Sonny & Cher

[Charlie]

I recently purchased a 3-disc DVD set of Sonny & Cher “The Ultimate Collection”. The DVD set includes 9 full episodes of Sonny & Cher and some extras. These are shows that I haven’t seen since I was a little kid. For anyone that hasn’t seen their show, it’s kinda like a mix between Saturday Night Live and The Carol Burnett Show.

One of my favorite parts of the show is the “Vamp” skits with Cher in a red dress and introducing it by singing from atop an old piano. The song has a catchy tune that I like. After going through two or three short skits, they do some really cool early-70’s camera magic by bringing out all of the characters from the skits played by Sonny, Cher, and various guest stars… showing them several times all at once… seemingly interacting with each other to a small degree. During this time, they are all singing together in unison. In the commentary, Cher mentions that it took a lot of time and effort to get this one thing right because you’re doing it several different times from different positions… all in front of green screens. Of course, today we could do this with a simple click of the mouse, and the end result would look far better than what they did 40 years ago. You can find some of these Sonny & Cher Vamp skits on Youtube.

A technical observation I made- It seems there’s a time delay in much of the video… especially when they are moving around kinda fast. For instance… if someone moves their head back forth, it seems to take a frame or two for their hair to catch up. Sometimes you see what appears to be “trails” left behind lights. It’s kinda like a really slow refresh rate. I don’t know if this was intended to be this way, or if it was due to cheesy equipment. I might expect to see these artifacts in videos from the 1950’s, but not the 70’s.

Most people today would not think of Cher as being a comedian, but really, that’s how she started out with Sonny years ago. After getting popular in the mid-late 60's on the radio with a handful of tunes, they started their own TV show in the early 70's on CBS. At that time, Cher was just barely 25 years old. Some of the guests in this collection include Harvey Korman, Governor Ronald Reagan, Glen Campbell, Farrah Faucet, Burt Reynolds, Howard Cosell, and Don Knotts.

I think the DVD set is pretty funny. I hope they decide to release more of them as time goes by. If you like old-fashioned slapstick type comedy, you’ll like this. If you’re looking for something to watch on your CTC-38 or early XL-100, this is perfect.