Customer Reviews

The Mr. Bill Collection (The Best of Saturday Night Live) [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The "Mr. Bill" short films are as bizarrely endearing as ever, but the DVD is a disaster. (Note that all the earlier reviews are for the VHS tape.)

Here's the rub: ***ALL*** scanning and skipping functions are disabled throughout the entire disc! Want to go to the next film? Don't press the skip button; it won't work. You have to go back to the tedious menu and arrow your way slowly to the episode you want. Want to back up or fast forward a little in the film you're watching? Sorry, but there's no way AT ALL to do that.

This disc is a cruel joke and should be withdrawn. It cannot be recommended at all as issued, though I found it impossible to give poor Mr. Bill only one star....

All the material on this disk plus more is contained in the three-disk Definitive Collection which at the time of this writing is in print, available on Amazon, and very inexpensive (especially through 3rd-party sellers). What the D.C. lacks is any printed material that might be included with this Anchor Bay release.
Mr. Bill, BTW, seemed a lot funnier to me during his SNL run (this seems to be the general consensus), but even with hindsight, I'd probably still purchase the D.C., if only for an inexpensive trip down Memory Lane. Rating reflects the material, which I have seen, and not this particular release, which I haven't.

This Mr. Bill video is very funny I believe. And what makes it so great, of course, is how "cheap" it's done. No one but Mr. Hands ever moves, and Mr. Bill just has to "stand" for anything Mr. Hands does to him, or anything Sluggo, a guy who hates Mr. Bill, tells Mr. Hands to do to him. Hilarious I believe!

You may feel bad laughing at the sufferings of the benevolent, upbeat Mr. Bill, but you can't help it. This is as funny as anything ever seen on SNL. Although the video is less than an hour long, it packs more laughs than some of the best comedy movies. I highly, highly recommend this.

When they started out, the Mr. Bill shorts were a clever satire of bad childrens animation (that is, until they started taking themselves too seriously and became bad animation. See: "Mr. Bill Does Vegas.") More to the point, those two minute segments of poor, play-dough Mr. Bill getting slaughtered by Mr. Hands and Sluggo were pretty dang funny.
The DVD image is fairly grainy and at some points can be quite poor. However, they still looks substantially better than the early TV broadcasts, and much better than the previous "Best of SNL: Mr. Bill" video. Among the numerous extras (games, Mr. Bill intro, Storyboards, Booklet, New Shorts, G-Rated Versions) the best is the commentary by Mr. Bill and Mr. Hands. As in the commentary on the "This is Spinal Tap" disc, it's a funny satire of the normal, boring commentary track.

This tape is a laugh-a-minute!I strongly recomend

Liked it. So did my kids. Funny watching their reaction to something from the past. The choices of the episodes to include were the right ones.

Mr Bill is a little clay man with a little yellow dog. (Here comes Mr. Bill's dog) He has terrible luck whenever his friend, Mr. Hand, comes around. Mr. Sluggo is another clay man. Whenever Mr. Bill sees Mr. Sluggo, he claims "He's gonna be mean to me", and he's always right. Mr. Bill was well known in the late 1970s. This started out as a little short skit on Saturday Night Live. It caught on, and the little skits turned into a saga. In the lat 1970s young adults were always quoting "OH NO-O-O" and everyone knew what they were talking about. Even now kids enjoy sympathizing with Mr. Bill and his bad luck, and even teenagers get a kick out of it. Adults will enjoy the memories.

The DVD is ok, seems to get dull and boring after a few minutes. I watched the original series but watching it now seems dumb!

can't rewind a one minute film? Who cares? You DVD nerds are the worst.
The menu is cute.