Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible TV series on DVD

Originally broadcast in 2001, Dr Terrible's House of Horrible is a six-part pastiche of 1970s Hammer Horror from Steve Coogan's Baby Cow production company. Each episode is topped and tailed by Coogan beneath a mass of prosthetics in a high-back leather chair as the avuncular, flatulent, faintly morally debauched Dr Terrible. "That was truly diabolical", he concludes of each show, a verdict with which one or two critics unkindly and unfairly concurred. Coogan also stars in each as six different characters. In "And Now the Fearing...", for example. he plays rat-faced, unpleasant millionaire Denham Denham; in "Frenzy of Tongs" - a mickey-take of the Fu Manchu films--he's the insufferably suave Nathan Blaze, a Jason King-a-like; in "Scream, Satan Scream", meanwhile, he superimposes a parody of Peter Sellers over a lampoon of the Vincent Price film Witchfinder General. Although most of these episodes are elaborate period pieces and genuine care has been made to render them as scary as possible, the real period detail has been in recreating the luridly quaint, over-acted, hammy feel of the 70s productions to which these episodes pay affectionate homage.

SPECIAL FEATURES: Commentary, Interactive Menu, Photo Gallery, Production Notes, Scene Access

English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), Region 0