Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3531 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-07-03
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 116 minutes

Special Features
4:3
DVD 5
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital Stereo English
Dolby Digital Stereo

Synopsis

The Bill Hicks - Totally DVD release consists of "Revelations", the outrageous comedian's last live performance, and "It's Just A Ride", a tribute to Hicks that features interviews with comic personalities such as Eddie Izzard, Sean Hughes, Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Customer Reviews

Hicks at his best.
The last officially recorded concert by Bill Hicks before his death in early 1994, Revelations live at the Dominion Theatre is the finest of his limited DVD releases, coming as it does with the half-hour channel 4 documentary, Totally Bill Hicks.

Whilst it's not really the selling point here, Totally Bill Hicks is well worth watching. A brief overview of his career featuring minor interviews with many influential and imporant comedians (as well as great testimony by Jay Leno and David Letterman), the documentary is probably not something you want to watch in tandem with the main feature, as it does have a lot of clips from it contained within.

The Revelations performance itself, on the other hand, is quite literally Bill Hicks at his best. Having come within a whisper of his perfect live set by 1993, and in cantankerous mood having recently kicked cigarettes, Hicks stalks the stage, skinny and pale, unleashing his darkest, greatest material. Whilst Hicks can occasionally have a tendency to take something too far - he pounds his anti-marketing message a little too much - this DVD is probably his finest recorded moment, featuring the delightfully twisted Goat Boy and a razor-sharp extension of his material on drugs and smoking.

A curious documentary worth a watch or two, coupled with probably Bill Hicks' greatest officially recorded set, combine to make this DVD an essential purchase for any fan of Hicks or comedy.

Good introduction
I'd recommend that if you buy this you watch the gig half first, then the documentary. The documentary just takes interviews and intersperses them with sections from the performance so when you get to the performance you've already heard all the punchlines. In other words: Don't hit 'Play All'

Personally I thought the Goat Boy thing just awful.

Poorly produced DVD
Revelations is probably Bill Hick's best show on recording, so with the documentary this should be the greatest Bill Hicks DVD out there - but it isn't.

Revelations is seriously let down because the first 10 minutes or so of this issue have been badly edited, so rather than Bill coming on stage and the comedy keeps rolling, instead what we get is Bill on stage - cut to 30 secs later - cut to 30 secs later, etc. We never get to see Bill's feelings on leaving LA "Bye, Bill, we'll be good!" and the choppy editing is annoying.

But worst is that for some unfathomable reason, whoever edited Revelations on this DVD release also decided to fade in images from the background during Bill's performance. So we get to see a burning US flag suddenly fill the picture, and at another point, the head of a baby with accompanying child noises. It's distracting, annoying, and entirely pointless.

If you really want a recording of Revelations to view, don't buy this release - instead get a standalone which hasn't been butchered the way this one has.