Fractured Flickers

I watched this show during its initial 1964 run (as a small child) and after forty years could still remember specific funny lines and scenes. Imagine my delight when I read that the entire series of 27 episodes was to be released on DVD.

I have now watched about half of them with my 14-year-old son, and we are enjoying them just as much as I did as a kid...except now I get more of the jokes. (Same story with Rocky & Bullwinkle, from the same zany group that did FF.) Sure, there are some "clunkers" (including a couple of too-long segments where the narrator is trying hard to do a Bob Newhart-style monologue), but every episode contains some laugh-out-loud moments. Hans Conreid is the perfect host, and the other voice-over talents (Frees, Foray, Scott) are in top form.

FF is the forerunner of What's Up Tiger Lily?, LA Connection's "Mad Movies," Kung Pao, etc. and more consistently inspired than any of them. That's because they knew when to stop a gag, and could jump to something completely different when necessary. Commercial parodies, zingers about 60s politicians and celebrities, surreal wackiness...it's all here and all collected in a 3-DVD set! Oh, and did I mention all the celebrity visits from people like Rod Serling, Zsa Zsa, Fabian, etc?

Yes, I was but a wee tad when Fractured Flickers graced our "television" unit. I only recall a handful of specifics. I mostly just remember how wonderfully funny it was; how my brother Barry and I sometimes fell over on the floor laughing, so overcome were we by the unselfconscious silliness of it all. These where *our people* speaking in *our language*.

And of course, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the dear memory of Hans Conried; thanks, Mr. Conried; wherever you may be. What a voice, and a tribute to the power of voice to touch you in a deep and satisfying way through humor.

This was the funniest program ever on television. We used watch it lying down so we wouldn't have any place to fall. My stomach would hurt from laughing after every half hour show. My favorites were: Two German Shepherds in "Froth and Foam: King of the Mad Dogs"; Stan Laurel (before he teamed with Oliver Hardy) as Sherman Oaks in "Minute Mysteries"; and the salute they made to a different U.S. city in each show. Some of their car commercials were hilarious, too. Hans Conreid was a perfect host for this, and very funny himself.

I would really like to see this program come back (as reruns). I hear a lot of criticism about TV shows from the 50's and 60's, but this show was much funnier than anything on now, or in the last twenty years.

Yes this IS the best. As a child I laughed so hard I still remember. Curley of the 3 stooges made me smile as a child, but FF made me laugh uncontrollably. The universal appeal would still apply today...if they would only release it.

Of all the Jay Ward productions this was FAR AND AWAY MY FAVORITE!!! Rocky and Dudley and George and all were great, but this is the show that every week would set me off laughing. The voice-overs had a wild free-wheeling style that felt like spontaneous jokes flowing out of their heads -- though of course they were scripted to match the wonderful visuals. These were either a brilliant re-editing of a single movie, or a fantastic hybrid of dozens of them, reassembled to tell an entirely new story. That sort of work requires a prodigious visual memory and a great sense of humor. And Hans Conried was the perfect cherry topping it all off.

Now despite what the cranky Mr. Vogel says below, this show introduced me to silent movies, the same way I first learned classical symphonic music through Warner Bros. cartoons. The distinctive look of the early film stock, cinematography, and acting is now so closely associated with the pleasure centers of my brain that whereas most people can now barely tolerate black and white anymore, I don't even need the incidental music and can sit in pure silence for hours just treating my eyes to silent movies. Thanks to Jay Ward, I like flickers, even unfractured.