholeheartedly embrace. “Escapist entertainment” in the very best sense of the term, Fantasy Island scores as a semi-goofy (and unexpectedly touching at times, believe it or not) example of the Spelling-Goldberg stunt casting model, married to the traditional TV drama anthology format…with a little bit of Twilight Zone paranormality thrown in to broaden the genre sampling. No extras for these good-looking transfers.

A lush, tropical island, somewhere deep in the Pacific Ocean. As the white prop Grumman Widgeon lazily arcs over the spectacular island mountain range, a solitary, crystalline ringing of a bell can be hear across the jungle, as little Tattoo (Hervé Villechaize) enthusiastically calls out, “Da plaaaaane! Da plaaaaane!” Resplendently attired Mr. Roarke (Ricardo Montalbán), the owner and operator of “Fantasy Island,” thoughtfully looks skyward out the window of his office, located in a gingerbread Victorian/island-themed folly, before briefly bantering with his minor major domo Tattoo. Mr. Roarke’s guests have arrived. Each week, two sets of guests fly to “Fantasy Island,” having paid a considerable sum of money (which is almost never mentioned and which is never seen exchanging hands) to have their most private, most cherished, most fevered fantasies come true at the hands of the mystical, supernaturally-powered Mr. Roarke, who, although he professes to never judge, does his best to guide the guest to a more morally uplifting conclusion to the fantasies. Sometimes their fantasies are light and amusing, sometimes dark and deadly…but always, always populated by second-or-even-third-tier performers on their way down their career ladders.

 This is the opening to a review I wrote years ago for another classic Spelling-Goldberg production, The Love Boat (Fantasy Island‘s Saturday night lead-in), and I think it’s entirely appropriate for the beginning of our look at Fantasy Island:

“The Love Boat is, in my humble opinion, one of the three or four classic litmus tests for whether or not you truly love TV. Now I’m not just talking about “liking” TV. We all like TV, whether we admit it or not. And we all watch it, despite those few poor liars we work with or know who sniff, “I never watch TV.” No, I’m talking about loving TV, as in, “I was born and raised on endless hours of absolute junk crammed into my head from the earliest possible age…and I don’t want it to stop” kind of loving. Some of TV is good, or even great; a very small portion of it you could even call “art” (whatever that is). But an awful lot of it is puerile swill, and you have to love that―faults and all―before you can say you truly love the medium of TV as a whole. Now obviously, I’m making a point here. I don’t think for a second that The Love Boat is “puerile swill”―not at all. In fact, I think it’s light and fluffy, and rather charming in its openly calculated, commercial way. But most “TV critics” in 1977 certainly hated it, and over the years, the words “The Love Boat” have become an easy, convenient way for people who haven’t seen the series to take a cheap shot when comparing other shows thought to be similarly brainless or trivial. But I take my stand and say, “Nay!” There are quite a few pleasures to be derived from The Love Boat, particularly in the earlier seasons, and just as importantly, The Love Boat gave a lot of pleasure to millions and millions of fans who responded to its silly premise and its sunny, innocent, sweet-natured attitude. And I’ll take that aim any day over TV that deliberately offends, or shocks, or titillates, or exploits, in the specious pursuit of faux-gritty, spuriously real, bogus “art.”

 Ditto for Fantasy Island.

 I haven’t seen an episode of Fantasy Island in years and years, but it was a favorite of mine growing up, particularly in that classic one-two Spelling-Goldberg programming punch with The Love Boat on ABC’s Saturday night. “Escapist entertainment” in its most literal sense, Fantasy Island only wanted to take the viewer away from their own problems for an hour…by showing those same problems condensed and glamorized and glossed over (and most importantly: neatly resolved by the end of the hour) as essayed by a host of familiar, comforting performers who posed zero threat to the viewers. With a super-smooth, almost mechanical production (and I don’t mean that negatively), two highly charismatic leads (Villechaize funny and cute, and authoritative, quietly dramatic Montalbán appropriately silky and mysterious), and a highly-regimented “repeatable experience” quotient, Fantasy Island was a consistent “go to” series when you wanted to flake out for an hour and be simply entertained by the tube, week in and week out.

 Watching the series again all these years later, what surprised me the most about it was how much of Fantasy Island incorporated supernatural/paranormal aspects to its basic framework. For whatever reasons, I seemed to have remembered Mr. Roarke’s execution of the fantasies in a much more literal, physical fashion. I remembered the show as people coming to the island, having paid a lot of dough to get there, with Mr. Roarke recreating their fantasies by building them, as in engineering them, such as in this season’s Eagleman segment: Bob Denver wants to impress his comic book-loving son, so he becomes “Eagleman,” through the mechanical and engineering trickery of Mr. Roarke (bouncy boots, a mocked-up secret hideaway headquarters). However, quite a few, if not the majority of the fantasies presented here involve either vague or acknowledged “otherworldly” aspects to make them come true (time travel, alternate universes, and magical potions are the most frequently utilized)…if they’re not outright extensions of Mr. Roarke’s mysterious powers. Why I didn’t remember that is beyond me, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when one takes into account when Fantasy Island was produced: right at the tail end of that golden period of 70s hooey about Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, pyramid power, and UFOs (Roarke even directly references the Triangle in Magnolia Blossoms, stating that through a “strange, geo-magnetic condition,” guests of Fantasy Island can “occasionally” travel back in time, and even get stuck there…or can they?).

 0And despite carping from critics about the fuzziness of the actual workings of the fantasies, I found that aspect of the series the most intriguing. You never really knew what the set-up was on Fantasy Island, or how fantasies were actually worked out, or who, exactly, was Mr. Roarke. It always kept you guessing. Roarke may warn that time travel on Fantasy Island can be fickle or permanent or even fatal…but he sure seems to have mastered it, coming and going within his guests’ fantasies with impeccable timing (just when they’re ready to die, usually). So is it really time travel the guests are experiencing? Or alternate universes? Or are these fantasies just little playlettes from Mr. Roarke’s imagination? He obviously is immortal (he speaks of knowing Cleopatra, battling ancient mermaids, and references a romance from over three hundred years ago this season), while he possess powers that bring him close to divinity (although the writers, mindful of a much more mainstream religious 1979 American, are always careful to stress he can’t bring back the dead). In Rouges and Riches, Robert Goulet, a former guest, has continued on in his fantasy as a swashbuckler…so is he still paying Mr. Roarke? Or has he genuinely traveled back in time? What kind of “time” has he inhabited? Is it really located on the island, or is the island a portal to that particular place and time? Or is Roarke God, juggling all of these little dramas and comedies for his own amusement? Now…why in the world would I want that spelled out for me, as some critics would ding the series? Wouldn’t that end the mystery and “pull” of the show the minute the producers made everything concrete?

1 2As for the storylines themselves, they may be obvious and predictable as far as their outcomes hash out, but they often tap into some fairly primal fears and fantasies of the viewers watching. Mindful of their core audience, the producers and writers of Fantasy Island always try and include some plucky tryers and losers from the Midwest for these little morality plays (to TV producers, “the Midwest” is everything inbetween Los Angeles and New York City, from Toledo to Sioux Falls to Wichita), where the characters are desperate to find resolution to some physical or emotional (and often financial) condition that only Mr. Roarke can settle once and for all. Paralyzed kids who won’t walk again, blind cops who can’t work, down-on-their-luck businessmen needing one last score, estranged fathers and sons who can’t connect, loser singers who won’t ever make it, dockworkers trying to go to night school, small-time secretaries looking for love and fulfillment, lonely people looking for something, anything to alleviate their pain―all of these characters show up on Fantasy Island. And most endearingly to the viewers (the viewers who see parts of themselves in those losers and damaged people), those characters are never made fun of on Fantasy Island. Mr. Roarke gravely listens to them (how many people in your life really listen to your fears and desires…and then actually does something about them?), and, even though he often knows their fantasies are misguided, grants them their wishes (and their dignity), before guiding them to greater understanding and happiness. What grandparent at home, watching Jeannette Nolan and Ike Eisenmann in the lovely On the Other Side, wouldn’t want to hear their selfish, oblivious grandkids tell them how much they loved them, begging them to not cross over into heaven? A decidedly moral series at its core, without being preachy or denominational, Fantasy Island, even at the depths of its sometimes silliness, was able to reach a level of sweetness and sadness that’s quite unexpected…particularly when all you ever hear is how “disposable” it is as television (the unusual one-guest The Wedding, with Samantha Eggar dying in Mr. Roarke’s arms, is sensitively written, with Montalbán given the rare opportunity on this series to actually act…which he does exceedingly well).

3 4Certainly, though, you don’t have to let Fantasy Island weigh heavily on you if you don’t want to: you can just sit back and let some of its more ridiculous aspects wash pleasantly over you. Though frequently corny, I always enjoyed the Roarke/Tattoo comedy moments at the beginning of the episodes…although by the time the writers shamefully introduced Chester the Monkey into them, you see these little scenes gradually disappear, until a stock shot of Roarke coming out and merely bidding Tattoo “Good morning” graces most episodes (was this the producers’ way of giving the reportedly difficult Villechaize a slap-down?). The then-vilified/now-celebrated Spelling-Goldberg model of matching up a smorgasbord of marginal and/or faded stars for contrasting effect will certainly entertain viewers like myself who live for these bizarre pop culture conflagrations. Where else but in a series like Fantasy Island do you get Father Knows Best‘s Paul Petersen romancing Playboy®’s Barbi Benton? Or Roddy McDowall and Donna Mills? Or Get Smart‘s Don Adams and James Bond’s Martine Beswick? Or Sonny Bono with nun Shelley Fabares (from Elvis to Sonny in ten short years…)? Or Fred Williamson and Gary Collins (no, not romancing…boxing)? Or Jethro and Carol Lynley? Or George Maharis and Britt Ekland (she’s Aphrodite…and he’s got a permed rug that makes him look like the aborigine in that Bugs Bunny cartoon)? Or Don Stroud nailing not only classy Rosemary Forsythe but Marcia Brady, too? Or Lisa Hartman and Frankie Avalon? Or Misty Rowe and Keith Partridge? Or most delirious of all, Ernest T. Bass with Judy Landers? When you have an episode like One Million B.C. come out of the blue, where Jo Ann Pflug and Vega$‘s Phyllis Davis (a funny actress with a jaw-dropping, impossible body) crack jokes before they shrug their shoulders and give themselves over to caveman Peter Lupus, complete with goofy Land of the Lost dinosaurs matted in…brother, what you have is perfection in the kind of delightful TV nonsense that television today is too self-conscious, too snottily self-aware, too self-important to bother with anymore. More’s the pity.

5 6Pity the poor fans who tried to find Fantasy Island during premiere week in September. In a major miscalculation, ABC took the hit Fantasy Island (22nd most-watched show of the previous 1978-1979 season) out of its Saturday 10:00pm slot and pushed it back to Fridays at 8:00pm, leading in The ABC Friday Night Movie, with direct competition from the kid-friendly The Incredible Hulk on CBS. Ratings took a nose dive, and ABC hastily put Fantasy Island back in its regular Saturday night timeslot in October, but the damage was done. Despite zero competition from CBS’s highly-touted flop, Paris, with James Earl Jones, and NBC’s disastrous James Bond throwback, A Man Called Sloane with that annoying little pest Robert Conrad, Fantasy Island‘s ratings slipped overall to 28th for the year, proving once again that viewers get testy when networks move around their shows. A more accurate assessment would probably be that lead-in The Love Boat dropped significantly in the ratings this year, as well, pulling down Fantasy Island‘s ranking; in the upcoming 1980-1981 season, The Love Boat went through the ratings’ roof…bringing Fantasy Island along for the ride.

7 8The DVD:

The Video:
The full-screen, 1.33:1 video transfers for Fantasy Island: The Complete Third Season look good, with solid color, a sharpish image…but way too much red jaggies for my liking. Rather surprising, that.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English mono audio track is fine, with no distortion and little if any hiss. English closed-captions are available.

The Extras:
No extras for Fantasy Island: The Complete Third Season.

Final Thoughts:
Perfect escapist fare, expertly produced. Superficial at times, surprisingly touching at others, and always hilariously funny (unintentionally, of course) whenever a mis-matched pair of celebrities co-star, Fantasy Island: The Complete Third Season is consistently entertaining. I’m highly recommending Fantasy Island: The Complete Third Season.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published film and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

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