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Post by stareater on Mar 10, 2005 12:34:56 GMT -8
I just purchased the series on DVD and watched a few eps last night. All four epsiodes were enjoyable, as it's a series I don't remember that well. The shows were The Crowd, Marionettes, Inc., The Banshee, and The Playground. Very fun stuff in the vein of The Twilight Zone (Bradbury penned quite a few episodes for Rod Serling). The series was filled with well-known stars, and in the handful I watched I was treated to Leslie Nielsen, Peter O'Toole, and king ham William Shatner.
The set, put out by Platinum Disc Corporation, is bare-bones and rather unimpressive in general, with no extras included. The print quality is very dubious, with quite a bit of pixelization spread about. I'd compare it to the average Alpha disc. On the plus side, you do get all 65 episodes for $24, making it a bit easier to forgive the print quality.
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Post by Xenorama ™ on Mar 10, 2005 20:06:59 GMT -8
i've seen the DVDs of it, but i don't even know when the show was aired originally. seems like i saw it a couple times, but can't remember when.
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Post by Shonokin on Mar 10, 2005 20:35:46 GMT -8
Holy cow! Thanks for the heads up on that stareater! Even if the quality isn't tops, $25 for the entire run ain't bad. There are many priceless episodes of that show.
Megs, it aired from the mid-80s to early 90s and I believe it was syndicated so was on whatever random stations.
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Post by stareater on Mar 11, 2005 7:16:30 GMT -8
No problem, Shonokin, glad I could help. It's always nice to help friends with common interests find a gem at a bargain price. Deep Discount DVD has it for $23.94 with free shipping. The set contains 5 discs in one of those fold-out boxes with a dust cover box too. It's such a good show, and Bradbury's writing is so brilliant and entertaining, the shortcomings I mentioned about the transfer quality are forgotten once you get on a good roll watching each disc. RBT ran from 1985-1992, although it almost seems like it was much older than that. It originally aired on HBO, but for whatever reasons (cost, ratings, Bradbury's insistence of complete creative control?), they passed on the series after airing only six episodes over 1985 & 1986. It was picked up by USA Network, and new episodes began airing nearly two years after the last HBO show. RBT ran on USA to its conclusion in 1992. The first episode was "Marionettes, Inc.", and the final epsiode was "The Tombstone". There's another interesting note concerning the show. After watching the first episode on Disc 1 the other night, there in the end credits was the name Larry Wilcox. Yessir! That's the same Larry Wilcox who played John Baker on CHiPS. Mr. Wilcox was not only executive producer of RBT, he was also a co-creator! I always knew he was cooler than Ponch! Apparently, Wilcox feared that his track record from the California Highway Patrol show would prevent RBT from seeing the light of day. Bradbury told Wilcox about his own humble beginnings of selling a story to Weird tales for $20, and managed to allay Wilcox's fears. I guess that why we don't see Wilcox on latenight real estate infomercials, unlike his former partner Erik Estrada.
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Post by Xenorama ™ on Mar 11, 2005 11:22:46 GMT -8
that's a lot of info i never knew at all. i'll have to look for this a bit more.
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Post by Zone Fighter on Mar 11, 2005 12:27:03 GMT -8
I've never seen this show. Are any of the stories not depressing? The Ray Bradbury stories I've read all end badly.
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Post by Shonokin on Mar 12, 2005 8:46:20 GMT -8
I think there's probably more horror than straight sci-fi or fantasy in the series and horror tends to end badly. But in the case of RBT a lot of them are written to be more fun and full of s. The range of story types is very broad though and there's a lot to choose from.
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Post by Xenorama ™ on Mar 12, 2005 12:38:49 GMT -8
Ray does tend to have a melancholy streak in his writing though, even as far back as "The Lighthouse"- it's not a happy story.
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Post by Shonokin on Mar 28, 2005 7:50:20 GMT -8
Just watched the episode "The Lake", based on one of my favorite Bradbury shorts. The current events scenes are shot I'm guessing in the US somewhere with American actors, but all the flashback stuff is shot in Austrailia with Austrailian actors, even though it is also supposed to be in the states. Verrryy odd.
Example, current time adult Billy speaks American English, but has a heavy Austrailian accent in flashbacks to childhood (along with everyone else). Maybe I missed something haha
EDIT: upon rewatching it, I think they intimate that the main character was born in Austrailia and then moved to the States.
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Post by Zone Fighter on Apr 6, 2005 22:08:24 GMT -8
I saw the DVD at Best Buy, almost bought it but I decided to add it to my Netflix queue instead.
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