I have decided to finally write my review for The Benny Hill Collection. This is one DVD that many fans will probably want to pass on. However, one can certainly say it is unique. It contains one DVD, which features several short programs and an audio CD of 14 songs recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. The program is from 1991 and was produced and directed by Dennis Kirkland.
This program begins with actor Leslie Neilsen appearing at the very beginning. The reason why is not given. We then see Benny surrounded on a beach by lots of young girls who are a part of a beauty contest. (The 1991 Miss Hawaiian Tropic contest, of which Benny was one of the judges - in and of itself, a measure of how far his career had fallen since the 1989 cancellation of his Thames show, given that Miss Hawaiian Tropic isn't exactly a "major" beauty pageant, being as it was run by a company that manufactured suntan lotion; that year [1991] a TV special was put out by that company, which showed Mr. Hill at one point making his long-rehashed comments about girls having what he long called "twinkle." This scene was taped in Daytona Beach, Florida, where much of the judging for this competition was held, as part of a proposed music video for one of the tracks being recorded for the accompanying Audio CD. - William Brown).
Next, Benny walks across Abbey Road, apparently the same crosswalk that the Beatles walked across for the cover of their famous album, "Abbey Road". (It was indeed, only you can gather what time of the year this was shot because the buildings are in plain view, unlike The Beatles' album where the sidewalks were covered with rows of trees, thus obscuring the buildings. - William Brown). All during this, "Yakety Sax" is the background music. I think this was also used for the shot of a cover of one of Benny's albums. (Which was Benny Hill . . . The Best Of, released a few months after his death [more comments below]. - William Brown). Next, "we" walk up to Mr. Scuttle who is standing at the entrance to Abbey Road Studios. Scuttle is not allowing us to enter because Benny Hill is recording his new CD. "We" flash some money and he allows us to enter. Then there is some brief clips of Benny recording in the studio with Ronnie Aldrich. (Which marked the last time he worked with the legendary pianist and easy-listening conductor, who died a little over a year after Mr. Hill. - William Brown).
The scene shifts to a beach side concert with Benny performing "Unlucky Luke" for a crowd of nothing but men. Now this is strange. Was this a gay beach? This is accompanied by a clip with Benny on the beach standing next to a girl and Leslie Neilsen standing next to her. Benny repeats his gag of thinking he is touching her soft skin, when all the while he is touching Leslie Neilsen's arm.
The scene shifts back briefly to Abbey Road Studios with Benny and the Maggie Stredder singers. This moves to a clip of Benny outside performing "Bianca" with some young girls. There is a clip of Benny with a girl at an outdoor cafe being served dinner. I do not recognize the girl. (She may have been a bit actress working in Hollywood at the time, I myself can't make heads or tails. - William Brown).
We then move to a street scene with a group of people gathered around Benny performing his "New York Rap". Benny wears a black leather jacket and a beret and the scene shifts to several locations during the clip.
This is the complete video of Benny performing "Unlucky Luke". Benny appears on stage and puts on a large hat, his thick "R. Dibble Handyman" glasses and plays a banjo. It is apparent that the audio for this is looped, since the performance is the same as the one on the CD. Also, there is no band accompanying Benny on the stage. At the end, the audio of a live crowd can easily be heard fading in. The other strange thing about this clip, as I mentioned before is that the crowd only consists of men. Dennis Kirkland can be easily spotted in this clip.
This is the video of "New York Rap" presented seperately, but it is already contained in it's entirety in the "Benny Hill Edited Clips" Program.
This program begins with Benny talking to someone (unknown) about his travelling, I presume before he arrived in Los Angeles. This moves to Benny and Dennis Kirkland working out how they are going to do the scene where Benny won't allow anyone into the studio, until we see some money thrust in his face. The footage moves to Benny walking across Abbey Road.
This then moves to footage of Benny and the young girl rehearsing the dinner scene in an outside cafe. Apparently, there seems to be some technical problems to work out with the ketchup. Benny pours a ton of ketchup on his food. The young girl in this scene seems to want a lot of sugar as Benny pours her coffee into the sugar bowl, which make this a remake of the gag used in "I have to watch my figure" sketch that Benny did with Dilys Watling. Next is a brief segment with Benny as Mr. Scuttle
The next portion featues Benny standing outside the Pantages theatre rehearsing a scene of some kind. He wears a blue sports jacket and pink shirt. Dennis Kirkland pops into the scene briefly to adjust Benny's clothes.
The scenery shifts back to the street with Benny rehearsing the "New York Rap" with a large crowd of people, presumably brought right off the street. Dennis Kirkland again, can be seen in this part of the footage.
We then move onto a segment with Benny wearing the same wardrobe as he did in the New York Rap Video. Benny is lighting a cigar and when he throws it into the river, there is an explosion, from what appears to be a filling station for boats. There is a very large sign stating, "No Smoking" behind Benny, which he fails to see. The final footage for this is at the end of the "Benny Hill Edited Clips" program. Dennis Kirkland again enters the shot to assist Benny. We are then taken outside the Pantages theatre once again to close portion of the disc.
An interesting point to note is that the the audio of the archived footage ends abruptly at about the 40 second mark, and is taken over by the song "Ernie", which is repeated again and again until the very end of this 15 minute segment. I recommend you mute your equipment, as hearing this song again and again is not going to be any fun. Another strange thing that happens is that the video tape is actually rewinded briefly, repeating certain segements of the footage. I have no idea why this occurs. When you begin watching this footage, it states that it was taken from VHS footage. The quality is therefore, very poor. The timecode runs continuously at the bottom of the screen.
The Benny Hill Collection is not what I would call an item most Benny Hill fans will want to add to their shelf. This disc really offers nothing but scenes of Benny struggling to keep his career alive. It almost appears that the only crew was Benny and Dennis Kirkland and one camera. (Indeed, one can say that while his regular cast were supporting players, they were certainly the glue that helped hold his show together, and that Benny without his regulars, especially at this late stage in his career, was almost like a fish without water. - William Brown). None of these segments on this disc can be qualified as programs in and of themselves, but only portions of a show that never came to be. The bonus features aren't much help to this lacklustre collection. The Audio CD only makes it seem like you are getting more for your money. The performances aren't very good. (Not only in actuality, but especially when compared with the performances on his TV shows. - William Brown). I only paid ten dollars for this DVD and it isn't hard to see why. I get the feeling that the studio that put together this DVD was doing everything on the cheap and added the Audio CD to try and sell it. Benny Hill fans should be wary of purchasing this set.
All of the programs have fine picture quality in this set, except of course for the disappointing timecoded VHS clips.
Again, audio is fine and is presented in Dolby Digital Mono.
The Benny Hill Biography is presented as simple text information on three or four screens.
The Screen Saver is nowhere to be found on this DVD, even though the packaging and the menu clearly stated that there is one. I also explored the disc on my PC to no avail. Another indication of how cheaply this disc was put together.
The Weblink feature is simply the url for Easy Entertainment Group.
The credits features the credits for the CD and the programming on this collection.
The Audio CD provided with this collection contains 14 songs, (13 of which were previously released), recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. (Most of the contents of this audio CD were previously (and posthumously) released as the aforementioned Benny Hill . . . The Best Of [Continuum 19206-2] in the summer of 1992. A link to the original album - now out-of-print - can be found at Amazon.com. In addition, the original CD had 16 tracks instead of 14, the first and last tracks being different renditions of his closing chase theme "Yakety Sax," which is obviously not included here. And he had recorded both "Ernie" and "Pepy's Diary" in earlier years, as well, in superior versions to what's here. - William Brown). Since these tunes are not recorded before an audience, that may be some of what contributes to the lacklustre performances. The fact that we cannot see Benny is also another detractor. (Indeed, AllMusic.com opined of the original CD release of these tracks, "Benny Hill is funnier on the telly." If you really need this music, though, get the original CD release and skip this package. - William Brown).
The instrumentation is also quite poor and it seems the tunes were done in a rush. (On top of that, some of the songs - notably "Bianca" - were heavily rewritten, as but one example on that song a reference to 1970's British boxer John Conteh from the original performance on his 01/26/77 show replaced with the name of American boxing champ Mike Tyson in the lyrics. Benny's own vocal performance was rather ragged and somewhat deteriorated from his peak. At least we get the titles of some of his later songs, though there's a discrepancy between this and A&E Video's titlings of a few of them on their Complete & Unadulterated sets - for example, "Cafe Ole" [with the chords and melodies of "Zandoona" and "Jose's Cantina" set to different lyrics] was called "Anna Marie" by A&E [though it has nothing to do with the song that opened his Thames run back in 1969], "Gypsy Dance" had been referred to as "Maria," and likewise what is called "Older Woman" here was listed on the second A&E set as "Dapper Dan, The Lady Killer Man." And "Star Names" was what was sung in the "Bronco Benny" opening of 04/27/88. - William Brown). We don't get the more elaborate arrangements that accompanied Benny when he did these songs on TBHS. (Actually, the arrangements here were almost similar to what was on his last Thames shows in the late 1980's, which were indeed below what they were in his heyday. Even his earlier records from 1961-65 [on Pye] and 1971-72 [on EMI] were an improvement over this CD, and we didn't see him on those records either. - William Brown). You may also find yourself skipping halfway through tracks on this disc like I did.
The packaging is a regular amaray case. The front cover features a water-color drawing of Benny as Mr. Scuttle doing his famous salute. The cover states that the disc contains "never before seen clips and outtakes". It also advertises the Bonus CD containing the 14 songs recorded by Benny at Abbey Road Studios in London, as well as the performances made at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, California. The back cover states that the disc contains the last video and music performances that Benny ever made. The back cover lists the 14 tracks contained on the Audio CD. (Given the so-called "WARNING" on the bottom right side of the cover, if there were truth in advertising laws for these kinds of compilations the "WARNING" would advise of the generally wretched quality of the material offered here; and that one has to wonder if there was a reason why these were "never before seen" - or rather, if they in fact should never have been seen. The assertion of these being his "last video" performances aren't all that correct, either; besides The World's Favourite Clown documentary, there was an appearance on the Oct. 30, 1991 edition of the Thames chat show Des O'Connor Tonight, on which Benny played his Fred Scuttle and Mr. Chow Mein characters for what turned out to be the last time. Moreover, the actual final on-camera video performance he ever made [not included here] was for a video offering silver-anniversary wedding wishes to his long-time agent Richard Stone, and Stone's wife, that was taped during one of his hospital stays not long before his death. - William Brown).
The main menu contains the same drawing of Benny doing his Mr. Scuttle Salute. There is also an "Extras" menu accessible from here. A small sample of "Down On The Farm" from the Audio CD repeates again and again on the main menu only. This could get pretty annoying if you leave your volume turned up or if you don't start playing any of the programming on this disc.
To see Benny attempting to resurrect his career in this collection is not fun. It's sad to see Benny like this, and how far from the top of his game he was. (Indeed, his World Tour: New York special, as lacklustre and past his peak as that was, and as much an obvious attempt to keep his career going as it was, can be considered a step above this; certainly that show was more cohesive and coherent than this jumbled mess, which is even skimpier than some of the clothes worn in the early 1980's by the Hill's Angels. - William Brown). The Benny Hill Collection is not a good DVD at all and the people behind the making of it are simply attempting to cash in on his name. My final word is avoid this disc unless you really want to collect all of the Benny Hill merchandise avaialable. Remember, I have warned you.
Audio: ***
Video: ***
Extras: 0
Programs: *
Overall: *1/2