Yay, 'Police Squad!' is finally out on DVD!

[JRS]

Joy!

For those of you who have no idea what it is - it's the series that the Naked Gun films were based on. They shot six episodes, and the series was cancelled after four of them - the sight gags, non-sequiturs and puns were deemed as too complex for the audience. Plus it was sat opposite 'Magnum PI' and 'Fame', so it had pretty much no chance ratings-wise!

Been waiting for it to come out on DVD for years, did have the episodes on VHS but the tape died a death a long time ago. I'd forgotten just how good some of the jokes are Stuff like the title coming up as one thing, and the announcer reading it as something else entirely (as in, "A Substantial Gift" would appear on screen, the announcer would read the title as "The Broken Promise"), or Leslie Nielsen's wonderful dead-pan delivery of the line "We're sorry to bother you at such a time like this, Mrs. Twice. We would have come earlier, but your husband wasn't dead then", or the following exchange:

Sally: Well, I first heard the shot, and as I turned, Jim fell.
Det. Frank Drebin: Jim Fell's the teller?
Sally: No, Jim Johnson.
Det. Frank Drebin: Who's Jim Fell?
Ed: He's the auditor, Frank.
Sally: He had the flu, so Jim... filled in.
Det. Frank Drebin: Phil who?
Ed: Phil Din. He's the night watchman.
Sally: Oh, if only Phil had been here...

Currently sat here giggling through a couple of episodes

 

[JRS]

Is this a uk/PAL release? I remember I put my name down for when it came into production on another site now I better go order it!

Yeah, it is.

Cheers to whoever moved it to Box Office, forgot I was still in GD on that FireFox tab

 

[JRS]

This one?

That's the badger. I hadn't seen it was out, I knew that the US release was in November but I hadn't seen a date for Region 2 release.

 

[JRS]

"Can you beat the champ?"
"I can beat him blindfolded!"
"What if he's not wearing a blindfold?"
"I can still beat him!"

You just don't get comedy like that any more.

And stuff like the Japanese Garden (Japanese people standing in plant pots), a window being thrown into a rock garden, the gun battle between people who are two feet away from each other, the response to "Cover me!" being to stick a blanket over their head....

 

[JRS]

"....and starring Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln!"

Always cracks me up As does this one:

Det. Frank Drebin: My name is Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant, Police Squad. There'd been a recent wave of gorgeous fashion models found naked and unconscious in laundromats on the West Side. Unfortunately, I was assigned to investigate holdups of neighborhood credit unions.

A funny line, made even better by the way Leslie Nielsen delivers it

Have to say that one thing does disappoint me about the DVDs, and that's the sound quality on the commentary track. You can barely hear some of what's being said. It's a shame, as the commentaries themselves are just as hilarious as they are on the Naked Gun movie DVDs!