What's Done in The Dark: Season 1 (The Beginning: The First Complete Season)

What's Done in The Dark: Season 1 (The Beginning: The First Complete Season)
Solae Devhine (Author)
(20)

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Gay

Terry goes to jail and comes out a little bit different. Not only is he different but his wife, sister, brother, and best friend have changed.

The only thing they have in common are their secrets and their need to hide them. They soon find out that all things will be brought to light… one way or another.

This is the Complete First Season of the Best Selling Saga What's Done in the Dark.

(27,136 Words) Revised Edition

• Rank: #55345 in eBooks
• Published on: 2011-04-02
• Released on: 2011-04-02
• Format: Kindle eBook
• Number of items: 1

Description #1 by DeepDiscount:

The 1943 Columbia Pictures serial Batman was nowhere near the peak of the chapter-play genre; produced by Rudolph C. Flothow and directed by Lambert Hillyer, it was done on the cheap even by serial standards, and if the writing wasn't bad, the production was terrible. Apart from the presence of J. Carrol Naish as the villain of the piece, there's hardly a major screen name associated with it, and the entire tone of the piece -- which includes references to "shifty-eyed" Japanese and other slurs, referring to Japanese-Americans in that instance -- makes it just as well that this is the case. The serial, which was reissued in the mid-'60s to theaters as part of the "Batman craze" spurred by the ABC television series with Adam West, looks to be in only a fair state of preservation, at least in the first chapter. (The Columbia logos at the front and the credits look fine, but much of the image is too dark and, in compensation, the producers have pumped too much light through it to brighten some of the sequences, which ends up whitening the skin of the characters too much and whiting out certain details; and one sequence in the middle of the episode looks oxidized, even solarized at one moment at what appears to be a reel-change point.) Luckily, chapter two looks and sounds much better, and most of the rest of the serial is closer to that condition than to the shape of the first chapter, but there is an edit at about eight and a half minutes in, involving a shot that simply doesn't belong, that appears to have been in the original release print of the serial, and that speaks volumes about the overall sloppiness of the production. The packaging is infinitely slicker than the content, with the cover art made to resemble the dark 1940s version of Batman in a stylized manner, while the serial itself is less atmospheric than just dullish and clunky. The discs both open automatically to a simple menu that offers easy access to all episodes spread among two layers, advancing automatically chapter by chapter, with all installments getting five numbered scene-markers. The transfer seems to be a bit dark in spots, but there's a general consistency to the look of the full-screen (1.33:1) image and the sound that makes this one of the better presentations of the serial since the 1940s. The Batman serial never made it to laserdisc and on videocassette was only ever issued under license from Good Times in an SLP-speed VHS edition. There are no bonus features, but for serial buffs this is still a sort of encouraging release, in that it marks the first time that one of the major studios' video divisions has tried tapping into the serial market on DVD -- the pity is that Batman is such a second-rate example of the genre, but at least it shows that they know the stuff exists in the vaults. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Description #2 by DeepDiscount:

This 16-disc set -- 15 DVDs plus a CD -- is so cool, and so entertaining, that this reviewer interrupted his ascending pleasure every so often to say to himself, "Wow, is this great!" And if that's a lapse in objectivity, well, so be it. M Squad, starring Lee Marvin and shot mostly on location in Chicago, was one of those rare moments in entertainment where everything in a production clicked -- the perfect actor, at just the right point in their career, gets the ideal part at the precise moment when the right producers, writers, and directors are able to pick it up and run with it for all it's worth. Although it's often compared to Dragnet, M Squad is, in reality, a very different kind of cop show. Unlike Jack Webb's better-known series, it isn't trying to impress us with how police work is done, though that is an important (if decidedly secondary) component of each episode. Rather, it's filled with a lot of violence and nervous energy, punctuated with a lot of testosterone and raw sensibilities about crime and law enforcement, all rolled up in Lee Marvin's Lt. Frank Ballinger. As a detective assigned to M Squad (and the "M" stands for "murder"), Ballinger gets some of the dirtiest cases in the city of Chicago. These include a lot of robbery/homicides, execution-style killings, and anything with a high body-count. Universal apparently didn't keep a complete archive of episodes. As a result, when Timeless Media licensed the series for DVD release, they had to look beyond Universal's own archives, which had major gaps in it holdings. Reports say that originally this was to be a 100-episode collection, that being the best that Timeless and Universal could deliver, reflecting the gaps in the studio's holdings. But then collectors came forward and suddenly it became possible for Timeless) to put out the complete run of the series. But conversely, getting all of the episodes out meant compromising on the quality, more so than is usual for a major distributor. The results will prove frustrating to viewers who insist upon only top-quality transfers, and a delight to fans of the series itself. Even this reviewer, who thought he had seen every episode of the show, was surprised by how many of the programs here were new to him. They're all here, 117 episodes spread onto 15 DVDs -- and it must be said up front that many of them are not full-length (most of the shows, which only exist as later syndication prints, are missing one to two minutes of their original content); and some are transferred from what are obviously 16mm dupe prints. The sound on those episodes is shaky -- many have a layer of noise and some minor distortion, although the producers of this set have largely succeeded in providing serviceable playback; and for a change on a DVD set, the volume is extremely healthy all through this set. There are some modest to moderate (and sometimes severe) imperfections in the full-screen (1.33-to-1) images, in the form of missing frames, vertical scratches, jumps, whited out contrasts (a sign that a lot of light had to be pumped through an otherwise dark print to make it viewable), and also a flat, gray look to a lot of the shows. This is all doubly unfortunate, as the cinematographers involved in the series included a few well-known names, such as {$Lionel Lindon (not to mention a few notable directors, including Robert Florey). But they are more than watchable, and the acting, scripts, direction etc. all carry what is here well over the line of acceptability. A few do look almost like kinescopes, which is a damning criticism for material originally shot on 35mm film. No, it's not ideal, but for the price and the content, there's enough solid entertainment here, and more than sufficiently impressive moments to keep purchasers busy watching for weeks or even months. Along the way, one also glimpses performances by such soon-to-be-better-known actors as Mike Connors, Leonard Nimoy, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Deforest Kelley, Angie Dickinson, Werner Klemperer et al, and a few familiar faces from movies, such as former child star Bobby Driscoll. And all of that is fine and well for entertainment value, but the truly solidl worth of this package lies in the writing. M Squad benefited from first-rate scripts, including work by such future notables as Sterling Silliphant. And the quality of the writing isn't hurt one whit by the variable visual content. Each 25-minute episode gets a single chapter, which is fine, as the shows are seamlessly constructed and move briskly. And all 15 DVDs open automatically to simple dual-layer menus, offering "play all" options and access to individual shows, which advance as each programs ends and the menu reopens. The 16th disc is the sole bonus feature in the set, a CD offering music from the series, driven, of course, by the famous Count Basie theme that was introduced for the second season run. M Squad was among the earlier crime series to utilize a jazz-based score, and while it never made quite the hit that Peter Gunn did with Henry Mancini's music, it's still worth hearing on its own 50 years later. And given that everyone closely associated with the production is gone, it's probably the best effort we could expect in terms of a "bonus" feature.The set comes in a handy fold-out package, the discs held in convenient overlapping spindles, and all of it slides into a compact slipcase. And despite all of the imperfections cited, M Squad was positively addictive here, as the episodes are so finely and economically constructed -- without a wasted shot or line of dialogue -- that the tendency is to just keep viewing. And it works that way, too, though one will look up and suddenly find three or four hours gone to taking in {$Lee Marvin, all steely intensity (aided by his being prematurely gray in 1958) keeping the streets of Chicago safe. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Description #3 by Working Person's Store:

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