Nagy, Ivan

CHiPs - The Complete First Season

Where the rubber meets the road and the bad guys meet the badge -- that's where you'll find California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers Jon (Larry Wilcox) and Ponch (Erik Estrada). Set in the sun-drenched sprawl of Los Angeles CHiPs combines action heroics and fun in 22 Season One episodes whose event-packed storylines range from freeway gridlock (let's use a circus elephant to tow that broken-axled truck!) to wild roadway pursuits (who's that beautiful woman lead-footing a Rolls Royce?) from spilled onions (crying time fellas) to pure venom (an overturned van loaded with...sssnakes!). Attention all units: Report now for arresting entertainment!Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 053939778526 Manufacturer No: T7785

Country boy Larry Wilcox got first billing, but Erik Estrada was the breakaway star of CHiPs, the popular late 1970s show about California highway patrolmen. With his blindingly white teeth, tight shirts, tighter pants, and exquisite '70s hair (which always emerged from under his helmet perfectly coifed), Estrada transformed his struggling career of playing hoodlums into becoming one of television's first Latino heroes--Frank "Ponch" Poncharello--and a skyrocketing sex symbol as well. CHiPs is basically Adam-12 on motorcycles. Ponch may have been a hothead, but there's not a hint that these cops are anything but perfectly upright and earnest in their duties--a far cry from The Shield or The Wire! Ponch and Jon Baker (Wilcox) cruise all over the southern California freeway system, grappling with car thieves, clearing away overturned trucks, and pulling beautiful girls out of car accidents. Every episode has at least one high-speed chase and just about every episode features Ponch hitting on a woman with gloriously feathered hair; watching episode after episode may feel a bit repetitive, but there's no denying that the stories are efficiently laid out and crisply executed. Foiling crime and rescuing lost dogs was the show's meat and potatoes, but the dessert was preposterousness like Ponch competing with a squad of middle-aged housewives on a game show or chasing after spilled chickens. The extras on CHiPs: The Complete First Season are meager, but many episodes feature introductions by Estrada, who's gained some weight but lost none of his cocksure charm. --Bret Fetzer

Starsky & Hutch - The Complete First Season

In the rough-and-tumble, wildly entertaining world of Starsky & Hutch, impatient cops--anxious to join a foot race in pursuit of a villain--throw themselves out of moving vehicles and roll to a bruising stop. Undercover detectives Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Ken "Hutch" Hutchinson (David Soul), hardly imbued with the powers of Spider-Man, routinely scale walls, hop from rooftop to rooftop, and fling themselves down steep hillsides to stop bad guys from doing what bad guys do.

Two years before Hill Street Blues redefined the cop genre as a mesh of overlapping storylines and workaday frustrations, Aaron Spelling's Starsky & Hutch capped a five-year run (1975-1979) portraying LA's finest as madly heroic creatures of reckless determination and physicality. The Complete First Season reminds us how startlingly brutal this primetime series could be while maintaining a delightful, often incongruous, self-deprecating humor.

From the series pilot on, partners and best pals Starsky and Hutch work a fine line between predator and prey, relentlessly pursuing suspects while also snared by crime chieftains or short-sighted superiors. In "The Fix," Hutch's secret romance with the former girlfriend of a mafia boss (Robert Loggia) results in the lawman's kidnapping and forced addiction to heroin. Similarly, in "A Coffin for Starsky," a mad chemist injects the wisecracking cop with a slow-acting but lethal poison. "Jo-Jo," written by Michael Mann, finds our guys at loggerheads with federal officers over a dumb deal the G-Men make with a serial rapist.

The 23 episodes in this set are all fun, if sometimes shocking, viewing. Expect each character to take as much abuse as he dishes out. Still, the comic sight of Starsky and Hutch (in "Death Notice") trying to conduct business amidst busy strippers is well worth the surrounding violence. --Tom Keogh

Produced by Aaron Spelling, "Starsky & Hutch" roared onto small screens in 1975 to become one of the most popular, iconic series of the decade. This was TV's coolest buddy cop show, fueled by full-throttle car chases, offbeat humor, colorful characters and a hip vibe. Now the first season of this landmark show is available on DVD for the first time in an action-packed 5-disc set!

Starsky & Hutch - The Complete Fourth Season

STARKSY & HUTCH produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg was one of TV's best cop shows and the 1978-1979 final season was a fitting farewell. Stars David Soul (now sporting a sexy '70s mustache) and Paul Michael Glaser showed more range than ever with plot twists that dramatically put them at odds with Huggy Bear in a three-part episode or had the detectives hilariously posing as disco dancers hillbillies and hairdressers in other episodes. Besides recurring fan favorites Huggy and Captain Dobey an amazing array of guest stars including Kim Cattrall (TV's "Sex and the City") and Jeffrey Tambor (TV's "Arrested Development") played memorable roles. With colorful bad guys explosive gunplay big laughs and plenty of burning rubber the fourth season of STARSKY & HUTCH is the action-packed finale to this television classic.System Requirements:Running Time: 1080 MinutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 043396162938 Manufacturer No: 16293

Brilliant But Cancelled - Crime Dramas (Delvecchio/ Gideon Oliver/ Johnny Staccato/ Touching Evil)

See the shows that were cancelled before their time with four gripping crime drama episodes in the Brilliant But Cancelled(r) collection. From the producers who would go on to make the television sensations Hill Street Blues Columbo and Law & Order come these intelligent series that span over forty years of television.System Requirements:Running Time 209 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: UNRATED UPC: 025193031228 Manufacturer No: 30312

On Universal's Brilliant But Cancelled: Crime Dramas, whodunit fans get a chance to relive classic episodes of four critically acclaimed but short-lived series: Johnny Staccato, Delvecchio, Gideon Oliver, and Touching Evil. Spanning decades of television, the DVD's highlight is Johnny Staccato. Starring John Cassavetes in the title role, the episode (ca. 1959) stands up surprisingly well in modern times. Cassavetes is so suave and cool that no one would doubt his ability to play a jazz musician who happens to solve crimes at night. Each of the episodes has its own merits--Judd Hirsch is appropriately intense in Steven Bochco's Delvecchio, Louis Gossett Jr. is charmingly brilliant as an anthropology professor/sleuth in Gideon Oliver, and the elite crime fighters in Touching Evil could give anyone on Law & Order a run for their money. But the problem with this concept is that aside from the crime-solving element, the shows don't flow well from one to the next and ultimately leaves the viewer wanting to see more than just one episode from each show. --Jae-Ha Kim

Starsky & Hutch - The Complete Second Season

Starsky & Hutch: The Complete Second Season proves the 1970s ABC series, in its sophomore year, both codified its earliest strengths while continuing to evolve into a sharper, wittier, and often darker show. Contributing to those improvements were the stars themselves: David Soul (who plays maverick police detective, intellectual, and health nut Ken Hutchinson) and Paul Michael Glaser (as Hutch's more impulsive, junk-food-junkie partner Dave Starsky), each of whom directed exemplary episodes in season 2. Series creators also struck a more entertaining balance between the comic and dramatic possibilities inherent in Starsky and Hutch's bluntly honest, fraternal relationship. A number of stories placed the guys in intentionally funny undercover situations: as garish gamblers in the two-part opener "The Las Vegas Strangler;" entertainment directors (named Hack and Zack) on a luxury cruise ship in "Murder at Sea;" gigolo-like dance aficionados in the playfully-titled "Tap Dancing Her Way Right Back into Your Hearts;" and, most amusingly, stunt men in "Murder on Stage 17."

Those are all good shows, and the duo often bicker within them, to great comic effect, like an old married couple. (Soul and Glaser's commitment to their schtick as well as their more emotionally raw collaborations is truly admirable.) But it's the relentlessly tougher episodes that prove each character's mettle and demonstrates the depth of Starsky and Hutch's mutual trust. Among these is the powerful "Gillian," in which Starsky discovers Hutch's classy new girlfriend is a prostitute and breaks the news to his shattered friend. Somewhat lighter but just as revealing is "Little Girl Lost," starring a young Kristy McNichol as an orphaned street urchin whom Hutch, lately in a misanthropic, anti-Christmas mood, takes into his home. Glaser's directorial debut, the harrowing "Bloodbath," gives Soul a lot of room for an intensely physical and psychological performance as Hutch scurries to find his kidnapped partner. Soul returns the favor with "Survival," in which Starsky desperately seeks his missing pal, trapped and slowly dying beneath a car wreck. All in all, a very good season, with (of course) Antonio Fargas still sharp as sidekick Huggy Bear. --Tom Keogh

Starsky & Hutch - The Complete Third Season

Starsky & Hutch, starring Pail Michael Glaser and David Soul, is the epitome of the hip, 70s buddy cop show. Season Three reacted to criticism about the hit series boundary-pushing violence by pumping up the serious drama. The 1977-1978 season tackled socially relevant themes like child abuse, homosexuality and mental illness mixing "issues" with tire-squealing car chases, gunplay and colorful recurring characters like jive-talking Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas) and quick-tempered Captain Dobey (Bernie Hamilton). A dazzling array of guest stars including Danny DeVito, Melanie Griffith, Suzanne Somers, Joan Collins and Philip Michael Thomas (TV's "Miami Vice") shared screen time with the two handsome cops, who directed some Season Three episodes. The show's outrageous style and tongue-in-cheek humor, now played alongside more serious story lines, made STARSKY & HUTCH one of the most popular and innovative cop shows ever.

Ignite

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