Amazing Stories: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By Jude Clement
There must have been something in the air. During the 1985-86 season, three anthology series - a format that had seemed dead for years - premiered on network TV. Two were revamps of shows that had already been hits: The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The third was the result of a unique deal struck between NBC and director Steven Spielberg. Spielberg started his career in TV, directing episodes of Night Gallery (created by The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling), Columbo, and the TV movie Duel. He then made the transition to film, directing critically-acclaimed mega blockbusters like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. the Extraterrestrial. NBC decided to lure him back to TV with an offer he couldn't refuse: full creative control over a TV series of his own design with a guaranteed two-season run. The result was Amazing Stories, an omnibus series loosely based on pulp magazines of the 1940s and '50s. Thanks to the flexibility of the anthology format, the series would be able to explore a number of genres, including comedy, drama, science fiction, fantasy, and horror, much like Spielberg's diverse film oeuvre.
The series starts off with "Ghost Train," an episode directed by Spielberg himself. He also came up with the story, as he would for many other episodes. "Ghost Train" follows an elderly man who returns to the scene of a train accident that he inadvertently caused many years ago. While listening for the train with his ear to the track, he accidentally fell asleep. The conductor threw on the brakes, causing the train to derail and killing everyone aboard. Long wracked with guilt, the old man is convinced that the train is finally coming to pick him up. Unfortunately, his grandson's house lies right where the train tracks once were. This episode has a few nice things to say about memories, guilt, and communication between the generations, but it mostly seems to exist so that a train can inevitably ram through the home.
Other episodes also possess this mixture of solid entertainment with subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) flaws. In the funny "The Main Attraction," a popular but feckless high school student has a close encounter with a meteorite that leaves him a little too attractive. The equally amusing "Mummy, Daddy" follows the mad rush of an actor who races to be by his pregnant wife's side while dressed as a mummy. The tense, creepy "The Amazing Falsworth" features a nightclub mind reader who comes to realize that someone in his audience is a notorious serial killer. "The Sitter" is a comedic delight about a pair of brats who terrorize a series of babysitters but finally get their comeuppance then they meet their voodoo-practicing match. "The Mission" (directed by Spielberg) follows a World War II bombing run that goes horribly awry. None of these episodes are perfect, but they still manage to serve as outstanding examples of their individual genres.
Some episodes, however, simply feel like bland Twilight Zone knockoffs. In "Alamo Jobe," a young fighter at the Alamo finds himself toggling back and forth between the battle and 1980s San Antonio. "Mirror, Mirror" follows a normally unflappable horror novelist who becomes unglued when he begins seeing a murderous demon in his mirror. In "Mr. Magic," an elderly magician gets another shot at fame thanks to an enchanted deck of cards. "Gather Ye Acorns" tells of a pack rat who eventually finds value in his junk. Episodes like these strive to teach us some sort of moral, but their intentions are often muddled.
A few of the episodes are just downright bad. "Fine Tuning" is a strained attempt at whimsy that finds aliens coming to earth in order to meet their favorite TV stars. "Remote Control Man" presents a poor schlub who discovers that his new remote control allows him to summon his favorite stars off of his TV. This witless episode features cameo appearances by many '80s TV icons, including Kristian Alfonso (Days of Our Lives), football player Lyle Alzado, Dirk Benedict (The A-Team), Barbara Billingsley (Leave it to Beaver), Gary Coleman (Diff'rent Strokes), Leann Hunley (Days of Our Lives), Jim Lange (The Dating Game), Ed McMahon (The Tonight Show), Clara "Where's the Beef?" Peller, exercise gurus Jake Steinfeld and Richard Simmons, and LaWanda Page (Sanford & Son). Worst of all, though, is "Guilt Trip," a lame "comedy" in which the emotion Guilt (Dom DeLuise) vacations on a cruise ship and falls in love with Love (Loni Anderson). This abomination was directed by Burt Reynolds and features cameos by Charles Nelson Reilly (Lidsville) and Charles Durning (Rescue Me).
Being a Steven Spielberg production, the series often traffics in sappy hokum. This is especially true of episodes in which Santa is jailed by a sheriff who didn't get what he wanted as a kid ("Santa '85"), a man who has been in a coma for forty years wakes up just in time to telepathically communicate with a comatose girl ("Dorothy and Ben"), and a confirmed bachelor becomes obsessed with a doll ("The Doll"). These episodes aim to be heartwarming, but end up saccharine instead.
With regular series, we tune in each week to follow the continuing activities of our favorite characters. We grow attached to the characters and want to see more of them. Anthology series don't have that luxury. If you miss a week, you're simply missing an episode that has absolutely nothing to do with the one that precedes and follows it. There is even less reason to tune in next week if this week's episode is bad. Amazing Stories didn't ignite the ratings in its network run and left the air after its contractually obligated second season. With the release of Amazing Stories: The Complete First Season on DVD, viewers can enjoy the season's best episodes and just as easily skip the weaker ones.
Spielberg was able to recruit other Hollywood bigwigs to work on the series. Episode directors include Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby), Martin Scorsese (The Aviator), Joe Dante (Gremlins), Phil Joanou (State of Grace), Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul), Thomas Carter (Save the Last Dance), Peter Hyams (End of Days), Bob Balaban (The Exonerated), Donald Petrie (Miss Congeniality), Bob Clark (A Christmas Story), Irvin Kershner (Never Say Never Again), and Timothy Hutton (A Nero Wolfe Mystery). Writers include Richard Matheson (Duel), Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Manzel (City Slickers), and Brad Bird (The Incredibles). The series was co-produced and co-developed (along with Spielberg) by Joshua Brand and John Falsey (Northern Exposure, St. Elsewhere).
The real fun of the series, however, is watching the parade of famous and soon-to-be famous actors who fill its roles. The non-stop cavalcade of stars includes Lukas Haas (Witness), Drew Barrymore (Charlie's Angels), Richard Bull (Little House on the Prairie), Barbara Sharma (Laugh-In), Kelly Reno (The Black Stallion), Bronson Pinchot (Perfect Strangers), Kevin Costner (Dances with Wolves), Casey Siemaszko (Stand by Me), Kiefer Sutherland (24), Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace), Richard Masur (One Day at a Time), Gregory Hines (Will & Grace), Matthew Laborteaux (Little House on the Prairie), Milton Berle (The Buick Berle Show), Sid Caesar (Your Show of Shows), Gordon Jump (WKRP in Cincinnati), Harvey Keitel, Sondra Locke, Beau Bridges, Seth Green (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Mabel King (What's Happening!!), Wendy Phillips (Homefront), Michael Horse (Twin Peaks), Fran Ryan (Green Acres), Charlie Sheen (Two and a Half Men), Philip McKeon (Alice), James Cromwell (Six Feet Under), Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos), Forest Whitaker (Panic Room), Mark Hamill (Star Wars), Eddie Bracken, Evelyn Keyes (Gone With the Wind), Bruce Davison (Kingdom Hospital), Robert Picardo (China Beach), Lane Smith (Lois and Clark), Kathleen Lloyd (Equal Justice), Joe Regalbuto (Murphy Brown), Sam Waterston (Law & Order), Helen Shaver (The Education of Max Bickford), Dick Cavett, Tim Robbins (Mystic River), Glenn Scarpelli (One Day at a Time), Eve Arden (Our Miss Brooks), Mary Woronov (Rock and Roll High School), John Lithgow (3rd Rock from the Sun), Albert Hague (Fame), and Andrew McCarthy (Kingdom Hospital).
The twenty-four episodes that make up the first season are divided onto four discs. The discs are housed in a foldout case. The four discs attach to two panels - both panels hold two discs, one on top of the other, in a figure eight pattern. The discs and the foldout case are decorated with images from the series. The case is housed in a box that is meant to resemble a book. The effect is nice until the "book" is opened and it becomes instantly clear that the packaging has more in common with a cigar box than a book. The interior of this box contains episode titles and brief synopses.
The static menus are plain but easy to navigate. Viewers can play all episodes or choose them individually. The episodes are divided into chapter stops, but there are no scene selection menus.
