Ripley's Believe It or Not!

I absolutely love this show! Jack Palance was excellent as the host! I loved it on ABC in the eighties. I last saw this show in 1997 on the SCI-FI Channel and I miss it terribly! I was able to tape many of the episodes off of TV, but I have watched them so much that they are getting worn out. Some tapes from 1984 and 1985 are literally on their last legs! I wish this 1982-1986 version of Ripley's Believe it or Not would get a release on DVD as Season Box Sets. So far, there is only the Dean Cain 2000-2004 version on DVD and it was only released in a BEST OF-style DVD. I did write to Columbia Pictures a while ago, but there has been no response. I urge Ripley's fans to write and beg for this excellent show to be released on DVD! That's my rant! Bodger1.

I loved watching this show when I was in high school. Jack Palance and his daughter Holly did a wonderful job in putting together an amazing show. He had a ball hosting it and he took us along for the ride. I loved it when he acted out certain parts. Jack is a ham but he is always a joy to watch. I remember when he won his Oscar for City Slickers and did push ups on the stage! and that wonderful speech he gave! (Billy Crystal...I crap bigger then him!)I think that my favorite story that they did on this show was the one about Phineas Gage. He was a Vermont railway worker who suffered a horrifying accident in 1848. He was shot thru the skull and brain with a heavy iron bar and lived a normal life for another thirteen years!

Because I was so young, half the bits never made sense to me. I remember this one story on an artist who made very life-like sculptures of people. They showed him doing the lifecasts, and my young mind thought this was about people who voluntarily allowed themselves to be encased in plaster and die and become mannequins. I was scared of this show and of mannequins for quite awhile after that.

Believe it...or not!

I loved this show! I really did. It was on Sunday nights from 1982- 86 from 8-9 PM. I watched it all the time. For example, there was one episode about the B-19, which was the largest plane built, but it never made it to combat. That was in the first season. At the beginning of another episode, he talked about the death of Rasputin. Holly Palance, in one episode, talked about the tomato, and why people in the 19th century thought it was poisonous. It was an education. Over the four-year run of the show, there were three co-hosts, Holly Palance, Catherine Schirrif, and country singer Marie Osmond. Marie Osmond was on in the last season. My rating: *****.

This is one of the best, and most interesting shows I've ever seen. It's amazing what some people do. Their book, "Ripley's Believe It or Not! Encyclopedia of the Bizarre: Amazing, Strange, Inexplicable, Weird and All True!" is also incredibly interesting.

I just wish they'd get rid of Kelly Packard, I don't understand why they even added her. I guess to attract idiots who just watch the show because they like to look at the hosts. Because she is so incredibly annoying! Thankfully she's usually only shown once durring an episode.