DVD REVIEW: BENNY HILL – COMPLETE & UNADULTERATED MEGASET

The. Greatest. TV. Sketch. And. Variety. Comic. Ever. Period. Exclamation. Point.

The Humans

Benny Hill, Henry McGee, Bob Todd, Jackie Wright, Nicholas Parsons, Louise English, Hill’s Angels, The Ladybirds and tons of hot women.

The Nutshell

Uproariously lecherous British funnyman Benny Hill dominated TV sketch comedy variety shows for twenty years with his hilarious studio musicals and sketch routines as well as his outdoors comedy clips on his show, The Benny Hill Show. Virtually all of his comedy routines featured some of the hottest and raciest women on TV at the time and you could be assured that whether Hill was in drag, being chased by women of all shapes and sizes (frequently fat and fugly), singing or running a satirical sketch, you were going to laugh – frequently uncontrollably. Sporting a mug that made him look like a babyfaced sexual pervert, Benny Hill delighted audiences for decades. This is the ultimate collection of his television works.

The Lowdown

I was laughing at Benny Hill’s sketches before I was even old enough to even understand what the hell I was laughing at. In my opinion, Hill ranks up near Monty Python in terms of British sketch comedy. If Python were the kings of that particular castle, Hill was the petulant, naughty prince in the wings feeling up all the handmaidens. Hill was unique in that he mixed song and dance numbers like Ed Sullivan, Vaudeville and utilized speeded-up silent comedy shorts that usually took place outdoors and were highly reminiscent of old silent movies where Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were doing their thing. In fact, Chaplin was Hill’s idol and he became very close with the Chaplin family in his later years. Chaplin’s son, Eugene once told Hill that Chaplin thought hill was "the greatest."

Hill was highly controversial in his day because he was largely deemed inappropriate and risque for the sexual content of his comedy. That was largely Hill’s main shtick: sexual comedy, but he took that premise and did more with it than anybody I’ve ever seen. And when you watched his variety show, you knew you were going to get a variety show. Singing skits, acting skits, and the film clips, comprised every show and all of them with Hill as the centerpiece. And Hill admittedly ventured into racially offensive portrayals at times, probably the biggest of which was his character of Mr. Chow Mein, a stereotypically Asian character with a dubious grasp of the English language (mixing up his Rs and Ls, etc.). Pretty much think Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s and you get the idea. Hill also did some blackface bits at times in his portrayal of Indian and African characters. That’s fairly indefensible, no doubt. But consider this: Hill was so popular in China itself that they interrupted regular TV to announce his death nationally in 1992. And to know Hill’s comedy is to realize that the first person he made fun of first and foremost was himself.

Hill also inspired fierce loyalty and he returned that loyalty by working with the same cast and crew for years, decades even. Regulars like Henry McGee, Jackie Wright and Bob Todd were with Hill for the vast majority of his run in the Thames years (’69 – ’89). And considering that Hill also did the scripts for all of his comedy and singing bits, he would have to be considered one of the most prolific comics in TV history. Hill didn’t only do risque sexual comedy, he also did satires of various TV shows such as Cagney & Lacey, The Six Million Dollar Man, Starsky and Hutch and A-Team. I’m of the opinion that even 15 years after his death and some 20 – 30 years since his heyday, Hill is just as watchable now as he was at his peak. An undeniable comedic genius.

Now his genius gets the treatment that it truly deserves. This Complete & Unadulterated DVD set is an absolute monster. 18 discs comprising 58 one hour episodes with an advertised 585 comedy skits. Damn thing arrived at my doorstep on a flatbed, it’s that big. The six three disc set were offered previously, but this is the first time they’ve all been gathered together. There’s some 48 total hours of material here and I guarantee that at least 40 of it will have you in stitches. The first night I watched a considerable amount of episodes into the wee hours, I came to bed still laughing like a blithering idiot and annoyed my wife who was trying to sleep. Hill is undeniably my favorite comedic TV performer ever.

The Package

The six individual sets with three discs apiece have previously been released, and even released together – back on May 15th as The Complete Collection – but apparently that title wasn’t catchy enough, so now here it is again five months later as the Complete & Unadulterated Megaset, which certainly offers more bang in the title. Here’s how the whole shebang breaks down:

There’s another good life retrospective in the form of the Benny Hill: Laughter and Controversy episode of A&E’s Biography. If you’ve watched Biography before, you know it’s one of if not the best show on TV for recounting the lives of famous people, and this one is no exception. The Benny Hill Cheeky Challenge Trivia Quiz # 1-6 was a series of trivia questions to test your knowledge of Hill’s shows and his characters. Eddie in August is a 25-minute silent from 1970 about a guy named Eddie who daydreams about girls in a local park and does things like buying a dog or buying a car to meet them Of course the one girl he really wants he never gets but that doesn’t stop him from trying. This has several of Hill’s shticks, but it’s noticeably more sedate that most of Hill’s film clips.

I Was A Hill’s Angel featurette runs fifteen minutes and features several of the girls – including Sue Upton, sisters Jo and Alison Thomas, Alison Bell and Carla De Wansey – who used to be Hill’s Angels and their recollections of the good times with Hill. And Hill’s Angels: Off the Record is another featurette with the former Angels reminiscing about more of the show that runs about 12 minutes. Finally, Hill’s Angels: In Conversation is a gathering of the Thomas sisters and Alison Bell (in a bed mind you) to reminisce one more time, although together rather than separately as the two features before.