The D Generation-The Best & Second Best of (1986)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1986
Running Time	179:31 (Case: 181)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (30:37)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Walter Boston Helen Gaynor Kris Noble
Studio Distributor	Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Santo Cilauro Marg Downey John Harrison Rob Sitch Magda Szubanski Michael Veitch Tom Gleisner Nicholas Bufalo Tony Martin Jane Turner Geoff Paine John Alsop Mick Malloy
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$39.95	Music	Gordon Gribbin

    OK, let's start off with a quick quiz. Do any of the following statements make you smile or even laugh out loud?

1. "Hail, General Testiclies"
2. "Gott unt Himmel these Englanders fight like madmen"
3. "Bossa Nova until the late hours of the afternoon in the Brown Corduroy room"
4. "I almost there, Dad"

    If you smiled or laughed at all of these, you are a huge D-Generation fan and will probably buy this disc as soon as you can find it. If you remember only some of them, you'll probably want this disc to remind yourself. If none of them mean anything to you, check your pulse.

    If after checking your pulse, you are still not sure what I am am on about then have you ever heard of or enjoyed movies such as The Castle, The Dish or Crackerjack and/or television shows like Kath & Kim, The Late Show, The Panel, Fast Forward or Frontline? Well, the people involved in all of those productions began their television careers here, straight out of Melbourne University. During the mid 1980s, the D-Generation were a comedy troupe which had a successful television series on the ABC (and some on Seven). At the time the central members were Rob Sitch, Michael Veitch, Marg Downey, Magda Szubanski, Santa Cilauro & John Harrison. Also featuring were other well known faces including Jane Turner (Kath), Jane Kennedy, Tom Gleisner, Mick Malloy, Tony Martin, Nick Bufalo & Jason Stephens. The television show ran from 1986 to 1988 but the material here includes earlier and later footage, particularly of the third section.

    This disc contains nearly three hours of classic D-Generation foolishness and includes all the famous sketches such as The Thunderbirds, Homicide, The New Christ is Right, the married couple who constantly argue and try to kill each other, the yellow thing with hinges and many, many more. You will see many sketches and characters here which were later developed into fuller ideas on The Late Show and Kath & Kim.

    The disc contains three separate sections (although you can choose to Play All).

• The Best of (56:19) - A special put together in 1996 from the original television series. This features many classic sketches such as Dag City (Quote 3 above), The Thunderbirds (Quote 4), Terrorist outtakes, the fartwhistle, the test-tube-o-matic and much more.
• Degenocide (88:42) - A 1997 special featuring a revoiced version of the television drama Homicide which recurs throughout and many sketches from the original television show including making fun of teachers, private schools, pool cleaners, incontinence, religion, marriage, morning television, and American talk shows. It also includes the other two quotes mentioned above. There is some great stuff here but also some misfires and one joke which may offend.
• The Bottom Drawer (34:30) - This includes material from 1980 to 1993 covering everything from their early Super 8 films to live appearances and their hit singles Five in a Row and Five More in a Row from the early 1990s. Also included is The Lawn Warrior, a take off of Mad Max and some unscreened pilot material they made for Channel Nine. This is well worth seeing and some of it is very funny.

    Basically, if you are a fan this is great stuff. If you are not but have enjoyed any of their subsequent work mentioned above, you should check this out to see where it all began. Even if you don't know who these people are but enjoy good Aussie comedy give this a try.

Video

    Let's be realistic, this is mid 1980s television made by the public broadcaster on a small budget. The video quality is fine but nothing spectacular.

    The feature is presented in a 1.29:1 aspect ratio which would be the original aspect ratio. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The picture was reasonably clear and sharp throughout, with no evidence of low level noise. Of course, due to the source material it is quite grainy and does not have the sharpness of modern television and movies. The second section is the best, the first section is softer and the third section contains quite a bit of amateur footage which is fairly poor. Generally the material seems to have been transferred well, but the quality is restricted by the source material.

    The colour was a bit washed out and some colour bleeding was present as you would expect from the age of the source material.

    There were a number of artefacts including tape tracking marks at 2:59, 6:53, 9:42 and 46:22 in the first section, some minor edge enhancement, aliasing on a dress at 24:20 in the second section and comet trails at 40:55 in the same section.

    There are no subtitles.

    This is a dual layered disc and the layer change is well placed at the end of a sketch at 30:37 in the second section.
    

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is fine, but pretty much mono except on the odd occasion.

    This DVD contains only one audio option; an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack encoded at 224 Kb/s.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand. There were no problems with audio sync except where some sketches included jokes about bad lip synching.    

    The surround speakers were essentially not used at all.

    The subwoofer was not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There were no extras.

Menu

    The menu includes the ability to choose a particular section or Play All.

    This disc is coded for all 6 regions but does not seem to be available outside of Region 4.

    The video quality is fine considering the nature of the source material.

    The audio quality is fine.

    The disc has no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall