01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 26, 2006

Director Cecil B. DeMille was famous for his epics: The Greatest Show on Earth, The Crusades, The Sign of the Cross and two versions of The Ten Commandments -- a silent in 1923 and the more famous 1956 remake. Besides spectacle, DeMille's films often had religious themes and sexuality.

Universal has put five of DeMille's best from the 1930s, most of them rarely seen today, in The Cecil B. DeMille Collection ($59.98) which proves that, at least in grandeur and melodrama, DeMille had no equals.

I was familiar with most of them, but had never heard of 1934's Four Frightened People. A sort of precursor of TV's Lost, it's about four people who flee a ship in the South Seas because of an outbreak of bubonic plague, then find more dangers in the Malay jungle which they try to cross to reach civilization. DeMille made the film between two epics -- 1933's The Sign of the Cross, about early Christians in Rome under Nero's oppressive rule, and 1934's opulent Cleopatra, still sexy with Claudette Colbert bathing in real milk. Colbert also stars in Four Frightened People, which was shot in the "jungles" of Hawaii and runs a scant 79 minutes. The film looks as though DeMille was taking a breather between epics.

It underlines his love of melodrama as the survivors meet up with pythons and wild beasts, as well as unfriendly natives at inopportune moments. It's not long before they're at each other's throats, too. Yet the sophisticated and lovely Colbert, playing against type as a wallflower schoolteacher who has given up on love, blossoms in the jungle with its dangers and romance. By the end she's wearing a leopard-skin sarong and throwing herself at a married man who has saved her life. Melodramatically overwhelming, it nevertheless is an interesting film of its era. Made one year after King Kong, the jungle scenes filmed in Hawaii recall that movie, although without any dinosaurs.

Of the other four films in the collection, The Sign of the Cross still impresses with its religious theme of a Roman officer who is converted to Christianity at a time of crisis. Cleopatra is still a larger-than-life production, especially her arrival by barge. Richard the Lionheart tries to save Jerusalem for the Christians in spectacular battle sequences in 1935's The Crusades. Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea fight Indians and each other while building a cross-country railroad in the 1939 western epic Union Pacific. DeMille's final film in black and white, Union Pacific's most stupendous moment is a spectacular train wreck at the end.

Fun for the family

Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt and their brood of 12 screen children delighted audiences in Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (Fox, $26.98), one of those rare films that was much funnier than the original.

It's a family vacation comedy about keeping the family together. With some of the kids grown and about to leave the nest, Martin's Tom Baker prods them all into having one last summer vacation at the lakeside cottage they've rented for years. Tom didn't count on running up against longtime rival Jimmy Murtaugh, played by Eugene Levy, who has built a huge McMansion "cottage" on the opposite shore and tries to one-up Tom at every turn.

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is loaded with wacky slapstick, including Tom's wild kneeboarding ride behind a power boat and a fancy lunch that ends in catastrophe, thanks to a wad of uncooked hamburger and the Bakers' rambunctious dog.

There are heart-to-heart moments, too, but all ends well at the annual lake competition with sack races and log-rolling contests that leave Tom and Jimmy taking aim at each other with wicked pranks.

Live from New York

You'll find nothing funnier on the video shelf than Saturday Night Live: The Best of Commercial Parodies (Universal, $19.98).

From adult diapers to the most enormous taco you've ever laid eyes on, the SNL stars take aim at Madison Avenue in funny sketches, none more than 2 minutes long and some going back to the days of John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner. Will Ferrell is the host.

Ferrell's also seen in skits with popular SNL regular (from 1995 to 2000) Cheri Oteri. She's saluted in Saturday Night Live: The Best of Cheri Oteri (Universal, $19.98). Playing opposite such guest stars as Cameron Diaz, Tobey Maguire and Britney Spears, Oteri's characters include a klutzy cheerleader and a power-mad TV judge.

Ancient Egypt's best

Egyptologists won't want to miss two double-disk releases from BBC: King Tut -- The Face of Tutankhamun and Egypt.

King Tut ($29.98) follows the long search by archaeologist Howard Carter that led him in 1922 to Tut's tomb, the only one in the Valley of Kings not extensively ransacked by tomb robbers across the centuries. Behind a wall of the tomb Carter even found Tut's sarcophagus and his solid gold mummy case, with Tut still inside! It's a grand adventure, complete with theories about the pharaoh's curse that later cut down many of the explorers. There's also black and white movie footage from the 1920s of Carter's expedition and archival photos of the tomb as Carter found it.

Egypt ($29.98) is a series of docudramas with actors reenacting historical characters who played a great role in bringing ancient Egypt to life. They include Howard Carter; Giovanni Belzoni, a former circus strongman who uncovered the huge Temple at Abu Simbel; Jean-Francois Champollion, who deciphered the mystery of the ancient hieroglyphs, discovering that those strange carvings were not merely pictographs but stood for sounds in the language of pharaonic times. Fascinating stories in their own right, these two releases are a boon to anyone who loves ancient Egypt.

Catherine the Great

History buffs, too, will enjoy the dramatized biography of Catherine the Great (PBS/Paramount, $24.99), the engrossing story of how a low-level German princess became the very powerful Empress of Russia.

It's a story of political intrigue, illicit romance, sex and murder and it plays out on opulent sets like a grand soap opera drama.

Cross-country discovery

Felicity Huffman of TV's Desperate Housewives had a groundbreaking role in Transamerica (Genius Products, $28.95), playing a man who discovers, just days before his scheduled sex-change operation, that he has a 17-year-old son he never knew existed.

Huffman won a best actress Golden Globe and was nominated for a best actress Academy Award for her remarkable efforts. For my money, she should have won the Oscar.

In this often very funny film, Huffman's Bree travels to New York to bail her newfound son from jail. Pretending to be a Christian missionary, she takes him on a cross-country trip (he wants to go to Hollywood to be in the movies) which turns out to be a voyage of discovery for them both. Bree awakens to a world of possibilities that are more than hinted at in Transamerica's unconventional ending.

In a world of cookie-cutter movie scripts, Transamerica is a welcome original.