BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

I picked up the DVD set for the TV show BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, which starred Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman. I don't want to take any shit here but I bought it for my wife because she loved the show while she was still in college - must have answered some sort of fantasy for her and what love "should be" and all that, which of course is slightly misguided.

The disc has the first season episodes - six discs in all. I never watched the show during its first run - only saw photos of Perlman in that mullet sporting lion make-up and - at that time - thought the show looked, well, lame.

By time BEAUTY AND THE BEAST aired Hamilton had been around a while - most notably, she was in THE TERMINATOR with the governor of California. THE TERMINATOR was hugely popular and helped put Hamilton on the cinematic map so to speak. Between THE TERMINATOR and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, she'd also been in b-movies like BLACK MOON RISING, SECRET WEAPONS and a couple of made-for-TV things that really didn't amount to much.

But Hamilton really left her mark in TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY, with her character Sarah Connor slimmer, muscular. I remember the first shot of Hamilton doing pull ups with her bare arms and shoulders flexing - didn't look like the same Sarah Connor from the original TERMINATOR at all.

In fact, I thought Hamilton would go on to other action oriented films - maybe even follow Sigourney Weaver's ALIEN lead - but she didn't. She pretty much stayed in TV, even though BEAUTY AND THE BEAST ended in 1990. I don't fault Hamilton for this - she's worked steadily in the decade and a half since BEAST and TERMINATOR 2. But maybe the problem with her finding work in movies was twofold:

1. She was getting older - always a curse for actresses
2. Her marriage to TERMINATOR director James Cameron ended.

Hard to say and it doesn't really matter that much - worrying about some rich actress' career.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST was originally shot on 35 mm with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, given its TV nature. No need for widescreen here but I'm going to make the assumption that the orginal film elements are missing because the DVD doesn't look all that great with the shows looking culled from a video source as opposed to film sourcing. Colors bleed and there's some "digititis" going on here with speckles of pixelation, fall out, shadowing - and for a show that takes place underground (for the most part - Vincent (the Beast) lives in a world just below the streets of NYC), you want the blacks to be really black. But, with this set, that just isn't the case. That said, the show does retain a rich, goth feel (at times I was reminded of the Terrence Fisher Hammer classic from 1960 called THE BRIDES OF DRACULA).

The series' original music (either by Don Davis or Lee Holdridge) is emotional - if not overwrought - and, at first, I found myself swept up by the musical swelling but, by the end of the show, it became wholly predictable.

Anyway - BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is pure treacle - a romantic fantasy that, basically, makes most guys feel inadequate in the romance department. If you watch this with your girlfriend or wife be prepared for lots of sighing and sniffing back tears (not yours most likely).

But if you really want to understand the underpinnings of the myth of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, find the DVD of Jean Cocteau's 1946 LA BELLE ET LA BETE - a surreal excursion into hallucinatory madness of the happiest kind. Mesmerizing with childlike wonder.