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| Amazing Stories - The Complete First Season |
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List Price: $49.98
Buy New: $29.99
You Save: $19.99 (40%)
Buy New/Used from $29.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 24 reviews)
Sales Rank: 57
Category: DVD
Publisher: Universal Studios
Studio: Universal Studios
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
Label: Universal Studios
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Full Screen, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 6 x 1.1
UPC: 025192526329
EAN: 0025192526329
ASIN: B00005JN8Q
Release Date: July 18, 2006 (New: Last 30 Days)
Theatrical Release Date: September 29, 1985
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Steven Spielberg's mid-'80s foray into television, Steven Spielberg Presents Amazing Stories, was based loosely on a pulpy sci-fi magazine from the '40s and '50s--much as his rollicking hit Raiders of the Lost Ark had been based on movie action serials of the same era. Yet despite the retro concept, Amazing Stories brought high gloss and state-of-the-art production values to their yarns of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. The boxed set of the first season (which debuted in 1985), contains all 24 episodes, as well as more than 20 minutes of deleted footage. Spielberg himself was very hands-on in the series, and directed many episodes and wrote most, and some themes from his later films show up here. In The Mission, a special hourlong episode (most are half an hour), stars Kevin Costner and Kiefer Sutherland play World War II bombers whose plane is hit during a routine mission, and who face a dire choice, with one young colleague's life hanging in the balance. Spielberg's visceral direction of the wartime violence, camaraderie, and anxiety is pitch-perfect, and presages some of the most moving moments in Saving Private Ryan. Part of the fun of this collection is seeing the stars and guest directors Spielberg cajoled into service, including Martin Scorsese, Sam Waterston (with a head of bushy '80s hair), Tim Robbins, Clint Eastwood, Harvey Keitel, and John Lithgow. The storytelling is crackerjack, and the trip down TV memory lane priceless. --A.T. Hurley
Studio description
Enter the extraordinary, supernatural world of Steven Spielberg with all 24 episodes of the complete first season of "Amazing Stories." Created by and featuring some of the greatest talents in Hollywood, these original tales delivered a groundbreaking and imaginatively unique show every week. Digitally remastered and presented in Dolby 5.1 surround sound for the first time ever, the DVD release also includes 20 minutes of deleted scenes. The 24 episodes from the 1985-86 season include performances by Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Tim Robbins, John Lithgow, Kevin Costner and many more. 1 Ghost Train; 2 The Main Attraction; 3 Alamo Jobe; 4 Mummy, Daddy; 5 The Mission; 6 The Amazing Falsworth; 7 Fine Tuning; 8 Mr. Magic; 9 Guilt Trip; 10 Remote Control Man; 11 Santa '85; 12 Vanessa in the Garden; 13 The Sitter; 14 No Day at the Beach; 15 One For the Road; 16 Gather Ye Acorns; 17 Boo!; 18 Dorothy and Ben; 19 Mirror, Mirror; 20 Secret Cinema; 21 Hell Toupee; 22 The Doll; 23 One For the Books; 24 Grandpa's Ghost.
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Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Awesome! I have waited a long time for this. July 24, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am a big fan of this series and looked forward to seeing this show every week in the 80's. I own the handfull of episodes that were released on Laserdisc and could not wait for DVD season sets to come out so I could own them all. This is a nice four disc set with very good picture and sound and comes in a nice sturdy box. This set has several of my favorite episodes including The Amazing Falsworth, Mirror, Mirror and Mummy, Daddy. I will have to wait for season 2 for my all time favorite episode though: Go to the Head of the Class starring Christopher Lloyd. Several episodes in this set also contain deleted scenes. Highly recommended!
Very pleased with this deluxe styled set July 22, 2006
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
Some might call Amazing Stories the Twilight Zone of the 1980's. The groundbreaking one hour series was extremely critically acclaimed. The show won numerous Emmy Awards for it's brief run during the mid 1980's. The show was produced by Steven Spielberg who directed several episodes of the show also.
Amazing Stories premiered on NBC in 1985. The shows first season is now available on DVD in a very deluxe 4 disc box set. The set includes all 24 episodes from the shows first season on single side discs. The interior of the box that holds the discs includes detailed descriptions of the episodes.
The show debuted with the episode "Ghost Train." In this episode an older man visits his adult children and his grand son. He tells them that their new country home lies in the path of a train. Of course the adults think he is delusional until a train comes straight threw their house in the middle of the night and takes the old man on his way.
Those kind of "amazing" stories helped Amazing Stories to gain a huge cult fan base. For years fans of the show have been awaiting for the series to arrive on DVD. Well Universal did a great job with the box set. The set even includes deleted scenes.
Having Steven Spielberg as a producer was a plus when it came to attracting star power. Dom Deluise, Charlie Sheen, John Lithgow, and Kevin Costner are just a few of the actors who appear in season one episodes.
 Revisiting Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories" two decades down the road July 22, 2006
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
In the wake of his blockbuster films "Jaws," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and "E.T.", NBC got Steven Spielberg to create a television anthology series. Spielberg's first directing gig was for one of the early episodes of Rod Serling's "Night Gallery" (the one with Joan Crawford as a blind woman), and of course the director was weaned on the classic anthology series "The Twilight Zone," "The Outer Limits," and "One Step Beyond." Spielberg was going to revive the genre with "Amazing Stories," a half-hour anthology series that last two seasons (1985-87), but it did not happen even though he got the likes of Kevin Costner ("The Mission"), Mark Hamill ("Gather Ye Acorns," and Sid Caesar ("Mr. Magic") to star in episodes (not to mention next gen actors like Charlie Sheen and Keifer Sutherland), as well as getting Burt Reynolds ("Guilt Trip"), Clint Eastwood ("Vanessa in the Garden"), Martin Scorcese ("Mirror, Mirror"), Paul Bartel ("Secret Cinema"), and Joe Dante ("Boo!") to direct (Note: the Michael Moore who directed "Alamo Jobe" is not the Michael Moore who did "Roger & Me" and other lighthearted documentary fare, but rather Michael D. Moore, who was the second unit director on the Indiana Jones movies).
Watching these 24 first-season episodes again, there are many more mundane outings than ones we would consider to be truly amazing. Spielberg directs two of the episodes, the "Ghost Train" pilot and "The Mission," but he came up with the stories for another dozen episodes, so this was clearly his series. In many ways that first episode, "Ghost Train," represents the series as a whole. The point of the episode is to have a steam locomotive crash through a living room wall and drive a train through a family's house. That is certainly a compelling image, and we get it from multiple camera angles, but the story that accompanies the stunt is not as good, despite Robert Blossom's performance as Old Pa. "The Mission" is much better offering an effective portrayal of a B-17 bombing mission during World War II going wrong before pulling some magic out of a hat.
For me "Dorothy and Ben" is far and away the best episode. Ben Dumfy (Joe Seneca) wakes up after 40 years in a coma to find he is an old man. He also discovers that he had talk to Dorothy (Natalie Gregory), a 7-year-old girl who has been in a coma for two weeks. Lane Smith and Louis Giambalvo are the doctors, Kathleen Lloyd and Joe Regalbuto are Dorothy's parents, and I watched these four DVDs because I wanted to watch this episode again (several times in fact). All of the other episodes I like, such as "Alamo Jobe," "The Amazing Falsworth," and "The Doll," have simple ideas and play them out without becoming truly memorable. An episode like "Santa '85" or Timothy Hutton's "Grandpa's Ghost" becomes quite representative, because once you understand the set up you can figure out the payoff. Even with an episode "Gather Ye Acorns," which I can obviously appreciate because of my own collections of comic books, baseball cards, and Buffy figures, the idea ends up being vastly superior to the execution. I do not know why, but watching these episodes again was not as enjoyable as watching "Zone" episodes the second, third and umpteenth time around.
If you do the math most of the episodes are "Twilight Zone" like in nature during this first season, including a pair written by Serling's best writer, Richard Matheson ("The Doll" and "One for the Books"). But Spielberg is more willing to come up with humorous episodes, with decidedly mixed results. "Mummy Daddy," in which an actor playing a mummy in a movie makes the mistake of racing off to the hospital where his wife is giving birth without getting out of his makeup and costume or checking the fuel gauge, is pretty good. But for the most part "The Main Attraction," "Fine Tuning," "Guilt Trip," "Boo!," and "Hell Toupee" try too much and lack the requisite subtlety. "Remote Control Man" and "Secret Cinema" have unrealized potential, although any excuse to get Barbara Billingsley on camera is greatly appreciated. This is why an episode like "The Sitter," where Mabel King plays a sitter who does that voodoo she do so well to young Seth Green and his brother, becomes paradigmatic because obviously Spielberg wants "Amazing Stories" to skew a lot younger than Serling did with the "Zone." Consequently, something like "One for the Road" may well run a little too dark for the kiddies.
Amazing Stories July 21, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I was so delighted to see this wonderful series on DVD. I have waited for so long to get these. They truly deserved all the awards they got. I never realized what a stellar cast of actors played on these episodes nor the caliber of directors either. This series is well worth the money and the wait time. My two favorite episodes are The Mission and Boo!
 Childhood Memories Fade...It Wasn't Good After All July 20, 2006
3 out of 14 found this review helpful
If you, like me, buy this because you liked this show when you were younger you will be making a big mistake!!! Trust me, once you start watching the episodes you'll think "This sucks" and wish you had your money back.
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Copyright Runningonkarma.com 2006
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