1776 is one of my favorite musical comedies. I've loved it the several times I've seen it on stage but I only liked the movie the first time I saw it. That's because the movie, as initially released, was hacked down from its original director's cut. Under pressure from Richard Nixon (honest), studio mogul Jack L. Warner cut 40 minutes of mostly political content and the film suffered for it. We summarized this in this article here on this website and it was also covered last year in The Los Angeles Times in this piece. The mostly-restored version was released a few years ago on Laserdisc and it finally comes out on DVD on July 2nd. It's still a bit "stagebound" in this format but it's a much better movie.
The DVD is already available for advance ordering from Movies Unlimited for $26.99 plus postage and if you click on that link and give 'em your credit card info, my site gets a tiny percentage. However, the DVD oughta be up for advance ordering any day now from Amazon and, if I understand the two companies' pricing systems correctly, it'll be two bucks cheaper there…plus, depending on the size of your total order, Amazon could cost you less in shipping. (For standard, domestic shipping of videos, Movies Unlimited charges $5.00 per order plus 50 cents an item; Amazon charges $1.99 per order plus 99 cents per item. This means that, looking just at postage charges, Movies Unlimited is cheaper when you order 9 or more items; Amazon is cheaper if you order fewer.) So wait and order it via the link on this site when we tell you and we'll both profit. Better still, wait until you have a whole lot of things you want to order. After all, you have two months.