Welcome Back, Kotter - The Complete First Season

1 more product image	Starring: Gabe Kaplan, John Travolta, Ron Palillo, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Robert Hegyes Warner Home Video, 1975, DVD Customer Rating: 54 reviews   Recommend List Price: $29.98 Our Price: $12.48 (Price details) You Save: $17.50 (58%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days. Ships from and sold by movies-4-u. Click to see all 10 offers available

Mr. Kotter, meet the Sweathogs, the goofiest group of remedial students who ever set off the fire alarm two minutes before a test or spent algebra class constructing spit wads. Sweathogs, meet Mr. Kotter, a former Sweathog who's returned to his old high school as your new teacher. Gabriel Kaplan stars as Kotter and John Travolta, in his breakthrough role, plays Sweathog leader Vinnie Barbarino in this multicultural, multicomical 1970s smash hit set at Brooklyn's James Buchanan High School. Join them plus jivin', high-fivin' Freddie Washington, tough-guy Juan Epstein and peppy pipsqueak Arnold Horshack for all the Season One fun - or it's up your nose with a rubber hose!

DVD Features:
Featurette:The shows cast and creators reflect on the influence of the show, their personal experiences and memorable moments
Other:Actors' Original Screen Tests

Travel back to a time when sitcoms were recorded live on tape before a studio audience and dialogue was dominated by nonsensical catch phrases, like "Up your nose with a rubber hose!" and "Off my case, potato face!" The year was 1975. Saturday Night Fever had yet to make John Travolta a star, and stand-up comedian-turned-creator Gabe Kaplan had yet to become a late-night poker mainstay. Welcome to four years at Brooklyn's Buchanan High School.

Along with What's Happening, Welcome Back, Kotter was what the cool kids were watching — just as their kids would turn to Freaks and Geeks in the years to come. Unlike the teens of Happy Days, Buchanan's remedial students aren't polite preppies, but slang-slinging hooligans. Gabe Kotter (Kaplan) serves as home-room teacher to a "pack of howling baboons" led by Vinnie Barbarino (Travolta), Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo), Freddie "Boom-Boom" Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), and self-described Puerto Rican Jew Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes) Their adversary: Vice Principal Woodman (John Sylvester White), who lives to put a kibosh on their high jinks — just as he did when Kotter was a Sweathog in the 1960s.

Other regulars include Kotter's wife, Julie (Marcia Strassman, who hosts the featurette "Only a Few Degrees from a Sweathog"), and Rosalie "Hotzy" Totzy (Mary Hartman's Debra Lee Scott). At the time, Welcome Back, Kotter was more than just a show. It was a cultural phenomenon, spawning lunch boxes, schoolyard taunts, and the like. In retrospect, the jokes are cornier than ever, but the anything-goes spirit — crazy costumes and musical numbers — is hard to resist. At least that's true of the first three seasons. By the fourth, Travolta and Kaplan became scarce, and Kotter ran out of steam. Rest assured, though, that John Sebastian's clap-happy, chart-topping theme remains as catchy as ever. — Kathleen C. Fennessy

Title: Welcome Back, Kotter - The Complete First Season
Sales Rank: 5419 in DVD
Actor: Gabe Kaplan, John Travolta, Ron Palillo, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Robert Hegyes
Studio: Warner Home Video, 2007-06-12, Theatrical Release: 1975-09-09
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Acpect Ratio 1.33:1
Languages: English (Original Language)
Audience Rating: Unrated
Region Code: 1
Running Time: 553 minutes
Item Dimensions: 0.5 pounds
Package Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches, 0.45 pounds

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