Bozo Shows 4-5-6

Rating:
Summary: Bozo Show finally available
Review: This DVD is a compilation of several of the live action "Bozo the Clown" TV series out of Boston, Massacheusetts, from the 1960's. I, personally, grew up with WGN-TV's Bob Bell as Bozo the Clown out of Chicago, and had no previous experience with Boston's Bozo, Frank Avurch. I was pleasantly surprised.
The basic format is the same -- at "Bozo's Circus" there is an introductory skit or two, followed by a "classic" Bozo cartoon, followed by the Grand Prize Game, ending with another skit. Frank Avurch does an excellent job, with a different cast of characters than I am used to -- The Professor, a combination of magician and mad scientiest, Ruth Carlsson, who juggles, unicycles, and fills in otherwise as needed, Daniel the Lion, who is a talented speed artist, and several others.
The three episodes included on the DVD work well, and are very entertaining, containing some classic clown skits. I have only 1 negative comment. Larry Harmon is working on a new, computer animated series of Bozo cartoons, which is fine. The DVD uses short clips of the computer animation to connect the segments together, where the commercials originally were -- this, too, is fine. What is not fine is superimposing the computer animated characters on top of the live action, on a very frequent basis. This was very distracting. Other than that, the actual audio and video quality was very good, and much better than I was expecting, although a few of the "classic cartoons" were slightly fuzzy at times.