Viper - 'The Complete Collection' DVDs: Release Date, Cost, Box Image, Pre-Order Link! 'All 4 seasons, 80 episodes, includes The Pilot' from VEI in mid-December
Posted by David Lambert	11/20/2017
It prowls the streets in the pursuit of justice. Its origins are secret. It's technology, 21st Century. Its existence, officially disavowed. Its presence, undeniable. The perfect weapon for an imperfect Future! Viper! The action-adventure TV series Viper follows a special task force set up by the federal government to fight crime in Metro City, California. Perpetually under siege from one crime wave after another, the Viper Team relies on The Defender, an assault vehicle that masquerades as a Dodge Viper RT/10 roadster and coupe. A week-and-a-half ago we told you that Visual Entertainment Inc. (VEI), two years after first announcing that they had acquired the rights to the title, was finally finishing up on their DVD release for Viper. We didn't have a specific availability date at the time, or pricing, or package art. But now we have all three! Viper - The Complete Collection will include the original pilot telefilm, the rest of the 1994 season from NBC, and all three seasons from the show's 1996-1999 syndicated run. Every episode is here, for $49.99 SRP. Now, VEI usually releases their titles on Fridays...which is different than most of the home video industry, where the standard street date for titles is on Tuesday. But, with no reason given, VEI is releasing Viper - The Complete Collection on Monday, December 11th...exactly three weeks from today! The info at VEI's website also shows that we should expect a bonus item. It's a bit confusingly worded, but we think they're giving Viper DVD buyers a bonus episode of Barnaby Jones...the first episode from the fourth season, which was a cross-over with the fifth season of the William Conrad-starring program that Jones was spun off from, Cannon. As of this writing, VEI's info says this: Bonus: Prequel episode of the Deadly Conspiracy part 2, which aired two days earlier on September 17, 1975 in the series CANNON. Television icon Buddy Ebsen (The Beverly Hillbillies) stars as the tall, silver-haired private eye in the long-running series Barnaby Jones. Called out of retirement to solve the murder of his son, Barnaby Jones reopens his Los Angeles detective agency, hires his daughter-in-law Betty (Lee Meriwether, Mission: Impossible) as his secretary and personal confidante and is back doing what he does best, catching bad guys and putting them away. Running for eight seasons on CBS, the entire series is available for the first time on DVD. From executive producer Quinn Martin (The Fugitive, The Streets Of San Francisco, and Cannon), Barnaby Jones also starred John Carter ("Scarface") and Mark Shera (S.W.A.T.) as Barnaby's nephew J.R. Many familiar actors made guest appearances over the course of the series run, and others newcomers went on to become well-known actors including Tyne Daly (Cagney & Lacey), Joan Van Ark (Knots Landing), Dick Van Patten (Eight Is Enough) Nick Nolte ("48 hours"), John Ritter (Three's Company), Larry Hagman (Dallas), Dabney Coleman ("9 To 5") And Eileen Brennan ("Private Benjamin"), among others. Even if that info about extras turns out to be an error, it won't matter to Viper fans: they've wanted their show on DVD for a long time now! So don't wait, pre-order your long-awaited copy today, using the button link below that's linked to the VEI online studio web store. Right now they have a "Black Friday" special, which provides free shipping on all orders over $24; just input discount code "D3BT892VE3VG" when you check out. Our thanks to longtime reader Gordon Hartman and also to Steven Lawrence of the fan website http://www.ProjectViper.com for their assistance in this story.

Viper - VEI Posts on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook With New DVD Timeframe! As of right now, this long-awaited release is coming out next month
Posted by David Lambert	11/08/2017
The most recent word we had from VEI (Visual Entertainment Inc.) was that Viper would be released this past summer. That obviously didn't happen, and fans have become upset waiting for an update. Good news, then! Today, a Twitter post from VEI linked to a YouTube video of the opening credits, and both the tweet and the video (see both, below) told us this was "Coming Soon." But just HOW soon is that? On this past Monday, VEI responded to a Facebook post with a comment that says to expect it in December 2017...next month! Our thanks to reader Steven Lawrence for the heads-up about it. Let's hope this timeframe doesn't change again. Stay tuned, and we'll keep you updated!

Viper - VEI Posts a Release Timeframe for the Fan-Favorite Mid-90s Car/Crime Show! The DVDs of the series from Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo are just months away now
Posted by David Lambert	4/05/2017
In 1994, the writing/producing team of Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo (the same team responsible for the movie The Rocketeer and TV shows such as 1990's The Flash and the early UPN series The Sentinel) brought a show to NBC called Viper. NBC cancelled the show after one season of 12 episodes. But two years later, in 1996, Viper returned from Bilson and De Meo as a syndicated program, lasting for a 2nd, 3rd and 4th season before getting permanently parked. In November 2015 we reported that VEI (Visual Entertainment, Inc.) had added a LONG list of shows to its "coming soon" page at their website...a list that has been removed quite some months back, when VEI realized that it would take a long time to produce EVERYTHING listed there. They were all still being planned for release...it just wasn't going to be "soon" after all, so they wanted to give themselves more time! Viper was among the titles given, and - as we said at the time - we've never known if VEI's plans are for the entire series, or for a fraction of it. Maybe just the NBC season, or maybe just the three syndicated seasons, or perhaps one season at a time...we simply don't know, as VEI hasn't said! But whatever amount of the series is coming, VEI recently HAS actually said something about when we can expect it! One of our readers, Richard Mazepa, was the first to link us to a Facebook post made a few weeks ago by another Viper fan, Terri Paxton, asking (in a roundabout way) for VEI to update us all about the show's DVD plans. VEI had a short - but VERY sweet! - answer to him about it: "coming this summer"!!! We're working with VEI to get more specifics, and they promise to get back to us about their various upcoming TV-DVD titles as soon as things get finalized for each of them. Stay tuned, of course, and we'll update you further as more info becomes available!