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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 6, No. 42 |
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RON'S VERY DARK XMAS SHOPPING LIST |
 AMERICAN TV'S BEST PRIVATE EYE? SEE BELOW |
DVD Goodies Coming:
Alert Santa Right Now!
of TheColumnists.com
If you know a Dark
Corridors type that you'd like to give a really nice present
to this Christmas, you need do no more than get in line at the
video store and start snapping up the delights coming soon in
the categories of mystery, horror and noir.
In fact, if you're the eager type like me, you won't want to
wait that long. Go right now to either www.amazon.com or www.moviesunlimited.com
and pre-order all the hot items for delivery well before Christmas.
And pay less than you'll pay at the video store, too.
The biggest gem for mystery fans is the DVD boxed set of "The Rockord Files: Season One," which will arrive in the first week of December. You get the first 25 one-hour shows featuring James Garner as woebegone Southern California P.I. Jim Rockford plus all the usual interview goodies with Garner and others. It's a bargain at about $40 in stores, but you'll be able to get significant discounts buying on line. And I guarantee you'll be happy with either Amazon or Movies Unlimited, two reliable outfits I constantly buy from all year long.
In my opinion, "The Rockford Files" is the all-time best private eye show ever on American television. Rockford, who tried as hard as he could to avoid physical encounters with criminals, was a wholly original concept for the detective genre, although I'm willing to concede he was pretty much Garner's Bret Maverick in civvies.
Why not combine your gift of the Rockford set with one that just came out and you can pick up right now: "A Touch of Frost: Seasons 7 and 8"? If your friend prefers British detective shows, you can't do better than the most popular detective show in the U.K. I have all eight seasons of "Frost" and they're a constant source of pleasure as Inspector Jack Frost (David Jason) works very hard to bugger the bureaucracy and solve murders in his own inimitable style.
In the noir category, I highly recommend
picking up any of the more recent boxed sets of classics, like
the one containing perhaps my all-time favorite low-budget noir
movie, "The Narrow Margin," the Richard Fleischer original
from 1952 with Charles McGraw as the detective chaperoning mob
moll Marie Windsor on a train ride back to L.A. to testify against
the gangster crowd.
But here's an offbeat suggestion, also available right now: The
boxed set containing "Profit," the complete 1996 Fox
TV series starring Adrian Pasdar as Jim Profit, a vicious and
sinister corporate executive who learned everything he knows
from watching TV constantly as a child. He still sleeps in the
TV packing crate he slept in as a boy. Wow! This was a marvelously
nasty and satirical show--it really ripped the TV industry--and
perhaps the darkest ever on TV. Naturally, it lasted only four
weeks on the air and all the rave reviews couldn't save it. The
boxed set contains episodes never shown anywhere.
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exercise in noir that didn't go past four weeks on TV. Now you can get the complete series on DVD. |
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If they can make a profit on "Profit" at about $30 for the set, maybe they'll quickly come out with two other short-lived dark shows: ABC's 1987 "Max Headroom" with Matt Frewer and CBS' "EZ Streets," the 1996-97 crime series that was too stylish for the general public, but made critics swoon. Created by Paul Haggis, now very hot after writing last year's Oscar-winning movie "Million Dollar Baby" for Clint Eastwood, it was a brilliantly conceived show that also left many unaired episodes.
For fans of the only decent mystery show on the broadcast networks--UPN's "Veronica Mars," the good news is that the complete first season just came out as a boxed DVD set. Better snap this one up quickly. From the ratings so far, the teen girl detective they're calling today's Nancy Drew may not get a third season.
Finally, "Foyle's War 3," the third season of the wonderful British mystery series starring Michael Kitchen as a police inspector during World War II, comes out Nov. 1. It just finished its run of those episodes on PBS' "Mystery!" This is a great series and you should have all three seasons in your collection.
And, lest I forget, my favorite current U.S. series, Fox's "24," comes out with the boxed complete Season 4 on Nov. 29, just in time for you to catch up before Season 5 gets going in early 2006. This is a show I have watched almost entirely via the DVD boxed sets, which is the best possible way to watch a serial.
Nor can I skip over another major event: The premiere of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season One," including all 39 episodes from the thriller director's original TV series. This is on the shelves right now, so don't let it slip away.
In the horror category, you have several mega-choices. First is the currently available "Val Lewton Collection," which features all nine of producer Lewton's famous fright films of the 1940s. This is an absolute must for anybody who wants to know what horror movies are all about. It has all the RKO classics: "The Cat People," "Curse of the Cat People," "The Seventh Victim," "I Walked With A Zombie," "Isle of the Dead," "The Body Snatcher," "Bedlam," "The Leopard Man" and "The Ghost Ship," which was held up for decades because of legal problems.
The other biggie is "The King Kong Collection," due in late November, just before Peter Jackson's "Kong" remake hits theaters. It includes the first digital remastering and DVD release of the original 1933 "King Kong," along with its sequel, "The Son of Kong" and the 1949 big gorilla movie "Mighty Joe Young." This will run yout about $40 in stores, but you can buy the films separately or get the whole package online at a considerable markdown.
Now available for the first time in its CinemaScope widescreen version is Jack Clayton's sensational "The Innocents," the 1961 version of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," featuring Deborah Kerr as the disturbed governess to a pair of youngsters who are being haunted by ghosts. You can get this one for under $20 and it's well worth every penny. (The Fox Video release also comes with the full screen version on the same disc, if you must have it.)
Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" with Tom Cruise also comes out before Christmas, along with a whole lot of other "War of the Worlds" material, including a remastered version of the 1953 George Pal version and Season One of the 1988-90 TV "War of the Worlds" syndicated TV series.
My final suggestion in the horror category is coming out Oct. 25: "American Gothic: The Complete Series." This is the 1995-96 CBS series starring Gary Cole as the demonic sheriff of a small town in South Carolina called Trinity where ghosts, demons, monsters and you have it seemed to gather regularly. Created by former teenybop music star Shaun Cassidy, this show was masterfully creepy and if you watch very many episodes, you'll soon be hearing that ghostly little girl's voice in your dreams, whispering, "Someone's at the door!" Cassidy has become a specialist in such fare and this season has two spooky shows on the air: ABC's "Invasion" and The WB's "Supernatural." Dive into these episodes and you'll wonder why CBS didn't give "American Gothic" another season or two.
This selection ought to give you lots to
choose from, but you probably ought to drop a line to Santa and
ask him to drop them all down your own chimney Christmas Eve.
You don't want him to run out before he gets to your place.
©2005 by Ron Miller.
This column first posted Oct. 24, 2005.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine
and teaches classes in mystery for the Academy of Lifelong Learning
at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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