Saturday, October 19, 2013

The Ray Bradbury Theater

Ray Bradbury was a super talented writer. His books touched upon suspense, science fiction, and horror like no other writer in the 20th century. He also contributed to film and television. Speaking of television he was responsible in the 1980s for The Ray Bradbury Theater.
This show had many great things going for it. Amazingly Ray wrote all 65 episodes of the show over it's seven year run. Originally on HBO after two seasons it moved to The USA Network which is where I caught it. Great writing complimented by guest stars such as William Shatner, Jeff Goldblum, Drew Barrymore, Donald Pleasance and many other.
The only negative of the show is that the production values were pretty low. Many of his short stories and books made the jump to the small screen and most adapted very well. However a larger budget per episode would have benefited the show greatly. "A Sound of Thunder", "Marionettes Inc", "Here There Be Tygers" and so many more stories were produced. Many were a joint Canada/France production which made for an interesting take on the tales.
There is good news and bad if you want to take in this great show today (and what better time of the year). On Amazon you can buy the entire run of the show on a 5 DVD set for the low price of $9.99. Imagine my surprise that this entire show could be mine for ten bucks! The realization came when the pack arrived. In an oversized DVD case with a poorly printed insert all 5 discs were on one spindle with no dividers or anything. That said only one had a minor scratch and played fine. In addition no love was paid when this transfer was done. Simple menus, no extras, and the transfer is really poor (I am talking VHS quality at best). The quality wavers from episode to episode as does the sound quality. But for the price I am not complaining. I just want these companies to know that we are willing to pay a little more for a quality product.
http://www.amazon.com/Ray-Bradbury-Theater-Complete/dp/B0007CEXUY/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1382160255&sr=1-1&keywords=ray+bradbury

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