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DVD W.C. Fields Comedy Collection (The Bank Dick / My Little Chickadee / You Can't Cheat an Honest Man / It's a Gift / International House)
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
Review(s): DVD W.C. Fields Comedy Collection (The Bank Dick / My Little Chickadee / You Can't Cheat an Honest Man / It's a Gift / International House)
This is hilarious . . . and pathetic
Look at us. This is miserable. The reviews of this superb DVD set focus so much on what is NOT available to Fields fans. How frustrating can our small lives be? Maybe we need capital letters to get the message across: UNIVERSAL, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS, NOW, PLEASE, RELEASE THE OTHER FREAKING FILMS ALREADY BEFORE WE THROW OURSELVES INTO THE SEA TO MAKE YOU FEEL AWFUL. Shoot. It still didn't work. I happen to own copies (bootlegs, um, just kidding) of The Old Fashioned Way and Man on the Flying Trapeze. The latter, if you haven't seen it, trust me, is so vintage right down to Grady Sutton it's criminal it's not even on VHS. But I've never even seen "Poppy," "Mississippi" and "Tillie and Gus." Why should this be so hard?
ok, to the review: I don't own the set yet, but I know the films very well. "My Little Chickadee," of course, belongs in print and I guess because of its name recognition belongs in this "greatest hits" package, but even if it is central to the legend, it is far from the best stuff. "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" opens with tremendous momentum and has great, great stuff throughout -- Fields getting a bath from an elephant, his wars with Charlie McCarthy, lovable Mortimer Snerd. A lot of people have it in for Edgar Bergen, it seems, these days, particularly in relation to this film, but I like Charlie McCarthy and while this wouldn't be hidden with my primo stash, I've got no problem with it. "International House" is absolutely hilarious and it's probably only badmouthed because Fields isn't in it all that much, but his bits are really top shelf. This is nice and looney. But for the "greatest hits collection," um, Universal . . . UNIVERSAL, ARE YOU AWAKE!!!! . . . no. Maybe we shouldn't beat on Universal. Maybe we should be very nice to them. Shoot, I've spent a lot of money on their products over the year, can't they do us a favor? Anyway, back to the review: "The Bank Dick" and "It's a Gift" are two of the best darn comedies ever commited to film and texts for so much funny business that followed for years. "It's a Gift" has enormous influence (See, say, "All in the Family"). They are great, great, great. I know this all looks in shorthand, but we all know this stuff if we're reading it. So, in the end, this collection certainly is a buy, but it could have been better.
The best 5: "It's a Gift, The Bank Dick, The Old Fashioned Way, The Man on the Flying Trapeze, (pick your own fifth).
About as good as W.C. Fields can be
If you like W.C. Fields, this collection is a "must have". And the fact that is includes "My Little Chickadee" pairing Mae West with Fields - well Mae West fans will want this collection just for that! The quality is pretty good considering. The acting is awful of course but thats part of the fun in these old comedy classics.
"A thing worth having's worth cheating for!"
This set of Fields flicks is long overdue. While it's wonderful to see "Its a Gift" on DVD, we already had the Criterion issue of "The Bank Dick". "Chicadee" and "Honest Man" are always welcome and "International House" has its moments but I cannot fathom why "The Man On The flying Trapeze", "The Old Fashioned Way", "If I Had A Million", "Tillie and Gus", Never Give a Sucker an even Break", "You're Telling Me, "Million Dollar Legs", "Missisippi" and "Poppy" are withheld year after year from DVD. I love Fatty Arbuckle but shouldn't Fields come first? Does Fields not stand shoulder to shoulder with Chaplin? Does the honesty and human frailty of Harold Bissonette (pronounced Bissone') not rival the brilliance of "The Little Tramp" in "The Gold Rush?" Do we not deserve the opportunity to see all the performances of arguably the funniest man who ever lived?
How do we expect to nurture new generations of great writers and directors when the above mentioned "American Splendors" are witheld from view. How sad that the history of Vaudeville, The Cigar Box Routine and all of these other great hours of comedic brilliance must be seen on homemade VHS copies in the year 2005 while video outlets are shrines to the likes of "Sharkey's Machine".
As my dad so aptly said: "It's not the money, IT'S THE MONEY!" Rise up Fields fans! Buy a dozen copies of this box set so the powers that be will be forced to release the rest of these gems. Think Fast Mr. Motos! Sincerely, Carl LaFong! (Captol L , small A etc.)
Related DVD's W.C. Fields Comedy Collection (The Bank Dick / My Little Chickadee / You Can't Cheat an Honest Man / It's a Gift / International House)
There will be a debate of which 2004 DVD collection of Marx Brothers films was better. This Universal release of the better known Paramount-produced films are the only ones starring all four brothers: Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo. The Warner collection contains less-vital films, but is loaded with extras and commentaries. The Universal collection contains only 20 minutes of interviews from NBC's Today Show--interesting but short--with Harpo, Groucho, and Harpo's son Bill from the '60s and '70s. All of the films in this collection were released on DVD by Image Entertainment in 2000 and the prints look the same, which isn't necessarily bad; one just wishes a major restoration had been undertaken.
The films--packaged handsomely with a booklet--are essential Marx Brothers,... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 09 November 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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When it comes to long-awaited treats like The Marx Brothers Collection, you can never get too much of a good thing. These seven comedies can't compare to the sheer lunacy of the five classics (The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup) that the Marx Bros. made for Paramount between 1929 and 1933 (available in The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection), but when uber-producer Irving Thalberg signed Groucho, Harpo, and Chico to an MGM contract in 1935 (by which time sibling costar Zeppo had become the team's off-screen manager), he knew just how to cure their box-office blues. As a result, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races were critical and commercial hits, lavishly produced... More Info about this DVD Director(s): William A. Seiter - Archie Mayo - Charles Reisner DVD Release Date: Released the 04 May 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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For a knock-out combination of timeless entertainment and vintage studio history, you can't do much better than The Warner Brothers Gangsters Collection. In the 1930s and '40s, Paramount specialized in glossy comedies, MGM popularized lavish musicals, Universal produced signature horror classics, and Fox scored hits with sophisticated dramas. But it was Warner Bros. that generated controversy--if not always box-office profits--with so-called "social problem" films, and that meant gangsters. When viewed in their pre- and post-Prohibition context and in chronological order (Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, 1931; The Petrified Forest, 1936; Angels With Dirty Faces, 1938; The Roaring Twenties, 1939; White Heat, 1949), these six films... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Cagney - Humphrey Bogart - Edward G. Robinson DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Almost as welcome as a shaker full of martinis, The Complete Thin Man Collection represents an eagerly awaited DVD milestone for fans of the fizzy MGM movie series. The best film in the series came first: The Thin Man (1934), W.S. Van Dyke's marvelous adaptation of a Dashiell Hammet novel. The movie gods were in a generous mood when they paired William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, the upper-class sophisticates whose sleuthing escapades somehow joined the classic form of the whodunit with the giddyup of screwball comedy. Among the series' many attributes, one of its most radical notions was the idea that a married couple might find each other delightful and view life as a goofy adventure together.
It is common wisdom that the Thin Man sequels... More Info about this DVD Director(s): W.S. Van Dyke DVD Release Date: Released the 02 August 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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