70s Live Kid Vid Blog

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.

The Sci Fi channel will be running a Memorial Day marathon of the original Land of the Lost. It will run twenty hours, starting at 8 am and ending at 4 am. All of the episodes, with the exception of the last three, will be aired as part of the marathon.

In the early 90s, the Sci Fi channel ran a marathon of the original series that was hosted by Wesley Eure, who played Will, and featured an appearance from Marty Krofft. No word if there will be any hosts or extra features on the upcoming marathon.

Speaking of Wesley Eure, he now has his own official site. On his blog, he mentioned that his cameo in the upcoming film had been cut out. Hopefully, it will make it to the inevitable DVD version.

The TV Land Awards took place over the weekend and as part of the Pop Culture Award presentation to the Kroffts, Cyndi Lauper performed the Electra Woman and Dyna Girl theme dressed up as one of their villains, the Empress of Evil, with her backup singers dressed as Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

You can find photos from the event on Cyndi’s page.

The Land of the Lost theme was performed by Clint Black and reportedly, Billie Hayes made an appearance as Witchiepoo.

The TV Land Awards will air on TV Land next Sunday, April 26th.

The 2009 TV Land Awards will take place on Sunday, April 19th, at 8 PM and Sid and Marty Krofft are scheduled to be given the  Pop Culture Award, which is given to producer(s) whose series have a major impact on pop culture. Cyndi Lauper and David Cassidy are scheduled to pay tribute to the brothers.

A week later on April 26th at 8 PM ET/PT, the award show will be aired on TV Land.

Congrats to Sid and Marty!

Back Issue Magazine, which is devoted to comic books of the past,  has recently published new interviews with three of the main actors on Shazam!

The most recent issue, 33, is devoted to teen super heroes and has an interview with Michael Gray, who played Billy Batson on the series.

Issue 30 was devoted to Saturday morning super heroes and features interviews with both Captain Marvels, Jackson Bostwick and John Davey.