Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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42 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The end of the road?, July 14, 2005
The early to mid 80s...the groovy 70s were over, and we were unceremoniously dumped into the gimme gimme greed is good era, rife with yuppies, Iran/Contra hearings, and jellybeans (President Reagan's favorite treat), and we all laughed at the antics of a diminutive (in size, but not in heart), adopted, African American boy named Arnold Jackson as he posed the question we all wanted to know the answer to in 'What choo talkin' bout, Willis?' Yes, what were you talking about, Willis? Anyway, After School Specials, dramatic, sometimes comedic, programs designed especially entertain and teach pre-teens about life and issues they could have very well faced, in terms they could understand in an hour-long format (approximately 45 minutes, without the commercials), were now a television staple. Networks, seeing the potential in reaching a younger audience, began airing primetime sitcoms, that, while they were still comedies, often included more serious tones like drug and alcohol abuse, teen age pregnancy, and so forth in shows like Diff'rent Strokes (1978), The Facts of Life (1979), Family Ties (1982), and so on...this set comes with two DVDs, each containing 2 episodes, or 4 episodes per set. The series (I believe there were something like 26 episodes) was created and produced by Martin Tahse, and won a slew of awards, was really unique in that it was programming for young people that wasn't created to tie into products or sell merchandise, but to speak to them about situations difficult to understand or comprehend, treating its' audience with the respect and intelligence not often seen, not talking down to them but relating to them on a level they understood and appreciated.
The episodes featured on After School Specials 82-86 Vol 6 are as follows;
Two Loves for Jenny (Originally aired 10/27/1982) aka Between Two Loves stars Robert Reed (`The Brady Bunch'), Karlene Crockett (Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story), and Lance Guest (The Last Starfighter). Reed is an widowed architect with three boys who marries a widowed woman with three girls...er, wait, wrong show...Reed is a high school music teacher who, after plucking a potential promising student (Crockett) from the manure pile that is the general student population, seeing promise in her ability with a violin, eventually coaxes her to participate in a contest where the prize is a scholarship to a hoity toity music school. The catch is the girl's boyfriend (Guest) also plans to enter the competition, so now she's torn `between two loves', as she so covets the music scholarship, but is afraid the competition will torpedo her relationship (hey baby, boyfriends are a dime a dozen)...an added bonus, looks for an appearance by Doors guitarist Robby Krieger (no foolin').
Did You Hear What Happened to Andrea? (Originally aired 12/27/1983) aka Andrea's Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy features Michele Greene (Abby Perkins on the TV show `L.A. Law'), Carrie Snodgress (The Attic), Matt Clark (Brubaker), Moosie Drier (Oh, God!), and an especially young Kirk Cameron. Andrea (Greene) and her boyfriend David (Drier) thumb a ride with an innocent looking man. After dropping David off first (good idea, Dave), Andrea arrives home much later, avoiding contact with her family (as you can guess, she ended up paying for the ride...you know the old saying `Cash, grass, or ash, no one rides for free). Anyway, the truth finally comes out and her parents are torn...Pops (Clark) is understandably angry and Mom (Snodgrass), living in the realm of Neverland, wants to pretend it never happened. Meanwhile, David decides to take matters into his own hands ala Charles Bronson in Death Wish, by hunting the man down and gutting him like a fish...er, wait, no, that's not right...what he actually does is track the man down by getting his license plate number and reporting it to the police, who subsequently catch and arrest him, but now Andrea isn't sure if she can deal with facing him in court...all joking aside, this was probably one of the more serious episodes, dealing with a particularly difficult issue...
Ace Hits the Big Time (Originally aired 10/28/1981) features Rob Stone (Kevin Owens on the TV show `Mr. Belvedere') as Horace 'Ace' Hobart (you can see why he went with the nickname Ace). After moving to New York with his family, Ace is warned by his annoying sister that school gang, `The Purple Falcons', will kill him, figuratively speaking. Anyway, Ace shows up to school with an eye patch (a touch of the pink eye) wearing a garage sale jacket, looking just generally weird. The gang, who are actually a bunch of whiffs, decide Ace would fit right in with them, so he joins up and makes time with the only girl member who ends up getting kidnapped by a rival gang because they're jealous about, get this, the fact that Ace and his got picked to appear in a low budget movie and they didn't (no foolin')...sort of a low rent West Side Story, this episode features music, dancing, and even a love ballad (no foolin' again)...actually this one is pretty lively...
Face at the Edge of the World (Originally aired 9/17/1986) aka A Desperate Exit features Malcolm-Jamal `Don't call me Theo!' Warner (`The Cosby Show') and Rob Stone (Kevin Owens on the TV show `Mr. Belvedere'). Jed (Stone) Charlie (Warner) were life-long friends, that is until Jed finds out Charlie decided to check out early, if you get my drift...anyway, Jed, who is obviously crushed by not only the loss of his best friend, but also the fact that he had no fore warning of what his friend was going to do, or why he even did what he did. This drives Jed to delve into Charlie's life, with a little help from some others, to understand the things they never really talked about, things that directly contributed to Charlie's choice to shuck off his mortal coil...
The quality of the video on these DVDs is not the best, but it is as how it was when originally presented, and given these were teleplays made to be presented on television in the 70's, you really can't compare it to today's standards. The packaging is really cool, as the DVDs, enclosed in a regular DVD case, come in a detailed reproduction of a school yearbook. Printed on the inside and the back is a brief synopsis and airdate for each episode, along with the key talent, and the name of the original author for each story.
Cookieman108
If you're interested in picking up all these sets (there are six total), there is a bundled package coming out in August 2005, with all the sets enclosed in a replica of a little, yellow school bus, like the one I used to ride...
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Take a trip back to the 80s with the After School Specials, January 25, 2008
I never had the opportunity to view these growing up and cannot now remember how I stumbled upon them on Amazon but I decided to try out a couple and take a look-see. The other one I ordered was After School Specials: 1979-1980. I'm a bit stuck in an 80s time warp is what it is. cookieman108 pretty much covered the content spot on so I'll just tell my personal experience of the product.
Packaging - DVDs come in a case inside of a box doctored to look like the pages of a yearbook. The outer arwork is designed to look like a high school yearbook so this theme is carried all the way through - on the inside front cover are the student (teen actors) and faculty (adult actors) pictures, the 'first page' contain still shots of each of the four movies, and the 'last page' and inside back cover contains "Autographs" which are a brief synopsis of each of the movies and comments made about them eg. by the New York Post/L.A. Times etc. A vey well constructed design overall.
Audio - The 'Settings' option allows you to listen in either Dolby Stereo or Dolby 5.1. The sound is not too bad in either setting. But nothing like "theatre experience" if you know what I mean.
Video - The film is not exactly crisp and clear like you'd get on a new DVD. There is the 'fuzz' element (sort of a grainy picture) of the 80s and the colours are a bit muted. If you want a clearer picture of what this DVD looks like, have a look at Chips or Magnum P.I. on network TV and it looks pretty much like that.
DVD Content - Disc 1 contains 'Two Loves for Jenny' originally aired 27.10.82 with a runtime of 44 mins and 44 secs - about a girl who has to choose between what's best for her or what's best for her boyfriend. What choice will she make?; and 'Andrea's Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy' which was based on the book 'Did You Hear What Happened to Andrea?', so it's also known as 'Did You Hear What Happened to Andrea?' on the DVD, originally aired 7.12.83 with a runtime of 44 mins and 26 secs about a girl who hitches a ride home with unforeseen consequences. Disc 2 contains 'Ace Hits the Big Time' originally aired 2.4.85 with a runtime of 42 mins and 51 secs about mild mannered Horace who, through a comedy of errors, gets mistaken for a big, bad, gang member; and 'A Desperate Exit' also known as 'Face at the Edge of the World' after the book from which it was taken, originally aired 17.9.86 with a runtime of 41 mins and 11 secs about a popular teen who commits suicide and no-one could figure out why. On both discs you may view scenes from each movie (here called Chapters) but they are limited to 4 scenes from each and Photo Gallery which are still shots from the movies themselves. There are some cool graphics integrated into the menu with the school theme taking precedence of course. The menu is backed by a notebook page, a pencil scribbles out the information and an eraser rubs out the information when you move on to the next movie for which the pencil scribbles in the new information.
The movies - I liked each of them very well. I thought they were wholesome family TV with morals in each one of course. The only one I thought was a bit odd and couldn't get the point of was 'Ace hits the big time'. I'm guessing the moral was that if you just be yourself, everything will turn out OK in the end but this was a bit confusing 'cuz it didn't work out BECAUSE he was himself, but IN SPITE of that. Maybe it just seemed weird because I found the whole thing incredibly funny whereas all of the other After School Specials dealt with really serious heavy topics - teen suicide, teenage pregnancy, rape etc.
Would recommend this as good clean pre-teen/teen family viewing or adult trips down Memory Lane.
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DVD ~ Artist Not Provided
DVD ~ Various Actors
DVD ~ Christian Juttner
DVD ~ Melissa Sue Anderson
DVD ~ Carol Jones
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