THREE MOVIES I WANT TO SEE ON DVD. BUT CAN'T.

Here are three movies that haven't made it to DVD yet, let alone Blu Ray. And that sucks.

It sucks because movies like THE CANNONBALL RUN, POPEYE, ZORRO: THE GAY BLADE, and THE PIRATE MOVIE are all readily available on DVD, and they are crappy movies that I grew up watching on Home Box. Hell, even GREASE 2 gets a goddamn DVD special edition. And the following movies do not. And that sucks.

1. UNDER THE RAINBOW (1981)

Let me start this off with the following statement: I think Chevy Chase is a fucking douche bag. The guy was funny on SNL in 1975. He left in '76 because everyone told him he was a magic bullet and he believed them, because heck... cocaine makes you think you are totally awesome. If you don't believe me, I humbly submit to you the work of a little ol' band called Eagles. Not The Eagles, mind you. Eagles. Look it up, it's how they want it. Ahem... ... ... ... cocaine.

Okey dokie. Back to Chevy "It only works when I am with Goldie Hawn" Chase. In '81 the big galoot starred in a movie that has effectively slipped off the face of the planet, titled UNDER THE RAINBOW. The story was actually pretty damn compelling; It is 1938. A hotel manager in LA goes on vacation and leaves his nephew (or was it his son? I can't remember and I can't re watch it because the fucking thing isn't available on DVD!) in charge of the place. The nephew swindles a bunch of little people to stay there while they are filming the Munchkin scenes on The Wizard Of Oz. The little fuckers are everywhere: hanging from the damn ceiling. Among the crowd is a dwarf Nazi who is passing on secret info to a Japanese spy. But there are also Japanese tourists all over the place, and one case of mistaken identity happens after another.

Oh, and Carrie Fisher minces around quite a bit wearing a lace see-through bra. Oh my yes indeed.

The plot is convoluted and silly, and horribly degrading to little people. The events in the movie match the politics and history of the time (pre-Nazi spies, the depression) and it even echoes the Wizard Of Oz all the way through (a fish-out-of-water fantasy... good and evil, etc.) It's madcap crap. I have no idea why Chase's MODERN PROBLEMS is on DVD for less than $10 and this one isn't. Dammit.

2. IF YOU COULD SEE WHAT I HEAR (1982)

Tom Sullivan is a real guy. He was born premature and the incubators that they used at the time had a flaw where they sometimes fed too much oxygen into the chamber. It would create a film over the baby's eyes, or some such. Congratulations, son, you are now blind. Enjoy your life!

Sullivan didn't let that stop him or slow him down, and his autobiography became a bestseller in the late 70's. The guy wrote songs, was an athlete (running, swimming, even golf!) and he even took up skydiving for the hell of it. He appeared on tons of sitcoms and TV dramas in the same time period that his book was big; and they made it into a movie starring Marc Singer. Yes... the guy who played THE BEASTMASTER. Christ... I just realized that THE BEASTMASTER is available on DVD. And IF YOU COULD SEE WHAT I HEAR isn't.

The movie is the story of Tom Sullivan's college years, pretty much. His romances with a young black student, his trips into hooliganism with his best friend Sly, his summer as a piano player in a tavern of a harbor town, and how he met and fell in love with his future wife (played by the cute blond gal who was in MEATBALLS... a movie that is available on DVD. Sigh...).

This would easily be a CBS movie-of-the-week if it weren't for the PG-rated language. But something about it the story of "a guy who doesn't know he's blind" is irresistible and awesome all rolled up into one. The performances are charming, the movie flies along at a good pace, and there would probably be more puppies on the planet if more folks watched it. I don't know how it correlates, but trust me: Puppies and IF YOU COULD SEE WHAT I HEAR go hand-in-hand.

3. ELECTRIC DREAMS (1984)

Have I ranted and raved about how wonderful this movie is to you yet? Have we talked at length about how Lenny von Dohlen turns in an absolutely wonderful performance as Miles, a milquetoast architect living in San Francisco who meets and falls in love with Virginia Madsen, a cellist who just moved in upstairs? Have you heard about the movie where a guy dumps champagne all over his new computer and somehow or another it ends up bringing the computer to LIFE!? You read that correctly. He brings the computer to life. Through booze.

The computer's name is Edgar. And he agrees to help Miles write a love song for Virginia upstairs, because he is in love with the gal as well. Yeah... it's pretty much Cyrano de Bergerac. But with a computer. And Virginia Madsen. Yes oh yes.

There is a very good chance that you own a copy of the incredibly stupid and mediocre 1985 Hughs-o-rama WEIRD SCIENCE. And you think it is awesome because it has a scene where Bill Paxton gets turned into a giant pile of shit.

You own a movie where a guy gets turned into a huge pile of shit, and you can't own a copy of a movie where Virginia Madsen and a pre-Windows PC have a breath-taking 4-minute cello/synthesizer duet. Everything about ELECTRIC DREAMS is awesome: the clothes, the colors, the terrible underlying fear that the appliances were secretly out to get you... Every time I talk about ELECTRIC DREAMS in front of a group of "movie people" I get at least one other person who flips out, who has been thinking that the movie in question was never an actual movie at all but maybe something that they just made up once when they were young. Nope. It exists. It's a great piece of 80's fluff, and it hasn't been put on a DVD. And from the way things are going, it probably never will.

I just don't get it. I really don't.