Jack J's '70s: Udvandrerne/Nybyggerne

...skip to 42 years later and I'm finally re-watching UDVANDRERNE / NYBYGGERNE (The Emigrants/The New Land)!!! Directed by Jan Troell and starring Liv Ullmann & Max von Sydow. It's hard to fathom that Sydow played the old guy in THE EXORCIST 3 years later.
When I watched the films in '74 they were broadcast as an 8 part tv series and I've decided to split the two films into 4 parts (the two films run for 6+ hours). I hated the films as a kid, now I love 'em. Oh, and needless to say, to re-create the atmos from 1974 ... I'm watching the films in black & white!

McCloud (1970-77)

I watched this with my dad in the 70s and have fond memories about it. I haven't really rewatched the show since then, except for one episode 4-5 years ago, and I've been meaning to make a revisit for years and years. A couple of years back I found out the only available seasons were 1 & 2 so I decided to order a bootleg with all 7 seasons from iOffer. Fortunately, I did one more check to see if more had been released in the passing years.

And, lo and behold, the full series (kinda) is out on Danish dvd now. Denmark is actually the only place in the world where it's released in its entirety. In Australian they've released 5 seasons so far. Unfortunately, the Danish version only includes the edited version of season 1 (6 episodes were edited into 3) and the pilot uses the syndicated title ("Portrait of a Dead Girl") instead of the original title (WHO KILLED MISS USA). And furthermore, an episode is missing entirely from season 3 due to (Ricky Nielson) music rights. The Australian set of season 1 from Madman has the original 6 episodes plus the edited ones. And they include the missing episode in season 3 but sans the music. I have my info partly from an Amazon user in the States, WIKI and IMDb. The Danish season 7 also includes the telly movie THE RETURN OF SAM MCCLOUD (1989).

I've ordered the Danish set but will also get the Aussie set of at least season 1. Henrik Larsen has the Danish season 1 and he says that although they are in the original fullscreen ratio they look slightly squeezed from top down. Buy, hey, at least they're on official dvd now!

Scandinavians can get the Danish seasons from cdon.dk at 100 DKK a set.

Episode listing with original broadcast dates.

Jack J's 1970s: DELVECCHIO

Bloody hell! I've just discovered you can get the complete Delvecchio cop show on DVD now! Okay okay, it's a bootleg but still!! I've been wanting to revisit this for YEARS! I watched the series when it originally ran at the end of the 1970s and I haven't watched it since (Danish tv hardly never reran anything!). I'm sure these are broadcast episodes off air but who cares. I'm gonna get this when I get paid!

Hmm, and I've ALSO just discovered that there's actually ONE episode available legally! It's out on a reg. 1 DVD entitled "Brilliant But Cancelled" (it's got three more shows but I'm not familiar with any of them).

Jack J's 1970s: Columbo

About a year ago I wrote about how I was watching my way thru the first season of the old fave cop/detective show Columbo which my mum got me into when I was 7 years old. I've been holding out on getting more seasons cos, well, everything has a price tag on it :-/ but last night I was lucky enough to scoop up a complete, brand new box set of Columbo seasons 1-8 for the "whooping" price of... £10!!! That's 15 dollars! With postage it came to around $17. My luck was a marketplace seller on Amazon UK selling a never used set as second hand. Wauw!! Big grinds all 'round!!! xD [EDIT: 13 years later I finally notice the bloody spelling mistake; it's GRINS, not "grinds" for fuck's sake!Argh!! /Jack in October 2022] About the box; I'm sticking to the UK DVDs as they're often better than their US counterparts when it comes to TV shows. And they're often cheaper than the locally released Danish versions (besides I just don't care much for the often badly written Danish cover text. It just annoys me! LOL). So far there's been two boxes I've been keeping an eye on price wise; A box containing seasons 1-7, and the one I've just bought which as I mentioned contains #1-8. I'm really only interested in seasons 1-7 as these are the original seasons from the 1970s. Don't get me wrong it's not that everything has to be old per se but I just don't think the "new" episodes (which by now are quite old too) are that good (if you're a Danish/scandinavian reader I suggest you read Henrik & Joachim Larsen's coverage of the series in Obskuriøst magazine #10. PDF-edition here). I've just noticed there's now a box set on Amazon that appears to be the fully complete series but I haven't checked out if it really is all complete or whatnot.

Jack J's 1970s: Columbo

I looked down and discovered my white T-shirt was full of blood. Not fake blood or tomato juice but real living human blood. All over my shirt. I was around 7 or 8 years old and I was sitting in bed watching an episode of Columbo and I got the biggest nosebleed ever!! (and lets not go into why I had a nosebleed! Picking your nose is a filthy habit but, hey, I was 7 yrs old for crying out loud!! LOL).

I haven't really watched Columbo since its original run back in the 70s and I have never watched a full episode of the "new" seasons (i.e. counting from season 8) so when I stumbled over a particularly cheap Columbo box at a local store I thought it was finally time for a re-visit. :-)

So far I've watched two episodes and I can certainly see why we followed the series religiously in my family in the 70s. It's pretty cool. Well, not "cool" like Fonzie but you know wha' ah mean.

The box I got contains the complete season 1 and also includes the two feature length pilots that were made prior to the series. There's no other extras.

When I watched the first episode (directed by Steven Spielberg no less!) I couldn't help thinking there was something that didn't quite sit well with me; Then I discovered the cause: it was in colour!!! The show was filmed in colour alright but we never WATCHED it in colour cos in my family we didn't get a colour TV until (I think) around 1980!! So obviously I switched off the colours and watched the rest in black & white. :-) :-) :-)