'Streets of San Francisco' and 'Untouchables' on DVD
Burbank, California—Two serious crime dramas—both executive produced by Quinn Martin—provide another good reason to stay at home, away from the potty jokes, spurting blood and severed limbs in theaters and offer a strong dose of romanticism in premiere first season DVD sets available next week.
Shortly after he appeared opposite George C. Scott in Patton, Karl Malden starred as Detective Mike Stone in ABC's one-hour drama The Streets of San Francisco, teaching a young apprentice, Inspector Steve Keller, played by Michael Douglas a few years before he produced Oscar's Best Picture for 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The four-disc Season One, Volume One includes 13 of the original episodes, the 90-minute pilot movie—which sets the series up—and a short promotional interview with both actors by Variety's Army Archerd.
Like Hawaii Five-O, multiple exterior shots of San Francisco are gorgeous—a sniper briefly takes over Coit Tower in one episode—and the scripts, casts and action crackle. The first regular episode, "The Thirty-Year Pin" (air date: 9/23/72), is taut, dramatic and better than half the Bay Area crime pictures of the past few decades. Each episode aired with titles announcing each act, which stresses the program's tight composition.
Here's Paul Michael Glaser (as Michael Glaser) a year after he sang and danced in Fiddler on the Roof, and he still looks like a peasant hitchhiking around wine country as the ex-convict son of a Greek immigrant ("Bitter Wine," air date: 12/23/72) and here's Harold Gould—without the mustache and before his role as Rhoda's father—as Stone and Keller's prime suspect in the murder of two young career women in a swinging San Francisco apartment complex. Good stuff, steep suggested retail price ($42.99) and an excellent transfer to DVD.
Of course, Quinn Martin had already made his mark in the outstanding television series, The Untouchables, also coming to DVD for the first time (Season One, Volume One), which was wrongly attacked by the Thought Police as too violent. This gripping crime drama surpasses expectations—the picture quality is amazing considering the show aired in 1959—and one can see why it was hugely popular.
Based on the 1957 novel by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, The Untouchables pits policeman Ness, played by Robert Stack, against Chicago's lowest criminals—those bottom feeders known as the mob in the Twenties. Some readers may be more familiar with the 1987 Sean Connery-Kevin Costner movie of the same name, but there's no substitute for the original series, which serves good versus evil with a strong sense of moral clarity that would probably never make it on screen today.
Combining two opening segments, "The Scarface Mob," which aired a week apart, is presented here with an introduction by Desi Arnaz—The Untouchables was a Desilu production—and a distinctive narration by newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. The late Mr. Stack is thoroughly persuasive as Eliot Ness, a man who's at once forceful and intelligent, smashing giant trucks into Al Capone's (Neville Brand) illegal joints, creating a special unit of men selected foremost for their virtue and restoring order to a city overrun with thugs toting machine guns. Stack seems totally incorruptible as Eliot Ness and The Untouchables is still irresistibly good.
The only complaint both DVD sets involves the cheap packaging—no printed material for either The Streets of San Francisco or The Untouchables, just episode notes on the box.
Another notable DVD release is The Doris Day Collection, Volume 2—now there's a real movie star whom I'd love to interview—with six gems including her breakthrough screen debut, Romance on the High Seas. It's directed by Casablanca's Michael Curtiz with song and dance routines by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn and Busby Berkeley, it's a must see for those who claim she was just a pretty face. What a talented actress and singer, but more on the incomparable Doris Day and the tremendous library that's available later.
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• Index of Scott Holleran's Columns
RELATED ARTICLES
• Review - 'Kojak' on DVD
• Feature - When 'Kojak' Was King
• Feature - Real-Life Murders That Inspired 'Kojak'
• Review - 'Police Woman' on DVD
• Close-Up: 'Police Woman's Earl Holliman
RELATED LINKS
• DVD: The Streets of San Francisco - Season 1, Vol. 1
• DVD: The Untouchables - Season 1, Vol. 1
• DVD: The Doris Day Collection, Vol. 2
Shortly after he appeared opposite George C. Scott in Patton, Karl Malden starred as Detective Mike Stone in ABC's one-hour drama The Streets of San Francisco, teaching a young apprentice, Inspector Steve Keller, played by Michael Douglas a few years before he produced Oscar's Best Picture for 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The four-disc Season One, Volume One includes 13 of the original episodes, the 90-minute pilot movie—which sets the series up—and a short promotional interview with both actors by Variety's Army Archerd.
Like Hawaii Five-O, multiple exterior shots of San Francisco are gorgeous—a sniper briefly takes over Coit Tower in one episode—and the scripts, casts and action crackle. The first regular episode, "The Thirty-Year Pin" (air date: 9/23/72), is taut, dramatic and better than half the Bay Area crime pictures of the past few decades. Each episode aired with titles announcing each act, which stresses the program's tight composition.
Here's Paul Michael Glaser (as Michael Glaser) a year after he sang and danced in Fiddler on the Roof, and he still looks like a peasant hitchhiking around wine country as the ex-convict son of a Greek immigrant ("Bitter Wine," air date: 12/23/72) and here's Harold Gould—without the mustache and before his role as Rhoda's father—as Stone and Keller's prime suspect in the murder of two young career women in a swinging San Francisco apartment complex. Good stuff, steep suggested retail price ($42.99) and an excellent transfer to DVD.
Of course, Quinn Martin had already made his mark in the outstanding television series, The Untouchables, also coming to DVD for the first time (Season One, Volume One), which was wrongly attacked by the Thought Police as too violent. This gripping crime drama surpasses expectations—the picture quality is amazing considering the show aired in 1959—and one can see why it was hugely popular.
Based on the 1957 novel by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, The Untouchables pits policeman Ness, played by Robert Stack, against Chicago's lowest criminals—those bottom feeders known as the mob in the Twenties. Some readers may be more familiar with the 1987 Sean Connery-Kevin Costner movie of the same name, but there's no substitute for the original series, which serves good versus evil with a strong sense of moral clarity that would probably never make it on screen today.
Combining two opening segments, "The Scarface Mob," which aired a week apart, is presented here with an introduction by Desi Arnaz—The Untouchables was a Desilu production—and a distinctive narration by newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. The late Mr. Stack is thoroughly persuasive as Eliot Ness, a man who's at once forceful and intelligent, smashing giant trucks into Al Capone's (Neville Brand) illegal joints, creating a special unit of men selected foremost for their virtue and restoring order to a city overrun with thugs toting machine guns. Stack seems totally incorruptible as Eliot Ness and The Untouchables is still irresistibly good.
The only complaint both DVD sets involves the cheap packaging—no printed material for either The Streets of San Francisco or The Untouchables, just episode notes on the box.
Another notable DVD release is The Doris Day Collection, Volume 2—now there's a real movie star whom I'd love to interview—with six gems including her breakthrough screen debut, Romance on the High Seas. It's directed by Casablanca's Michael Curtiz with song and dance routines by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn and Busby Berkeley, it's a must see for those who claim she was just a pretty face. What a talented actress and singer, but more on the incomparable Doris Day and the tremendous library that's available later.
$
• Index of Scott Holleran's Columns
RELATED ARTICLES
• Review - 'Kojak' on DVD
• Feature - When 'Kojak' Was King
• Feature - Real-Life Murders That Inspired 'Kojak'
• Review - 'Police Woman' on DVD
• Close-Up: 'Police Woman's Earl Holliman
RELATED LINKS
• DVD: The Streets of San Francisco - Season 1, Vol. 1
• DVD: The Untouchables - Season 1, Vol. 1
• DVD: The Doris Day Collection, Vol. 2
