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

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children 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: 18 Genres: Comedy, Slapstick, Farce, Whodunit

With only a minimal romantic subplot and no music whatsoever, Who Done It? is pure, undiluted Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and a good mystery on its own to boot. Bud and Lou star as Chick Larkin and Mervyn Milgrim, a pair of soda jerks who aspire to become radio detective-show writers (their latest epic is "The Midget Gets the Chair-or, Small Fry"). Invited by their radio-scrivener pal Jimmy Turner (Patric Knowles) to attend a broadcast of the "Murder at Midnight" program, Chick and Mervyn are on hand when network president Colonel Andrews (Thomas Gomez) is murdered just before delivering a vital patriotic message. While waiting for the official police to show up, Chick and Mervyn decide to try to solve the case on their own, thereby securing their reputations as writers. The boys manage to convince everyone-even the real killer-that they're genuine gumshoes, only to be exposed when the real cops, Moran (William Gargan) and Brannigan (William Bendix) arrive on the scene. Ultimately, the murderer is revealed, leading to an exciting rooftop chase, with poor Mervyn suspended between two skyscrapers on a slender electrified wire. The comic highlights of Who Done It? are too numerous to mention here, but they include Mervyn's misadventures in the radio-transcription room, his confrontations with a wise-guy page boy (Walter Tetley), his "Not watts, volts!" exchange with the exasperated Chick, and an athletic interlude with those world-famous tumblers, the Flying Bordellos (sic!). Best bit: Upon winning a quiz program, the boys eagerly turn on their prize, a portable radio--only to turn it off in disgust when Abbott and Costello sign on the air ("Every time you hear those guys, it's 'Who's on First-What's On Second!'") ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bud Abbott - Chick Larkin
Lou Costello - Mervyn Milgrim
Patric Knowles - Jim Turner
William Gargan - Lieutenant Moran
Louise Allbritton - Jane Little

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