W.C. Fields Comedy Collection
W.C. Fields

For anyone who loves classic comedy, the W.C. Fields Comedy Collection is absolutely essential. Film for film, this may be the best DVD showcase ever devoted to a single comedian, including all five of Fields's acknowledged classics in a sturdy, beautifully designed library-quality slipcase. One could easily lament the relative lack of bonus features (it would have been nice to have some vintage Fields radio shows and newsreel footage), but the inclusion of A&E's 1994 Biography documentary W.C. Fields: Behind the Laughter is sufficiently informative about Fields's life, career, irascible personality, and tragic alcoholism. That's all that's really needed when the films themselves are so timelessly entertaining, and they're all remarkably pristine in sound and image quality. The best way to appreciate Fields's evolving screen persona is to view these films in chronological order: In International House (1933), Fields was merely one of many Paramount stars of screen and radio (including Rudy Vallee, Burns & Allen, Bela Lugosi, Sterling Holloway, and manic bandleader Cab Calloway), but he handily steals the show, invading a Shanghai hotel in his airplane/helicopter and delivering the classic line (to Franklin Pangborn), "Don't let the posy fool ya!" It's one of Paramount 's best all-star revues. It's a Gift (1934) is a remake of Fields's 1926 silent It's the Old Army Game, and was the first sound feature devoted to Fields's inimitable talent. As beleaguered husband and would-be orange farmer, Fields revives vintage routines from Vaudeville and Broadway, and his first encounter with Baby LeRoy is comedy gold. You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939) features Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and Fields's classic, still-hilarious ping-pong routine, while 1940's My Little Chickadee matches Fields (as "Guthbert J . Twillie") with Mae West, whose unforgettable on-screen banter with Fields shows no sign of their notorious off-screen animosity. In his raucous masterpiece The Bank Dick (also 1940), Fields is "Egbert Souse," lowly bank guard, unlikely hero, and manic driver in perhaps the greatest slapstick car-chase scene ever filmed. Despite the regrettable absence of Fields's final starring feature Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, this classy five-disc set is a veritable cornucopia of comedy, offering ample proof of Fields's comic genius through classic one-liners, physical routines, memorable costars, and perfect bits of business that never grow old. -- Jeff Shannon


Price: $57.69

The Sherlock Holmes Feature Film Collection
Sherlock Holmes Jeremy Brett

Jeremy Brett is Conan Doyle's famed sleuth in these five feature-length episodes from the British TV series: "The Eligible Bachelor," "The Hound of the Baskervilles," "The Last Vampyre," "The Master Blackmailer" and "The Sign of Four." 9 3/4 hrs. total.


Price: $55.99

The Doris Day Show - Season 1
Doris Day

Doris Day was still a big movie star when she switched gears and hit the sitcom trail in 1968. The Doris Day Show traded on her bright-bulb cheerfulness and effortless audience rapport for its appeal, and in its second and third seasons became a top-20 hit. Day herself was not happy with the premise of the first season, however: a widow and her two young sons move to the country to live with her father. The irony was, the job Day's character was leaving behind--writer for a New York women's magazine--was much more in the vein of her successful movie parts. (One episode has her traveling back to NYC to help on a story, and frankly she looks much happier there.) Instead, the TV series lays on the rural corn, with much humor stemming from the grizzled father (Denver Pyle) and Gomer Pyle-like handyman ( J ames Hampton). Doris 's single status occasionally makes for a storyline, but this was the beginning of the great era of TV widows and widowers, and her loyalty remained with her boys. As a performer, Day retained the spunk and the naturalistic, conversational style she developed in movies, and it must be said that for a woman in her mid-40s she had the figure of a 19-year-old. The DVD set includes some quirky video messages from Doris Day promoting the show in 1968, two entertaining 1950s Day appearances on What's My Line?, and interviews with then-child-actor Philip Brown and J ames Hampton, who would become a regular in the Burt Reynolds stock company. All 28 first-season episodes are here.


Price: $35.99

DORIS DAY SHOW SEASON 4
Doris Day

Plot Synopsis: This light and fluffy sitcom changed formats and producers almost every season. Originally it was about widow Doris Martin and her two young sons who left the big city for the quiet and peace of her family's ranch, which was run by her dad Buck and ranchhand Leroy. Later Doris, Buck and sons Billy and Toby moved to San Francisco , where Doris got a job as a secretary to bumbling magazine publisher Michael Nicholson. In Season Three, the Martin family moved into an apartment above the Paluccis' Italian restaurant, and Doris began writing features for Today's World magazine. Finally, the kids, family, Nicholson, the Paluccis' and all other cast members vanished, and Doris became a single staff writer for Today's World, where her new boss was stentatorial-voiced Cy Bennett.


Price: $35.99

DORIS DAY SHOW SEASON 3
KOPELL, BERNIE

Plot Synopsis: This light and fluffy sitcom changed formats and producers almost every season. Originally it was about widow Doris Martin and her two young sons who left the big city for the quiet and peace of her family's ranch, which was run by her dad Buck and ranchhand Leroy. Later Doris, Buck and sons Billy and Toby moved to San Francisco , where Doris got a job as a secretary to bumbling magazine publisher Michael Nicholson. In Season Three, the Martin family moved into an apartment above the Paluccis' Italian restaurant, and Doris began writing features for Today's World magazine. Finally, the kids, family, Nicholson, the Paluccis' and all other cast members vanished, and Doris became a single staff writer for Today's World, where her new boss was stentatorial-voiced Cy Bennett


Price: $35.99

DORIS DAY SHOW – SEASON 2
Doris, Buck and sons Billy

Plot Synopsis: This light and fluffy sitcom changed formats and producers almost every season. Originally it was about widow Doris Martin and her two young sons who left the big city for the quiet and peace of her family's ranch, which was run by her dad Buck and ranchhand Leroy. Later Doris, Buck and sons Billy and Toby moved to San Francisco , where Doris got a job as a secretary to bumbling magazine publisher Michael Nicholson. In Season Three, the Martin family moved into an apartment above the Paluccis' Italian restaurant, and Doris began writing features for Today's World magazine. Finally, the kids, family, Nicholson, the Paluccis' and all other cast members vanished, and Doris became a single staff writer for Today's World, where her new boss was stentatorial-voiced Cy Bennett


Price: $35.99

BUSBY BERKELEY COLLECTION
BERKELEY, BUSBY

The Busby Berkeley Collection celebrates the work of one of the most visually inventive director-choreographers in the history of film. The centerpiece is of course 42nd Street (1933). This is the quintessential backstage musical in which young Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) goes from wide-eyed chorus girl to leading lady, urged by Warner Baxter, "You're going out there a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" A cast that also includes Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers (when she was an RKO contract player and before she teamed up with Fred Astaire) performs "Shuffle Off to Buffalo , " "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me," and the title tune, in which Keeler tap-dances on a black surface that turns out to be the roof of a car. Berkeley 's numbers are known for their kaleidoscopic patterns, their stark black-and-white contrast, and their sheer sense of spectacle. But more than anything, they're known for their celebration of women. By the dozens, they dance, play pianos, frolic in waterfalls, and, in some of the most overtly sexual numbers, stand spread-eagled in a line as the camera passes through their legs. In many ways, the title song from Dames sums it up best: "What do you go for / to see a show for? / Tell the truth, you go to see those beautiful dames." While Berkeley choreographed and directed the musical sequences in these films, the plot sections were generally directed by others such as Lloyd Bacon. Keeler and Powell were the most frequent headliners, supported by character players such as Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, and Ned Sparks, and most of the songs were contributed by Harry Warren and Al Dubin. The stories aren't much, usually revolving around the putting-together of a musical show as well as the lives and loves of chorus girls. The term "gold diggers," which is the source of the title of two of the films included in this set, refers unflatteringly to chorus girls in search of wealthy husbands. Gold Diggers of 1933 opens with a justly famous shot of Ginger Rogers wearing an outfit of coins and singing "We're in the Money" first in English then in pig Latin. Gold Diggers of 1935 is capped by "The Lullaby of Broadway," a 14-minute story-within-a-story that seems one of the inspirations for Singin' in the Rain's "Broadway Melody." Dames (1934) has the aforementioned title tune as well as "I Only Have Eyes for You" (with Powell singing to dozens of Keeler faces). Footlight Parade changes things up a bit by starring James Cagney as a producer desperately cranking out musical numbers. Keeler and Powell emerge from their bit-character roles to headline two of the big productions stacked together at the end, while Cagney replaces Powell in the third, showing off the vaudeville hoofing skills he would use later in 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy. DVD supplements are generous. The sixth disc is the 163-minute Busby Berkely Disc, a former laserdisc program that collects just the musical numbers from nine films without the plot filler. Most of the numbers are already included in the films in this collection, but there are also one number each from Fashions of 1934, Wonder Bar, In Caliente, and Gold Diggers of 1937. Also on the discs are new and old featurettes (one tracks the development of 42nd Street from book to screen to stage), and vintage cartoons and shorts (one promotional short has Berkeley on-screen talking up Dames). Picture quality is about the same as on the Astaire and Rogers Collection, Vol. 1: good for the age of the material, but with noticeable fuzz and print damage. --David Horiuchi


Price: $38.49

BENNY HILL COMPLETE AND UNADULTERATED 18 DVD BOX SET
BENNY HILL

THIS IS A BRAND NEW SEALED BOX SET OF 18 DVD'S. Each of these sets contains original full-length episodes of the Benny Hill Show, exactly the way they were telecast across the pond. By the time they were shown stateside, the contents had been crudely whittled down to half their length. More often than not the editing had no regard for continuity, meaning that those sketches that happened to run throughout a show, were haphazardly represented. Thankfully, the folks at A&E wisely decided to restore every song, dance and skit for these collections and yes, that even means the oft-rumored never rebroadcast black and white episodes from the late '60s.


Price: $154.99