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List Price: $29.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 1438
Released: June 12, 2007 |
| Our Price: $12.49 |
| Used Price: $15.95 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Mr. Kotter, meet the Sweathogs, the goofiest group of remedial students who ever set off the fire alarm two minutes before a test or spent algebra class constructing spit wads. Sweathogs, meet Mr. Kotter, a former Sweathog who's returned to his old high school as your new teacher. Gabriel Kaplan stars as Kotter and John Travolta, in his breakthrough role, plays Sweathog leader Vinnie Barbarino in this multicultural, multicomical 1970s smash hit set at Brooklyn's James Buchanan High School. Join them plus jivin', high-fivin' Freddie Washington, tough-guy Juan Epstein and peppy pipsqueak Arnold Horshack for all the Season One fun - or it's up your nose with a rubber hose!
DVD Features:
Featurette:The shows cast and creators reflect on the influence of the show, their personal experiences and memorable moments
Other:Actors' Original Screen Tests
Description of Welcome Back, Kotter - The Complete First Season:
Travel back to a time when sitcoms were recorded live on tape before a studio audience and dialogue was dominated by nonsensical catch phrases, like "Up your nose with a rubber hose!" and "Off my case, potato face!" The year was 1975. Saturday Night Fever had yet to make John Travolta a star, and stand-up comedian-turned-creator Gabe Kaplan had yet to become a late-night poker mainstay. Welcome to four years at Brooklyn's Buchanan High School.
Along with What's Happening, Welcome Back, Kotter was what the cool kids were watching--just as their kids would turn to Freaks and Geeks in the years to come. Unlike the teens of Happy Days, Buchanan's remedial students aren't polite preppies, but slang-slinging hooligans. Gabe Kotter (Kaplan) serves as home-room teacher to a "pack of howling baboons" led by Vinnie Barbarino (Travolta), Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo), Freddie "Boom-Boom" Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), and self-described Puerto Rican Jew Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes) Their adversary: Vice Principal Woodman (John Sylvester White), who lives to put a kibosh on their high jinks--just as he did when Kotter was a Sweathog in the 1960s.
Other regulars include Kotter's wife, Julie (Marcia Strassman, who hosts the featurette "Only a Few Degrees from a Sweathog"), and Rosalie "Hotzy" Totzy (Mary Hartman's Debra Lee Scott). At the time, Welcome Back, Kotter was more than just a show. It was a cultural phenomenon, spawning lunch boxes, schoolyard taunts, and the like. In retrospect, the jokes are cornier than ever, but the anything-goes spirit--crazy costumes and musical numbers--is hard to resist. At least that's true of the first three seasons. By the fourth, Travolta and Kaplan became scarce, and Kotter ran out of steam. Rest assured, though, that John Sebastian's clap-happy, chart-topping theme remains as catchy as ever. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Welcome Back, Kotter - The Complete First Season Reviews:
Great Show, Unusually Good DVD Release! 
2008-11-16 - I guess you could say I'm picky with DVD releases, but this one was quite good. The theme song is intact, the studio audience laughter is still there and the episodes are mostly complete, with the episodes usually running from 24-25 minutes. It's always annoying when a show is released on DVD but is badly edited, glad to see they left this show mostly intact. The price is also quite good, you get 22 episodes, compared with some DVDs which contain 15 at a higher price (I'm looking at you, Paramount). Picture quality is decent, certainly not the level seen in "I Love Lucy" or "MASH" but those shows were done on film, and considering this show was done on tape I'd say it's pretty good. As for the humor, well taste is subjective but I enjoyed this even if I didn't quite get the occasional topical joke, with much of it being quite watchable.
Welcome Back Kotter 
2008-04-14 - This will take you back to the days when Welcome Back Kotter was a weekly favorite on the T.V. Looking back you can enjoy the great writing that made this show so popular. Here's to a young and sexy John Travolta!
Welcome Back Kotter
2008-03-30 - I am very grateful to the studios for bringing this classic to dvd. I am very pleased with the quality and the nostalgia this timeless piece brings to me.
Welcome Back Kotter DVD set
2008-03-10 - This DVD set arrived quickly and was exactly what it stated it was, the whole first season of Welcome Back Kotter. My family and I are loving every episode. Great experience!
Why don't they do something like this?
2008-02-09 - I'll keep it short and simple. I LOVE this show. It seems they always do something like this when releasing old shows. They release a season or two and then they just stop. Why don't they release the entire series as a box set. Wouldn't that be easier, and satisfy all of us who want the entire series. Quite annoying... and from the looks of it, it looks as though we will never see Season 2. Argh... argh indeed!
