But my friend Chris Thiel knows no fear. So he got me some crazy cool DVDs. What did he get me?
Supergirl - Oh my God. The Supergirl movie. You can put this down in the "so bad, it's good" category. It came out in 1984, and it was made by the same folks who made the Christopher Reeve Superman films, looking to milk the franchise for all it was worth. It goes like this. We come across that last surviving Kryptonian city, Argo City, where Kara Zor-El, cousin of Kal-El, is a headstrong teenager. She's screwing around one day with an omnipotent power source, and this thing gets lost in space. She goes chasing after it, winds up on Earth, and becomes Supergirl. Meanwhile, the omnipotent power source has fallen into the hands of a cheezy sorceress wannabe, so Supergirl has to do battle with said sorceress to recover the omnipotent power source. I haven't seen it from beginning to end since I was 10...I wonder if its still as bad as I remember.
The Venture Bros.: Season 1 - This is just one of the funniest cartoons on TV today. Watch it, darn it!
And, of course, I was able to pick up something I'd been after for a long time. As I've blogged in the past, one of my favourite aspects of the DVD format is how just about ever really cool TV show that only lasted 6 episodes eventually gets released. And when I saw it at Wal-Mart, marked down to $14.95, I knew I could pick up one of the most infamous dead TV shows of all time. Of course, I'm talking about....
Harsh Realm: The Complete Series
For those who don't remember.... The year was 1999. Radio stations wouldn't stop playing All Star. Nerds all over the world were collectively disappointed by Episode I. And the Fox network was offering up a new TV show called Harsh Realm.
Harsh Realm was the latest TV show from Chris Carter. Carter was at the top of his game, still riding high on that pop culture phenomenon known as The X-Files, and the modicum of critical praise that came with Millennium. Needless to say, it was one of the most heavily-hyped shows of the fall of 1999.
And it was cancelled after only 3 episodes.
Carter went on a very public tirade against the Fox network, about how they screwed him over and they never gave the show a chance to find its audience. But, the deed was done. 9 episodes in total were produced, and the whole series was eventually screened on cable's FX Network. And, in 2004, it became the latest dead TV show to be released on DVD.
In case you've forgotten...Harsh Realm followed the adventures of Tom Hobbes. Hobbes was a highly-decorated Lieutenant in the Army, his tour of duty was almost done, and he was looking forward to getting married and settling down. But then, he was recruited for one last mission....
Turns out the US Government created this virtual reality training simulation called "Harsh Realm." The Government created an exact duplicate of the USA, people and all...and then they nuked New York City. The purpose was to train soldiers to fight in the world war that would result. Hobbes' final mission: go into the simulation and beat the high-scorer, Sergeant-Major Omar Santiago.
When he gets into Harsh Realm, Hobbes finds out the horrible truth. Santiago has, in fact, hijacked Harsh Realm, and rules this virtual world with an iron fist. Even worse, the Government fears that Santiago is using Harsh Realm as a dry run, to eventually take over the real USA. Hobbes' true mission is to assassinate Santiago...and he's just the latest in a long line of highly decorated soldiers that have been sent in to do it.
So the whole show was about Hobbes fighting Santiago, trying to bring down Harsh Realm, and find a way to escape the virtual world.
And speaking of dead TV shows on DVD, today they announced one of the most anticipated TV-shows-on-DVD releases. Circle October 27 on your calendars, because that's the day that we finally get...
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: Volume 1
The folks at Lucasfilm have been working hard for the past 5 years to bring Young Indy to DVD. George Lucas has allegedly had an army of documentary filmmakers scouring the globe, making all kinds of documentary bonus material about the historical figures that Young Indy bumped into in his travels.
The plan is to release the entire series over three volumes. Volume 1 comes out October 27, no word yet on the rest of the releases.
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