After reading my recent review of White Christmas and my remarks about Bing Crosby's onscreen chemistry with co-star Danny Kaye, my pal Sergei Hasenecz marveled at how Crosby seemed to generate a relaxed camaraderie with just about everybody, from every facet of show business and beyond. I was continually reminded of this watching Bing Crosby - The Television Specials - Volume Two: The Christmas Specials, a two-disc set of five complete holiday shows plus a lot of supplementary material. Bing appears opposite a wide range of guests, from opera singer Mary Costa to rock star David Bowie - and he makes everyone look good.

The shows themselves are a very pleasant surprise. Variety-style specials from the 1960s and '70s tend to be extremely garish and lowbrow, with lame topical humor and labored slapstick sweetened...Read the entire review

"Reason with Grandpa? You sound like you just moved in."

Want you to meet the family,
Known as the Real McCoys.
That's Grandpappy Amos, the head of the clan,
He roars like a lion but he's gentle as a lamb.
And now here's Luke who beams with joy
Since he made Kate Mrs. Luke McCoy.
From West Virginny they came to stay,
In sunny Cali-forn-i-ay!
Oh Grandpappy Amos and the girls and the boys,
Of the family known as the Real McCoys!

Not as strong a season as the opener (which I reviewed three years ago), but still funny and sweet--down home-style. Infinity has released The Real McCoys: Complete Season 4, a four-disc, 39-episode(!) collection from the smash-hit ABC sitcom's 1960-1961 go-around. The originator...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Soul of a People is a recent documentary put together by the Smithsonian Networks as a companion to David A. Taylor's book of the same name. Alongside the book, this film, directed by Andrea Kalin, intends to tell the nearly forgotten story of the Federal Writers Project, a progressive facet of FDR's New Deal. Through the 1930s and the 1940s, the Writers Project sought to chronicle the story of America itself, including the corners of the social map that weren't often spotlighted in other histories. It was an undertaking that would yield great results, but also courted controversy.

FDR inte...Read the entire review

San Francisco's Alcatraz Island has been many things during the past few centuries: a lighthouse area, a military camp, a military prison, a federal prison, a Native American occupation and, most recently, a recreational area and popular tourist attraction. Since its days as a military and federal prison (undoubtedly, the island's most famous "identity"), Alcatraz was known as "the inescapable prison"; in fact, most of the convicts sent there had a history of escape attempts at their prior locations. The prison closed its doors in 1963 due to the high cost of maintaining the facility, as well as the pollution it created in the surrounding San Francisco Bay. One year before its closing, however, something unusual happened: three prisoners fled the prison grounds and made it into the Bay, prompting a ...Read the entire review

Positively therapeutic, dad--one of my favorite vintage TV releases so far this year. From Infinity's Legends of Entertainment series comes Bing Crosby - The Television Specials: Volume One (I like that hopeful tone of "Volume One"), featuring four of Der Bingle's musical specials from the 1950s through 1970. Guest stars include Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, Jack Benny, Louis Armstrong, Edie Adams, Bernadette Peters, Sheree North, Flip Wilson, the Smothers Brothers, and of course, fellow Road traveler, Bob Hope, who cruise along with the Old Groaner to the wild sounds of George Shearing, Paul Smith, Joe Bushkin, Buddy Cole, and the Pete Fountain Quartet, among others. If you were around back when Bing did his annual TV specials (he produced and starred in 30 of them between 1954 and 1977), you'll remember then that they were pretty much "required" viewing back when pare...Read the entire review

In December, Infinity Entertainment Group released the first volume of a new series collecting drive-in features, titled Presenting Roger Corman's...Best of the B*s Collection 1: Hot Bikes, Cool Cars & Bad Babes. Now we have the second volume, Naughty Nurses & Tawdry Teachers, which seems to stretch the library a little thin when it comes to filling out a 7-film set.

Disc 1 - The Student Nurses (1970) / Private Duty Nurses aka Young L.A. Nurses 3 (1971)
Revolution and politics flesh out the first two movies in the collection. In the former, Lynn (Brioni Farrell) meets Victor Charlie (Reni Santoni), the publisher of an underground Spanish newspaper, and devotes her time to helping p...Read the entire review

The Product:
The "Roger Corman Renaissance" continues unabated. Thanks to home video, the obsessive-compulsive nature of the Internet, a growing devotion from geek nation, and a recent honorary Oscar, the producer/director of hundred of schlock epics, the man who famously stated that he never made a movie that didn't make money, is ripe for rediscovery. Granted, he really never went away, decades of cultural irrelevance translating into a true cult of beloved B-movie magic. Now, it what appears to be an ongoing collection of classic Corman trash, we get Infinity Entertainment's seven film overview Best of the Bs. This time around, the motorcycle mayhem of the '50s through '70s is matched by a couple of car lover laments to argue that, when it came to marketing and making dough in a fad gadget gonzo era, the man who gave dozens of soon to be Hollywood superstars their start, new how to...Read the entire review

Over 25 hours of Abbott & Costello hilarity. Infinity Entertainment, under their Legends of Laughter Collection line, has released Legends of Laughter: Abbott & Costello, featuring what I would assume are public domain copies of 14 episodes of the duo's The Colgate Comedy Hour, 17 shows from their radio series, The Abbott & Costello Show, two films (Africa Screams and Jack and the Beanstalk), 20 original movie trailers (including one that was expanded as a WWII recruitment short), a WWII P.S.A., The Autobiography of a Jeep (that features a two-second shot of the team), and a rare blooper reel of fun flubs from the team's movie career. The two key words in that previous sentence are "public domain." I'm guessing most of this material has been made available before, and being public domain copies, video and audio fidelity is taxing, at best ...Read the entire review

The Series:

The Spike Jones Show ran on television from 1954 through 1961 on CBS and gave popular band leader Lindley 'Spike' Jones a chance to entertain America with a combination of freewheeling jazz music, witty dialogue and slapstick comedy. A strange looking lanky man, Jones got his start playing in theatrical orchestras and playing in back up bands, performing on radio shows and records throughout the years until starting his own band in the form of Spike Jones And The City Slickers - made up of Freddie Morgan Doodles Weaver, George Rock, Sir Fredrick Gas and Billy Barty. The band toured and recorded and did radio shows before getting in front of the cameras allowing audiences around the country to appreciate the physical side of their considerable comedic talents.

So what made these guys different? Well, aside from being a group of talented and accomplished musicians, t...Read the entire review

It would have been easier to just listen to Stuart on this one. Infinity, through their Legends of Entertainment line, has released The Jerry Lewis Show Collection, a two-disc gathering of "best of" highlights from Jerry's little-seen 1967-1969 NBC variety series, The Jerry Lewis Show. I write "highlights" because these 13 episodes aren't true, complete episodes from the series, but rather edited clips and selections from Jerry's skits, cobbled together for syndication purposes some time ago (no doubt by Lewis himself, who owns the copyrights to almost all his work). Naturally, this presents a dilemma for the Lewis fan: put up with badly, even ineptly chopped-up highlights to see rare Jerry action you won't find anywhere else, or reject The Jerry Lewis Show Collection outright on th...Read the entire review

Perhaps the best season of the series...even with the departure of co-star George Maharis. Roxbury Entertainment and Infinity have released Route 66: Season Three, Volume Two, a split-season offering (grumble) of the last 15 episodes from the CBS cult-classic's 1962-1963 go-around. George Maharis, the on-again, off-again co-pilot of Martin Milner's sweet, sweet 1963 Chevy Corvette, makes one final, inexplicable appearance here...and then disappears without the slightest explanation, only to be replaced, somewhat awkwardly, by Glenn Corbett's Army Ranger veteran, Lincoln Case (with Tod's now-forgotten one-shot co-pilot, Lee Winters, played by Robert Duvall, in-between Linc and Buz). As with the Season Three, Volume One episodes, the stories in this final wrap-up are as good as they get for the series (including what may be my all-time favorite Route 66 episode), and the ratings c...Read the entire review

"After all, what's left to us but our separateness? And the dignity to bear it?"

A triumphant return to form...and then the same disappointing artistic step backward as in Season Two. Roxbury Entertainment and Infinity have released Route 66: Season Three, Volume One, a split-season offering (grumble) of the first 16 episodes from the CBS cult-classic's 1962-1963 go-around. George Maharis is back as dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-souled Buz Murdock, and everything is everything, baby...until he takes another powder in the last few episodes here, throwing off the rhyme and reason of the series yet again. Most of these Season Three, Volume One stories were as good as they would be for any season in the series, and the ratings certainly were up from the...Read the entire review

The Movie:
I am the father of two boys who have found all manner of creepy crawlies on our large property which backs to a protected greenspace with a stream. When the boys were much younger, and not quite so aware of how ballistic their mother could get when presented with unexpected items, we had several "look what I found" moments involving snakes, slugs, spiders and frogs, as well as a whole host of other creatures that really should have stayed outside. For those of you who might want a slightly more vicarious experience, this fun little compilation of three 25 minute episodes from the Smithsonian Channel's Critter Quest! series offers fun to spare for the kids. The good news is host Peter Schriemer is both knowledgeable and personable enough to keep most adults reasonably entertained as well.

Schriemer delights in leading explorations of various "backyard" environments--whet...Read the entire review

The Movie:

U2: A Rock Crusade is one of the better "unauthorized" music biography DVDs I've seen, though that's not a terribly tough beauty pageant to win. It bests its competition primarily thanks to the copious amounts of archival footage available; unlike other unauthorized music discs that rely heavily on warmed-over recollections of hangers-on and "personal journeys" by singers in sound-alike bands, A Rock Crusade seems to have come from the auspices of a television news organization (perhaps the BBC, based on the narrator's accent) and is able to populate its running time (an admittedly slim 47 minutes) entirely with footage and interviews of the...Read the entire review

The Movie:

From the director of 13 Erotic Ghosts and Curse Of The Komodo comes... Teen Boxer? Really? The same guy who made that horrible softcore lesbian sex film and that bad killer lizard movie also churns out remarkably safe though equally bad family fare? Writer/director Richard Gabai, you are a multifaceted and unpredictable creative force, that much is for sure.

Better known under the title of Kickboxing Academy (the title under which it played a few times on cable) in the nineties, this is basically a horrible, cliché ridden mess of a film. Doubtless, some will find it amusing in its absolute awfulness, but those poor twisted souls will likely be few and far between. The plot, such as it is, concerns a young man who has left his karate school but is called back when they need his mad skills to beat another local karate school of the nasty, vill...Read the entire review

I'll tell you a story,
A real true life story.
A tale of the Western frontier.
The West, it was lawless,
But one man was flawless,
And his is the story you'll hear.

Wyatt Earp! Wyatt Earp!
Brave, courageous, and bold!
Long live his fame, and long life his glory!
And long may his story be told!

Well, he cleaned up the country,
The old Wild West country.
He made law and order prevail.
And none can deny it,
The legend of Wyatt,
Forever will live on the trail.

Wyatt Earp! Wyatt Earp!
Brave, courageous, and bold!
Long live his fame, and long life his glory!
And long may his story be told!

"Make up your mind to something. Being a man is just that simple."

Infinity, SFM Entertainment, an...Read the entire review

"On King! On, you huskies!"

"I arrest you in the name of the Crown!"

"Well, King, this case is closed."

Sony's Classic Media and Infinity have released Sergeant Preston of the Yukon - Complete Season 1, a five-disc, 33-episode collection of the CBS color adventure series that premiered in 1955. Starring Richard "Dick" Simmons as the square-jawed, pencil-thin-mustachioed Royal Canadian Northwest Mounted Police sergeant, with his loyal lead dog, Yukon King, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon is primitive yet enjoyable action fare that should delight nostalgic vintage TV fans and young children alike. Advertised on the back of the slipcase box as "digitally remastered for unparalleled picture and audio quality," I can't say whether or not th...Read the entire review

Author's note: This review is based on viewing an advanced screener disc - not the final shelf product. Subsequently, ratings on the video and audio are not final, nor is there any mention of off-disc extras (such as an episode guide or an informational brochure), nor of the disc's packaging. When and if I receive the final shelf product, I will amend the review.

"...and keep thinking the good thoughts."

Well, at least she never asked anyone what kind of tree they'd like to be. Infinity Entertainment has released Rona Barrett's Hollywood: Nothing But the Truth, a newly gathered compilation of ten vintage celebrity interview clips, hosted by none other than Miss Rona herself (who looks terrific, by the way). Where Miss Rona has been thes...Read the entire review

The Movie:

It sounds like the stuff of pot-fueled paranoia: A guy sells a bong to some stranger -- after an inordinate amount of coaxing from the would-be customer, it must be said -- and winds up arrested by swarms of heavily armed police officers and DEA agents in a pre-dawn raid. But wait -- that's no paranoid delusion! It happened to Tommy Chong, half of the famed stoner-comedy duo Cheech and Chong, and it's chronicled in A/K/A Tommy Chong.

The documentary details the twisted legal odyssey of Chong, whose cannabis-friendly comic routines with "Cheech" Marin in the 1970s and '80s sold millions of records and led to a string of successful movies. A 2003 U.S. Justice Department push against drug paraphernalia manufacturers, dubbed "Operation Pipe Dreams," ensnared a high-profile trophy with Chong Glass/Nice Dreams, a Los Angeles-based water-pipe company largely bankrolled ...Read the entire review