Knight at HOME at the Movies
Boxed Sets Courtesy of Santa
This week's DVD picks are three of the flurry of boxed sets that arrived in December and sat patiently waiting under the Christmas
tree for yours truly to pick them up, toss them in the suitcase and head home for the holidays with them in tow. I saved these three
in particular because I really wanted to savor each set. Boy, were these three worth waiting for!
Mission Impossible was surely one of the most clever and deeply entertaining shows that
ever graced the idiot box. And each week, watching the Impossible Mission Force go
about the business of bringing down a foreign dictator or sneaking secret plans or a
kidnapped agent behind the Iron Curtain, the suspense was palpable. This was really the
film noir of TV shows – though the characters were clearly devoted to one another
(especially Martin Landau and Barbara Bain as the man of a thousand faces and voices
Rollin Hand and the bewitching model and actress Cinnamon Carter) – none of the
principals wasted time on personal interaction.
These folks had a job to do and usually in a short period of time. The show’s clever
prologue never changed: after seeing a lightning fast montage of the show to come (to
Lalo Schifrin’s iconic, Latin flavored theme music – one of TV’s all time greats), Dan Riggs
(“Law & Order’s” Steven Hill in Season One) or Jim Phelps (Peter Graves in all subsequent
seasons) had some coded dialogue with his contact and would then go into a private area
and turn on the long playing record or tiny tape recorder in which the mysterious male
Voice relayed that week’s mission. The tape or record would self destruct and then we’d
see Riggs or Phelps in his groovy bachelor pad assembling his team. Then after a quick
meeting, action!
Paramount Home Video has FINALLY released Mission Impossible: The Complete
First Season which has 28 episodes spread out over 7 discs. Though the set doesn’t
include any bonus material – and not even the original air dates of the episodes – this is
a MUST HAVE for even cursory fans of this spy series. Simply put, these cunningly written,
beautifully paced, and terrifically fun shows are like a bag of Lay’s potato chips. Once I
started with a disc I simply had to watch each and every episode. Something about the
theatrics of each outing with the IMF crew just sends me into TV nirvana. And all the crew
are here (except Graves' Phelps who showed up in season two). Aside from Landau and
Bain, we have Greg Morris as the tech expert Barney, muscle man Peter Lupus as Willy
(Lupus, as many readers will recall, went on to do the first full frontal layout for Playgirl –
yes there is a God), and several guest stars who play the required expert for that
particular mission. The episodes look remastered and cleaned up from their earlier VHS
counterparts (thanks Paramount) and needless to say, I eagerly await further additions to
the series!
Next up we have the whopping 12-disc Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection from
20th Century Fox. This set collects the screen adaptations of the songwriting team’s
biggest hits, spanning the decade from 1955’s Oklahoma to 1965’s The Sound of Music.
Those two, and both the 1945 and 1962 versions of State Fair were released last year in
spectacular, 2-disc remastered editions. In addition to these are the Fox’s new special
editions of 1956’s Carousel and The King & I, and 1958’s South Pacific. Each of these also
gets the 2-disc treatment. For fans of the classic musical, this set will keep you humming
for months.
Carousel, the re-teaming of Oklahoma’s Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae, is probably the
special edition I’d most been anticipating and the wait has been worth it. In addition to a
slew of making of featurettes, both new and vintage, Fox has included the 1934 version
of Lillom that the musical was based on. I’m also happy to report that the movie has
never looked better – the film’s dingy cinematography, perhaps due to its New England
setting, seems finally to have recovered from the murky depths that has plagued every
print I’ve seen of the film. The sound is better, too.
Work has also been done on South Pacific though nothing can be done about those
colored filters director Joshua Logan decided to use. Though the perky musical with
heartthrob John Kerr and a bevy of hunky sailors is certainly pleasing, Mitzi Gaynor in the
leading role is just a tad too peppy for my tastes. I much prefer the demure heroine of
The King & I (expertly played and sung by Deborah Kerr – and thrilling when she stands up
to Yul Brynner). This new version marks the film’s 50th anniversary and to mark it, Fox
gives us the expected bonuses. Many of these – for all the films – include excerpts from
the Broadway and TV versions of the shows. There’s also a nice illustrated booklet to help
one navigate their way through the set. Highly recommended.
Finally, 20th Century Fox is also giving us the 4-disc Charlie Chan Collection,
Volume 2. This, naturally, is a follow-up to their terrific Volume 1 set. That set
introduced us to the shrewd, gracious and methodical detective played to perfection by
Warner Oland. In the first films we found Chan visiting exotic locations (London-Paris-
Egypt-Shanghai) and being drawn into a murder case. Here we have him at the circus, at
the race track, at the opera, and at the Olympics (the four films – one per disc and most
clocking in at around 80 minutes – were released between 1936 and 1937).
Fox has taken the time to restore the films (yeah) and a nice little featurette has been
added to each disc. Though the Chan series ran afoul because some have thought the
character plays into racial stereotypes, the evidence, as these and other films in the
series testify, proves otherwise. Though Chan is often dismissed by the “superior” white
characters, Oland (who wasn’t Chinese), with the merest flicker of his eyes lets the
audience know that he is nobody's fool. Aside from being fun little mysteries, these
movies are a fascinating artifact of the time in which they were made. Classic movie fans
will be happy to hear that a third volume is planned.
