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Rating:  -
This is a must have for any Super hero fan. Awesome TV series!!! We need more TV shows like this one!! The Flash really comes out of the comics and on the screen.
Rating:  -
I bought this out of fond memories from high school when this was on TV. Well, it didn't age well, but that didn't make the DVDs any less fun. This is the Barry Allen Flash, and it's too bad CBS didn't give it a consistant time slot to build an audience. They spent a lot of money on it and then let it flop in the wind. At first, they didn't want super-villains, then they changed their mind. Basically, this series didn't have a chance.
John Wesley Shipp does a good job as the Flash, and his supporting cast is pretty good, though Tina McGee's voice gets pretty annoying with her English accent after awhile.
The highlights include the episodes with Nightshade, a former vigilante, and the ones with Mark Hamill as the Trickster. Hamill is even better as psychotic villains (see: the Joker in the Batman animated series) than he was as Luke Skywalker!
Rating: -
This six disc set put out from Warner Studios is a welcomed addition to my superhero DVD collection and also contains the 90 minute pilot episode. This amazing six disc set also contains the entire 21 episode run of the much underrated, underdeveloped and short lived live-action 90's television series "The Flash". The packaging and disc artwork are well done and even though the discs overlap one another I find them easy to remove and replace in the package. For comic book fans and Flash purists this 90's live action version resembles the 1960's scarlet speedster and more than anything else it stays true to that character. Struck by lightning during an experiment and doused with all sorts of chemicals police scientist Barry Allen (John Wesley Shipp) quickly discovers that his metabolism is rapidly changing and he now has the ability to move at incredible speeds. With the aid of a beautiful scientist Tina McGee played by Amanda Pays, Barry Allen AKA "The Flash" learns how to control his new found powers as he turns his efforts to crime fighting in Central City. Watching this series all over again reminded me why I loved it so much in the first place. The series was full of great set designs, amazing special effects and a solid soundtrack from Danny Elfman. It's no secret that "The Flash" was an expensive show to create each week and a floating time slot by the network pretty much sealed its fate from the start. Where the show also faltered was in its development of villains to combat the Flash and wreak havoc on the citizens of Central City. The show had a more human feel rather than comic book and the rogues gallery of high caliber villains didn't really surface until the show was almost over and by then nothing could save the flash. If the network would have taken the time to introduce the villains earlier in the series and kept the show in a solid time slot, the flash would have probably lasted a long time. I think the choice for John Wesley Shipp to play the scarlet speedster was a good one and only wish he could have played the flash more than one season. Disc freezing during the pilot episode has been a poroblem with this set and I hesitated for the longest time to purchase it. Fortunately I haven't encountered that problem and I rate the picture and sound 7/10 on this set. The only crime with this set is there isn't any bonus features, commentaries or extras included. We all need heroes and I wish "The Flash" would make a speedy return to television.
DVD Episodes:
Disc #1
Pilot Episode
Out of Control
Watching the Detectives
Disc #2
Honor among Thieves
Double Vision
Sins of the Father
Child's Play
Disc #3
Shroud of Death
Ghost in the Machine
Sight Unseen
Beat the Clock
Disc #4
The Trickster
Tina, Is That You?
Be My Baby
Fast Forward
Disc #5
Deadly Nightshade
Captain Cold
Twin Streaks
Done With Mirrors
Disc #6
Good Night, Central City
Alpha
The Trial of the Trickster
Rating:  -
Sure, the set was pretty bare-bones (seriously, would it have killed them to cobble together a interview segment with the cast and crew looking back on the show, or dig up some behind-the-scenes footage, or even throw in a single commentary track?), and some of the earlier episodes were somewhat cornier than I remembered, but the show definitely picked up speed (pardon the pun) pretty quickly. In fact, one episode in particular, "Beat the Clock", was a surprisingly good dramatic story, and even featured a young Angela Basset. (There's also the fun of spotting actors who became famous much later in their careers. For instance, both Brian Cranston and Jonathan Brandis were featured in episodes, and Gloria Reuben and Jeri Ryan both had cameos.) All in all, it's defintely worth owning, in my opinion.
Rating: -
I can't really say too much that hasn't been said already. When this show came on the air, I was afraid that the special effects would be cheesy beyond words, but in fact were top notch for its time. J.W. Shipp as the Barry Allen was very solid, as was Amanda Pays (yum) as Tina McGee, and Alex Desert as Julio Mendez (a bit under-utilized, IMO).
The stories ranged from the excellent: the two with the late Jason Bernard, and the "Beat The Clock" episode with Angela Bassett (yes!) in a cameo where The Flash has to save a condemned man in "real time", to the rather silly (the episode where Flash got blown 10 years into the future). But overall, the show really had potential. I faithfully taped them on VHS, but knew the show was in trouble as it bounced around from one time slot to another, and was interrupted for breaking news in the Gulf.
Another flaw in the series (besides, unnecessarily cheesy dialog) was the lack of usage of the Rogues Gallery from the comics. It took way too many episodes to get Mirror Master (a nicely cast David Cassidy), The Trickster (an amusingly over the top Marc Hamill, freed from The Force :-), and Captain Cold finally make appearances. Alas, a sort of Reverse Flash episode was one of the weakest.
The only down side to the DVD set is that there were no added features.
Be on the lookout for the various special guests and cameos. Angela Basset, Jason Bernard, Hamill, Cassidy, Jeri Ryan, and Richard Beltzer were just a few.
You know, with the explosion of the CSI genre, a police scientist (again, The Flash was ahead of its time) with super powers would make for a GREAT series. The cost of the FX work helped kill the series the first time. 18 years later (my god has it been THAT long?), perhaps those barriers have been lowered enough to bring it back.
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