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TV on DVD Reviews > Unsolved
Mysteries
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Unsolved Mysteries
Ghosts and UFOs
(First Look-2004)
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RETURN TO TV ON DVD BOX SET MENU
 
Copyright ©2004
PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: October 10, 2004. |
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Description: |
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Unsolved Mysteries was one of the Granddaddies of reality TV.
Actually, if you get technical, it's pretty much a variation on Leonard
Nimoy's 70s syndicated series In Search Of. Still, the show has
always been compulsively enjoyable. It takes interesting and
inexplicable stories and lies them out for public consumption in little
bite-sized nuggets. It is perfect for our world of low-attention-span
theater, tell a good story and then move on. These are the first two
DVD box sets (with more to come) of the long-running series, and they are
probably two of the better subjects to hit on. Personally, I found the
ghost stories more interesting than the UFO ones, but that probably says
more about me than the stories.
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What's Good About
It? |
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It is no wonder that this show ran for fifteen seasons. (The packaging
actually sort of hints that it is still running and refuses to acknowledge
that host Robert Stack passed away last year.) They take some
fascinating stories and boil them down to 10-15 minute segments. The
stories come from all over the world, some are well known, some aren't.
Wonderful ghost stories include those of Resurrection Mary, a specter near
Chicago who appears on the side of roads looking for rides to her graveyard
home, the dead woman who inhabited an acquaintance to implicate her murderer
and the haunt who will not leave the lakeside resort where her lover took
her life. The coolest UFO sightings are probably the ones by an
airbase in Bentwater, England and the one which horrified a group of
campers. |
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What's Bad About It? |
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This themed "greatest hits" format does not really do the show any favors.
One of the cool things about the series is that they'd follow a murder with
a ghost with a corny lost-relative story. It kept things lively, kept
things different. Here it is one type of story over and over, which is
great if you are passionate on the type of tale. However, ghost
stories and particularly UFO sightings do have a tendency to be kind
of similar. Future box sets are coming on things like Miracles
and Murders; murders I could see being endlessly fascinating, but how
many miracles can you really see? Also, one of the complaints about
the series throughout its run... and it's a somewhat valid one... is that
the reenactments they do of the stories tend to be a little cheesy.
Not to mention that the actors used almost never look like the actual people
who are interviewed. One last minor quibble is that because these
segments are culled from over fifteen years worth of stories, the production
values (as well as clothing and hairstyles) vary wildly. |
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What's Missing? |
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One of the fun things about watching reruns of the show on cable is that sometimes
you run across slumming future stars in the "reenactments." Recently,
for example, I saw a repeat where Matthew McConaughey was a murder victim.
It would be fun if they used some of these "before they were stars" moments,
but I didn't notice any. |
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PopEntertainment.com
final grade:
B-
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The show exudes a strange fascination. It's like potato chips, you
can't watch just one story, you keep thinking, well, I'll see what this one
is about. Yet, it is such an embarrassment of riches that you also can
pick it up and put it down as the whim moves you like a true-crime book.
If you watched four straight DVDs on either of these subjects it would be
way too much, way too similar. In a way, it is like a magazine as
compared to a novel... terrific in short bursts but not necessarily
something you want to follow all the way through.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2004 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: October 10, 2004. |
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