Catch up with battling TV celebrities from the 1970s and ’80s on the “All-Star Family Feud” DVD.
“Family Feud” had a nine-year run with Richard Dawson as host. Dawson, who rose to fame on “Hogan’s Heroes,” was a quick-witted celebrity panelist on “Match Game.” His success there led to hosting the new “Family Feud” program in 1976.
The “All-Star Family Feud” DVD collects several celebrity episodes, with guest stars from shows including “Love Boat,” “Dukes of Hazzard” and “Dallas.”
Dawson is determined to kiss every woman who crosses the “Family Feud” threshold. But, since he met his second wife on the program in 1981, I suppose you can’t discount his methods entirely.
The idea behind “Family Feud” is to give the most popular answers to survey questions. Watching these shows from 20-plus years ago is an interesting time capsule — the answers to some questions are exactly the same as they would likely be in 2008, whereas in other surveys, new technologies and cultural changes have rendered the answers nearly inscrutable.
The contestants are mainly from TV shows of that era, though there are some reunions (notably “Leave It to Beaver”). The pop-culture melange of the “All-Star” editions is helpful in pointing out one’s own gaps in pop culture knowledge: There was a Jeb Duke? Shannon Tweed was on “Falcon Crest”? “Sha-Na-Na” was a TV series?
The production isn’t as sharp as the recent “Match Game” DVD set; sometimes the video is shaky, and there’s not much in the way of extras.
Some celebrities are better at the game than you might expect (Tom Wopat), while others are worse (Bernie Kopell). And at least some of the contestants will have you scrambling to the Internet, wondering, “Whatever happened to …?”
— Matthew Price
