"This is the most danger-packed show on television. Every jump, every aerial maneuver is real, photographed just as it happened, without tricks or illusion. All that stands between a jumper and death...is his ripcord."

"This is skydiving: controlled flight without wings. Even for experts, the most dangerous game going. This jump, like every jump you will see on this series, is being made by a highly trained man who is playing the game for the highest stakes that there are: his own life. He has one and only one safety device at his command: his parachute and its ripcord."

Last-stage Ziv "armpit slick," cleaned up for the kids by Ivan Tors. TGG and M-G-M have released Ripcord: Complete Season 1, a boxed 2-volume, 5-disc, 38-episode collection of the Ziv-United Artists syndicated actioner's 1961-1962 season. Starring Larry "Dash Riprock" Pennell and Ken "Fe...Read the entire review

THE SERIES:
It's always been a shame that, when they are compared outright, The Twilight Zone gets so much of the smothering praise and The Outer Limits is usually left holding the rotting raspberries. Granted, Rod Serling's brilliant and sometimes breathtaking television show offered more than its fair share of startling ideas and engaging writing. Limits was almost always classified as clever junk, reducing its obvious special qualities into something resembling juvenile pulp comics. It was also referred to as the "Monster of the Week" show, since there was a reliance on aliens, robots, demons, and beasts as the means of crafting fear and dread. Zone loved to flaunt its "psychological" terrors and fright, hoping you'd be inspired to think as well as shrink in your seat. But pound for pound, The Outer Limits really outdid Serling's showcase in the true sci...Read the entire review

Content:
From creator Bryan Fuller, the creative mind behind shows with huge potential and originality like Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls, comes yet another unique show, Dead Like Me. The connection all of these shows had outside of Bryan Fuller, is the fact that all of them were cancelled way before their time, never really given the chance to find their audience. Airing on the Showtime network, Dead Like Me was cancelled after only a short 2 seasons and 29 episodes. Luckily (or unluckily after having seen it) the series was shortly revived with the film, Dead Like Me: Life After Death. Is the series worth checking out?

Dead Like Me revolves around the dead-end life of Georgia "George" Lass (Played by Ellen Muth.) George is a cynical, semi depressed, angst filled teenager whose life is quickly going nowhere. She's recently dropped out of school, she l...Read the entire review

THE FILM:
Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird...it's a plane...it's a superhero struggling for his cinematic identity. Indeed, while Marvel has made mincemeat out of its action man competition, more or less owning the comic book genre for the last decade or more, DC and its resident alien superstar have been revamped, reinvented, and rejected over and over again. Richard Donner and his interpretation of Kal-El/Clark Kent may have heralded the dawn of the four panel film, but the original caped crusader has seen his stock plummet, destroyed by bad conceptualizing, weak interpretation, and Bryan Singer (just joking). The truth is, Superman has no real post-modern meaning. He's not a tortured soul ala Batman, a preyed upon minority like the X-Men, or a kid going through some highly unusual growing pains ala Peter Parker. No, he's an extraterrestrial noble who brings nothing really new to the ideal...Read the entire review

THE FILM:
When DVD first hit the marketplace, it was seen as a home video savior by many in the industry. Not only did it require film fans to "re-purchase" their old favorites, earning companies millions for more or less selling fans the same thing, but it actually had the opportunity to increase revenues by breaking out a series of now meaningless tags - "Special Edition," "Collector's Edition," "Anniversary Edition" - which added little to the product but a lot to the bottom line. As with most such fatted calves, the business called show was bound to kill and cook it before it realized what it had done. Sure enough, DVD is on the outs, Blu-ray is struggling, and smartphones and streaming seem to be the way most people want to digest their pleasing popcorn entertainment.

Of course, this means there's a lot of homeless titles out there, movies whose sell-through dates are older than the l...Read the entire review

"Back when the west was very young,
There lived a man named Masterson.
He wore a cane and derby hat,
They called him Bat - Bat Masterson."

Slightly above average by late-‘50s TV Western standards, Bat Masterson (1958-61), a Ziv/United Artists show produced for NBC and starring Gene Barry, breaks away just a bit from the usual Western, though not really enough to interest non-genre fans.

The series arrived during the peak of Western shows on television, when in 1959 a whopping 26 series aired during prime time. Of those really only two stand out: Gunsmoke (then in its moody, half-hour black-and-white era) and Have Gun - Will Travel. Other shows like Wagon Train and Bonanza were equally or more popular but they were much less interesting or innovative. Wanted: Dead or Alive and Maverick were great vehicles for their rising...Read the entire review

"Whenever the laws of any state are broken, a duly authorized organization swings into action. It may be called the State Police, State Troopers, Militia, the Rangers... or the Highway Patrol. These are the stories of the men whose training, skill and courage have enforced and preserved our state laws." - Highway Patrol's opening narration

As it often does, Wikipedia gets it wrong: The television series "Highway Patrol was created … in response to [the] California Highway Patrol (CHP) wanting to be featured in a TV series." No, it wasn't. Highway Patrol (1955-59) was created in response to the huge success of Jack Webb's Dragnet (1951-59), a Top 3 show boasting at one point an incredible 53.2 share of the viewing audience, ratings almost unthinkable in today's market. It was inevitable that an aspiring television producer would come up with something similar. ...Read the entire review

Everybody knows in a second life
We all come back sooner or later
As anything from a pussycat
To a man eating all-i-gator
Well you all may think my story
Is more fiction than it's fact
But believe it or not my mother dear
Decided she'd come back...

As a car...
She's my very own guiding star
A 1928 Porter
That's my mother dear
'Cause she helps me through
Everything I do
And I'm so glad she's near.

The Show:

Though it only lasted a single season, My Mother the Car has gained areputation for being one of the worst shows to ever air on American TV.It has been the punch line for jokes about bad TV for decades but nowTGG Direct has released the entire run of this infamous series and...it's actually not that bad. There have certainly been much worse showsand when...Read the entire review