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Bonanza: The Official Second Season, Volume One

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 27th, 2010

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Three-time widower Ben Cartwright (Greene) runs his famous Ponderosa Ranch with the aid of his three grown sons from three different mothers. There’s Little Joe (Landon), Adam (Roberts) and Hoss (Blocker). Set some time in the mid 1800’s, this long-running series followed the family’s many exploits. In the late 1950’s westerns accounted for six of the top ten programs on TV. Only Gunsmoke had a longer run than Bonanza. From 1959 to 1973, Ben Cartwright and his boys rode across the small screen.
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Monte Walsh

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 21st, 2010

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Monte Walsh and Chet Rollins (Lee Marvin and Jack Palance) are two cowboys in an era where their kind is becoming extinct. After a hard winter in the mountains, they discover that most of the ranches they knew have vanished, the land being bought up by Eastern corporations. They find work on the ranch once owned by Jim Davis, though he now answers to accountants back East. And though life, at first, seems all right, bit by bit they witness the end of their era, as a way of life dies, and the men who lived it are pushed to suicide, desperation, robbery and worse.
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Gunsmoke: Season Four, Volume Two

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 20th, 2010

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The setting for Gunsmoke was the by-now-famous Dodge City, circa 1870’s. Phrases like “get out of Dodge” would enter the popular lexicon as a result of this resilient series. Marshall Dillon (Arness) was charged with keeping the peace in Dodge City. The only other character to see the entire 20-year run was kindly Doc Adams (Stone). Star Trek’s own Doc, Leonard McCoy, took many of his traits from Doc Adams. He was the humanitarian of the city, always looking to help someone. Like McCoy
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Lucy Show: Official Third Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 20th, 2010

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This was Lucille Ball’s follow-up to I Love Lucy. Here Ball is a widowed mother of two, sharing her home with best friend Vivian Vance, who is a divorced mother of one. All the other members of household are, of course, faced with the disasters triggered by Lucy. I screened this set immediately after viewing its close contemporary, Petticoat Junction, and the difference between the two was instructive.
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The Andy Griffith Show 50th Anniversary: Best of Mayberry

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 20th, 2010

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Who doesn’t have a soft spot in their heart, if not their DVD collection, for The Andy Griffith Show? The denizens of Mayberry have been with many of us our entire lives. For most of America, The Andy Griffith Show has become the template for any small rural town. The characters stand as prerequisite citizens in any said town. The town drunk, the local barber, the motherly little old lady, and the corner mechanic all look like Otis, Floyd, Aunt Bee, and Goober to most of us now.
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Death of a Snowman

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on December 12th, 2010

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A mysterious figure or organization going by the name of War on Crime is apparently engaged in just that in the streets of Soweto. Known drug dealers are being gunned down. On the case is Lt. Deel (Nigel Davenport). Caught up in the case is newspaperman Chaka (Ken Gampu), who is contacted by War on Crime and given tips as to when the next attack will take place. Deel and Chaka are friends of long standing, but their friendship is challenged by the fact that the police captain now views Chaka as a possible accomplice in the vigilante killings. The question, too, is whether there is more to these killings than meets the eye.
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Have Gun Will Travel: Season Five, Volume One

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on December 6th, 2010

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“’Have gun, will travel’ reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land…”. Those words ended every episode of Have Gun Will Travel, sung by Johnny Western in a time that such words could be sung without irony. Outside of Richard Boone’s black-clad, craggy Rhett Butler gone-to-seed gunfighter, that song was all I could really recall about this venerable Western from television’s golden age.
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The Fugitive: The Fourth and Final Season, Volume One

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 6th, 2010

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“The man is Richard Kimble and, not surprisingly, the man is tired. Tired of looking over his shoulder, the ready lie of the buses and freight trains. Richard Kimble is tired of running…”

The elusive “one-armed man” is one of the best known television icons of all time. The plight of Dr. Richard Kimball has been the subject of numerous imitations and even a feature film staring Harrison Ford as Kimball and Tommy Lee Jones as his pursuer. Tim Daly left the ranks of comedy to fill the shoes of Kimball in a very short-lived revival series.
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White Christmas (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on November 10th, 2010

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Having made it through WWII, fellow soldiers Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are now a song-and-dance team. Kaye is worried about the lack of romance in Crosby’s life, but that problem seems likely to be resolved when sister act Rosemary Clooney and Ver-Ellen show up. These two pairs of entertainers must pool their talents in order to save the inn run by former general Dean Jagger from financial ruin.
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Scooby Doo Where Are You: Season One V.4

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on November 4th, 2010

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Written by Diane Tillis

Jumping Jellybeans! Scooby Doo deserves mention in any article that discusses the best and most-loved animated television series in history.

Scooby Doo has been chronicled in several different media from live-action films, direct-to-DVD films, and the popular 1969 animated series. The earliest material from 1969 – 1970 tends to be the more highly regarded season of the series to date. If you are like me and grew up watching reruns of these episodes on Saturday mornings, the earliest material is also the most loved of the series.
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“31 Days of Terror” Psychomania

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 29th, 2010

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Nicky Henson plays Tom, the leader of a hellraising biker gang known as the Living Dead. His goal is to make that moniker absolutely literal, and it helps that his mother (Beryl Reid) is a medium who has made some sort of Satanic pact, and the butler (George Sanders, in his final role just before his suicide) might well be an infernal power himself (his precise nature is never made clear). At any rate, all it takes to come back from the dead, apparently, is to kill oneself while firmly believing that one will return. Tom proves this formula to be correct, and soon almost all the other gang members follow suit. The one member who might hold out is his girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin). Meanwhile, as the Living Dead embark on a reign of terror, will anyone be able to stop them?
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“31 Nights of Terror” Crucible of Terror

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 24th, 2010

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Former pirate radio DJ Mike Raven plays Victor Clare (a case where the actor has a scarier name than the character he plays), reclusive artist who, one strongly suspects, has the unpleasant House-of-Wax-y propensity to pour molten metal on his models in order to bronze them. A group of characters with varying agendas gather at his Cornwall abode: his senile wife; his sexually ambivalent model; his weak, alcoholic son (Ronald Lacey, a long way from the menacing Nazi he would later play in Raiders of the Lost Ark) and impatient daughter-in-law; a neophyte art dealer and his girlfriend, Millie (Mary Maude). Victor becomes obsessed with Millie, determined make her his artistic muse. Meanwhile, the cast is being gruesomely bumped off one after the other.
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All in the Family – The Complete Seventh Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 11th, 2010

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There were a lot of changes in store for the Bunkers in the seventh season. The Jeffersons, long a source of irritation for Archie and a ton of laughs for us, moved to their own show, on up to the East Side and that big de-luxe apartment in the sky. Mike and Gloria finally move out of the house, but only as far as next door in the vacated Jefferson home. Most importantly, little baby Joey joins the family. New characters would join the show in the seventh season.
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He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown (Deluxe Edition)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 6th, 2010

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I grew up on the Peanuts creations of Charles M. Schulz. Most of us have, in some way or another. His newspaper comic strip is one of the longest running and most successful strips of all time. The work has been translated into every language currently spoken on the planet. The images of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts gang have appeared on just about any kind of product imaginable. Our pop culture contains too many references to the strip to mention briefly
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Patty Duke Show, The: Complete Third Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 30th, 2010

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Despite lasting over a hundred episodes, The Patty Duke Show only lasted about three years from the fall of 1963 until the late spring of 1966. However, it was often penned as one of the best shows of the 1960’s and still finds a way into syndication when networks such as TV Land need a wholesome show to fill a time slot. So, it is little surprise that Shout Factory have decided to release all three seasons of the show to DVD. But how does the final season of this show hold up after all of these years?
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Galaxy of Terror

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on August 16th, 2010

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Reviewing schlock in my tenure here at Upcomingdiscs has reached a level of passion. When I was a much younger pup here, I abhorred the concept. Eventually, as I was fed some of the worst movies on record (and most of them weren’t even romantic comedies), I started to actually enjoy some of these and look forward to writing reviews. Then I got a most gracious gift in my review pile, my first Roger Corman flic. Like a new father, I gave out cigars, asked the doctor for the extra stitch, unwrapped Galaxy of Terror and went straight to work.
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Cinema Pride Collection

Posted in Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 26th, 2010

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As the name suggests, this is a collection of ten movies on LGBT themes. In chronological order, here’s what we have:

The Children’s Hour (1961): Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn are the headmistresses of a girl’s school, and their lives are turned upside down when one ghastly little child accuses them of being romantically involved. It is clear, though, the MacLaine would very much like to be. This was director William Wyler’s second stab at adapting Lilllian Hellman’s play, and this time was able actually to deal with the play’s central issue, rather than disguise it as he had to
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Superfriends!: Season One, Volume 2

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on July 21st, 2010

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The Super Friends as a cartoon show had a long and sketchy past. It started out in the 1970’s and ran in nearly a dozen different incantations and over a hundred episodes until 1986 when it was put down for the last time. The original episodes that ran from 1973 until 1974 were unique, they ran for an hour with commercials and focused on one core story. Eight of them are provided here.

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The Real McCoys – Complete Season 4

Posted in Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on July 20th, 2010

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The Real McCoys was a major TV hit during its run of 1957-1963. Starring three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennen and a pre-Rambo Richard Crenna. Led by Grandpa, the family move from Virginia to California (sound a touch familiar?) and is comprised of brothers and sisters that range in age from their twenties right down to eleven. This series paved the way fir rural comedies, especially the Beverly Hillbillies, proceeding it, and Brennen’s voice set the bar for wiley Southern farmer characters for a generation.
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The Lucy Show: The Official Second Season

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on July 20th, 2010

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This was Lucille Ball’s follow-up to I Love Lucy. Here Ball is a widowed mother of two, sharing her home with best friend Vivian Vance, who is a divorced mother of one. All the other members of household are, of course, faced with the disasters triggered by Lucy. I screened this set immediately after viewing its close contemporary, Petticoat Junction, and the difference between the two was instructive. There are plenty of hokey gags and situations on The Lucy Show, but there is an enormous difference between the shows,
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My Three Sons: Season Two, Vol. 2

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 22nd, 2010

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“The Douglas family is back and ready for seconds in volume two of the second season of My Three Sons. Join America’s favorite pipe-smoking single dad Steve Douglas as he raises sons Mike, Robbie, and Chip with a winning combination of laughter, love and world-class fatherly advice.”

Just to look at it you would think that My 3 Sons was a Disney production. Its star Fred MacMurray had appeared in many Disney films of the 50’s and 60’s and is most likely recognizable from those appearances. Two of the three boys were also known for work with Disney.
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Peanuts: 1970’s Collection, Vol. 2

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 24th, 2010

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I grew up on the Peanuts creations of Charles M. Schulz. Most of us have, in some way or another. His newspaper comic strip is one of the longest-running and most successful strips of all time. The work has been translated into every language currently spoken on the planet. The images of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the rest of the Peanuts gang have appeared on just about any kind of product imaginable. Our pop culture contains too many references to the strip to mention briefly. For me, it was the television specials starting in the mid 1960s that brought the gang into my life
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Marcus Welby, M.D.

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 11th, 2010

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Perry Mason did it for lawyers. Marcus Welby did it for doctors. From 1969 to 1976 and beyond Robert Young was the face of the television doctor. The actor was so identified with his part that he dealt with fans and their medical questions his entire life following his portrayal of Marcus Welby. In those days there wasn’t a medical doctor on the planet, real or fictional, who was more recognizable than Welby. The show pretty much wrote the book on the television medical drama. It doesn’t matter if your a fan of House, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, or any of a hundred other medical dramas that have come and gone since that time
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No Time for Sergeants

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 6th, 2010

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Most people don’t know or remember that Andy Griffith had a career before his television classic reached the airwaves. He had a pretty distinctive stand-up routine going for many years that included recordings like most stand-ups of the day. He had quite a famous bit about a country farm boy seeing his very first football game. It was called “I Think They Call It Football”, and it’s a priceless classic. Andy also found his way into a couple of movies in the days before he became Sheriff Andy Taylor. One of those movies was No Time For Sergeants. It wasn’t a stretch for this country boy
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Saturday Morning Cartoons – 1980s, Volume 1

Posted in Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on May 4th, 2010

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Most of my growing up and living occurred in the 1980’s. From ages five to fifteen, I grew up in an era that was famous to many different types of cartoons. It helped to shape my personality, from bad jokes to that unmistakable sarcasm. So, it was easy to attract me to a cartoon set that showcased odds and ends from that familiar era. Join me as we take a step back in history, a history that hits very close to home.
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