| I have a confession to make: I have never seen (Indiana Jones And The) Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Actually, that’s not entirely true, as one day, when I was but a young lass of 7 or 8, I managed to catch the tail-end of the film, and scurried under the table as soon as I saw a guy’s face being literally melted off – and that was the end of that. Later, when I was around the age of 11 or 12, I became familiar with Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom, pretty much the right age to see such a film. But with Kate Capshaw’s snarling visage and Short Round making me resent my own Asian heritage, you can probably understand why I didn’t bother perusing the previous film, or the second sequel, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.
Fortunately, Paramount Home Video has decided to cash in on its baby just in time for the impending release of Indiana Jones And the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, and they’ve managed to ship out this sexy little box set, despite the fact that the subject for today is strictly Raiders and Raiders only.
America’s Funnyman Harrison Ford plays globetrotting Indiana Jones, who, when not in the classroom teaching dozens upon dozens of young nubile women, he’s Spelunking through booby-trapped tunnels with a tarantula-covered Alfred Molina. Lucky for me and you that teaching takes up approximately 1/25th of Indy’s life, so instead of a 2-hour lecture on the lost ruins of the ancient civilization of Krzmshepetan, Indiana Jones is sent off on a marvelous search for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, a mysterious piece of art built to contain…a most… legendary… thing.
Wikipedia says the ark was built to hold the broken pieces of The Ten Commandments, but what the hell do I know, I’ve never picked up a bible in my life. The only ark I know about is Noah’s, and that’s because I was forced to review Evan Almighty. While sober. God damn it.
 You see, Hitler, a bit of a nut when it comes to the occult, and he’s sent his little group of thugs out in order to find the ark, believing the ark to be a pipeline to God itself. But, like a proper Sierra adventure game of the early ‘90s, Indy has to collect the headpiece to The Staff of Ra in order to secure The Ark’s location, and unfortunately that artifact is in the hands of former flame Marion Ravenwood, a hard drinkin’ woman still soured on Jones’ preference to tomb raiding over love making. However, when forced to cooperate, Indy and Marion are virtually unstoppable, able to fend off nazi monkeys, nazi humans, pitfalls, snakes and supernatural spooks (they’re apparently easily deflected by the ostrich technique – if you can’t see them, they aren’t there) with only a minimal chance of getting kidnapped, tortured and/or murdered.
 It’s rather odd that, despite the fact that I hadn’t seen the film (for all intents and purposes, that is), despite overabundance of pop culture parodies ranging from The Simpsons to the entire opening of "Weird" Al Yancovich’s UHF, and, hell, even for it’s theme park ride at Disneyland making me feel like I had not only seen Raiders before, but was well versed in it, by golly, Raiders Of The Lost Ark is a surprising blast of unexpected energy, a film that didn’t bore me at any point of its two-hour running time without causing that feeling of bloat and burnout one gets from newer Hollywood blockbusters.
Much credit seems to lay in the hands of both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, two men I have had conflicting emotions about in the past, present and I’m assuming the future (Shia Leboeuffferghhhglh), who both knew the exact tone they were tying to strike. Gone is Spielberg’s sentimentality (which would resurface for Last Crusade, much to my frustration), and gone is George Lucas’ awkward everything. What’s left is just adventure, set pieces of just good old-fashioned asskickery light in tone, but not afraid to explode a head, melt a face off or throw a nazi superman into the spinning blades of an aeroplane, all in the name of throwback family entertainment. I can’t believe how much of a pansy I was as a kid, because this shit is awesome.
 Presentation
I have not had the pleasure to look at the earlier box set that was released in 2003, but from scouring much better review sites with much more thoughtful and intelligent writers, it seems that this release is an exact carbon-copy of the box set release, right down to the infamously derided menu design. This of course means that we’re not getting any upgrading when it comes to audio or video, but come on – the original DVDs were released five years ago, it’s not like Paramount rehashed a flipper disc from 1997. What we’ve got here is a relatively clean and sharp image with grain kept to a minimum outside of a few dark shots here and there.
And while I might not be able to take advantage of the 5.1 surround sound, the audio is still pleasurable to my ears, even if the dialogue is at times overshadowed by the (appropriate) overbearingly iconic score by John Williams.
Extras
This is where fans of the series get to roll their eyes: the new Raiders disc, and the box set itself comes with a slew of new, sequel (and franchise)-geared bonus features. What this means is that outside of the introduction by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, just about every extra on the disc (and all the discs contained in the box set) covers the entirety of the series rather than being a gateway into the world of Raiders, all of which culminates in plugging for the fourth film.
For example, Indiana Jones: An Appreciation (by the way, the complete title is Indiana Jones: An Appreciation: Indy IV Looks Back At The Original Trilogy in the DVD menu, and The Indy Trilogy: A Crystal Clear Appreciation on the back of the box), which features the cast of the new film talking about their favorite moments in the original trilogy. Fun Fact: Shia LaBeouf likes Short Round. I knew there was a reason I fucking hated that guy.
 The Melting Face! Is quite the literal name for this bonus feature. In fact, I think it should have been called something more appropriate, like Holy Shit, That Guy’s Face!, or Steven Spielberg Ruins Your Childhood! instead, but either way this is my favorite type of special feature: fetishizing special effects makeup. Not only do we get some prime archive footage from the making of the film itself, but also we get new footage where special effects guru Chris Walas shows you what you can do with some gelatin, colored string, a few propane torches and enough ill will towards children across the world.
The highlight of all these extras is the fleeting snippets of vintage behind-the-scenes footage of Spielberg and Ford working on the actual sets, snake wranglers, melting faces, all captured on gritty home video. I could watch that stuff all day.
The final extras have very little interest to me, and therefore I will simply assume they hold very little interest to you. We have Storyboards for the Well Of Souls sequence, a solid gallery which an always welcome marketing section, and a trailer and link for an original demo for the Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures Lego-branded video game. The former two are appreciated in concept, but as for the demo, I can’t even run YouTube on my computer, so not only do I dislike the game stuff, I take personal offense to it.
 Oh yeah, and we get a trailer for the upcoming Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. All I know is that, when I purchase my ticket to see this movie, I will say the full title. You should, too.
The Bottom Line
Some might call (Indiana Jones And The) Raiders Of The Lost Ark a cinematic classic, but I think Spielberg and Lucas would scoff at such a title: this is a beautiful, beautiful glorified – I hesitate to even call it a B-Movie because the serials the film homages weren’t even that – It’s skilled businessmen playing in the sandbox, and sometimes there’s nothing better than that.
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