70s Live Kid Vid Blog

KTV, the kids and teen television channel, is currently airing an extended retro block in the late afternoon/evening slot, featuring several Filmation series, including Space Academy. Space Academy airs daily at 6:30 EST. The other Filmation shows include two with live action segments, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids and The Secret Lives of Waldo Kitty, as well as two Archie series, the original series and Archie’s Funhouse.

Other retro shows aired during the block include Gumby, the Mighty Hercules, Mr. Magoo, and Roger Ramjet.
Individual segments of Roger Ramjet and the 1960s Dick Tracy cartoon are frequently shown in between shows. The one other retro live action series is Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo, an Australian series from the late 60s that was produced by some of the same people who later worked on Barrier Reef.

Besides the shows listed above, the channel has showed the animated spin off of the Ghost Busters as well as various Filmation holiday specials, including the Fat Albert Christmas and Easter ones, and the He-Man & She-Ra Christmas special.

Here’s KTV’s full schedule.

The station is available via DISH and Sky Angel.

While looking something else up on Amazon UK, I saw that Here Comes the Double Deckers is now available on DVD in the UK. Besides all the episodes, the disc includes interviews with cast members Brinsley Forde (Spring) and Michael Audreson (Brains).

My copy is on order and I will try to post a review once I get and also let everyone know if the DVDs can be played on standard US DVD players like the UK release of Big John, Little John was.

For fans of 1976 NBC series, The Kids from C.A.P.E.R., there is a great new site with a wealth of information about the series at The C.A.P.E.R. Project.  The site features an expanded episode guide with video and audio clips, tons of photos, and extensive interviews with actor Steve Bonino and musician Rob Hagel, who wrote songs for the show.

The site has its own YouTube channel which features over 60 clips, including two full episodes, as well as scenes from other episodes, and clips of the actors on various other programs.  Here;s one of the clips that features the Kids singing “Wrap Up All My Dreams” from the “Mummy’s the Word” episode:

The Big John, Little John series set that was supposed to come out in October 2009 was initially delayed until April 2010. A few weeks prior to that, the release was postponed indefinitely and TV Shows on DVD reported that the studio intends to release it one way or another at some point.

For those, like myself, who don’t want to wait, the series was released in the UK and Australia last year. As with the Red Hand Gang release, which was released in the UK the year before it was released in the US, the UK DVD is region free, which means it should play on any US DVD player or computer.

I received the UK DVD as a Christmas present and it includes all 13 episodes uncut. Unlike the episodes copied from faded 16 mm prints, these episodes include an episode preview at the beginning of each episode, as well as a preview for the next episode.  The bonus material is pretty small, just an episode guide and a few promotional photos.

Imported copies have shown up on Amazon in the US, but currently, no copies are available. I got my copy from Amazon UK and it only took a few days to ship.

As mentioned previously, Big John, Little John is coming out on DVD this fall, October 13th, to be exact, which is just two weeks away!

The set features all 13 episodes of the series, which starred Herb Edelman and Robbie Rist and ran on NBC during the 1976. From what I have read and been told, there are no major extras on the set.  Which was the same case for the two other Saturday morning series released by Virgil Films and Entertainment this year, Monster Squad and Red Hand Gang. What you should expect is nice, clear, cleaned up episodes of this rare series.

You can pre-order the set from Amazon:

Land of the Lost DVD releases

On the same day Big John will be released, the Land of the Lost movie is also coming out in both regular DVD and Blu-Ray format.  Both versions with contain the following extras: deleted scenes with commentary from director Brad Silberling;  ” A Day in the Life of a Big-Time Movie Star” featuring costar Danny McBride;   Devil’s Canyon Gift Shop Commercial and Tour; and a commentary track with director Silberling.

The Blu-Ray edition includes more bonus features: 12 more minutes of deleted scenes with commentary from the director;  “Dr. Marshall’s Food Diaries” with commentary from the director; “This is Not a Routine Expedition: Making Land of the Lost” featurette;  “ Brad, Sid and Marty: A Conversation with the Kroffts” a look back at the various shows produced by Sid and Marty Krofft.

No word as to whether the deleted scenes will include the alternate ending that featured cameos from the stars of the original series, Wesley Eure and Kathy Coleman.

In addition to the movie release, the original series is being re-released as season sets.  So far, the only announced extra is a preview for the 2009 movie on the season 3 set, but based on the complete series re-release from May, I wouldn’t expect any other ones.

Pre-order the DVDs from Amazon:

In other Krofft related DVD news, on the Krofft brothers’ myspace message board, there are official postings that said that Far Out Space Nuts will be released on DVD in the next six months and The Lost Saucer will be released within the next year.

With the Land of the Lost movie coming out this weekend, the Kroffts are showing up in the press quite a bit. Here are some recent articles and interviews:

A New York Times feature on their work.

An interview with Sid and Marty as part of Collider’s coverage of the movie.

The Washington Times did an online chat with the brothers,  here’s the transcript.

The Boston Globe’s article on the Kroffts.

Finally, The Onion’s AV Club has a new article,“Welcome to the altered state of Druggachusettes!”: 25 notably trippy kids’ shows, that mentions a few of the Kroffts’ shows.

To coincide with the release of the Land of the Lost movie, the Sci Fi Channel is running another marathon of the original Land of the Lost series.  The marathon will run over the course of two days, June 4th and 5th, from 8 am to 6 pm EST.  Unlike the previous marathon, they will be omitting the first three episodes, but will be showing the last three episodes, which were not aired during the Memorial Day marathon.

Sci Fi’s website also has a new video interview with Sid & Marty Krofft here.

For those that haven’t picked up the, now out-of-print, box set, all 17 episodes of H. R. Pufnstuf are now available for purchase from iTunes.

The Pufnstuf movie is also available from iTunes.  For those that would prefer a hard copy version of the movie, it was also released on DVD this month. While there are no extras included, the DVD contains the wide screen version of the film.

Two full episodes of Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp are now available officially through You Tube.

The two episodes, Dreaded Hong Kong/Great Bank Robbery & Reluctant Robot/Royal Foil, were put up by Image Entertainment, who also released the Lancelot Link DVD set a few years back.

They’ve also uploaded a few segments of another Saturday morning series, the animated Here Comes the Grump, which aired on NBC from 1969 to 1971.

The Red Hand Gang will be released on DVD in the US on July 28, 2009. It is being released by Virgil Films and Entertainment, the same company that will be releasing Monster Squad on June 23rd. No extras have been announced, but the 2008 UK release of the series did have the series’ commercial bumpers as an extra.

You can now pre-order the US set from Amazon.

The same company plans on releasing two other Saturday morning series from the same production company, D’Angelo-Bullock-Allen: Big John, Little John in the latter part of 2009 and Run, Joe, Run in 2010. Hopefully, the sales of the series will be good enough to get the last two D’Angelo produced series, Westwind and McDuff, the Talking Dog, released.