The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series Review

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(More customer reviews)"The Wild Wild West" was a terrific show. CBS/Paramount has released the series in this entire season format. The show looks extremely good and the extras (only on season one except for the "bonus disc" but we'll get to that in a moment)are good as well. The big issue is the packaging. The box is certainly attractive look but it's basically the size of a board game box. When you open the inside the 27 discs are split into seasons 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 in what appears to be 2 cardboard "saddle bags" where they slide into it and are held in place with tiny cardboard inserts. The discs could be pretty easily scratched in this cheap packaging. Whoever designed this should be sent back to design 101--it's clever IF the quality of the materials were good but they're not--and it is a pain if you want to store this with some of your other DVD season sets. The saddle bags are sunk into a plastic older again making it look a bit like a board game (which is perhaps the purpose). There is a strip reprsenting the pix from the opening along the top. There is also a booklet that notes what episodes are on each disc.
The "bonus" disc has the two TV movies which should have been included as an extra on the fourth season box set (but was withheld so fans would have to double dip to get the two TV movies). Although the box claims they have been digitally restored, they look like simply transfers and while they don't necessarily look bad, they could have used the clean up given to the season sets. There are lots of white streaks and splotches that appear on the first TV movie and the openining 10 or 15 minutes for the 1980 sequel looks WORSE with the image a bit muddy and image quality darker than the 1979 TV movie. I was never a huge fan of the TV movies as they are more in line with "Support Your Local Sheriff" the movie starring James Garner. That's because both TV movies were written and directed by the same team who did that movie and "Support Your Local Gunfighter". It's nice to see both Robert Conrad and Ross Martin in their roles again but both movies while they have the humor that was characteristic of the series, certainly lack something. The producers must have gotten a bargain on stock footage for nuclear bombs exploding as it appears several times in both TV movies.
The first TV movie "The Wild Wild West Revisited" features Dr. Loveless' son (played by Paul Williams)planning to take over the world with replicas of the leaders of every major nation in the world. Both West and Gordon are called back retirement to prevent Loveless from using an atomic bomb (or something similar)that he has created planeted in the major nations of each country where he has replaced the leaders.
The second TV movie "More Wild Wild West" features the duo pulled out of retirement again to prevent Albert Paradine II (Jonathan Winters) from using his invisibility device from taking over the world.
Both films have nice supporting casts, some clever gags and nice interplay between Conrad and Martin but are a bit uninspired failing to capture the flavor of the original series at all.
I think it stinks that CBS/Paramount chose to release the TV movies only in the "The Complete Series" as they rightfully should have been included as part of the second, third or fourth season sets as an extra there. Regardless, my advice is to burn a copy when you're watching it on TV vs. ponying up additional cash for a package that while it looks nice isn't very sturdy.
If you haven't purchaed the other season sets this is an affordable one stop shop but the box itself is cumbersome and the materials a bit shoddy in my opinion (although it looks quite nice).

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James West and Artemus Gordon are two agents of President Grant who take their splendidly appointed private train through the west to fight evil. Half science fiction and half western, the Artemus designs a series of interesting gadgets for James that would make Inspector Gadget proud. A light hearted adventure series that was a fan favorite.

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Have Gun Will Travel - The Complete Second Season (1957) Review

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(More customer reviews)Richard Boone stars as Paladin in this six-disk dvd set of the first season of HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL (1957-1958).
CBS broadcast an incredible thirty-nine episodes that first season, each episode lasting 23 to 25 minutes. Most episodes begin with the spiffily dressed Paladin (we're never given a last name) scouring the thick stacks newspapers brought to him by the ever helpful Hey Boy (Kam Tong), bellboy at Paladin's residence, the Carlton Hotel in San Francisco. Eventually Paladin reads of a missing child in Colorado, or a rash of robberies occurring in Montana. Paladin slips his business card - a chess knight with the legend Have Gun, Will Travel, Wire Paladin, San Francisco - into an envelope and mails it to the injured party.
Slowly enough as we wend our way through the first year we learn something of Paladin. He has a passion for justice and a taste for the good things. His going rate is $1000, although he will take on a pro bono job if the cause is just. In town he dresses to the nines and in sundry other ways consumes conspicuously. When traveling with a gun he dresses in black. Somewhere along the line he picked up a military education, quotes Shakespeare and Pliny, savors a first-edition of Dryden. His taste in and knowledge of fine wines is commented upon in a couple of episodes....
I don't know if any of this matters, but going through fifteen hours of HGWT over a week or so it's kind of fun to have an aha moment or two. Paladin is an enigma, and Boone, a little more credible as the gunslinger than the city dandy, was an inspired choice to play him. Boone has a commanding presence and, believe me when I tell you buckaroos, was pretty darn quick on the draw.
Twenty-three minutes is a pretty tight box to fit a action story in, which might explain why we don't waste a whole lot of time on Paladin's backstory. Of course, the storytelling is made a lot easier when you consider the talent involved. The talent rundown has to start with Boone, who was nominated Best Leading Actor as Paladin in 1959 and 1960. The great majority of the first season episodes were directed by action veteran Andrew McLaglen (son of actor Victor McLaglen), although a couple were helmed by Oscar winning director Lewis Milestone. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry wrote a few scripts for the first season as well. Sam Peckingpah even co-wrote one episode (The Singer).
The talent in front of the camera was as formidable as that behind. Major established stars like Victor McLaglen and John Carradine appeared in episodes - weak ones, in my opinion, especially the McLaglen episode (directed by son Andrew) in which the old actor played a construction foreman threatening to cut a town off from its source of water. McLaglen simply wasn't getting around very briskly and it's a little painful to watch. Another major movie star fares much better. Charles Bronson wasn't established yet, but he plays a robber who more or less forces Paladin into a gunfighting showdown in an episode that paints fatal violence as both regrettable and, sometimes, unavoidable. Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke) appears in two episodes, once as an unscrupulous frontier lawyer and earlier in a more affecting role as a high wire walker who'd lost his nerve somewhere along the way. Warren Oates plays one of the bad offspring in a truncated take on King Lear.
That's just the beginning. Future television stars appear in almost every episode. Pernell Roberts and Dan Blocker (Bonanza) appear as scruffy tough guys in relatively small roles in separate episodes. Jack Lord (Hawaii 5-0) is a cowardly kidnapper. June Lockhart (Lassie, Lost In Space) appears twice as a frontier doctor. Angie Dickinson (Police Woman) plays a young woman whose brother was murdered and threatens to incite a lynch mob. Mike Connors (Mannix) plays a cattle rustling bad guy in one of the early episodes.
Okay, I'm enthusing here. Still haven't got to the best stuff. What gave me the biggest kick was watching the people I'd never heard of. Peter Whitney, who the intro blurb that precedes each episode tells us made a film career out of playing slow-witted big guys and menacing big guys, plays a mentally challenged ranch hand who's goaded into placing a burr under boss's Stuart Whitman's saddle, with dire consequences, in "The Last Laugh." The diminutive B-western star Bob Steele plays a crooked mine boss in "The High Graders" - the Wire Paladin blurb tells us Steele had developed a quick draw during his B-career, which McLaglen pays homage to in a draw down between his character and Paladin. My favorite discovery, though, has to be Marian Seldes, a tremendous actress who is featured in two episodes. First as a mail order bride who Paladin escorts to her new home in "The Bride" and later as a small town teacher who the local bullies try to intimidate in "The Teacher."
Very strongly recommended, especially for fans of traditional westerns.


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HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL follows the story of professional gunfighter Paladin who, after the Civil War, settles into San Francisco's Hotel Carlton where he awaits responses to his business card.Upon receipt of $1,000, Paladin will leave his suite to chase down whatever mission of mercy or justice his clients commission.Featuring a photo of a white knight chess piece, the business card simply says "Have Gun - Will TravelWire Paladin, San Francisco."

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The Wild Wild West - The Fourth Season Review

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(More customer reviews)Witness if you will the fourth (1968-1969) and final season of "The Wild Wild West", still produced by Bruce Lansbury and that continues his updated and rugged treatment of the series with the paranoid political tales: "The Night of the Doomsday Formula" (guest starring Kevin McCarthy as the fanatical General Kroll) and "The Night of the Pistoleros" showing a future nations' conflict triggered by Mexican look-alikes of American military officers.
You will meet James West's new partners because Artemus Gordon is sent to Washington: secret agent/master of disguises Jeremy Pike (played by Charles Aidman) in four episodes ("The Night of the Camera", "The Night of Miguelito's Revenge" that is the last Dr. Loveless' offering, "The Night of the Pelican", "The Night of the Janus" that is Charles Aidman's best performance as Baron Klaus Esterhauser and in which we catch a glimpse of James West's training academy), secret agent/master of disguises Frank Harper (played by William Schallert) in the two parter "The Night of the Winged Terror", and chemist/agent Ned Brown (played by Alan Hale Jr) in the gloomy "The Night of the Sabatini Death".
Moreover, we will again foray into the off-centered and the macabre fantasies as the Hammer Productions-like "The Night of the Sedgewick Curse" dealing with the theme of the fountain of youth, the tribute to the classic "The Phantom of the Opera" in "The Night of the Diva" (Robert Conrad even sings "Buffalo Gals" with his friends Richard Cangey and Red West) and a veiled reference to Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in "The Night of the Bleak Island", and two Jules Verne-oriented ones in "The Night of the Kraken" (which highlights a Captain Nemo type of character) and "The Night of the Winged Terror, Part I & II" (describing a secret organization of subversive mad scientists ruled by a hypercephalic mastermind).
One episode, directed in late season 3, depicts Robert Conrad's tragic fall while performing his stunt: "The Night of the Fugitives" (guest starring Simon Oakland).

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James West and Artemus Gordon are two agents of President Grant who take their splendidly appointed private train through the west to fight evil. Half science fiction and half western, the Artemus designs a series of interesting gadgets for James that would make Inspector Gadget proud. A light hearted adventure series.

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