Play All 3.18.08
by Brian Tallerico

When you hit Play All this week, you won't find a single commentary, featurette, or deleted scene. There's not even a gag reel or a damn music video. These titles get no respect. All of the "alternate" titles featured in this week's Play All, the landmark column that looks at the titles behind the ones advertised on the side of a bus, come completely feature-free. It's a shame but the content of the DVDs themselves are bound to appeal to somebody even without any special features. Sometimes extras just weight down a DVD, right? After you've seen I Am Legend, don't forget WE are Play All.

Autopsy: Postmortem with Dr. Michael Baden
Studio: HBO
Starring: Michael Baden and dead folks
Features: None

Dr. Michael Baden is a fascinating cable TV icon. He's been doing forensic mysteries on HBO since before the days of CSI or 48 Hours Mystery. He's been solving cases on the HBO series, Autopsy, for almost fifteen years. The latest DVD of the hugely popular HBO series finds the good doctor going back in time to investigate five of the most high-profile cases in history, all of them landmark, notorious homicides. The 57-minute DVD includes never-before-seen footage and details about cases that span nearly a century, starting all the way back with the mysterious disappearance of the royal Romanov family in Russia in 1918. After that, Baden moves on to the JFK assassination in 1963, the notorious deaths of Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy in 1978 and 1979, the most infamous double-murder case of all time with OJ Simpson in 1994, and even the recent illnesses and deaths due to toxic exposure by the first responders at Ground Zero on 9/11. After fourteen years on the air, Baden may have been joined by countless other forensic 'celebrities' on cable TV, but he's still the master. If you're interested in true crime at all and haven't seen the dozens of episodes of Autopsy, you're in for a great surprise. A bloody and gory surprise (this is HBO), but a great one, nonetheless.

The Seeker: The Dark is Rising
Studio: Fox
Starring: Alexander Ludwig, Ian McShane, Frances Conroy, Christopher Eccleston, and Gregory Smith
Features: None

A lot has been made of the failure of The Golden Compass to become the next Narnia or Harry Potter, but there was another book-to-screen adaptation that misfired even more miserably - The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. Based on a very popular series of children's books, The Seeker came and went so fast that even fans of the original might not yet know it exists. The film opened with only $3.8 million and had one of the poorest starts for a fantasy film in years. The worldwide gross couldn't even cross $30 million. With only 16% of critics giving the film a 'fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising basically fell apart on theatrical release. But fantasy and family films always do well on DVD, so some fans are going to be drawn to The Seeker. The film is heavy on teen action, telling a Potter-esque story of a normal young man who it turns out is the chosen one of the title. He can seek out the six signs necessary to defend against the rising Dark. In theaters, The Seeker struggled to find an audience because it was so clearly just a lesser version of other fantasy franchises that do this kind of thing better. On DVD, those same fans who bought tickets to another movie in theaters might be curious to see what exactly is being sought. The Seeker is far from the worst family/fantasy film on the back shelf, but don't be surprised if you understand why you didn't find it before.

The Untouchables: Season Two - Volume One
Studio: Paramount
Starring: Robert Stack, Paul Picerni, Nicholas Georgiade, Abel Fernandez, Steve London, and Walter Winchell
Features: None

There's probably a whole demographic of people who know Robert Stack as "that guy from Unsolved Mysteries." If you're a little older than that demo or a fan of classic TV, it probably makes you shudder to think that Stack's legacy might be reduced to that cheesy reality show. Those who passed "Classic TV 101" know that Robert Stack will always be Eliot Ness, the leader of The Untouchables. And fans of the show will be happy to know that another thirteen and a half hours of the show are now available on DVD in the form of Season Two - Volume One of the classic series. The Untouchables tells the story of a group of lawmakers who were handpicked for their incorruptibility. Where every other cop was going dirty, Eliot Ness and his men couldn't be turned by the greed of crime. Featuring sixteen episodes, digitally remastered and on DVD for the first time, The Untouchables is a must-have for fans of classic crime television. The first half of the second season features several notable episodes in the history of The Untouchables, including Ness' battle with the notorious "Legs" Diamond and the classic two-part, "The Big Train," which features Ness trying to stop Al Capone's crew from breaking him out on a transport to Alcatraz. You can keep Kevin Costner. To Play All, Robert Stack is the first and last Eliot Ness.

The Wild Wild West: The Fourth Season
Studio: Paramount
Starring: Robert Conrad, Ross Martin, and Michael Dunn
Features: None

Don't let the horrible Kevin Kline - Will Smith movie fool you - The Wild Wild West was actually pretty damn fun when it was on television. In the mid-60s, the western TV genre was losing viewers to spy shows, so creator Michael Garrison decided to merge the two and come up with something completely new in The Wild Wild West, a series that was supposedly pitched as "James Bond on horseback." The Wild Wild West is that rare genre - the science fiction Western - and even forty years after it aired, doesn't really look like anything else on television. Wild Wild West tells the story of two Secret Service agents (Robert Conrad and Ross Martin) and their mission to protect President Ulysses S. Grant and the United States from crazy threats that often included some form of science fiction like robot squids of cyborgs. If James Bond could go to the moon, why not James West? The now-available fourth season, which aired from '68 to '69, was the show's last and featured the final showdown with the infamous Dr. Miguelito Loveless along with guest appearances by Harvey Korman, Ted Knight, and many more.

-- Brian Tallerico

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