Producers, The (DVD)

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We gonna crush Poland . . . We gon' take over France . . .

But the moral of this story is that in the theater, you just never know what the public will like. Leave it to a hippie-dippy actor they hire to play Hitler, a flower-power junkie named Lorenzo St. DuBois, or L.S.D. for short, to prove that.

One of the extras features the reading of a piece by comic genius Peter Sellers saying that "The Producers" is one of the funniest movies of all-time. Who am I to disagree? if you don't already own this film, it's a hilarious Brooks outing that certainly belongs in your collection.

However, for movie fans who already have the one-disc Special Edition and are wondering if they should upgrade to the two-disc Deluxe Edition, I have to say that the whole thing hinges on how you feel about double-sided discs. The menu graphics are the same on both editions, and though I'm willing to believe that there's a slight improvement in picture quality on the new version, it may be the power of suggestion. It's really that close. The Special Edition offered the movie on one side and the extras on another. The Deluxe Edition eliminates the double-sided disc, with essentially the same features plus a preview of the new version of "The Producers."

Video: Both the old Special Edition and this Deluxe Edition offer a choice between a 1.33:1 "full screen" version and 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation, in color. The picture quality is very good, though you'll see an ever-so-slight graininess if you have HD or a plasma or LCD screen.

Audio: The audio options are, again, identical to the old Special Edition: either the original English Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono, or the remixed English Dolby Digital 5.1 with English, French, and Spanish subtitle options. The 5.1 mix sounds really excellent, with a robust bass and a natural-sounding treble. The Mono is flat by comparison, but purists will be glad it's offered as an option.

Extras: Again, the extras seem to be nearly identical to those offered on the earlier release. There's a five-part making-of feature that's quite good, with Brooks on-camera and plenty of clips, as well as a few surprising gems. Example? Mars tells how he took his Third Reich costume home every night and slept in it, in order to transform into the Hitler-loving character he played. And Brooks may stun a few folks with his revelation that he began as a drummer, and that he credits his early training in percussion to his sense of comic "beats" and timing. There's also an outtake, a photo gallery, trailers, and a sketch gallery—none of which come close to the making-of feature.

Bottom Line: "The Producers" won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and Mel Brooks' freshman outing turned out to be a hard act to follow. But that seems to be Brooks' sensibility: give it all you've got, and then it forces you go out there and try to bring the house down yet another time.

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