FIRE SALE (1977)
Label: Signal One Entertainment
Region Code: A,B
Rating: Cert. 12
Duration: 91 Minutes Audio: English PCM 1.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles:
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Alan Arkin
Cast: Alan Arkin, Rob Reiner, Vincent Gardenia, Anjanette Comer, Sid Caesar
Benny (Vincent Gardenia, Death Wish 2) owns a department store that is about to go into bankruptcy. As he prepares to go on vacation to Miami with his deluded wife Marion (Anjanette Comer, The Baby), Benny concocts a scheme to solve his financial woes by convincing his one-legged mentally ill brother-in-law Sherman (Sid Caesar, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) to burn down the store so he can collect the insurance policy, telling him it's a World War II Nazi installation.
Cast: Alan Arkin, Rob Reiner, Vincent Gardenia, Anjanette Comer, Sid Caesar
Benny (Vincent Gardenia, Death Wish 2) owns a department store that is about to go into bankruptcy. As he prepares to go on vacation to Miami with his deluded wife Marion (Anjanette Comer, The Baby), Benny concocts a scheme to solve his financial woes by convincing his one-legged mentally ill brother-in-law Sherman (Sid Caesar, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) to burn down the store so he can collect the insurance policy, telling him it's a World War II Nazi installation.
Meanwhile Benny leaves his deeply neurotic son Russell (Rob Reiner, TV's All in the Family), who works at the department store, in charge of the store, in charge while he is away, but cautions him to not do anything aside from opening and closing the store, to absolutely not institute and new marketing ideas. However, when Russell discovers the store is about to go belly-up he enlists the help of his brother, a high school basketball coach Ezra (Alan Arkin, Freebie and the Bean) who is hated by his players and who left the family business, to come up with their own solution to save the family business. What they come up with involves cancelling the fire insurance policy, uh-oh, with plenty of madcap 70's comedy antics to follow.
I love screwball comedies from this era in the 70's, this one has a terrific cast, too, Vincent Gardenia is so funny as the scheming father, and Rob Reiner as his neurotic, asthmatic son brought a smile to my face as he struggles to go against his domineering father's wishers with the best of intention, despite being a bit of dipshit. Then we have Sid Caesar as the mentally ill WW2 vet brother-in-law Sherman who believes he's still fighting the war. Benny takes advantage of his illness, recruiting him to set fire the failing business by telling him it's a secret Nazi base. To that end Sherman sets about escaping the Veteran's hospital, after several failed attempts eventually doing so on a souped-up motorized wheelchair, but not before blowing himself up after a tranquilizer incident while handling Molotov cocktails. Arkin is in over-the-top mode here, he plays it a bit big, even for this film, he's certainly abrasive, but it works for the sort of ridiculous flick this is, and as a counterpart to the neurotic Reiner.
We also get subplots involving Russell being secretly engaged to a nice Irish girl who works at the store against his father's explicit objections, and Ezra's wife wanting to adopt, which leads to Ezra adopting a 16 year-old basketball prodigy (Byron Stewart, TV's St. Elsewhere) in hopes of finally winning a game, currently holding a record of 2 wins and 147 losses. Also be on the look out for fun supporting roles from both Alex Rocco (The Godfather) and Richard Libertini (Fletch).
Audio/Video: Fire Sale (1977) Makes it's worldwide Blu-ray debut from UK distributor Signal One Entertainment in 1080p HD widescreen (1.85:1) - there's no information about the source but it's clean and free of blemish, and the grain looks decent throughout. Colors and saturation are generally strong and fine detail is adequate throughout. The accompanying DVD is PAL formatted and runs approximately 3-minutes shorter due to PAL speed-up. Audio comes by way of uncompressed English PCM 1.0 mono, which is clean and free of hiss and distortion.
The 2-disc BD/DVD aet arrives in a clear Scanavo overlap keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork. The two artworks are identical, featuring the original illustrated movie poster my Mad Magazine artist Will Elder, oddly the only difference is the back cover is formatted slightly differently and one side doesn't have the ratings logo, but the spine and front cover are exactly the same so far as I can tell. The same artwork is also featured on the discs inside.
Special Features:
- Still Gallery
Loving these silly 70's comedies the way I do I am loving that this sort of forgotten madcap comedy is getting a Blu-ray from Signal One Entertainment, a worldwide HD debut no less. While the lack of substantive extras is a bit disappointing the A/V presentation is solid and having it on disc it a kick. Highly recommended to fans of screwball 70's comedies and films with fantastic comic casts, which this has plenty of.
Screenshots from Signal One Entertainment Blu-ray:
