Product Description

On September 221986 a lovable alien named Alf crashed his spaceship into the home of unsuspecting tanner family for the next four years Alf elusively avoided houseguests chased the family cat ate everything in sight and broke anything of value but the Tanners always loved the old Alfer.System Requirements: Running Time 616 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS Rating: NR UPC: 031398157526 Manufacturer No: 15753

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3725 in DVD
• Brand: Lions Gate
• Released on: 2004-08-10
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Dimensions: .50 pounds
• Running time: 616 minutes

Amazon.com
"He's just like E.T.," says a character of the fuzzy extraterrestrial stranded on Earth in the pilot episode of ALF. But the fun of this late 1980s family sitcom is that the sardonic ALF (an acronym for Alien Life Form) is nothing like the interplanetary innocent of Steven Spielberg's classic. With his whiplash wit and huckster sensibility, ALF (real name: Gordon Shumway from the late planet Melmac, Lower East Side) enters the lives of the Tanner family as a fully formed rascal whose spacecraft crashes into their garage one night. Worried that the feds will chop ALF up for research purposes, the Tanners--father Willie (Max Wright), a cautious civil servant who doesn't like a lot of fuss at home; wife Kate (Anne Shedeen), and kids Lynn (Andrea Elson) and Brian (Benji Gregory)--reluctantly take ALF in like a shambling, profligate uncle who cracks wise despite having fallen on hard times.

There is a touch of darkness to ALF that inspires some interesting episodes. While most of season 1's episodes find the Tanners and their permanent guest struggling with compatibility, certain stories are sharper for indulging a little black comedy. "Looking for Lucky," for instance, finds Willie and Kate assuming that ALF--who is quite open about his fondness for eating cats--made a snack out of the family kitty. In "Pennsylvania 6-5000," Willie is accused of being a terrorist after ALF uses his host's ham radio to contact Air Force One. One of the best episodes, "Wild Thing" (written by David Silverman, later a co-producer on The Simpsons), is a nutty burlesque in which ALF asks the Tanners to lock him in a crate while he undergoes a 24-hour madness peculiar to Melmac-ians. After he escapes, chaos ensues in the community as cats disappear, a gorilla is freed at the zoo, and Willie--looking for ALF--prowls the streets in his pajamas. Fans of Jerry Stahl's book Permanent Midnight: A Memoir, in which the Hollywood writer describes working on ALF while supporting a severe drug habit, will be interested in his season 1 scripts, particularly the surreal "La Cucaracha," in which ALF and Willie do battle with a car-size cockroach. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Show's funny, gets less stars for the syndicated thing
If you've read the other reviews, you'll already know that the episodes on this disc are syndicated versions, not the original NBC ones. That's a shame, as my wife and I watched the show since Day 1 (I'm 38 in 2004, you do the math).

It is nice to have them on DVD. Would it have been better to have the original uncut ones? Hell yeah. But I'll take this. I just hope that if the next seasons are released, that they don't use syndication.

The comments by Alf on the DVD menus are pretty funny, and the blooper reel is awesome (What the hell is that? A plane?) As a long time Alf fan, I'm glad to see these on DVD, but my excitement is tinged with disappointment over them being edited.

The DVD intros recorded by Alf are quite funny. The bit about more FBI warnings made me laugh out loud, as did some of the blooper reel - to hear Alf (mildly) swear made me and my wife really laugh out loud). The syndicated issue aside, the show is STILL damn funny - there's no getting around that issue. :)

NOTE: There's a statement from Lion's Gate on why they have the syndicated versions over the originals online over at TVshowsondvd.com - look in their Alf section.

MAJOR disappointment!
I have most every episode taped from the original NBC airings. I expected to be able to eliminate them from my ever-cluttered collection of stuff with the purchase of this long awaited set. Why Lions Gate chose to use edited syndication episodes completely baffles the imagination. Perhaps they plan on later releasing a "Deluxe Edition" so that the consumer will get hit twice to pay for the same product. The $40 list price should have more than adequately covered licensing the rights to the full episodes, but I guess there's no end to corporate greed.

I am stunned by the rave reviews of the Extras: 1) a short gag reel of which only about 15% is funny, 2) some brief trivia screens which is mostly made up of obvious facts that any fan of the show already knows (like A.L.F. stands for Alien Life Form, for example), and 3) credits screens - credits for the DVD authoring is now considered a bonus extra?!?! Sheesh! Would have made better sense to have included some of the best ALF bits from Hollywood Squares, or even included some of the many commercials ALF has appeared in over the years. Or interviews with the cast reflecting on being a part of the show.

The omission of a feature to play all of the episodes on a disc is simply appalling. Interactive is nice, but can you imagine an audio CD in which you have to select each song separately? Adding this feature would have taken the authors mere minutes to code. I just don't get it.

Rather than deluxe packaging, like you get with most TV series box sets, a clamshell case crams in the four discs in a clunky, overlapping layout. No book, either, just a single sheet listing the discs and episodes, and a slipcover for the case. I've seen public domain sets packaged better.

I'm not sure if the picture quality is due to the original source or not, so I'll reserve judgement on that. Just don't touch the Zoom button because the artifacting from the low bitrate encoding is completely useless. Even still frames in normal mode look bumpy. No other TV series sets in my collection have these problems. How could so many elements get overlooked?

The three stars are for the episodes themselves, which are priceless. A smart, funny, irreverent sitcom that eclipsed "Mork and Mindy", which aired opposite ALF on rival network ABC. I still laugh out loud every time I view this wonderful series. The disc introductions by the ol' ALFer himself are quite amusing in their own respect and deserve to be a part of a package that was created with more care, passion, and respect to the fans of the series.

The DVD contains EDITED versions! Boo Hiss Boo Hiss
I'd love to give the DVD set a good review, as the show is funny. However, in an outrageous and unacceptable move, the studio has released EDITED, CUT versions of the series, made for syndication. When I go out and BUY a TV series on DVD, I do not expect edited junk, I can see that on cable stations.

BOO! HISS! AVOID THIS DVD! Write the studio and tell them you will not sit still for this. Save your money and record the edited versions from TV reruns yourself. Glad I have the uncut network versions from NBC.