Tracklisting details not advised.Starring: ; Kenny Rogers

Twenty years before the Farrelly Brothers turned raunch into acceptable film comedy, the team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker exploited it first. The college threesome made it big with Airplane in 1980, but this 1977 cinematic version of their live theatre show was the ground zero for their talents. Kentucky Fried Movie is a mish-mash of sketches, fake commercials, and parodies with no central theme--except their crudeness and laugh-out-loud humour. Highlights include a commercial for "Scot Free", a board game based on the Kennedy assassination conspiracy; "The Wonderful World of Sex", in which a couple goes through foreplay with a self-help narrator instructing them step-by-step; and a 20-minute spoof of Bruce Lee films entitled "A Fistful of Yen". Brazen to a fault, the movie will reach for any punchline, no matter how crude (and those who flocked to the film's initial release looking for R-rated sex will remember the final sketch and the infamous trailer for "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble".) Directed by then-unknown John Landis (who went on to make The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London) on a shoestring budget, the film has aged. But crassness, when this funny, is forever. --Doug Thomas, Amazon.com

Kermit's Swamp Years is the full-length version of a one-off American cable television feature that sets out to show us the formative years of the future host of The Muppet Show. Its focus is a childhood adventure involving Kermit and his two best friends: a somewhat delinquent frog called Croaker, and a tremulous toad named Goggles. Though the film was, obviously, made some years after the death of Kermit's creator, Jim Henson, the wit, spirit and joy that informed Sesame Street and The Muppet Show are all discernible here. Henson's resounding genius was to understand that children can tell when they are being treated like idiots, and that they don't much care for it, which is why The Muppet Show is still enjoyed by adults who grew up with the programme, and why none of those adults will object to sitting through Kermit's Swamp Years with their children.

On the DVD: Kermit's Swamp Years is presented anamorphically in 1.78:1 widescreen. Extras include behind-the-scenes footage, which reinforces the fact that the human magic necessary to animate the muppet characters is far more interesting and impressive than any amount of the computer wizardry now favoured by most similar films. There are also some quite well-done muppet pastiches of the common DVD special features, interviews with, and commentary from, the stars, and a collection of bloopers and out-takes. --Andrew Mueller