Hope you've been saving those pennies, kids, because there's tons o' good stuff on DVD today. There is, for instance, D.A. Pennebaker's amazing documentary Don't Look Back, released in '67 but shot in '65, capturing Bob Dylan at precisely the moment he achieved greatness. Absolutely essential, even though it's been given an unnecessarily expensive box set packaging.
For pure weirdeness, you can't do better than Terry Gilliam's Tideland or Jess Franco's Dracula. Franco's picture alternates between utter amateurism and trippy genius, but with Christopher Lee in the title role, Herbert Lom as Van Helsing and Klaus Kinski as Renfield, can you go wrong? Of course not.
Somewhat more staid pleasures await you with Season Three of The Rockford Files. This is one of the most consistent shows in TV history; even the lesser episodes were pretty good, and most remain endlessly rewatchable. Sure, it's James Garner's show all the way, but also enjoy the fine supporting cast, particularly Joe Santos and Gretchen Corbett, and notice how the writers took the time to write strong scenes for these so-called minor characters. This was the season in which David Chase joined the writing staff, and the tone of his episodes tends to be noticeably darker. One of the best shows in TV history, uncut and non-time compressed--a bargain at any price.
Still, the DVD release I'm most excited about is Sergio Corbucci's goofy 1981 superhero send-up Super Fuzz, starring Terence Hill as a cop who gains super powers when he's caught in a nuclear blast. It's unbelievably cheap, relentlessly stupid and barely entertaining, a real come-down for Corbucci, who once made such fine films as Django and The Great Silence.
But hey, it has Terence Hill (real name: Mario Girotti), a childhood favorite of mine for his Trinity pictures, and Ernest Borgnine blusters amusingly, and the whole thing is so darned nice, you can't help but love it.
Mostly, Super Fuzz's lasting legacy is as a last gasp from the days when low budget international fare could actually play neighborhood theaters in the U.S. Japanese monster movies, weird-ass Italian kiddie movies and that seemingly endless parade of Swedish Pippi Longstocking movies played non-stop as matinee fare, and exposed kids to other cultures and other sensibilities. Some of these were entertaining, some were worthless, but all were better than the carefully-engineered Hollywood blockbusters designed to appeal to kids these days.
Today a movie like Super Fuzz feels as ancient as the pyramids, a strange, handmade reminder of a time when people didn't program children to be cynical automatons.
