Dastardly
& Muttley In Their Flying Machines (1969
- 1970*)/I
Love Lucy 75th Anniversary
(1951 - 1960/CBS)/Looney
Tunes Cartoons
(2020
- 2024/*both Warner Archive)/Ultraman:
Towards The Future + The Ultimate Hero
(1990 - 1993/Alliance)/all Complete
Series
Blu-ray collections
Picture:
B/B/B/C+ Sound: B-/B-/B-/C+ Extras: C/B+/C/D Main
Programs: B-/A-/C+/B
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Dastardly
and Looney
Tunes
Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
The
complete series sets keep rolling out and here are more of them...
Dastardly
& Muttley In Their Flying Machines: The
Complete Series
(1969 -
1970) was a high note to end the 1960s on for Hanna Barbera, who had
been building up their company all decade and were about to hit their
stride for the next five years. Filmation had just successfully
launched a few years before, so the company had to up their animation
game and budgets, so they did and this show results in better color,
slightly better animation, a faster pace, which makes for
better-moving humor and a modern era in TV animation that also fueled
the great era of Saturday Morning Television.
Dick
Dastardly is obsessed with capturing Yankee Doodle Pigeon, using a
squad of three flyers (including assistant Muttley) and endless
airplane variants, contraptions and bizarre combinations thereof to
do the job. Dastardly is also an ingrate and is only nice to Muttley
when he gets what he wants. Muttley puts up with this, but gets his
digs in all the time. Klunk and Zilly fly the backup planes, but
always with the same inane results. This is the superior spinoff of
Wacky
Races
(one of many) where the duo get developed at their peak.
Dastardly
is voiced by Paul Winchell and is a riot, determined to be no good
and will not quit no matter his endless string of failures. Klunk
and Zilly are comic relief, inept often, but likable, even when one
offers half of his dialogue as sound effects. Then there is Muttley,
now in adorable and hilarious mode, even with his own private segment
in each show called The
Magnificent Muttley.
Abandoning this approach to his character in later revivals was a
huge mistake, then they changed his name a bit (some copyright mess?)
and that makes this the ultimate and only great version of Muttley
ever. Had he been allowed to evolve further, he would have been
another Scooby Doo, owning that trademark laugh that had been used
with other characters. Don Messick voiced the rest of the characters
and was the narrator.
Best
of all in all of this, the makers found a way to go bonkers and take
the cat & mouse and Road Runner/Coyote formula and really go off
the hook with it. It took some real creativity and humor to pull
this off, but they did it and it remains one of the best TV shows
Hanna Barbera ever made. As a salute and send up of WWI, Those
Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines,
its sequel
Those
Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies,
plus The
Great Race
and even Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang,
it succeeded thoroughly. Recommended to everyone who has a sense of
humor and likes a fun time!
Extras
include audio commentary tracks on two episodes and two featurettes:
The
Vulture Squadrons' Greatest Misses
and
Dastardly
& Muttley's Spinoffs: What Wacky Races Wrought.
You can read our coverage of Warner Archive's Wacky
Races
Blu-ray set art this link:
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16619/Ben+10:+The+Complete+Collection+(2006+-+2014/Ca
I
Love Lucy 75th Anniversary: The
Complete Series
(1951 - 1960) Blu-ray set follows the DVD set by a few months we
covered at this link:
https://fulvuedrive-in.com/review/16798/I+Love+Lucy+75th+Anniversary:+The+Complete+Seri
The
point is to make the Blu-ray edition available at a lower retail
price than the first Blu-ray Complete
Series,
but Lucy always
sells. This is now the fourth time (!!!) we've covered the complete
series, a record for this site as of this posting, but it is one of
the most important TV series ever made, still influential, enduring,
funny and that makes total sense. When you get it, enjoy it all.
I
hope The
Lucy Show
is up next!
Extras
repeat those of the DVD set.
Looney
Tunes Cartoons: The
Complete Series
(2020 - 2024) is an animated TV series that pretends to be a
continuation of the Technicolor theatrical shorts Warner made
(particularly in the 1950s) as if they never stopped production. The
good news is that characters we do not see enough (Sam Sheepdog and
Ralph Wolf for example) are brought back, but results per short can
vary and sometimes wildly.
Some
shorts look better than others, with more than a few looking cheaper
and more generic than they should, while voice over work is sometimes
badly done and even the choices for that work can be really bad,
deviate from the original, established voices that the studio has
used for eons. Such changes are no improvement and kill any of the
fun or laughs. A few moments are even surprisingly joyless and lack
energy. Still, the show has its fans and a few of the shorts are
worth a look, but I was disappointed.
Extras
includes 12 shorts, six made for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games,
six for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games, dubbed Looney
Tunes Presents; Sports Made Simple.
Ultraman:
Towards The Future +
The
Ultimate Hero: The
Complete Series
(1990 - 1993) are together in this new collectible 4-disc Blu-ray set
from Alliance that adds to their incredible collection of Ultraman
TV series shows and sometimes feature films. Ultraman:
Towards The Future
(released in Japan as Ultraman
the Great)
is
the tenth Ultraman
series and the first to be produced in Japan's Heisei era.
Ultraman:
Towards The Future
consists of 13 episodes which include: Signs
of Life, The Hibernator, The Child's Dream, The Storm Hunter, Blast
from the Past, The Showdown, The Forest Guardian, Bitter Harvest, The
Biospherians, Tourists From The Stars, The Survivalists, Age of the
Plagues,
and Nemesis.
Ultraman:
The Ultimate Hero
consists of 13 episodes as well which include: On
A Mission from M78, Attack Kemular From Behind, A Quarter of
Creatures, The Dark Past, Monstrous Meltdown, The Dada Effect, Devils
from the Crypts, A Father's Love, The Fires Beneath, Deadly Starfish,
Dino Might, Falling Stars Spell Trouble,
and The
Final Showdown?
I
personally find all the Ultraman
series to be fun and enjoyable as a kaiju fan. Even if the stories
aren't always original, its fun to see the different character
designs on these shows and films over the years.
No
Special Features, but you can read about all the various series (as
we keep covering them all) elsewhere on this site.
Now
for playback performance. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition
image transfers on Dastardly
& Muttley
look
really good, even a little better than I thought, as the company
entered a new era of more expensive production (relatively speaking)
and this was one of the shows to first show that off. These are
apparently off of the original 35mm original camera negatives. Glad
they survived so well. Also after some sometimes boxy soundtracks
and limited sonics, the
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes on these shows are
better than I have ever heard them. That makes the combination a
pleasant surprise and the shows more fun to watch.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfers and DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes on this I
Love Lucy 75th Anniversary: The
Complete Series
set easily outperform the DVD set and are much more in line with
older Blu-ray The
Complete Series
set. Save some stupid uses of AI on some of the episodes, these look
good and unless you have some mint film prints of any of the
episodes, they are not going to look any better.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on Looney
Tunes Cartoons: The
Complete Series
look fine for new productions and they sometimes try to look like the
classic Technicolor cartoons, but not as much as I would have liked.
Other items, the animation and color use is more generic and maybe
too much so, but that does not effect definition or detail. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes are not bad, but somehow
seem to have inconsistent soundfields, so only expect so much.
The
Ultraman
series is presented in 1080p high definition on 4 2K Blu-ray discs
with an MPEG-4 AVC codec, a full frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and
lossless, English-dubbed DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo. Some of the
darker scenes, particularly in Towards
the Future,
you can see some compression in the details of the image. Likely
this was the best option possible with the material available.
To
order the
Dastardly
and/or Looney
Tunes
Warner Archive Blu-rays, go to this link for them and many more great
web-exclusive
releases at:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20
-
Nicholas Sheffo and James Lockhart (Ultraman)
https://letterboxd.com/jhl5films/
