While the real action this week is in the theaters, there are still some home entertainment releases of great interest to the geek community this week including the final season of the Chuck TV series, a trio of classic Doctor Who sagas, plus direct from Adult Swim, Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie.

 

 

There aren’t many TV releases this week, but some of them should be of interest to one fan group or another.  The slacker espionage/comedy series Chuck developed a small but devoted following over its five year run, which should be the main clientele for Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season (Warner Bros., $39.99, BD $49.99), which follows the comedic, and occasionally dramatic, adventures of a slacker clerk in a big box store-turned secret agent.

 

Fans of the classic Doctor Who series have a trio of release to enjoy including Doctor Who: Story #107: Nightmare of Eden (BBC, 100 min., $24.98), a classic four-parter from 1979 featuring the popular Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), Doctor Who: Story #151: Dragonfire (BBC, 100 min., $24.98), the fourth and final serial from the 24th Season that features the introduction of Sophie Aldred as the companion to the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), and Doctor Who: Story #153: The Happiness Patrol (BBC, 100 min., $24.98), the second serial from the 25th season that features “The Kandy Man” and the Seventh Doctor.

 

For those who enjoy the campy stylings of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, there is Elvira’s Movie Macabre: Wild Women (One Entertainment, 336 min., $19.98), a collection of four sub-B movies, Untamed Women, The Wild Women of Wongo, Hercules and the Captive Woman, and The Wasp Woman, all of which get the biting, snide, and occasionally insinuating "Elvira" treatment.

 

Others might be interested in the excellent introductory collection, The Twilight Zone—More Fan Favorites (Image, 500 min., $29.98), or in the epic escapism of Fantasy Island: Season 2 (Shout Factory, 1140 min., $39.97), or the cheap neon thrills of the Aaron Spelling-produced Vega$: The Third Season, Part 1 (Paramount, 587 min., $36.98), which starred Robert Urich as PI Dan Tanna who cruised the strip in a red 1957 T-Bird.

 

The one "serious" TV series due this week is The Big C: The Complete Second Season (Sony, $45.99), which stars the estimable Laura Linney as a cancer "victim" in the cable series that has more humor and slice-of-life-grit than might be expected from such a grim subject.

 

The only animated "TV on DVD" offering this week is the Franklin DVD Collection (Phase 4, 525 min., $24.95), which includes 44 episodes of the Canadian-produced cartoon series based on the series of children’s books about a turtle written by Paulette Bourgeois and Brenda Clark.

 

 

Underworld: Awakening (Sony, "R," $30.99, BD $35.99, 3DBD $45.99), the fourth nd most successful movie in the Underworld franchise, earned $160.1 million worldwide. The movie features  the return of series star Kate Beckinsale in an action-packed saga that takes place six months after the "purge" of vampires and lycans in Underworld: Evolution, the franchise’s previous installment.

 

Of special interest to Adult Swim fans is Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (Magnolia, "R," $28.98, BD $34.98), which was actually produced for $3 million and which only managed to earn a poor 40% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  While those who don’t enjoy the irreverent Adult Swim style humor might find that 90 minutes of the bizarre comedy of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim can be a little off-putting, most viewers will find that supporting performances from Robert Loggia and Will Ferrell do liven things up considerably.

 

This week’s other major release is also a genre film, though its genre is the "romance." The button-cute Rachel MacAdams and hunky Channing Tatum star in The Vow (Sony, "PG-13," $30.99, BD $40.99) a sudsy saga about a young bride who loses her memory in a car accident.

 

 

The top release this week is the Occult Academy Complete Series Premium Edition (NIS America, "13+," 334 min., BD $64.99), which includes all 13 episodes of one of the more interesting supernatural/fantasy series of recent years.  This series aired in Japan in 2010 and was streamed almost simultaneously on Crunchyroll.

 

The Guin Saga Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, "14+," 650 min., $79.99, BD $89.99), which includes all 26 episodes of the 2009 anime series from Satelight that was based on the classic fantasy novels by Kaoru Kurimoto.  This marks the series’ debut on Blu-ray here in the States, though it was released in two parts on DVD (and each part had an MSRP of $59.99).

 

Everything else is basically re-priced editions of stuff that has been released before such as the Getbackers Complete Collection (Sentai Filmworks, "13+," 1225 min., $59.98), which collects the series previously released by ADV. Media Blasters has two releases due this week, the sexy Kanokon: The Girl Who Cried Fox TV & OVA Collection (Anime Works, "17+," 350 min., $39.99) and Queen’s Blade 2: Evil Eye (Anime Works, "16+," 300 min., $49.99)

 

 

Bird of Paradise (Kino Classics, BD $24.98) was directed by King Vidor in 1932 and shot largely on location in Hawaii and Catalina. Kino’s new Blu-ray of the South Sea Island epic starring Joel McCrea and Delores Del Rio may not be perfect, but it is a great transfer made directly from a surviving nitrate print at the George Eastman House with fine detail and rich solid blacks through the vast majority of the film’s scenes.  As the depression worsened in the early 1930s there were a number of films set in this South Sea island vein including most notably F.W. Murnau’s Tabu and Vidor’s Bird of Paradise (as the depression was settling in, the life of a beachcomber must have seemed pretty attractive). With its conventional attitudes ("It would break his mother’s heart, if he brought home a native girl"), Bird of Paradise is hardly the Rousseau-esque paean to Polynesian life that Tabu is, but remains interesting throughout in spite of a hackneyed plot that has a Polynesian princess (well-played by the great Mexican actress Delores Del Rio) being sacrificed to a volcano god. Forget the plot and groove on the stellar black-and-white photography by three of Hollywood’s better cinematographers, and check out what passed for pre-Code soft core porn—a surprising long and tastefully photographed underwater "nude" scene featuring Del Rio and McCrea that compares favorably with the more famous "nude bathing" scene from Tarzan and His Mate (1934).  The lack of Polynesian actors in the lead roles is troubling, the comic relief provided by McCrea’s alcoholic shipmates is lame, but Bird of Paradise still manages to be a memorable film, especially in this excellent new Blu-ray incarnation.

--Tom Flinn

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect those of editorial staff of ICv2.com.