Beavis and Butt-Head:
The Mike Judge Collection Volume 2
(Region 1 3 Disc DVD Set)
Paramount/MTV 88901
Total time: 227 mins (main feature) ~100 mins (extras)
Following on from the release of Volume One is the second of the three Volumes of the Mike Judge Collection, where the best two thirds of Beavis and Butt-Head make their way to DVD. The first volume, although good, suffered a bit from having Director's Cuts of some episodes that didn't endear themselves to everyone, as well as some other minor annoyances such as having to watch or fastforward through the advertisements for other DVDs before settling down to watch the troublesome twosome.
Of course, many of the episodes here and on Volume One have already been released on VHS video before, but for licensing reasons, the episodes were shown without the music videos that came with them on first transmission. As is the case on Volume One, there's no music videos contained within the episodes themselves, but they're tucked nicely on to Disc Three so you can watch them as a whole lot of commented videos or one by one. Again, Discs 1 and 2 are basically the episodes (20 per disc, so 40 in all) and Disc 3 has all the extra features which I'll come to later on.
The best news of all is that when you look through the first two disc sleeves, none of the episodes are Director's Cuts whatsoever. Whether this was because they'd already been censored before their first airing on MTV or because there was quite a bit of outcry from fans after the release of Volume One is unclear, but nonetheless getting the episodes "as is" is a definite plus from me. In terms of the episodes chosen, I'll come to that within each disc, but there's enough to please most of us, and it just wouldn't be the same without the appearance of a certain alter ego character.
The sound is in Dolby Digital 2.0 and is pretty much like you heard it on television, while the picture is as clean as it could be, although I suspect some of the original material wasn't exactly stored under best conditions, there's a little bit of a minor speckle here and there. Oddly enough though that actualy adds to the rough and ready look of how the cartoons were.
Disc 1
Disc 1 has twenty quality episodes and they've been picked carefully to ensure maximum fun and entertainment. Whether it's seeing the whole school laugh at Beavis and Butt-Head having to come out into the school yard almost naked after not taking a shower in "Wet Behind The Rears", the two of them getting some on their shoulders in the manically hilarious "Top o'The Mountain", the two imitating a television history programme in "Lightning Strikes", Beavis panicking every time he thinks he might be pregnant with equally dramatic music when in fact he just needs to do something else instead, in "Pregnant Pause", or them really desparately undercutting themselves to sell the school's candy bars in "Candy Sale", the humour shines through and is as good now as it was then.
Disc 2
Disc 2 gets better than Disc 1, just like in Volume One. You have another twenty episodes, such as the two heroes watching Van Driessen go on a date and attempt to "score with a chick" while the two of them try to watch what they think's going to happen in "Date Watchers", the way that they keep ringing the same person with weird phone calls and then blame it on Stewart and his family in "Prank Call", the way that they leave Stewart locked up in their house prompting a massive search for Stewart whilst they completely forget about him in "Stewart is Missing", and being told off by women getting them aroused in "Sexual Harassment". But the best two episodes are the last two on this disc: "Buttniks" where instead of being Beatnik, Beavis drinks lots of capuccino and turns into Cornholio, performing an act that the beatnik crowd love, and the sixteen minute Halloween special, "Bungholio: Lord of the Harvest" where Cornholio makes another appearance after consuming too much of Mr. Anderson's candy and scaring the wits out of everyone in Highland before meeting his maker in a deserted barn. The fact the whole sixteen minutes or so are here is testament to the popularity of the show at the time, and of course, of Cornholio. "You can take me, but you cannot take the almighty bunghole!" Fantastic stuff, almost as good as The Great Cornholio.
Disc 3
Disc 3 is all the extra stuff that you get and nicely tucked away on an extra disc without getting in the way of the episodes themselves. There's plenty of music videos on here too, thirteen this time around as opposed to eleven on Volume One. And not just that, classics too, such as Beavis' commentary on the likes of Cochese in the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage", and the two turning up the TV to full whack in Pantera's "I'm Broken". The comments are all there and usually pretty funny too, and Beavis' humming along to the beat of MC 900 Ft Jesus' "If I Only Had a Brain" is just what people do. You don't just get that lot, but also part two of the "Taint of Greatness" feature, plenty of special appearances including Butt-Bowl, the Calvin Klein ad parody, Moron-a-thon clips with Beavis and Snoop Dogg, a bit from the US version of "I Love The 90s" (nice credit to the BBC there for the original idea) with US comedians talking about them (and Cornholio!), montages, and also previews, including Volume Three, which looks like it has the "Vaya Con Cornholio" episode as well as the original first episode "Frog Baseball"... looks interesting!
Overall Impression
Well, Volume Two is better than Volume One. The quality of the episodes is consistently good, and they're about as good as each other on that. However, it's the lack of Director's Cut annoyances, a few more music videos and some really good features that edge it in front of Volume One in terms of overall quality. I still wish that on some of the discs you could just watch the trailers as a special feature instead, rather than watch or skip through them at the beginning, maybe for Volume Three that'll be put right?
Well worth getting hold of, and if you were a little disappointed with Volume One, this should make up for it.
Warren's rating: 85%