Television. One DVD at a Time.

"Okay, I want to see Christie now. Get Christie Love." - Harry Guardino as Casey Reardon

Get Christie Love! DVD Review

By Jonathan Boudreaux

Television rarely starts trends, choosing instead to follow already proven shifts in pop culture. In 1974, ABC jumped on the blaxploitation bandwagon with Get Christie Love! Teresa Graves, formerly of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, stars as the titular cop, a pistol packin' mama who, when we first meet her in the pilot episode, is walking the streets trying to lure a killer who has been targeting hookers. Soon she is called upon to help crack a drug ring by focusing on Helena Varga (Louise Sorel), the girlfriend of (and alleged accountant for) a drug smuggler.

Unfortunately, this is a watered-down version of blaxploitation. Many of the elements that made blaxploitation a memorable film genre - over-the-top characters, cutting edge fashions, great music, wild action sequences, and an overall tough yet slightly campy attitude - are missing. Graves is ultimately too sweet to completely pull off her character's toughness, and her fight scenes are poorly staged. Her karate tinged fights are so badly edited that they literally jump from Graves raising her hand to her sparring partner lying in a heap on the ground. Whether this was meant to cover up a lack of skills on Graves' part or to soften the violence, a more effective solution could have been found.

Even when compared to standard cop dramas of the period, Get Christie Love! is below par. The plot is not exciting, and the clues gathered by Love are almost nonsensical. Oddly enough, even though the blaxploitation formula has been softened for TV, the plot does take a particularly nasty turn toward the end of the pilot when Love and her boss, Captain Casey Reardon (Harry Guardino), threaten physical harm to a child in order to blackmail a witness into cooperating with the investigation.

Ratings on the pilot movie were good enough to win the show a spot on ABC's fall schedule in 1974. The series' ratings were disappointing, and the show only lasted one season.

The pilot film is presented on a single disc housed in a keepcase. The menu design is strictly a low budget affair. The film is divided into chapters.

Video and Audio

The video for this show has more dust and dirt than your grandmother's attic, not to mention numerous other film flaws. Night scenes are way too dark while scenes in regular light are oddly colorless. In most scenes the edges of objects and characters are grey and colorless as if badly colorized. At other times, the color and picture do not quite match up, creating a visual echo reminiscent of 3-D movies from the '50s. The source material seems to be an old videotape as occasional tracking lines are visible.

The audio is just as poor - turn the sound up as high as you dare and marvel at how it still sounds as if the television is in the next room.

Extras

None of the extras included here are related to Get Christie Love! First up is a "DVD Dictionary" which presents definitions and explanations of various DVD-related terms, like aspect ratio. This is potentially informative for people who are not familiar with DVD terminology, but it is ironic that such a no-frills disc would include a primer on features that it does not have.

"Movie Trivia Game" is an interactive ten question quiz which reveals the rather disturbing fact that the lead in Beetlejuice was originally written for Sammy Davis, Jr.

Rounding out the extra features is Cobweb Hotel, an old Max Fleischer cartoon. The cartoon, which looks and sounds like it was found at the bottom of a garbage can, makes Get Christie Love! seem like the remastered version of Citizen Kane.

Yes, this is one strange DVD.

Summary

Get Christie Love! can be purchased in stores for around five dollars, but even at this low price, buyers should beware. The show itself is weak, but even fans will want to avoid this poor quality DVD.

8/3/03