The first thing you lascivious lot may notice about Severin’s new release of The Complete Comic Strip Presents… Channel 4 Films 3-Disc Collector’s Edition is the number of familiar faces it contains… well familiar if you dig on amazing British comedy that is… or had MTV in the mid to late 80’s…
Featured in the copious short films in this collection are none other that The Young Ones’ Adrian Edmondson, Rik Mayall, and Nigel Planer as well as Absolutely Fabulous’ Jennifer Saunders (along with her frequent comedy partner-in-crime Dawn French) as well as the troupe’s mainstay to this day; Peter Richardson… also keep your eyes’ peeled for Alexei Sayle (who played every member of the zany Balowski Family on the aforementioned The Young Ones before starring in his own self-titled sketch-comedy program) as well as the Harry Potter franchise’s Hagrid himself, Robbie Coltrane!
So, what are all of these talented-ass mother fuckers getting up to? Unbridled hilarity (spread out over 3 discs) of course!
Disc 1 kicks off with a crown-jewel of Series 1 called Five Go Mad in Dorset, which is an absolutely bonkers Hardy Boys-style with all of that series trademark nonsense amped up to the maximum degree to stunningly hilarious effect (the sequel from Series 2, Five Go Mad on Mescalin, is included on this disc and is chuck full o’ batshit lunacy as well).
Also a highlight of Series 1 is Bad News Tour, which if you love This is Spinal Tap! You’ll doubtless feel much the same about it’s British forerunner which features the uproarious misadventures of the eponymous brain-dead glam band.
Series 2 features even more splitting of sides with Dirty Movie the over-the-top adventures of a man attempting to catch a flick at a local cinema only to find the showing is a front for the exhibition of a porno film, as well as the Go Mad sequel mentioned up yonder.
Of interest to fans of this here creepy column, Disc 2 features parodies of not only spaghetti westerns, but post-apocalyptic flicks as well.
Series 3 brings us not only the return of Bad News (always welcome) wherein they ready a reunion tour with spectacularly ludicrous results), but parodies of a Miner’s Strike (although we in the States might not be familiar with the event itself, this film is about the Hollywood version of the event so there are plenty of big laughs to be had), as well as the bloody crime caper parody Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door.
Again there’s something to satisfy genre fans here as we get The Yob, a take on Cronenberg’s 1986 The Fly remake which features an avant-garde music video director undergoing a transformation after using a Port-A-Potty.
Along with the episodes of the series, the set also contains a collection of specials from the troupe on Disc 3 which lampoon cop-shows and Hitchcock, but the all-time, gold-star winner here (and perhaps of the entire set) is Five Men in a Car; which features four salesmen on the way to a convention, which sounds prosaic enough, but just trust me cats n’ creeps this road trip gets completely out-of-fucking-hand… (as an aside, the sequel piece, Five Men in a Plane is included here too, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the original).
As for special features… well, if your ass wasn’t numb by now, it soon will be…
Kicking things off we get two feature length documentaries detailing the history of the group and their output, as well as the short film that started this whole sordid affair.
Speaking of sordid, my dudes Bad News are featured prominently in the bonus material as we are treated to Bad News: The Whole Sordid Story (a Behind the Music style presentation), the band’s supremely absurd cover of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody (wait until you see who directed the video), a mock-“making of” for said video, another round of tour stories, and a Bad News-centric photo gallery!
A trailer for the series is included as well.
If you are a fan of The Young Ones (or possibly even Absolutely Fabulous) you should hop on this collection of The Comic Strip Presents… , as it contains some of the group’s best material… and the bonus material assembled makes it more than worth the cash my cats n’ creeps!
