The Avengers - '63 Set 4
|
Our Price: $21.35 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Avengers - '63 Set 4
Movie Review: Before Steed met Mrs Peel.......
Summary: 3 Stars
there was Mrs Gale and Venus Smith.
These seven episodes of pre-Mrs Peel Avengers episodes. The series was originally meant to be a more serious spy adventure series about two agents Dr. Keel and a much less debonair John Steed. The second series (season to Americans) focused more on Steed, eliminating the Dr. and teaming him with Venus Smith and Cathy Gale among others. Cathy Gale, an accomplished, educated, self confident woman with considerable martial arts training is very much Steed's equal despite being an 'amateur' agent. She has very much in common with Emma Peel although her relationship with Steed, at least in the earliest episodes, is quite antagonistic and quite lacking the playful banter that would characterize the Steed/Peel exchanges. Venus Smith is a very young (perhaps 20) nightclub singer who has no apparent secret agent skills or qualifications other than her admiration for Steed. In many ways, her youth, inexperience, enthusiasm and adoration of Steed, she is a forerunner of Tara King.
The stories include: "White Dwarf" - an sci-fi sort of tale about the possible end of the world; "Man in the Mirror" - suspicious suicide and the living dead; "Conspiracy of Silence" - undercover at the circus to stop a Mafia drug ring;"A Chorus of Frogs" - deep sea murder and foreign agents; "Six Hands Across A Table" - corrupt businessmen attempt to control British shipbuilding; "Killerwhale" - smuggling in the boxing world; "Brief for Murder" - corrupt lawyers use every means to free their clients.
"Man in the Mirror" and "A Chorus of Frogs" feature Venus Smith, (and 'showcase' her singing), the rest pair Steed with Cathy Gale. These are very low budget productions, completely lacking in the polish that appears in later years. The stories are all in black and white, with rather sparse sets. Camera work is jerky, sound quality uneven giving the whole thing a feeling of being shot live (which it was not) even to the point of leaving in obvious errors, like forgotten or wrong lines.
So why get these dvds? For Avenger fans it is interesting to see the beginnings of their favorite secret agent, John Steed, to see him before he developed his lighthearted, polished sophistication. Cathy and Venus are the forerunners of Emma Peel and Tara King and paired with Steed face not the campy eccentrics of the later series but instead more gritty serious villians. In the later series the emphasis was on the flashy visuals, the campy comedy punctuated by adventure here the reverse is the case, the spy adventure is at times sprinkled with bits of comic relief.
More Movie Reviews:
1 2
1 2