Review: ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ 35th Anniversary Edition
I had heard about [[[The Rocky Horror Picture Show]]]
John insisted Deb and I had to see the film in our room to appreciate the story and song before we attended a full-fledged screening so we understood when to scream out or throw toast or duck from the rain. I’m glad he insisted because I could see it as a movie before I saw it as a pop culture icon.
I’m therefore delighted to now recommend the 35th anniversary Blu-ray edition of the movie, now out from 20th Century Home Fox Entertainment. First of all, owning it is just cool. The care in restoring and transferring the film to high definition shows in the brilliant look on screen. Yeah, it was shot on the cheap and now the flaws are glaringly obvious, but so are the inventive sets, costumes and dance moves. It’s the best the film has looked since 1975 when the prints were still pristine. The sound is equally luscious so you can sing along with gusto.
It’s certainly fun to join Brad and Janet on that dark and stormy night, revisiting the house of Dr. Frank N. Furter and his oddball servants. The performances are over-the-top and never fail to entertain. Richard O’Brien’s madcap tribute to the science fiction movies of his youth has aged quite nicely.
The film is available in this two-disc set that contains all the existing extra features and then some new ones for the anniversary celebration. You get commentary from O’Brien and Patricia Quinn (Magenta); a track offering you audience participation prompts; a piece on the late night performances that have endured nearly as long as the film itself, plus a trivia game, a story building game, a screen saver, cast and crew bios, and web links. The participation track, Rocky-Oke: Sing It! is great so you can host your own event or prepare for a more public event.
The second disc offers up two deleted songs: “Superheroes” and “Once in a While”, with one of them remastered from the UK so appears in HD while the other is in standard definition. There are also “A Few From the Vault”, outtakes, clips from the VH1 special, a short documentary on the film and its cult following, a misprint ending and an ending featuring “The Time Warp” instead of “Science Fiction Double Feature,” the film’s original trailers, and the VH-1 Pop-Up Video version of “Hot Patootie”. [[[The Midnight Experience]]] offers you multiple options on exploring the cult phenomenon, so you can use the Trivia Track, Vintage Callback track from the 1983 audience Par-tic-i-pation album, a virtual Prop Box to hurl items at the screen using your remote, and The Late Night, Double Feature, Picture-in-Picture.
All told, this is one of those cultural Must Haves and it’s about time we had it looking this good.
There’s a certain grisly reality to CBS’ collection of [[[CSI]]] series that does the procedural part well, but depicts its characters as a particularly colorless bunch, overly serious and making the shows just a tad less engaging. Fox, wisely jumped on the police procedural bandwagon with something similar but certainly livelier.[[[Bones]]], based on Kathy Reichs novels, is a veritable rainbow of character types that has kept things captivating for six seasons now.
[[[Dragon Puncher]]]
For those of you who haven’t read the three-issue comic book miniseries 
, by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, don’t worry. The movie version is to the comic book as [[[Blade Runner]]] was to Philip K. Dick’s novel [[[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]] That is, Red takes the comic book’s basic concept—a retired CIA assassin, Frank Moses, finds himself under attack and comes out of retirement to deal with the problem—and then spins it off in a new direction. In this movie’s case, that direction is a fast, fun film with a fantastic cast, great action, great lines, and more than a little bit of humor.
There’s a lot of violence, of course. But no real gore. No nudity either, and not much profanity. Plus the light tone and the romantic element offsets all the talk about killing and killers. The film’s rated PG-13 and I think that’s fair.
This is a tough book to review given growing up reading the majority of titles covered here in addition to working on staff for twenty years plus continuing to contribute to the company today. It’s also a book I wish I had written. That said, this is a mighty undertaking that is strong and eminently readable. This is a worthwhile 75th anniversary collector’s item and a great way to encapsulate DC Comics’ rich history. By all means, this belongs on your bookshelf.
When Charles Schulz created [[[Peanuts]]] sixty years ago, he never imagined that Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s beagle, would steal the spotlight and overshadow the strip in future years. Much as Snoopy overran the comic strip and merchandising, so did he loom large in many of the animated specials which ran for decades on CBS. Warner Home Entertainment has collected two of those dog-centric specials in the just released[[[He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown]]].
The climb back to not only respectability but creativity was a long painful one for Walt Disney Studios but you could see bits and pieces of improvement throughout the 1980s. [[[The Little Mermaid]]] in 1989 was the first serious indication that the animators found their mojo. As a result, audiences were primed and ready for 1991’s 
. What they didn’t anticipate was just how magical and wonderful the film would be.
While the various animated series featuring the DC Universe heroes have had a loose connectivity, the feature films from Warner Premiere have been fiercely independent with variations in look, vocal cast and attitude. That is, until now. In 
, out today from Warner Home Entertainment, we have the first animated feature to immediately pick up on the events of a previous offering, in this case Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. Of course, it makes sense since they both are drawn from the Superman/Batman ongoing series and comprise the title’s first two story arcs.
