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Released by: ViaVision Entertainment
Released on: October 26th, 2022.
Director: Various
Cast: Telly Savalas
Year: 2005
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Kojak - The Complete Collection – Movie Reviews:
Telly Savalas first played police Lieutenant Theo Kojak in a made for TV movie called The Marcus-Nelson Murders that was shown on CBS in 1973. The movie did well, the character proved popular, and a TV series was born so that Kojak's adventures could be enjoyed every week.
A tough as nails lollipop loving (Savalas reportedly started with the lollipops to help him quite smoking) big city cop, Theo Kojak would bring a new crook to justice every week with a wink and a nod and a good sense of humor. While the action was never as intense as it was in other cop shows of the era (Starsky And Hutch and Baretta being prime examples), Kojak had something the others did not, and that was Savalas. He kept the streets of New York safe, and he had a good time doing it.
While he's probably best remembered for this series, Savalas got his start in front of the camera (after working in show business behind the scenes in various capacities) usually playing villains in many different films. A successful stint in Italy found him popping up as the devil himself in Mario Bava's Lisa And The Devil (shot the same year as The Marcus-Nelson Murders ) and he appeared in a few Euro-crime films around the same time such as Violent City with Charles Bronson and Redneck (certainly one of his strangest performances, that one). He did Spaghetti Westerns like Poncho Villa and war films like Kelly's Heroes. But Theo Kojak remains his signature character, and with good reason. The bald headed former soldier was made for the part – he had just the right combination of attitude, coolness, and looks to really make the role his own and despite the 'reimagining' of the series starring Ving Rhames (who is a fun actor), Kojak will always belong to Telly. Kojak was slick, and the reason Kojak was slick was because of Telly Savalas (and his tailor – the man had great suits).
Starting the whole phenomenon off was the aforementioned 1973 pilot film, The Marcus-Nelson Murders, based on the 1963 Career Girls Murders; the horrific double murder of two young women that led to a police brutality-induced confession from a young black man. While the actual case was ultimately solved due to the questions of prejudice from numerous reporters and doubtful cops, The Marcus-Nelson case in the film takes the liberty of putting Kojak in the role of truth seeker. The biggest star of The Marcus-Nelson Murders (outside Savalas) is the aforementioned City of New York, which oozes all of the character that Martin Scorsese would later utilize in Taxi Driver. The film is also unique in that it tackles some pretty juicy topics that weren't addressed a lot on television; racial prejudice, prostitution, drug addiction, police brutality and sexual assault, to name just a few. Offsetting the gloom is Savalas' Kojak character, bringing just enough personality and wisecracking to the table to lighten the mood enough that you won't feel like you need to take a shower after watching it.
Kojak was always finding himself in all sorts of predicaments – whether it be defusing a hostage situation in Siege Of Terror, helping a young lady stop her fiancé from doing something she knows is going to go horribly wrong in Down A Long And Lonely River or stopping a thug from hassling his niece before she's about to tie the knot in Conspiracy Of Fear. The writers of the show obviously had a lot of fun with the material as did the performers and it shows in the wise cracks and banter between Kojak and his collaborators. Part of the reason it worked so well is Savalas' dead perfect delivery but a lot of the credit needs to go to the scriptwriters as well for coming up with the material in the first place.
Another thing that makes the series so enjoyable is the amount of interesting guest stars that pop up throughout the episodes. Sally Kirkland, James Woods, Harvey Keitel, John Ritter, Jonathon Hillerman, Paul Michael Glaser and even the lovely Tina Louise all show up in bit parts as the first season scrolls through your DVD player, and that's just in season one. Later seasons include Richard Gere, Sylvester Stallone, William Hurt, Christopher Walken, Leslie Nielsen, Dabney Coleman, Maud Adams, Jerry Orbach, Lynn Redgrave, Geraldine Page, James Woods, Martin Balsam, Sharon Gless, Shelley Winters, Hector Elizondo and even Liberace to name only a few.
This massive thirty-five disc collection from Australia’s ViaVision includes every episode from each of the series' five seasons as well as the feature length pilot and the later made for TV movies. The Marcus-Nelson Murders was enough of a hit (earning writer Abby Mann an Emmy) to guarantee a 5-year run, but by 1978, the series was finished. An unheard-of seven years later, Theo Kojak was back on television in The Belarus File, which found the surly Greek Detective trying to solve a series of murders related to concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Russia, almost half a century earlier. Though the subject matter was still dark, the film fell short of the excellence of The Marcus-Nelson Murders, despite the continued intensity of Savalas and guest star Max Von Sydow.
The third film in this set is 1987's The Price Of Justice. This time around we see Kojak trying to prove the innocence of a woman named Kitty (Kate Nelligan) suspected in the murder of her two sons, recently found at the bottom of the Harlem River. She's married to a bar owner named George (Pat Hingle) who is a fair bit older than her. Things get complicated when the attraction between Kojak and Kitty becomes impossible to deny, as her court date looms on the horizon.
The third film is decent. If the romance angle never works the way it should, Nelligan is very good as the female lead. She's an interesting and strong character. Hingle is decent here too, while Savalas plays the character just as you'd expect by this point in his career. If not a classic, it's got some nice NYC footage, moves at a decent pace and offers an ending that is more interesting than most would expect.
The rest of the films were 1989’s Ariana and Fatal Flaw, 1990’s Flowers For Matty, It's Always Something, None So Blind and they’re not nearly as good, if entertaining enough. The scripts are fine but Kojak just doesn’t feel quite right in the late eighties and into the early nineties when the series was so specifically mired in the seventies and such a part of that decade’s pop culture. Still, it’s great to have them here even if they don’t measure up to the earlier material.
The main extra in the set is the inclusion of the half hour documentary, Who Loves You, Baby? which features interviews with cast and crew members that worked on the series as well as some of Savalas’ relatives. It’s a fun look back at Savalas’ career and his most iconic character.
The sixth disc in the season three collection contains fifteen minutes of cast and crew interviews where we hear from Kario Salem, Brian Murray, Alan Metzger, Christina Savalas, Ariana Savalas, Selwyn Raab and a few others where they all look back on the show and working with Telly Savalas.
Kojak - The Complete Collection – DVD Review:
All of the material in this set was shown fullframe on TV back in the seventies and eighties and that's how they're shown here on this set, as they should be. Overall this material, which obviously hasn’t undergone any remastering, looks okay on DVD. The series never really went over the top with the colors, instead opting to leave the locals used in the show looking as they would being in the big city and all – rather drab. This DVD collection reproduces that look quite faithfully, as it should. Details is fine by the standards of the format and print damage is limited to just the odd speck and scratch here and there. Edge enhancement is minor, and when compression artifacts pop up, thankfully they’re pretty minor. Black levels stay reasonably strong and deep, and flesh tones look lifelike and natural. Note that this set is encoded for Region 4 PAL playback.
While the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono English language soundtrack is reasonably clear without any hiss or distortion, the levels are just a hair low on this set. That's easily corrected by simply turning up the volume to accommodate this though, and once that's done there aren't any problems. Obviously with an older mono TV show you're not going to get a lot of effects or any channel separation but the dialogue is easy enough to follow and it's never overshadowed by the sound effects or background music at all. It's a 'no frills' mix but it takes care of business. Some of the later films are in stereo but there isn’t a whole lot of noticeable channel separation here. English subtitles are provided but only for the first season.
Kojak - The Complete Collection – The Final Word:
ViaVision’s DVD release of Kojak – The Complete Collection finally gets every episode and all of the movies in one proper boxed set edition. There aren’t a ton of extras here but the featurette is interesting. If the presentation quality doesn’t really improve over past DVD editions, it is at least a perfectly watchable standard definition offering. The main draw here is the series itself, which is a lot of fun and which makes for seriously great television.