Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I must offer kudos to A&E. Before these DVDs, all I had were 12-year-old VHS copies of Flying Circus dubbed off MTV. They were dull and noisy and these DVDs look much better.
Unfortunately, due to the glut of gaffes and omissions in this 45-episode box set, I am forced to keep those VHS tapes as reference copies for several episodes that A&E have unintentionally - and, in at least one case, intentionally - adulterated.
For the uninitiated, here's a laundry list of some of the omissions and gaffes in this set:
Show 31: Line "Masturbating" censored. MTV managed to find an uncensored version - A&E should have done likewise.
Show 33: Dialogue snipped from "Biggles Dictates a Letter". Not censorship, just a jump cut. Major QC goof.
Show 38: EVERYTHING after Eric Idle's "Next week, Black...Botoon..." voiceover is gone. No "Dad's Doctor", no "Dad's Pooves", no "Up the Palace", no "Limestone Dear Limestone". Possible explanation: Tape operator saw the fake fade-out right before these items and pressed "stop".
And in addition to the gaffes noted above, one more omission from Show 30 ("Blood, Devastation, Death, War, and Horror"): In the show, Graham Chapman belts out this brief West Side Story parody: "Tonight, tonight / I'm getting pissed tonight". A&E have cut the line.
The chain of events is easy to imagine:
1) A&E legal department decided they had to clear the line
2) Publisher wanted too much money
3) They cut it
Seems reasonable enough at first glance. So where, gentle reader, did they make their mistake? That's right, in step 1, when they decided they had to clear the line. It's called PARODY, dearhearts, and it's protected under the Fair Use doctrine of U.S. copyright law.
A&E is never going to fix these errors - if they cared about this series as a historical artifact, they never would have made the errors in the first place - so there's not much anyone can do. Except humiliate them with reviews like this. Woo hoo! Feels good! Take that, you corporate behemoth! Oh, wait, they're not reading this. Oh well. Hey, this is why we have tape trading, isn't it folks? Treat yourself.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Monty Python's Flying Circus - Set 5 (Epi. 27-32) (1971)
Contains "Argument Clinic", "Mr. Smoke-Too-Much" & "GumbyBrain Specialist" #27 "Whicker's World" contains: Icelandic Saga & A Court Scene #28 "Mr. and Mrs. Brian Norris' Ford Popular" contains: Puss In Boots & Trim-JeansTheatre #29 "The Money Programme" contains: Argument Clinic & Hitting On The HeadLessons #30 "Blood, Devastation, Death, War and Horror" contains: Anagram Quiz & PantomimeHorses #31 "The All-England Summarize Proust Competition" contains: Fire Brigade & TravelAgent #32 "The War Against Pornography" contains: Tory Housewives Clean-up Campaign &Molluscs Truly perfectly tailored to suit those not quite done with evolution, Monty Python'sFlying Circus provides a veritable university education in cultural literacy.Observe theLife of Tschaikowsky.Spend an afternoon with Jean-Paul Sartre.Hear agroundbreaking Theory on Brontosauruses and learn how to rid the world of all knowndiseases.Clearly, no programme in the history of television has brought suchenlightenment to the common man--always, of course, cleverly shrouded in a cloud of so- called "humour," in order to make education palatable to the masses.Watch and learn! With: GRAHAM CHAPMAN as Colonel Sir John "Teasy Weasy" Butler JOHN CLEESE as Mervyn TERRY GILLIAM as Balderston ERIC IDLE as Mr. Smoke-Too-Much TERRY JONES as the Impersonator of Italian Film Directors and MICHAEL PALIN as Erik Njorl, Son of Frothgar Conceived, written and performed by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam,Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.Animations by Terry Gilliam.Produced anddirected by Ian MacNaughton.
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