Just Released : AMAZING STORIES: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON’ 24 episodes from 1985-86, the first season of this series produced by Steven Spielberg. It features the hourlong episode directed by Mr. Spielberg, “The Mission,” and Clint Eastwood’s “Vanessa in the Garden.” Universal, $49.98, not rated.
One of my favorite episodes was the one with Mark Hamil as the guy who collects junk....and it turns out to be valuable. Is that the 1st season or the second?
That was "Gather Ye Acorns" from the first season. I'm looking forward to seeing "Hell Toupee" again myself.
When I was a kid, I remember an episode about a guy who watches too much TV, and the characters from his favorite shows start to invade his life. Was that an Amazing Stories episode? My memory of this is fuzzy, as it was 20 years ago, and I was about 5 or 6 years old.
Wasn't it an Amazing Stories episode where Sid Caesar plays an aging magician? That was great along with the B-17 episode that's on the first season dvd set.
Excellent!!! Lou Bundles was his name in the show. Great and emotional episode! Now if we can only get Tales From The Dark Side on DVD!!!
Here's the season 1 episode list from the imdb, with some handy synopses. I assume all of these episodes will be on the DVD set.
Rather than start a new thread I am just replying here... Amazing Stories seasons 1 & 2 are now on Netflix instant streaming.
They released it in Japan, along with season 1. Better to get the Japanese release. The PAL versions are sped-up.
The story goes is some kind of gremlin tells a young kid (whose grown up character is played by Mark Hamil) not to throw way any of his toys. So he keeps all of his toys in the original boxes in mint condition. When he is much older, the toys all are valuable collector's items and he becomes rich.
Man, this was a horrible show. I remember that NBC was livid at the fact that every other episode for the first season went way over budget. The word we heard was that the first episode, directed by Spielberg, cost something like $2 million+ to make, and NBC and Universal went through the roof on it. But Spielberg and his staff had total creative control, so NBC basically had to eat it. The ratings steadily went down and never really crept back up. I think they held the costs better with the second season, but it was clear to everybody involved that they weren't going to be back for a third year. The only reason the 2nd season was done at all was because Spielberg had a tight contract, so NBC glumly pressed on. At the time, Amazing Stories was regarded as a "director's show" and the rival Twilight Zone revival on CBS was regarded as a "writer's show." What I remember was that the former was fantastic and completely silly, while the latter was depressing and downbeat. Neither one fit what I thought would be a reasonable anthology show about fantasy or science fiction; both failed miserably in the ratings and got pretty bad reviews. I worked on about 10 episodes of TZone, and very few of them were good -- though I liked the one about the guy who comes back in time and accidentally saves the life of John F. Kennedy, causing many problems. Both shows had massive post-production issues, that much I know vividly. Horrifically complicated, effects-heavy shows with lots and lots of problems. This was a nightmare in this era (1985-1986). Nowadays, people have gotten a handle on how to do sci-fi shows with lots of effects for TV, but the technology just wasn't capable of doing it well during those years.
I really wanted to like this show, but it was just dreadful. $2 million for a 30 minute show was really out of sight back then. That would be more than $4 million today—which is more than some hour-long shows are in the 21st century. In terms of FX on sci fi shows, you're right it was quite difficult. Star Trek the Next Generation had their challenges as well, but for the most part it came out quite well for TV, and it even looks good in HD. But for that they had a huuuuuge bit of good luck. It happened that ILM was short on work in early 1987 when the bids went out for the early FX work for TNG. Rather than leave all of his beautiful facilities and high priced and talented employees unused, George Lucas put in a lowball bid that was at cost, and perhaps a little under. The producers of Next Gen couldn't believe how affordable it was to hire the best, and they took that offer and ran. They only could afford to use ILM for the first few episodes, but because the "beauty passes" of the Enterprise model created and filmed (in VistaVision iirc) by ILM were reused throughout the 7 year run, the credits for every episode list ILM for FX, although often other companies and people are listed as well....
