the "Rockford Files Movies" from Germany
[Click to enlarge, if you care]
by Ken
To tell the truth, I didn't care that much about getting any of the Rockford Files movies on DVD. I think I only wound up ordering them because I discovered:
(a) that I apparently couldn't get Vol. 2 (of what's supposed to be a two-volume series) any way on earth except by ordering it from Germany, and --
(b) if I ordered it from Germany, I could get it.
And somehow that made me want it -- no, need it. And made me willing to pay a price . . . well, noticeably higher than I would have paid for it normally. In the vicinity of 50 percent more, for example, than I subsequently paid when I ordered the domestically issued Vol. 1.
Vol. 2, you see, doesn't seem ever to have been issued anywhere in the English-speaking world, but as I discovered while browsing online comments on Vol. 1, it has been issued in Germany, where I gather Detektiv Rockford as our Jim is apparently known in Deutschland, has a following there. And sure enough, when I checked on amazon.de, the German Amazon website, there it was! Supposedly in both English and German. (I haven't gotten it yet. According to last report, it's likely to arrive tomorrow.)
I should probably back up a bit to explain for deprived non-Rockford devotees that the Rockford TV movies were produced (for CBS) about a zillion years after The Rockford Files -- created by a veteran TV legend and a soon-to-be one, Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell -- ended its storied five-and-a-half-season run (1974-80) on NBC. It took that long for the necessary parties to agree to such a project, starting with Jim Rockford himself, James Garner, who had earned a spot in the most elite rank of TV icons for his work in those six physically grueling seasons as TV's most endearing and charming and funny private eye.
The eight TV movies that were made between 1984 and 1990 didn't really recapture the magic, but I guess they were better than nothing. The obvious gap was Jim's father, Rocky, played by the great Noah Beery Jr. in every episode after the pilot (where we can see the False Rocky). I'm not going to try to make the case for The Rockford Files here, but at least some curiosity is owed for one of the younger-generation writer-producers nurtured by the show, one David Chase.
So I will soon be able to look again at not just the four movies in Vol. 1 (I Still Love L.A., A Blessing In Disguise, If The Frame Fits, and Godfather Knows Best), but the four hidden from non-German viewers in Vol. 2 (Falsche Freunde, Russisches Roulette, Detektiv im Rampenlicht, and Nur blut verkauft sich gut). And already I'm ensconced on amazon.de's e-mail list, so I can count on learning about all the swell deals, including those especially swell Final Sales.
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