New DVDs: 'Paranormal State,' 'Intelligence'

"Paranormal State: The Complete Season One"

"It's not your imagination."

The demonic activity and spectral visits in "Paranormal State: The Complete Season One" (A&E Home Video, $34.95) are real, or so says Penn State University student Ryan Buell, creator and director of the Paranormal Research Society. "Paranormal State" follows Buell and his crew of investigators as they motor from town to town exorcising things that literally go bump in the night.

At first the episodes seem repetitive. Then some of the more enigmatic cases emerge. Take the woman from Queens, N.Y., who makes electronic-voice-phenomena recordings. EVPs are believed to be recordings of spirit voices. Supposedly the New York woman makes her own recordings of a suicide and consequently finds herself demon-oppressed.

In another case, while trying to evict the bothersome spirits of a murdered family from an Elizabethtown, Pa., home, Buell becomes the target of a malevolent imp.

The three-DVD set features more than seven hours of supposed phantoms and the families claiming to see them. It also includes Buell and the others telling how they started on the path of psychic phenomena. Fascinating.

"Intelligence"

The underworld is a dangerous yet intriguing labyrinth. Most of us would rather observe the dark doings of that realm from the safety of our living rooms. Canadian writer Chris Haddock's "Intelligence: Sex, Drugs & Spies, Season One" (Acorn Media, $59.99) lets us do that.

Featuring realistic writing and precise acting, the pilot was first broadcast on the CBC in 2005. In 2006, when regular weekly broadcasts began, "Intelligence" was nominated for 16 Gemini Awards, Canada's Emmy equivalent.

The show explores the life of a fictional marijuana dealer, Jimmy Reardon (Ian Tracey). Reardon, a third-generation crime boss, owns a strip joint and an international shipping business. But he is actually a likable guy and a loving father to boot.

The other major player is Mary Spalding (Klea Scott, "Millennium"), the lonely but ambitious and brilliant head of the Vancouver Organized Crime Unit. As she positions herself to move up, she is forced to play cat-and-mouse with Ted Altman (Matt Frewer, "Max Headroom"), her conniving second in command.

When Reardon and Spalding strike an alliance to share information, writer Haddock skillfully reaches in and examines their prickly union. A veritable edge-of-the-seat chess match results.

Rough street talk, racy strip-club scenes, allusions to sexual trysts and lots and lots of alcohol drinking and dope snorting make "Intelligence" quite gritty. Overall, however, the four-DVD set is worth the 60 bucks.

(Monessa Tinsley is a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)