Search - The Best of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Vol. 1 on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Child Classic Movie Release: 2004 DVD Release: 02/10/2004 Format: DVD - Black and White Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, French, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 2 Number of Discs: 2 Run Time: 11 hrs 1 mins Studio: Universal Studios Members Wishing: 19 Genres: Comedy, Adventure Comedy, Satire

One of the most often revived of Abbott & Costello's early-1940s films, Pardon My Sarong casts Bud and Lou as Chicago bus drivers Algy Shaw and Wellington Pflug. At the behest of millionaire playboy Tommy Layton (Robert Paige), Algy and Wellington hijack their own bus and speed off to California so that Tommy won't be late for an important yachting race. Our heroes are hotly pursued by bus-company troubleshooter Kendall (William Demarest), while Tommy's trail is dogged by rival yacht-owner Joan Marshall (Virginia Bruce). Eluding Kendall when they inadvertently drive their bus into the ocean, Algy and Wellington are rescued by Tommy and Joan, who through a plot wrinkle have been forced to share the same yacht. After several days of drifting aimlessly across the Pacific, the yacht ends up on a remote South Sea Island, where Algy and Wellington flirt capriciously with the local native girls. Through a fluke, Wellington is served up as a sacrifice victim and ordered to enter a sacred volcanic mountain-which happens to be the hideout for jewel thief Varnoff (Lionel Atwill) and his gang. The story wraps up with a zany Sennett-like chase, with Wellington attempting to rescue the kidnapped Joan from Varnoff's speedboat. Filled to overflowing with hilarious sight gags, cross-talk routines and throwaway lines, Pardon My Sarong scores on two levels: as a devastating send-up of Dorothy Lamour jungle epics and as a first-rate vehicle for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. One one quibble: the film certainly could have done without the scene in which Bud invites Lou to commit suicide! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bud Abbott - Algernon Shaw
Lou Costello - Wellington Phlug
Virginia Bruce - Joan Marshall
Lionel Atwill - Dr. Varnoff
Robert Paige - Tommy Layton

The films of Abbott and Costello have undergone a major upgrade for the first time in decades on =The Best of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Vol. 1. A handful of their movies, including Buck Privates and In the Navy, were previously available early in the DVD era from Image Entertainment as direct conversions of their old laserdisc masters, with the same dirt, occasional missing frames, bad splices, and other flaws that prevailed on the laser editions. (Just to show how much DVD consumer economics have changed since 1999, at that time the Image edition of Buck Privates by itself cost as much as this set of eight movies.)

This two-disc set contains the eight feature films that Abbott and Costello made in their first two years in Hollywood: One Night in the Tropics (1940), Buck Privates (1941), In the Navy (1941), Hold That Ghost (1941), Keep 'em Flying (1941), Ride 'em Cowboy (1942), Pardon My Sarong (1942), and Who Done It? (1942). The movies that overlap with the earlier Image discs have all been transferred anew from distinctly cleaner, sharper sources, although there are still small flaws, such as a hair visible on the lower-left-hand corner of the screen in the opening credits for Hold That Ghost, which otherwise looks beautiful. The full-frame (1.33:1) transfers are as sharp as the technology will allow, at the practical limits of resolution so that they shimmer on shots of striped garments. Each movie has been given a detailed production and release history, and all but one (Pardon My Sarong) come with trailers (principally reissue trailers from Realart), which are usually a little on the scratchy side. One surprise, however, is the trailer for Keep 'em Flying, which was prepared in conjunction with a government-sponsored "Keep 'em Flying Week" intended to attract volunteers, and which runs a full nine minutes. Each film looks as good as has likely been seen over the past 40 years, be it in broadcast, on laserdisc, or theater screens. All come with 18 chapters (except for Buck Privates, which gets 19) and optional French and Spanish subtitles and English captions, and all four disc sides open automatically to a menu that goes three layers deep. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide