The premise: someone (usually a friend or family member) convinces "Scare Tactics" to target a victim of their choosing for some sort of elaborate, staged scenario, most of which involve violent psychopaths, since "Scare Tactics", unlike some prank and hiddne camera shows, aims to terrify rather than puzzle or amuse. After the gag is up, the pranker will come out and greet the prankee, and Morgan will take us to commercials and eventually introduce the next clip. Lather, rinse, repeat: a show like this isn't about range.

In the interest of fairness, I'll start by giving credit where credit's due and say that some of these scenes (probably even the majority) are conceptually clever: a guy discovers the item he's had handcuffed to his wrist as a courier is actually a bomb; a babysitter is told the husband she's already seen wandering around the house has been dead for several years; an assistant discovers the funeral home he's starting at is secretly harboring organs, etcetera. Some of them are a little horror-movie hokey (think devil babies, aliens and scientists out for revenge), but in general, the show is good at creating a quickly-understood gag that should get the audience ready and waiting for the payoff.

The execution is not so smooth. First of all, the acting in many of these sketches is mighty suspect. Sure, it's rarely all of the acting in a single bit, and "Scare Tactics" reuses its players, so the same actor will likely reappear in a later sketch and do a better job, so I don't mean this as a serious knock against these performers' abilities (especially since "Scare Tactics" probably isn't the kind of show they were imagining when they set out to be an actor). Still, wild breaks in the credibility of the scenes being played out take away from the believability of the scenes -- are people really this gullible?

Believability is also weakened by the show's production. Each scare scene is shown from several different angles, and all of them look pretty good -- better, maybe, than button cameras and surveillance cameras could be expected to look. There's also the fact that the audience is shown material the victim would never see. In a hypothetical "killer" sketch involving a prank victim and two actors, where one actor chases the other out of the room with the victim in it and the "murder" happens somewhere else, "Scare Tactics" would opt to show us the unseen incident. It's an odd choice, because we know the actors are just faking, and it seems unlikely that the actors really elaborately play out scenes without the benefit of their "audience" (the sensation that it's a bit unnecessary is increased tenfold when the show trots out a topless woman, which it does four times in this DVD set). Lastly, a few victims seem to repeat as prankers (one of the participants mentions her return outright), and seeing familiar faces among the non-actors just automatically seems odd. That said, I'm not claiming "Scare Tactics" is faked, just that the overall style adds an air of phoniness from time to time.

The only other relevant aspect of the show is the reaction of its unwilling participants, and it's hit and miss. A select few targets (in the sketches "Cheaters of Death", "Paralyzed With Fear", "Frankenstein's Basement of Terror", and "Taxi Cab Carnage", to name a few) have really great reactions, but the majority of the show's victims just stand there, looking unsure of what to do. I'm also somewhat shocked at the fact that almost nobody ever tries to run away. Of course, it doesn't help that the actors are forced to conclude most of the bits with the awful tagline, "Are you scared? Well, you shouldn't be -- you're on "Scare Tactics"!", which doesn't always generate the instant reaction that "You're on "Candid Camera"!" might have (I'd also like to point out that in the aforementioned "Cheaters of Death", the victim is told he's helping host a "Cheaters"-style show called "Doghunters", on which his job is to throw a foam bone at the adulterous targets and yell "You've been boned!" -- ironic that the creators of a silly reality TV show with an awful catchphrase would include a fake silly reality TV show with an awful catchphrase).

As host, Morgan is basically just collecting a paycheck. It's not that he's bad, but more that the show's structure barely calls for a host at all, a narrator would do just fine. As is, Morgan's basically got nine lines of dialogue per episode: the disclaimer, four sketch intros and four sketch outros. It's not clear if someone writes the material for him or if he's coming up with his own jokes, but it's almost funnier when the joke is unrelentingly awful. To the comedian's credit, he performs even the worst non-jokes (my favorite being: "Brandon looks like a big teddy bear. But he's actually a human being!") with lit-up enthusiasm.

The episodes in this 2-disc set break down as follows:
Disc 1: "Satan's Baby", "3:10 to Hell", "Deadly Genie in a Beer Bottle", "Psycho in a Box", "When White Noise Attacks", "The Screaming Room", "Frankenstein's Basement of Terror".
Disc 2: "Taxicab Carnage", "Home Video Horror", "When the Larvae Breaks", "Big Scoop of Scary", "Blood Bath", "Satan's Baby Returns".

Note About the "Uncensored" Presentation
I said I didn't know why audiences would want to see "Scare Tactics" episodes a second time; I had almost forgotten the show is Uncensored, with the ever-popular phrase "too hot for TV" proudly branded on the cover. "Uncensored" mostly refers to the language, and I suppose I kinda appreciate it (because, hey, I bet 90% of prank show victims swear up a storm when the joke is revealed). Blood and guts are a close second, since most of the sketches involve gruesome ends. The only addition I didn't appreciate, as previously mentioned, was the nudity. Not because I don't like naked women, but because every one of these reveals feels shady and ill-advised. The nudity also only crops up in sketches with female victims, which is bizarre.

The DVD
"Scare Tactics" comes in a really nice package: the two-disc eco-BOX with flap tray slides into a smooth, thick cardboard slipcover, which is a look I'm partial to: it's got the style of a digipak without actually being one (I've always been partial to standard cases), and it doesn't have the flimsy feel of an eco-BOX since the case is on the inside. The artwork has Tracy Morgan pulling a silly face, but the dark blue-and-red color scheme is nice. In another slick move, the box copy and features are printed on the slip but not on the cover, and most shocking of all (perhaps more shocking than anything in any of the episodes) is the inclusion of a fold out booklet with an episode listing, broken down by sketches. I guess it figures that one of the nicest TV-on-DVD packaging presentations I've seen as of late is for a show like "Scare Tactics"...

The Video and Audio
"Scare Tactics" is presented in 1.33:1 full frame and Dolby Mono, and it's no surprise, since most of the show is shot on low-res digital cameras that don't exactly capture crystal-clear HD video or 5.1 channels worth of glorious surround activity. I don't know what to say about the A/V quality, really, other than the fact that it's perfectly acceptable: it looks fine (the Tracy Morgan hosting segments are clear and colorful) and it sounds fine too. And since Warner has remembered to include English captions for the deaf and hard of hearing, really the only complaint I could lodge with the set is that some foreign subtitles might've been nice.

The Extras
3 additional scenes (4:54) take the exploitational nature of "Scare Tactics" to a whole new low: they're just hand-held B-roll of all the three scenes involving toplessness, set to awful porn-style riffs! The women are game and crack a few jokes, but watching this extra made me feel like I needed a shower.

The other inclusion is a reel of slightly awkward Tracy Morgan bloopers (3:23), set to a stock techno track.

Conclusion
According to the booklet, "Satan's Baby" was voted #1 in VH1's 2009 "40 Greatest Pranks" competition! Maybe I'm just out of the loop, since I didn't know that VH1 even did a yearly list of great pranks, but for my money, "Scare Tactics" isn't worth revisiting. If you're a huge fan of the series, you can certainly get your fix by renting this set, but even though it looks really nice, I can't see any reason to permanently add it to your collection.