Year:  1963
Genre:  TV series, Lawyer, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The best thing about Perry Mason was Raymond Burr and his (now almost cartoonish) gravitas. But the second best thing I think was the dated and campy way they titled each episode. The Case Of The Nebulous Nephew! The Shifty Shoebox! The Festive Felon and the Devious Delinquent! The Badgered Brother and the Bouncing Boomerang!

     Sometimes though, alliteration doesn’t cut it, and they go with something equally clever and giggle-worthy, like my personal favourite, the Case of the Drowsy Mosquito! The great titles of most of the episodes make the lame titles seem that much sadder. Where was the effort on the Bigamous Spouse, the Floating Stones, or the Deadly Verdict? All of these titles can be seen on Season Seven Volume One of Perry Mason, out August 21^st on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment.

     You’ll also get the episodes The Wednesday Woman, the Accosted Accountant and the Decadent Dean, as well as guest appearances from some reasonably well-known actresses like Pippa Scott and Julie Adams, most famous as the hottie girlfriend in Creature From The Black Lagoon. Other than that, you’ll get Perry Mason solving crimes. And that’s always fun to watch.

     Four of the earliest post-war German movies dealing with World War II are packaged together here in this new release from First Run Features.  The Anti-Nazi box set, however, is more than just a historic curiosity or a collection of films more notable for when and where they were made than for anything else.  No, it’s a collection of four quality movies.  Which are as follows:

  The Murderers Are Among Us (********8/10)

Year:  1946
Genre:  Drama, Romance, War
Country:  Germany
Language:  German w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Ernst Wilhelm Borchert, Hildegard Knef, Arno Paulsen 
Director:  Wolfgang Staudte
Run time:  85 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     The first movie made in post-World War II Germany, The Murderers Are Among Us follows two people trying to rebuild their lives following the war.  Susanne returns home to Berlin after being released from a concentration camp to find a man named Dr. Mertens living in her apartment.  His home has been destroyed by bombs, and neither of them has anywhere else to go.  They find a way to live together, then form a sort of tentative bond, then eventually fall in love.

     They fall in love, I think, because it’s a movie and that’s what people did in movies in 1946.  He loves her because she’s super hot and waits on him hand and foot and tends to his every need.  She loves him because…he broods a lot and drinks to ease his tortured psyche?  No…Susanne falls in love with Dr. Mertens because it’s in the script.  That’s it.

     That’s my one complaint about the film.  But setting the implausible love affair aside, it plays only a small part in an otherwise stark but excellent movie.  The two protagonists aer interesting.  Dr. Mertens has come back from the front where he was a soldier.  Susanne has returned from a concentration camp.  And yet she seems vastly less damaged, mentally, by the war than he is.  She is the one who provides the strength for him to conquer his demons.

     His one, biggest demon, it turns out, is his former army commanding officer Captain Bruckner.  Bruckner ordered the massacre of dozens of people, including women and children, on Christmas Day in 1942 in Poland.  It’s a little simplistic to think that killing Captain Bruckner will exorcise all of Mertens’ demons, but that ends up being his plan when he meets up with Bruckner again by chance.  The captain is now selling pots in Berlin (pots made from what used to be Nazi helmets).

     And that is the best reason to see this movie.  Horrible, inhuman monsters return home to become pot salesmen.  The city of Berlin is a complete ruin.  (The movie was shot in the real ruins of Berlin, which is something incredible to see.)  And the awkwardness between all the people – the two main characters and the secondary ones and the bit players who pass by – is tangible.

     Susanne is played by Hildegard Knef, who has an amazing story herself – she was a POW during the war where she disguised herself as a boy, and after this movie she did the very first nude scene in German movie history.  No nudity in The Murderers Are Among Us though.  Just harsh, brutal reality.

  The Gleiwitz Case (********8/10)

Year:  1961
Genre:  Drama, History, War
Country:  Germany
Language:  German w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Christoph Bayertt, Hannjo Hasse, Georg Leopold
Director:  Gerhard Klein
Run time:  70 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Perhaps the most interesting movie in the box, from a historical perspective.  This is the true story of ”The Gleiwitz Incident“, an attack on a German radio station staged by German soldiers posing as Poles in 1939.  That way, Germany could say they were “attacked” by “Poland”, and respond with force – the invasion that led to the start of the second World War.

     This wonderfully shot black-and-white movie lays out the German plan meticulously in great detail, without becoming stale or feeling like one of those made-forTV re-enactments.  While the outcome of that plan is a foregone conclusion, the politics and personalities that put it into action are fascinating, and this one is a must-see for those who are into the history of World War II.

  I Was Nineteen (*********9/10)

Year:  1968
Genre:  Drama, History, War
Country:  Germany
Language:  German w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Jaecki Schwarz, Vasili Livanov
Director:  Konrad Wolf
Run time:  115 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     A semi-autobiographical movie from director Konrad Wolf, I Was Nineteen is the story of a 19-year-old (obviously) German soldier fighting for the Russian army.  Gregor Hecker fled the Nazi regime with his family, settling in Russia.  Now a lieutenant in the Russian army, he returns to Germany as part of the victorious Russian force, and deals with some craziness. 

      That craziness includes Germans who refuse to surrender, and Germans who do surrender and then turn guns on their own army to help the Russians.  When young Gregor gets on the phone to try to convince a German officer that yes, in fact, the Russians have captured a platoon, that officer thinks he’s a German soldier who is drunk and refuses to allow the platoon to surrender.  Gregor, as the best German speaker in the Russian unit, makes the loudspeaker announcements trying to convince the Germans to surrender.  He is also the one sent in as a translator to the most perilous situations.

     There are angry citizens, happy citizens, and philosophizing Nazis all over the place.  The film does a wonderful job of capturing the chaos surrounding the fall of the Third Reich, from a Russian soldier’s point of view and also from a native German’s point of view.  Gregor, of course, is both.  There is a blind German soldier who believes Gregor to be one of his fellow infantrymen because all he can hear is his voice.  There is a surprise attack from German forces who have stolen Russian army uniforms and a tank.

     It’s chaotic, it’s confusing at times, but that’s appropriate.  I Was Nineteen is the best film in this box set, and one of the great war films I’ve seen from post-war Germany.

  Naked Among Wolves (*********9/10)

Year:  1963
Genre:  Drama, War
Country:  Germany
Language:  German w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Armin Mueller-Stahl, Fred Delmare, Erwin Geschonneck, Krystyn Wojcik 
Director:  Frank Beyer
Run time:  116 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Naked Among Wolves is the only film on this box set with a star most people might recognize.  Armin Mueller-Stahl is a well-known actor thanks to his recent work in Eastern Promises, The Game, The Peacemaker and many other Hollywood movies.  This is one of his earliest films, and it is also the first post-war German film to depict life in a concentration camp.

     Mueller-Stahl plays Hofel, a prisoner at Buchenwald in the closing days of the war.  The prisoners suddenly find themselves with a problem – a young Jewish child has been smuggled into the camp by a Polish prisoner (presumably because NOT smuggling the child into the camp would have ensured death).  Now Hofel and the other prisoners must protect the kid while still working on their own resistance plan.

     The most interesting part of Naked Among Wolves is the dynamic between the prisoners and the guards.  As it becomes increasingly clear that the war is unwinnable for Germany, the prisoners start to become more and more powerful – if the camp is liberated, and the freed men say that one officer in particular was kind to them, that officer might be treated better by his eventual captors.  The prisoners now have the power to threaten their jailers, and it’s a fascinating relationship that develops. 

     It’s another magnificent movie, wonderfully acted and actually funny at times.  Another must see on an excellent box set.

Year:  1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1986
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, Ron Howard, Frances Bavier, Jim Nabors, Danny Thomas
Creator:  Sheldon Leonard
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I have never before seen the Andy Griffith Show.  Of course, it’s one of those iconic shows that is so famous that I knew all about it.  I know that classic whistling theme music.  I know Andy and Opie and Barney Fife and Gomer Pyle and Aunt Bee.  (To be fair, I know Aunt Bee only because of her appearance on Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C.  Yes, I saw Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. before I saw The Andy Griffith Show.)  At any rate, with the release of the 50th Anniversary collection Best of Mayberry, on DVD December 21st from Paramount Home Entertainment, I was excited to finally sit down and see what this show was all about.

     The Andy Griffith Show was off the air ten years before I was born.  It depicts a community, an ethos and warm-apple-pie values that I am not convinced ever actually existed.  That being said, this is one of those shows that makes me feel nostalgic for something that may never have actually taken place, for a place that was never on any map, for a lazy friendly community that was probably impossible no matter what era.  There’s something terrifically familiar about The Andy Griffith Show, even for someone like me who has never seen it before, and who has never experienced this idyllic portrayal of life in the 60s.

     I assume it’s shows like this one that create that sense among older people today that things were just better back in the 50s and 60s.  Remember how back then, women always made apple pie and cooled it on the window sill, boys would be boys, girls would wear pretty dresses and play with dolls, and every father in America would come home after a hard day’s work, kiss his wife, eat his dinner, and dish out wise advice to his children with appropriate gravitas.  I keep hearing people saying that “family values” were better in this era, that people worked harder and were happier and loved their spouse more and blah blah blah.  Watch Andy Griffith for ten minutes, and I can see that people might think that.

     Then again, watch Andy Griffith for thirty minutes, and you might remember that things really were not as idyllic and lovely as they seem through the revisionist lens of a television camera that shows a non-existent world.  At the end of every episode on this DVD, the characters in the show do a quick endorsement for a product of some kind.  Often it’s coffee and breakfast cereal, sometimes other food.  I love seeing this stuff – I think the scripted endorsements actually make me feel more nostalgic for this time than the show itself. 

     And they are more telling than is the show – especially the one for Jell-O cake mixes, which tells me that the little woman is working herself to distraction in the house, what with the laundry and the cleaning and having to cook dinner – how can we make dessert easier on her?  Well, with the easy-bake Jell-O cake mix, of course!  She will be so much happier if we take nine minutes off her prep time for cakes – and then imagine how the counters will sparkle!  She’ll have nine more minutes to clean!

     So these are my first impressions of The Andy Griffith Show.  My second impression is one of Andy Griffith himself.  I’m very familiar with Griffith from Matlock, because I’ve watched that show for year.  I love me my Matlock.  Now, I’ve never seen Andy Griffith interviewed.  But I suspect that maybe, more than any other actor in the world, he is just like the characters he plays.  I really get the sense that if I were to run into this man today, he would invite me into his house just because, and he would stop by a hot dog cart on the way, and he would have a rocking chair and slippers and extra guitars so he can jam with random guests who stop by.  This is what I picture.

     At any rate, this is a DVD set that I just love.  I think this show was one of the best ever, and it still makes me laugh today.  When Don Knotts gets all smarmy and pompous, I giggle.  He wants to be in the town choir even though his singing makes everyone cringe.  Maybe my favourite episode is the one where he gets into a war with Gomer Pyle over traffic tickets and arrests himself.  And the one with his motorcycle and sidecar is hilarious.

     There isn’t a ton of Gomer Pyle on this DVD set, I guess because he didn’t show up until later.  There’s a lot of Opie and a couple of episodes with the Darlings, a backwoods bunch of Bluegrass-playing hicks with a slutty daughter.  The special features are great too – the first episode on the first disc is the episode of the Danny Thomas Show which introduced sheriff Andy Taylor and his family to the world, and the final disc has the TV movie Return To Mayberry, where Andy Griffith, Ron Howard, Don Knotts, Jim Nabors and twelve other cast members reunited to drum up some nostalgia.  And there’s a monster in a lake, a plot straight out of Scooby-Doo.  Well…not everything in the Andy Griffith Show can be a winner, I guess.

Year:  1963-1964
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance
Director:  Maury Thompson, Jack Donohue
Run time:  11 hours, 59 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     It was neat to see the first season of The Lucy Show a while ago.  You know, see what Lucille Ball got up to after I Love Lucy, see her gift for physical comedy hadn’t lost any lustre.  But now, with the second season, I’m tired of it already.  EVERY episode is the same!  Lucy and Vivian plan something, then they fight, then the plan goes awry, then Lucy somehow fixes it or gets busted.  The end.  Season two comes out July 13th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

     There are some moments of real silliness that detract from this season also.  The scene where Lucy dresses up as a clown to save their party-planning scheme, then gets carried away by helium balloons.  It’s awful.  The scene where Lucy locks the bank manager in the vault – after spending the night with him, locked in the vault, just moments before.  Or the scene where Vivian and Lucy compete to see whose death can last longer on stage during a production of Antony And Cleopatra.  This show was always contrived, and usually bad, but for one season it was worth it to watch Lucille Ball, one of the greats.  It’s not worth it any more.

“Oh…Lucy!”

Year:  1962-1963
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance
Director:  Maury Thompson, Jack Donohue
Run time:  12 hours, 53 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Lucille Ball followed up I Love Lucy with The Lucy Show, a distinctly different sit-com that saw her co-starring with Vivian Vance as room-mates living with two small children. The show is different from I Love Lucy mainly in that it isn’t as good.  The Lucy Show, for some reason, has about 20 or 30 episodes floating out there in the public domain, which means they are available on extremely cheap, extremely half-assed DVDs if you know where to look.  I purchased about six episodes thrown together on a bargain-basement DVD packaged with cardboard and scotch tape at Wal-Mart about three years ago for 46 cents or so.  It sucked and the sound was terrible.

     I still like The Lucy Show. And Lucille Ball is still as charming and funny as ever. But The Lucy Show relies less on her crazy ideas and silliness than it does on having her get into awkward situations and then make them worse. For example, in one episode, Lucy decides to referee the kids’ football game. Of course she screws it up, and the teams have to forfeit the game, so they can’t go to the NFL game that week. Lucy decides she can fix the mess, but a freak snowstorm makes things worse, and worse, and worse, until everyone is extremely uncomfortable.

     Or, she gets a job as a volunteer firefighter and – surprise surprise oh the irony – sets the station on…fire!  Or, she somehow manages to get six different men to show up at her house all at once to take her and Vivian out on dates.  Come to think of it…isn’t it odd when the two stars of a show go by the same first names as the actors who play those characters?  I get it with Lucy, but…anyway.  Then there is the episode where she and Vivian attempt to install a television antenna themselves, which amazingly results in disaster…well, you get the point.

     It’s a formula that would be followed by Ellen DeGeneres and a ton of others, but Lucille Ball was always the best of them.  Now The Lucy Show comes to DVD officially for the first time with the release of Season One on July 21st by Paramount Home Entertainment. It’s good, but it’s no I Love Lucy.  Thankfully, with this real, official release, the sound and picture quality are good, there is a high standard of production that is maintained, and you are far better picking this up than you are going piecemeal style through the Wal-Mart rejects bin.  If that sounds like faint praise, it…probably is.

Year:  1963
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  David Janssen, Barry Morse
Creator:  Roy Huggins
Run time:  12 hours 51 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
DVD extras:  Not much of anything
Related reviews:  The Fugitive Season Three Volume One, The Fugitive Season Two Volume One, The Fugitive Season Two Volume Two

     I have requested a few TV DVDs from Paramount, because I know very little about TV before I was born. I could name actors, directors, screenwriters and cinematographers on movies from before when my father was born, but as far as TV goes, I barely know a single thing before 1995. So when Doc talks about the TV shows of his youth, I am usually in the dark. So to that end, I ordered The Love Boat Season One Volume One and The Fugitive Season One Volume Two. Now, I have yet to get to The Love Boat, mostly because Doc has told me how terrible it was and I need to steel myself for the viewing experience. Or, break it out some night when a bunch of us have beer in us and are in the mood for something truly awful. But I watched the first episode of The Fugitive, and I was hooked. Each episode of this old 60s TV show is like a mini – B-film noir from the same era. And I love the B-movie film noir of the 60s. Not only that, but the acting and the stories are actually good!

     David Janssen stars as The Fugitive, a role we now associate almost exclusively with Harrison Ford. Janssen was, like Harrison Ford I guess, handsome in his time. I figured that out because in several episodes, women fall for his charms without hearing him speak. And Janssen barely speaks in any of these episodes. He’s like the Clint Eastwood western prototype hero, the one whose actions speak louder than his words and who needs very little dialogue to make himself understood. Of course, he also likes to keep a low profile, so it’s understandable that he would speak little, in order to not be noticed. Of course, he is on the run from the law because he is convicted of murder, a crime for which he is not guilty. We all know about the one-armed man who killed his wife, and the subsequent escape during a train derailment. Mostly, again, because of the Harrison Ford movie. Janssen was a serviceable actor, and the guests on each episode are quite good as well.

     Some major stars appear here, including (I am positive it’s him, although he was unbilled and I can’t find anything about it on Google) Jason Robards, who later did a wonderful star turn in the brilliant film Once Upon A Time In The West, and then received three Oscar nominations. (Winning for his supporting role in All The President’s Men.) So the basic premise of the show is that Richard Kimble wanders around the land, staying one step ahead of the law, helping people and getting into adventures. Like Kane in Kung-Fu. Or like MacGyver. Or the A-Team. Or any number of other shows about peripatetic drifters who are somehow just better than other men. However, The Fugitive stands apart from all these other shows on the strength of it’s writing. Every show is different. They don’t all involve damsels in distress, often the guy you think is innocent turns out to be guilty, and the outcome is not always satisfactory. Unlike Kane, there are guys who may well be able to beat Kimble up. Unlike MacGyver, Kimble will use a gun when he has to. Unlike the A-Team, when guns fire bullets, they often hit people. Some of the episodes of The Fugitive are throw-away episodes, like bad Roy Rogers moments, but most of them are excellent.

     Only now, after a long and painful run of sit-coms and Melrose Places and A-Teams, are shows actually becoming dark and well-written again. Thanks to The Sopranos, we now get shows like Dexter and The Wire and Californication, all of which are smart and interesting and, definitely, dark. Apparently those shows existed before, and one of them was The Fugitive.