Police Squad The Complete Series (1982) Review

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(More customer reviews)Police Squad! is one of those shows that just didn't get the chance it deserved. The show skewered, among other targets, the Quinn Martin crime shows of the 1960's and 70's (The Fugitive, Cannon, The Streets of San Francisco, etc.). Leslie Nielsen, who had guest starred on many of the shows Police Squad spoofed, was hilariously perfect. With his deadpan delivery, it was a perfect follow-up to the career altering path Nielsen had forged with his performance in Airplane.
But as fitfully funny and clever as it was, Police Squad!, for some reason, couldn't pull in the audiences that had flocked to see Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams' Airplane just two years earlier. The series suffered from low ratings from the start and never found its audience. One of the running gags on the show was the introduction of a "special guest star" who was immediately killed off in the some horrible fashion right after the introduction. Lorne Green, William Shatner, Georg Stanford Brown and Florence Henderson were among the guest stars who were shot, stabbed, machine-gunned and poisoned. Unfotunately, the guest star for the sixth episode was John Belushi who died right before the episode was to air. ABC had to pull the show until a new introduction could be filmed. Right after that, the series was cancelled after just six episodes, cutting short the run of one of the funniest series of all time.
Fortunately, the team of Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams resurrected the Police Squad! series in the form of the Naked Gun series in the late 1980's. The premise, and Leslie Nielsen, finally got the exposure it deserved and the result was three hilarious films that did very well at the box office. However, when the three films were released on DVD, there was no corresponding release of the original series on DVD.
Now, finally, the original series is coming to DVD on November the 7th. Hopefully many will buy the DVD and realize what a crime it was for ABC to cancel this hilarious series so soon.

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The satirical comedy "Police Squad" pits an ace detective and his captain (Leslie Nielsen & Alan North) against the criminal elements that befoul a big city. From the creators of "Airplane!".

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Airplane (Don't Call Me Shirley Edition) (1980) Review

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(More customer reviews)A clever, funny parody of disaster movies (bad melodramas such as "Zero Hour" and "The High and The Mighty" along with "Airport" were the prime targets here), "Airplane! The `Don't Call Me Shirley' Edition" manages to combine silliness, puns and with topical humor in a style that recalls something out of an alternate off-kilter universe. Filled with melodramatic, over-the-top music, deliberately bad acting and every cliché about plane disasters you can imagine, "Airplane!" aims wildly and accurately most of the time taking the wind out of the sails of bad (and some good ones, too such as "Jaws")movies everywhere. Evidently the writing/directing team of Zucker, Zucker and Abrahams (who wrote "Kentucky Friend Movie" for director John Landis and later went on to crate "The Naked Gun" films) caught "Zero Hour" on TV and realized that this overripe melodrama was just right to be plucked and served up as comedy (something it verged on anyway).
Robert Hays plays Ted Striker(the name of Dana Andrews' character in "Zero Hour!") a former fighter pilot who is now afraid to pilot planes since a disastrous mission years before. Striker books a seat on the flight of his girlfriend Elaine (Julie Hagerty) in hopes of working out their relationship. When the crew and passengers are brought down by food poisoning Ted has to overcome his fears to pilot the plane to safety.
While the film looks very good (and better than its previous edition), I was a bit disappointed by the amount of dirt and debris. I thought that a deluxe edition like this would have a nearly pristine print and that Paramount would have the film digitally cleaned up. Overall the film looks good but could have been tweaked more for this special edition. The soundtrack sounds pretty good overall and is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 with dialogue clear and little distortion.
The extras are where this edition truly shines. "Airplane! The `Don't Call Me Shirley Edition" doesn't have any of the conventional special features you'd expect. There's no "making-of" documentary or featurettes on the film per se. The "Long Haul Version" allow you to watch the film with frequent detours into comments by the actors (Hays is present but Julie Hagerty curiously isn't), writers/directors and other production crew. We also get deleted scenes in the "Long Haul" section that are quite amusing in many instances as well. Included in the "Long Haul" version are clips from the movie that inspired the Zuckers/Abrahams "Zero Hour". We also get the theatrical trailer and a clever menu that presents some of the classic scenes from the film as if you're watching an animated version of those horrible safety/disaster cards they place on airplanes drawn in the same style. This is like watching the movie, deleted scenes and a documentary at the same time. It's a great conceit and works pretty well here. There is also a subtitle track that features trivia about the movie and points out visual mistakes, etc. throughout the movie.
There's a good commentary track featuring the directors sharing stories about the production of the movie. This sounds like the commentary track from the previous edition. The commentary track provides a lot of amusing stories, trivia and background about the movie. Many of the comments are also echoed in the extended branching edition of the movie so listening to the commentary track really can't compare to watching the seamlessly branching edition.
A classic comedy that still works amazingly well, this special edition of "Airplane!" is well worth it for the fans of the movie. Although the image quality could have been cleaned up a little bit more for this presentation, it's a pretty minor issue really as the "special features" make this edition worthwhile for fans of this classic bit of madness.

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AIRPLANE:DON'T CALL ME SHIRLEY EDITIO - DVD Movie

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Snakes on a Plane (Widescreen New Line Platinum Series) (2006) Review

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(More customer reviews)Look, if I wanted to watch one of the greatest movies of all time... "Citizen Kane" or "The Godfather" or "Jean de Florette" or "Airplane!", I would have stayed home with my DVDs. No. If I wanted subtle man-versus-vermin psychological horror, with organ music, I would have stayed home and listened to William Conrad as "Leiningen vs. The Ants".
No. No, no, no! I wanted to go out on a Friday night and I wanted to see snakes on a plane. Mo'fo' snakes on a mo'fo' plane. And that is exactly what I got.
The problems with this movie are very few. Number one, the main character in this movie is a surfer dude but the movie was shot in British Columbia. That's not a problem. Good second unit photography will have you convinced that you're on Waikiki Beach, and you didn't come to this movie to see surfer dudes, anyway. You wanted to see a CGI plane battling turbulence, and really vicious CGI snakes.
Number two, it takes about 20 to 30 minutes for the snakes to get out into the cabin and start rearing and biting. That's not a problem either. Make a list of every delicate body part you'd expect a snake to bite, and once the snakes get out, game on. You're waiting for the big python to show up? Well, that's at least an hour wait, but once he's out, game on.
Number three, it takes Samuel L. Jackson so long to drop That Line that you almost wonder if he's not ever going to say it. Again, not a problem.
Look, this movie was probably first-drafted in screenwriting class. The writers care way too much about their reluctant FBI witness to a mob hit scenario, when the audience just wants snakes. Snakes on a plane. And then when we finally hit the airport, you can do a head count of the passengers and figure out who's going to die, how, and when. There's the stuffy British business traveler (I had him pegged as the first to die), the hot-to-trot sexy young couple -- the girl's in pink thong panties, the aging flight attendant on her last flight, and the ambiguously gay male steward. Finally, the overweight comedy co-pilot with the Texas accent. The script writes itself.
But it's got snakes. Snakes on a plane. If you took the time to come to this page and rate the movie one or two stars, you clearly didn't realize what movie you were buying tickets to go see and you shouldn't have been there in the first place. If you want to see your awesomely bad snakes on a plane picture, this is literally the only movie to go see.
Sequels: Snakes on a Train. Snakes in Portland, Maine. Snakes in the Drain. Snakes in the Fast Lane. Snakes in the Cold November Rain. Snakes in a Music Video with House of Pain. Snakes in the Batter's Box with Ferris Fain. And finally... Snakes on a Train II. Bring it on!

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On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who's a witness in protective custody, let loose a crate full of deadly snakes.DVD Features:Audio CommentaryDeleted ScenesFeaturetteGag ReelMusic VideoTV SpotTheatrical Trailer

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