Talk show host Dick Cavett (b. 1936) is rightly remembered as having one of the very best talk shows on television. His unusual combination of Yale-educated intellectualism and Nebraska-bred midwestern ordinariness, a kind of perpetual state of halting slight embarrassment, charmed audiences. They appreciated his self-deprecating humor and, most significantly, his eclectic guests. His smart conversations spurred many guests who'd rarely (or never) turn up on The Tonight Show, "Joey Bishop" or "Mike Douglas": esteemed writers, firebrand political activists, out-of-the-mainstream rock stars, and reclusive actors like Brando and Katharine Hepburn.

More than a decade ago, Shout! Factory released a superb series of boxed sets to DVD, one devoted to "Hollywood Greats" like Fred Astaire, Robert Mitchum, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Kirk Douglas and others. "Comic Legends" featured the likes of Wo...Read the entire review

Talk show host Dick Cavett (b. 1936) is rightly remembered as having one of the very best talk shows on television. His unusual combination of Yale-educated intellectualism and Nebraska-bred midwestern ordinariness, a kind of perpetual state of halting slight embarrassment, charmed audiences. They appreciated his self-deprecating humor and, most significantly, his eclectic guests. His smart conversations spurred many guests who'd rarely (or never) turn up on The Tonight Show, "Joey Bishop" or "Mike Douglas": esteemed writers, firebrand political activists, out-of-the-mainstream rock stars, and reclusive actors like Brando and Katharine Hepburn.

More than a decade ago, Shout! Factory released a superb series of boxed sets to DVD, one devoted to "Hollywood Greats" like Fred Astaire, Robert Mitchum, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Kirk Douglas and others. "Comic Legends" featured the likes of Wo...Read the entire review

In 1960, Lerner & Loewe's Camelot opened on Broadway and ran for 873 performances. Based on the classic T.H. White novel The Once and Future King, this bold musical would go on to have a U.S. tour and appear on stage in London, but it wasn't done just yet. In 1967, there was a film version adapted for the screen starring Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave, which revitalized the show and led to a revival of the stage version in 1980. In 1982, a live performance was captured on tape at the Winter Garden Theater in Manhattan, which is how we come to this DVD and a rare opportunity to revisit this lovely musical.

In 10 Words or Less
The counter-culture definition of a variety show

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Old TV, documentaries
Likes: Variety shows, weird stuff
Dislikes: Incomplete sets, hippies
Hates: That PBS doesn't make TV like this anymore

The Show
Anyone born since the start of the Nixon administration has likely spent several decades unaware that The Great American Dream Machine, created by PBS mainstay Alvin H. Perlmutter, ever existed. An oddball variety series that aired on public broadcasting stations for a few seasons in the early 1970s, it hasn't has a tremendous amount of obvious cultural impact, aside from being home to early performances by a wide range of big stars (and a few bit...Read the entire review

Its release cleverly coinciding with the Daniel Craig-Harrison Ford Cowboys & Aliens, S'More Entertainment's (A Big Box of) Cowboys, Aliens, Robots and Death Rays is a cut above the usual mishmash of public domain B-Westerns. Though none of the transfers could be considered pristine, all eight features in this four-disc set are, shock-of-shocks, perfectly watchable - a notch below major label releases, to be sure, but by public domain standards just about Grade-A. The sci-fi / horror / fantasy angles in most of the movies are extremely slight, but nonetheless present. (There are, however, no aliens at all.) Included are: Radio Ranch (1940), Ghost Patrol (1936), Tombstone Canyon (1932), Riders of the Whistling Skull (1937), Sky Bandits (1940), Gun Packer (1938), Saddle Mountain Roundup (1941), and Vanishing Raiders (1935).

One ...Read the entire review

The Movies:

S'More Entertainment gathers up a whole lot of Ed Wood related product for your enjoyment - how much of it can you take? The ultimate cinematic endurance test, this six disc collection gathers up some true Wood obscurities and packages them together with a few of his more common films (did we need another DVD release of Plan 9 From Outer Space? No - but it's cool to see Snow Bunnies and some of his rare TV work here) and throws in a pretty solid selection of extra features too. The quality won't floor you, but some of us will take what we can get when it comes to this stuff. Here's a look at what you'll be faced with if you dare to open the Big Box Of Wood...

DISC ONE:

Bride of the Monster (1956)

Bride Of The Monster has the marked distinction of serving as Bela Lugosi's swan song (the footage in Plan 9 was adde...Read the entire review

You wouldn't think a DVD with a title like Celebrity Bowling would be almost hypnotically entertaining - until, that is, you look at the bizarre/inspired/goofy parings of talent. I mean, Dick Martin & Billy Barty vs. John Schuck & Michael Ansara? How about Donald O'Connor & Rosemary Clooney vs. Rose Marie & Morey Amsterdam? Roy Rogers & Adam West vs. Kent McCord & Gary Collins?

The jumble of singers and songwriters, former and then-current TV stars and old-time character actors, all "bowling like millions of ordinary Americans do every week," makes Celebrity Bowling genuinely fascinating and fun viewing. While a few of the guests, Michael Douglas for one, seem mildly embarrassed to be there, most of the stars and barely-stars seem to be enjoying themselves immensely while a few clearly exhibit a competitive spirit that's occasionally revealing.

Another gem of...Read the entire review

The Movie
I normally wouldn't feel the need to share this in a non-porn DVD review, but I think it's necessary: I'm a chest man. You might find that nugget of information inappropriate, but considering actor Buddy Dolan also wrote Point of Contact, I'm guessing he intentionally spent half of the film shirtless. It's a good thing, because without his ample chest and biceps to distract me, I might not have made it through all 89 minutes. You see, when one of the characters flatlines five minutes in, so does the film.

Initially developed as an hour-long cable television pilot, Ghost Hunters: Point of Contact was later injected with 30 extra minutes in hopes of securing...Read the entire review

The Movie:
I started watching this new boxed set of the second season of Mister Peepers on "Black Friday," the mad shopping day which incredibly ended with the death of one store clerk and the shooting deaths of two shoppers, news interspersed with horrifying scenes of terror in Mumbai, India. My thought was that everyone everywhere needs to take a really deep breath and step back from the everyday insanity that seems to overpopulate our lives in 2008. And what better way to do that than with this unassuming and quietly charming series from the early 1950s? If Mister Peepers seems slow and virtually catatonic at times, at least when compared to today's quick-cut, joke every four second gestalt, maybe that's exactly what's needed to calm everybody down and to get us all back to a kinder, gentler time when not everything had to be based in raucousness. In fact it's inst...Read the entire review

Hey, it's Shari Lewis! Back in the early 1960s this talented, New York based actress and ventriloquist became a TV sensation. The bright and cheerful Lewis (Real name Sonia Phyllis Hurwitz) introduced millions of kids to her puppet friends, most particularly a confused little sock puppet named Lamb Chop, with whom she put on a terrific one-woman act.

Lewis was funny in a gentle, sweet way appropriate to small children but also amusing for the rest of us. Her ventriloquism was so good that we accepted Lamb Chop as a second personality; she could switch voices quickly between two characters and barely move her lips or look out of breath. She once joked that she could voice three puppets, but was unfortunately limited by having only two hands.

A Shari Lewis Christmas is an excellent way to revisit Shari's talent and appeal. Th...Read the entire review

S'More Entertainment, in cooperation with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, has gathered together three episodes from ventriloquist Shari Lewis' eponymously-titled early 1960's TV show, for A Shari Lewis Christmas. Featuring the whole gang from Shari's sock-puppet act, including the adorable little Lamb Chop, Hush Puppy, and Charlie Horse, A Shari Lewis Christmas is a wonderful trip back to black & white TV Land, when children's programming was executed with care and intelligence and most importantly, love (and also yes, of course, with an eye towards selling Bosco and Cremoland Butter). A pair of nifty extras help make A Shari Lewis Christmas a most welcome holiday surprise.

Shari Lewis, whose artistic parents encouraged her to enter s...Read the entire review

A deliciously camp, waking nightmare, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, a gay and KISS fanatics "holy grail" long-thought lost, has been miraculously unearthed and brought forth in all its gaudy, tacky mid-70s "Big Three" network TV special glory, by S'More Entertainment. And thank Christ they did. Unseen since its single network showing on October 29, 1976, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special's reappearance is a cause for weeping among Paul Lynde fans (and they are legion), the KISS Army (they are "legion" in the biblical sense), and anyone who wants to experience what it was like to be stuck at home on a Friday night in 1976, when there was no way in hell you were going to watch Sanford and Son and Chico and the Man again - not to mention Spencer's Pilots (I told you not to mention that).

Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/34383 Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:09:58 UTC Recommended

"Move it in move it roundmove it in round about, disco lady!"

Hypnotically bizarre, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976) is almost indescribable. A garish tapestry of '70s pop culture iconography, it would be easy to dismiss as an alarming anomaly of bad taste except for the fact that, shocking as it may sound to those too young to remember, it's actually a very typical example of what used to pass for mainstream entertainment. Virtually all seventies variety shows and one-off specials looked pretty much like this one, though few could claim such a beguiling mishmash of incompatible talent.

Paul Lynde (1927-82) was a talented comic actor with a unique snickering persona, best remembered as the father in both the Broadway musical and film of Bye Bye Bi...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/33586 Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:09:33 UTC Recommended

I don't normally review porn, but The Lascivious World of A.C. Stevens & Ed D. Wood, Jr.*, a triple bill of late-'60s to mid-'70s sexploitation, is an unusual case of movies appealing to an unusually outré audience requiring an unusual review. A.C. Stevens was the nom de plume of Stephen C. Apostolof (1928-2005), a Bulgarian-born director of skin flicks, initially quaint nudies in the early-1960s that eventually gave way to hard-core porn before the adult industry abandoned "Pussycat Theatre"-type theatrical distribution and its accompanying raincoat crowd in favor of the burgeoning home video market. Today there exists a small but loyal group of film fans who delight in retro- and proto-porn; the Something Weird label and others have specialized in this highly specialized genre for years. I'm not sure what the appeal is, but surely it's not as erotica. There's a certain camp value to these...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/32345 Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:25:28 UTC Recommended

I've got to hand it to Danny Thomas; he won me over. Never a big fan of the famous stand-up comedian, actor and television producer (he always seemed kind of angry), I watched an episode or two of S'More Entertainment's Make Room for Daddy: Season 6 and immediately put it away. It felt flat and artificial, and quite frankly, it sat in my screener pile until I had to review it. But pulling it out again, and giving it a fresh start, I have to say I really started to like it. The acting was first-rate, particularly the two young performers playing Danny's children; the writing was quite funny, and the guests stars impressive. Even Thomas started to grow on me; I can see why the series ran for as long as it did (11 seasons), and why it's still so well remembered today.

...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/31959 Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:20:19 UTC Recommended

Believe it or not, back in the day (otherwise known as the 80's), there was a time when the major networks treated Saturday morning cartoons the way their primetime lineups are treated today. They would advertise like crazy - particularly in Marvel and DC comic books - in addition to having "preview" shows in primetime to hook the kiddies into waking up early on a day where it wasn't necessary. Sure, there might have been some shows not deserving of my warm 'n fuzzy nostalgic feelings (Turbo Teen, i'm looking at you), but they're justified for the most part. When I selected the Littles - the Complete Unedited Series, I was was hoping that it would live...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/30732 Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:48:34 UTC Rent It

S'Mores Entertainment will release the anonymous little Toy Story-ripoff, The Toys That Rescued Christmas, a tepid CGI animated effort from 2001 that doesn't break any new ground, but which also won't offend the sensibilities of little tots should this DVD find its way into their stockings come Christmas morning. At an abbreviated running time of 24 minutes, it's harmless stuff, hardly worth mentioning other than for the connection to its infinitely superior Disney inspiration, and its obvious holiday appeal.

On Christmas Eve, the toys in an average American household are having a race: the Christmas Eve 500. Participants are an electric train engine, a red RC sports car and Smuckey the sock monkey (I know; it's sounds like a set-up for a dirty joke). As they ra...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/28601 Thu, 14 Jun 2007 08:36:13 UTC Rent It

From S'More Entertainment comes the three-disc box set, Aviation Library: Combat Zone, featuring eleven half-hour long documentaries produced by filmmaker Ferde Grofe, Jr., covering various military subjects such as military warplanes, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, World War II, and military generals (which leads me to question that aviation-emphasized title). While the quality of these documentaries from 1988 and 1989 can be spotty at times, with generally awful transfers here, the information provided is interesting, and there is an old, vintage feel to these docs - a sort of anti-History Channel roughness - that is ultimately quite appealing.

Split up into three sections, Aviation Library: Combat Zone covers Chopper Fury on disc one; The Jet ...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/27240 Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:25:39 UTC Skip It

Watching Television's Funniest Foul Ups is a bit like getting rid of all your old VHS tapes, pulling them out from under the rubble in some back closet and randomly sticking one of the tapes into the VCR, only to discover some obscure program you taped off of a UHF channel back in '85. While there's a certain nostalgia factor in watching this 1991 program featuring material dating back at least to the early-1980s, mostly it makes for an excruciatingly 90 minutes of non-existent laughs. S'more Entertainment has uncovered some marvelous obscurities over the past few years, but this ain't one of 'em.

The bulk of the material consists of three half-hour segments unimaginatively hosted by comedian Kelly Monteith, who sits in a TV control room while introducing clips with the mildest of jokes ("Bambi was so cute on the big screen. Who knew he'd be so much trouble on the little screen?"), tho...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/26955 Sun, 11 Mar 2007 01:59:08 UTC Rent It

The Film:
When you pick up the box for this three-disc documentary set, and read the synopsis on the back, it proclaims, "That's Black Entertainment is a fascinating three-part series that showcases the groundbreaking work of African American talent during the early years of Black cinema." And while that description is fairly accurate, you would be better off replacing the word "fascinating" with something along the lines of "boring" or "poorly executed."

Just as the packaging states, That's Black Entertainment is an examination of blacks in the early days of American film, primarily from the 1920s through to the 1950s. The collection is broken up into three parts -- "Actors," "Comedians," and "Westerns" -- each running just under 60 minutes long. "Actors" focuses largely on Paul Robeson, Spencer Williams, and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. And by the way the whole thing is put to...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/26186 Tue, 23 Jan 2007 07:17:36 UTC Recommended

Until S'more Entertainment took it upon themselves to unearth it for home video release late in 2005, Mister Peepers (1952-55) had been one of the "lost classics" of early American television, a fondly remembered but long inaccessible sitcom that had assumed an almost legendary status among television collectors and nostalgia buffs. Looking at the show's first 26 episodes, it's easy to see why. Back in the earliest days of television, most sitcoms were adaptations of popular radio shows or starred ex-vaudevillians and burlesque types plying tried-and-true routines in the new medium. Popular shows like I Love Lucy set the mold for slapstick stories built around a star performer.

Mister Peepers is much more an antecedent of the MTM-produced sitcoms of th...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/26137 Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:07:30 UTC Recommended

A provocative quote in the Atlantic Monthly stating "You can learn more about America watching one half-hour of Let's Make a Deal than watching [CBS Evening News anchorman] Walter Cronkite for a month" probably was the inspiration for Deal (1978), a feature-length documentary on the iconically '70s game show, where contestants dressed in wild costumes hoping for a chance to trade innocuous items ("from aardvarks to zithers") for valuable merchandise hidden behind three curtains while avoiding "zonks" of worthless junk.*

Directed by E.J. Vaughn and John Schott, in collaboration with cinematographer Robert Young, Deal was described by Film Comment's Amos Vogel as "hilarious, horrifying, apoplectic, bizarre, [it] attempts nothing less t...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/26086 Tue, 16 Jan 2007 06:59:58 UTC Recommended

I love vintage TV, but to be honest, after the second episode of Good Morning, World, I was ready to bail. There was something wrong with it that I just couldn't put my finger on, but frankly, I was too bored to care about figuring it out. But, pressing on, after the fourth or fifth episode, I found myself perking up a little, with the characters starting to grow on me. The sitcom plots, while a tad silly, were aided by some clever lines, as well. While by no means a forgotten classic, Good Morning, World is a good, solid little show that deserved a few more years on TV -- it was canceled after just one season.

Dave Lewis (Joby Baker) and Larry Clarke (Ronnie Schell) are smart, funny morning DJ's for a small AM radio station in the Los Angeles area. Their act con...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/26050 Sat, 13 Jan 2007 09:21:26 UTC Recommended

Television history isn't just the high points and the famous shows. You can't get an accurate view of TV history - and by extension, popular culture - by just watching The Andy Griffith Show and All in the Family episodes over and over again. You need to see all of it. And that's why it's great for TV lovers to see S'More Entertainment bring out a forgotten little show like Lotsa Luck, starring Dom DeLuise. A genuinely funny urban sitcom from 1973, Lotsa Luck didn't catch on with the public during its single season on NBC, and that's a shame, because the scripts and performers were quite funny. Only lasting one season, a show like Lotsa Luck never had a chance to be widely seen in syndication, so after more than 30 years, it probably slipped most peoples' minds. I remember watching the show when it moved mid-season to its new night, right after Sanf...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/19874 Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:29:23 UTC Recommended

S'More Entertainment has a winner in Good Morning World (1967-68), another interesting sitcom saved from oblivion thanks to insatiable consumer demand for TV shows on DVD and satellite/cable TV. Like another S'More/sfm Entertainment title, Lotsa Luck (1973-74), the show was the creation of writers Bill Persky and Sam Denoff (with supervision from Carl Reiner), then fresh off a fruitful stay on The Dick Van Dyke Show and a season into their maiden sitcom after that series had ended, the long-running That Girl. Good Morning World lasted just one season, and though it emulates The Dick Van Dyke Show's formula with mixed results, the series is pleasant and a decent follow-up for fans hungry for something similar.

Indeed, both onscreen and b...Read the entire review

]]> DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/19619 Mon, 09 Jan 2006 14:06:37 UTC Recommended

A funny sitcom undeserving of its almost total obscurity today, Lotsa Luck! had too few episodes to syndicate after its one-season run during the 1973-74 television season. The show was the creation of Carl Reiner, Bill Persky, and Sam Denoff: Reiner, of course, had created The Dick Van Dyke Show a dozen years before, and the writing team of Persky & Denoff eventually wrote many of that program's best episodes and later served as story consultants and producers.

Adapted from a very popular British show called On the Buses (1969-73), the basic set-up is the same though its emphasis is radically shifted. Stanley Belmont (Dom DeLuise) is a bus company employee working in its Lost & Found department. He lives in Brooklyn with his mother, Iris (Kathleen Freeman), his sister, Olive (Beverly Sanders), and her no-good bum of a husband, Arthur (Wynn Irwin).

One might have reas...Read the entire review

]]>