DVD Spotlight: "Shazam!" The Complete Live-Action Series

Saturday morning television in the 1970s was not all about animation. There were a few live action series too, including Bigfoot and Wildboy, Land of the Lost and Shazam!, which is now available on DVD from the Warner Archive. The series can be described as an ABC Afterschool Special with a superhero element. Young Billy Batson and his mentor, Mentor (yes, that's his name), travel around southern California in a motor home, complete with a Shazam! lightning bolt on the front. Billy is summoned by the elders, Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury, who appear in animated form and spout wisdom to the inexperienced young man, who always seems confounded by their messages. By the way, take the first letter in each elder's name and you spell Shazam!. After each meeting with the elders, Billy and Mentor (or Mr. Mentor to strangers) encounter someone whom the elders referred to and then set out to help him/her deal with various problems.

The stories center around topics such as peer pressure, being dishonest, bragging, stealing, overcoming a troubled past and even racism. Shazam! is a family friendly series that hopes to impart wisdom to its target audience. Of course, the original viewers are now much older, but watching the show after three plus decades is like taking an enjoyable walk down memory lane. For some reason, the troubled youth that Mentor and Billy try to help always seem to get into enough trouble that prompts Billy to utter the magic word Shazam!, which changes him into the adult Captain Marvel (of DC Comics fame). All 28 episodes of the series, which aired from 1974-1976, are featured on the recently released 3-DVD set and the Morals from the original series are included as a special feature. Those viewers who may not have gotten the gist of any given episode can become enlightened by the Morals segments, which are presented by Captain Marvel.

Jackson Bostwick portrays Captain Marvel in more than half of the episodes and is then replaced by John Davey for the remainder of the series. Radio and film actor Les Tremayne (North by Northwest) plays the good-hearted Mentor, while Michael Gray portrays Billy. Guest stars include Butch Patrick (The Munsters), Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family), Jackie Earle Haley (Lincoln) and Andrew Stevens. During its later run, Shazam! was paired with Isis for The Shazam!/Isis Hour. As a result, Isis (JoAnna Cameron) appears in a few episodes, where she teams up with Captain Marvel to save the day.

I suspect that today's youth may be too sophisticated for Shazam!, but the target audience is really those of us who remember how awesome Saturday morning television was during the 1970s and early 1980s, when so many classic series aired from 7:00am until noon and sometimes even into the early afternoon. Those programs hold special memories of our youth and can now be relived, at least in part, with Shazam!

You can watch a clip below.