Comedy

<p>Sheer, utter madness is the order of the day in this laugh riot on wheels that features one of America's all-time favorite funnymen, Red Skelton. In a story ranging from the weird to the whimsical, Skelton plays "Red," an accident-prone inventor of safety gadgets...

<p>Red Skelton plays Aubrey Filmore, a feather-brained but lovable bellboy who dreams of becoming an agent for the Union's secret service during the Civil War. He gets his chance when he inadvertently causes the capture of a notorious Confederate spy known as "The Grey...

<p>A gripping, dramatic thriller infused with a twist of dark humor, PU-239 reveals the lengths to which a man will go to secure his family's future. While working at a nuclear power plant in Russia, Timofey (Paddy Considine) is exposed to a deadly dose...

<p>Star actor/comedian D.L. Hughley appears in his first solo HBO special, a no-holds-barred 60-minute routine performed in front of a live audience at The Lincoln Theater, the venerable Washington DC venue. Hughley, seen previously in Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam, keeps the crowd roaring...

<p>Kind. Gentle. Sympathetic. Jim Norton is none of these things, and that's why he's one of the hottest new comedians in America. Norton continues the rich One Night Stand tradition of no-holds-barred comedy that blows apart the double standards of polite society. His pit...

<p>David Spade focuses on pop-culture bashing in his first solo HBO TV comedy special that aired on April 17, 1998 and was taped in front of a live audience. In this 60 minute show, David Spade uses his everyday life experiences as a platform...

<p>Long live King Arthur and Camelot! Yet in all of ancient England's newfound peace there is "a fraying link in Arthur's chain:" the growing passion between heroic knight Sir Lancelot and beautiful Queen Guinevere. One of history's most beloved legends is vibrantly retold in...

<p>"Lon Chaney is superb" (Leonard Maltin) as the hard-boiled sergeant with a heart of gold in this two-fisted tale of Marine Corps life, costarring William Haines and Eleanor Boardman. When Skeet Burns (Haines) joins the U.S. Marines, he winds up under Sergeant O'Hara (Chaney),...

<p>Errol Flynn duels into action in Warner Bros.' spectacular, spirited film of Mark Twain's classic novel. Amid 16th-century England's pomp and poverty, two lookalike lads, one a beggar and one young Edward VI, exchange identities for a lark. But their switch backfires and it's...

<p>Look who's rubbing elbows with the New York upper crust. It's sometime showgirl and carny sideshow attraction Maisie Ravier (Ann Sothern, playing the brassy screen heroine for the fourth time), earning her daily bread as a maid at the posh Rawlston estate on Long...

<p>Unable to pay her bill at a West African hotel, Maisie slips out of town by stowing away on a steamer and sailing upriver into unexpected adventure. Ann Sothern plays Maisie the second of 10 times the actress would bring the resourceful, free-spirited showgirl...

<p>Tough times for Maisie. In rapid order she's bounced from her taxi-dancer job, reduced to her last 60 cents by her landlady, given the heave-ho after sneaking aboard a train that would take her to a nightclub job in the Adirondacks and then, after...

<p>In the third movie of the series, Maisie is a gold digger -- the kind who swings a pickaxe and has only blisters to show for it. When folks strike gold in the great expanses beyond Phoenix, Brooklyn-born Maisie figures she can use her...

She loses her dance-hall job before she even sets foot on stage, she's down to her last 15 cents, then she's thrown into the hoosegow on a false charge of lifting a wallet. Welcome to Big Horn, Wyoming, ma'am. And welcome to the big...

<p>A charming, starry-eyed Czech immigrant arrives in America expecting the golden land of opportunity. What he discovers instead, in this breezy comedy, are the harsh realities of New York City. Ginger Rogers stars as Sylvia Dennis, a bouncy chorus girl who comes to the...

<p>If it's scandalous, sensational and hush-hush, New York columnist William Poster is the guy who lurks inside the speakeasies or slips beyond the backstage doors to find it. But after he breaks a story about an infamous politico's murder, the next time Poster's name...

<p>A homicidal maniac engages a frightened young woman in a deadly game of cat and mouse in this harrowing suspense thriller starring Raquel Welch. When Alan Morris (Luke Askew) guns down his estranged wife in cold blood, no one is more terrified than Michele...

In the third screen adaptation of his best-selling 1916 novel, acclaimed writer Booth Tarkington focuses on the mischievous Penrod (Billy Mauch) and his pal Sam (Harry Watson) in this junior league detective caper that pits the boys against dangerous murderers.

<p>High school football star Tim Dennis has big plans for his future: the University of Notre Dame and gridiron glory! Instead, his mother marries an Englishman, and Tim and his sister are summoned to live with their new family across the Atlantic. There, Tim...

<p>The Mauch Twins return in this fast-paced adventure, the third and final film in the Penrod series, loosely based on the stories by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Booth Tarkington (Alice Adams). Penrod Schofield (Billy Mauch) is missing! Convinced he's been kidnapped, his parents post a...

<p>Janet Gaynor, Robert Montgomery, Franchot Tone and Grady Sutton play the four sides of a romantic quadrangle in this screwball comedy co-scripted by Bella and Samuel Spewack (Broadway's Kiss Me, Kate). Gaynor portrays small-town girl Nancy Briggs, whose nebbish fiance George (Sutton) doesn't return...

<p>Raw-boned, raspy-voiced, sixty-something Letitia "Tish" Carberry (Marjorie Main, who would find her greatest fame in the Ma Kettle film series) comes back to her hometown with a baby in her arms. "I'm a woman. It's a baby. It's mine!" she declares. Three splendid character...

<p>In the tradition of such groundbreaking comedy club shows as Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam, HBO presents the most outrageous stand-up comedy form Snapping. Snapping is a game of African-American comedic insults, also known as rap comedy or yo mama jokes. Snapping has been...

<p>You've seen her on The Biggest Loser, her own daytime series, and the films Christmas with the Kranks and The Perfect Man, but Caroline Rhea has been delighting audiences for years with her fresh, smart and spontaneous stand-up performances. See for yourself in this...

<p>He's big. He's bad. And in the world of standup, Earthquake is a major force to be reckoned with. You've seen him on Premium Blend and Mad TV. Now see Earthquake set off comic tremors in front of an appreciative New York audience for...

<p>Jimmy Farnsworth (Allen Kearns) bets his friend $5,000 that he can get any two people, under the proper environment, to fall in love and become engaged within a month. The two he chooses are young society girl Betty Duncan (Renee Macready) and Peter Darby...

<p>Lee Tracy, the actor who makes a delightful specialty of playing motormouthed manipulators and flimflammers (including Hildy Johnson in Broadway's original The Front Page and slick publicity man "Space" Hanlon in Jean Harlow's Bombshell), stars in the pre-code comedy Clear All Wires! He portrays...

<p>Young Pinkie Wingate (Judy Garland) and her pal Buzz (Freddie Bartholomew) will do anything to stop Pinkie's widowed mother (Mary Astor) from entering into a loveless marriage with the town's fuddy-duddy banker (Gene Lockhart) -- including kidnapping! They stow mom in a travel trailer...

<p>Divorced working mother Christine Campbell (Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Seinfeld) attempts to juggle the daily stresses of motherhood and business -- which doesn't mean she isn't prone to taking NyQuil to get to sleep or leaving voicemail messages to herself in the middle...

<p>Three classic films from the immortal film clown Buster Keaton. PARLOR, BEDROOM AND BATH -- One of the first sound films starring Keaton, this film is an uproarious and naughty pre-code farce based on a beloved play by Charles W. Bell and Mark Swan....

<p>Raise a cinematic champagne glass to debonair leading man Robert Montgomery, one of MGM's leading lights of the 1930s and 1940s. This bountiful 4-Disc, 8-Movie Collection showcases the versatile actor in dramas and comedies alike. Costars include Rosalind Russell, Tallulah Bankhead and some of...

<p>Legendary animation studio Hanna-Barbera's first family of the future - The Jetsons! -- return in this second part of their sophomore season collection. Strap in alongside George, Jane, Judy, Elroy, Astro and Rosie and go soaring into their fantastic world of rocket cars, rocking...

<p>"Until divorce do us part." The solemn institution of marriage gets a swift kick in the pants from two frisky farces that mix sophistication with slapstick. In Merry Wives of Reno, New York society dames head west to shake loose spouses they think are...

<p>Talented, sad-eyed Aline MacMahon excelled in maternal and sisterly roles, giving them comedic grace or soulful earnestness as the situation required. Both qualities are showcased in this twinbill of MacMahon starrers. Blustery and domineering pop (Guy Kibbee) gets his comeuppance and goes from narrow-minded...

<p>Stars in their eyes -- laughter in the aisles! Two famed funnymen portray small town hick and Hollywood hopeful Merton Gill in the comedic tale that was first a novel, a beloved (and periodically reprised) stage hit and a silent film. Stuart Erwin adds...

<p>Newshounds battle gangsters in two light-hearted, lightning-paced crime-time capers. Ronald Reagan makes his screen debut in Love Is on the Air as a radio announcer (Reagan's real-life job before Hollywood) who's bounced to the kiddies' hour when he pursues a gangster against his sponsor's...

<p>Long before she was crowned the queen of TV, Lucille Ball reigned as the "queen of the Bs" for RKO pictures, appearing in over 43 films. This collection brings together three rarely seen treasures from Lucy's RKO days, giving modern audiences a chance to...

<p>FOUR DAUGHTERS Meet professor Adam Lemp's four daughters -- and the men who love them. This sentimental and romantic favorite launched the series and John Garfield's career. DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS Should a daughter marry a footloose charmer who's a lot like Dad? Director Michael Curtiz...

<p>Recovered and restored: fascinating early-sound shorts from a bygone entertainment era. Venerable vaudevillians. Musical marvels. Crazy comics. Formidable character actors. These and other great performers and ensembles from the Warner Bros. vault comprise a dazzling 9+-Hour, 4-Disc Collection of 60 Theatrical Shorts (1926-1930) that...

<p>Beautiful and vivacious Lupe Velez plays irrepressible Carmelita, a scatterbrain whose attempts to add spice to her life and luster to her marriage always result in farcical shenanigans galore. Leon Errol co-stars in the dual roles of Uncle Matt and the absentminded Lord Epping....

<p>Playing in a rock-'n'-roll band and saving the undersea world from diabolical villains? An impossible task for most, but not for Jabberjaw, the 15-foot talking great white shark from the fan-favorite Saturday morning cartoon series. The year is 2076 and Jabberjaw is the star...

<p>Zoom into gear with Wheelie, the world's greatest stunt racing car, and his girlfriend Rota Ree as they outmaneuver the sneaky motorcycle gang Chopper, Revs, Riser and Scrambles in this 3-Disc, 13-Episode Complete Series Collection! Not the smartest bike in the bunch, Chopper's schemes...

<p>If 1930s Hollywood needed a man's man who was at ease mixing a martini at a penthouse, the call could go out for Warren William. The star shows his range in three flicks that helped audiences forget the Depression. In The Woman from Monte...

<p>The distinguished career of Academy Award winner* George Arliss is marked by his powerful portrayals of historical figures from Disraeli to Alexander Hamilton to Voltaire. Fans who don't know Arliss also excelled at comedy are in for a treat with these three charmers. Drama...

<p>Divorced working mother Christine Campbell (Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Seinfeld) attempts to juggle the daily stresses of motherhood and business which doesn't mean she isn't prone to taking NyQuil to get to sleep or leaving voicemail messages to herself in the middle of...

<p>Their dialogue zings with Pre-Code sauciness, their barbed glee skewers social norms and their creativity includes daffy flights of song and dance. Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, from their feature debut in 1929 until 1937, tickled fans with a steady skein of comedy madness....

<p>Laughter's in session as Criminal Court, Part II, State of New York dispenses justice and comedy in an uproarious Season 4 that adds opinionated bailiff Roz Russell (Marsha Warfield) to the oddball Night Court ensemble. You are hereby sentenced to 22 Hilarious Episodes on...

<p>"Oh, it's Adolphe! It must be!" Lovely Juliet Corton (Florence Eldridge) is sure the dashing coiffeur who just arrived to style her hair is her husband, presumed dead in a railway crash five years earlier. The dashing stylist (vaudeville star Frank Fay) is sure...

<p>Emmy Award winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld) continues to shine in this comedy from Kari Lizer (Will and Grace) as divorced working mom Christine Campbell, successfully juggling the daily stresses of motherhood and owning a women's gym with her best friend, Barb (Wanda Sykes, Curb...

<p>"The screen needs smooth comics like this one," The New York Times' Bosley Crowther wrote about Red Skelton's starring debut in Whistling in the Dark [Disc 1]. What was true then is true today when Red unleashes live-wire goofiness as the Fox, a radio...