The Mirror 
Vidiot's Box

It comes as a bit of a surprise that the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker cult 1982 comedy series Police Squad! has only now made it to DVD, with a set collecting the entire run of the show (not hard, as only six episodes ever aired). In fact, fans have been waiting for this long enough that you can even find online petitions with thousands of signatures advocating for this particular release.

The show may have enjoyed an undeservedly short run, but its influence on comedy was pretty enormous, for better or worse, as The Naked Gun was spun directly out of the series six years later. Like the movie, Police Squad! starred Leslie Nielsen as a bumbling, deadpan cop, and if you’re familiar with either the Naked Gun or the also Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker Airplane! movies, you know the sort of absurdist humour that fuelled the show. The DVD set includes commentaries by the creators, an interview with Nielsen, a gag reel (which, given the show’s wackiness, must be particularly mind-bending) and a handful of behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Though there’s not much in the way of new stuff to be found in The Exorcist—The Complete Anthology, fans of the series might appreciate the chance to pick up all of the Exorcist movies—in all of their incarnations—on the cheap. You get both versions of the first movie (the original and the quickly-inaccurately-titled “Version You’ve Never Seen”), as well as both the Renny Harlin and Paul Schrader versions of the prequels. —Mark Slutsky

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