The Avengers '64, Set 1
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Movie Reviews of The Avengers '64, Set 1
Movie Review: Wow...
Summary: 5 Stars
Having been a great fan of the Peel/King Avengers, I approached the Gale Avengers with some trepedation. This was badly misplaced. While the technical quality of the transfer to this DVD (including the annoying fly....) is not as high (in part because this does not appear to have been filmed, but rather some earlier, less accurate process), the content is superb.Two of the episodes ran up with the very best televsion (not just Avengers) I have ever seen. Small Wonders, which also includes a not-so-small performance by Lois Maxwell (Moneypenny), is an absolute delight with clever plot twists and superb writing. It also plays upon certain "fears" of the period about secret societies. It is followed by "The Wringer" which could have come straight out of the pen of Le Carre. It reveals the underside of Steed's mysterious agency, and makes clear that these Avengers are playing for keeps.
Are these worth buying? Even with the fly, in a heartbeat. (and if they fix the fly, I will be the first in line to buy another copy...)
Movie Review: Steel Leather and an Umbrella Cathy?
Summary: 5 Stars
If you really relish a series like "Honey West," "Peter Gunn" or "77 Sunset Strip" you no doubt know about the content of what you are getting. You are more likely concerned about the quality of the product. How it looks and sounds? Like John Steed (Patrick Macnee) might say to Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), "You scratch my back and I'll scratch your back. Just watch the hat please. Be a good girl and turn on the TV." John and Cathy Gale are back and are here to stay via DVD technology. Being on DVD, the aesthetics about the actual episodes are not in question here. More appropriately one may ask again, how do they look? They look good, very good indeed Steed.Movie Review: Early outing for Steed
Summary: 4 Stars
For all the fans of The Avengers familiar with the Emma Peel/Tara King era of the show, these early episodes featuring Cathy Gale and Venus Smith may come as something of a disappointment. In fact, fans of the later shows may find it hard to believe that they are even part of the same TV series! After the initial run of 26 episodes featuring Police Surgeon David Keel and his cohort John Steed had aired in the UK in 1961/62, the producers of the program opted to bring Steed to the forefront of the action and give him a number of different "assistants." Thus, for season two, 26 further episodes were made and broadcast in 1962/63 featuring Steed abetted by Martin King, Venus Smith or Cathy Gale. Mrs. Gale turned out to be the most popular and successful foil for the suave agent, and the other characters did not return after season two. Unlike the later Peel/King stories which were all made on film, these studio based TV shows are much more reliant on dialogue and plot than visual elements, and can be somewhat heavy going as a result.
A&E is releasing these stories in a somewhat confusing order, and has started with season three. The first two sets released, Avengers 64 1 & 2, feature the LAST six episodes of season three. Next comes Avengers 63 sets 1 & 2 which comprises of the first half of the season. Next up in the release order is 63 sets 3 & 4 which precede 1 & 2 in running order and in fact feature the last seven stories from season two, plus the first from season three. Confused? Ultimately, it doesn't really matter, since thankfully there's no real reason to watch the stories in chronological order anyway.
What is interesting is the development of the production standards. 63 sets 3 & 4, featuring the latter stories from season two, are far more rudimentary in terms of production quality. The sets are extremely small and sparse; The direction very slap-hazard; Camera work shoddy; Sound is extremely poor; and the acting is negligible. With no budget for editing or reshooting, all the actor's fluffs and goofs stayed in. Steed's character is far less suave and sophisticated then he became later during his familiar role alongside Mrs. Peel, and the relationship with Mrs. Gale in particular is at first downright hostile with very little warmth between the two. He seems to get along much better with Miss Venus Smith, a night club singer who he engages at various gigs to act as his eyes and ears. Venus is a very odd character, and played strangely, but enthusiastically by Julie Stevens. She looks about 12, sings like she's forty, and dresses like anything in between. She also seems extremely naïve and it's hard to imagine why Steed engages her to help him at all. The far more intelligent and elegant Mrs. Gale does eventually warm up to Steed, and in the season three stories where she is the exclusive companion to him, their relationship develops nicely and they become much warmer and closer to each other.
The production values on season three are also much better than the earlier episodes. The sets became larger and more elaborate. The direction, lighting and sound improved greatly and the acting was much less wooden. Some editing was clearly allowed on these later stories, whereas the earlier ones clearly were broadcast as if they were live. There's a terrific blunder in "Six hands across a table," where Cathy is called "Ros" in one scene, and both actors realize the mistake, but keep going. An even better goof comes in "Concerto" when Nigel Stock forgets his lines completely and a very audible prompt is given from off camera. Terrific stuff.
The quality of the DVD's is somewhat disappointing, even accounting for the age of the material and the production values mentioned above. It may not be the case, but it certainly appears that A&E have made no attempt whatsoever to re-master the original tapes, and the flaws, jumps, scratches and sound blips are too numerous to mention. Virtually every episode on 63 sets 3 & 4 are hampered by picture and sound flaws and defects. Things do improve for 63 1 & 2 and 64 1 & 2, but the quality is still disappointing. Mind you, it appears they have done nothing to clean up the Tara King episodes either!
As a big fan of the series, I wouldn't even consider not having these episodes in my collection, but if you're looking for the wacky camp humor and the tele-fantasy of the Peel/King eras, these stories may not be for you.
Movie Review: Historic and most entertaining
Summary: 4 Stars
It is so very good to be able to see the "old" <Avengers> with Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, not only for its own sake but as an historic document (so to speak) and as a foreshadowing of the greater things to come the very next season when Diana Rigg continued to make television history as Blackman's replacement.First the negatives. These are "live," studio-bound productions in which lines are flubbed, jailers have all sorts of trouble opening the doors to cells, gun shots do not convince, and fights are obviously tame to prevent injury in these days before films, stunt-doubles, and retakes. Now and then the sound gets fainter as characters move away from the mikes, now and then the film jumps just a bit, and in at least two sequences a pesky fly seems to have been caught by whatever process was being used to reproduce the original image onto tape/DVD.
Neither positive nor negative but merely interesting is that Steed has not picked up his ultra-refined characteristics by way of wardrobe, umbrella (until the last episodes), and steel-coated bowler hat. His relationship with Cathy varies from amused tolerance on her part to such manifestations of her annoyance as throwing things at him. She takes things a lot more seriously than Emma will. In fact, there is little of that Avengers banter we so enjoy in the later episodes and consequently not so much of that chemistry between the two.
There are three episodes on each DVD and twelve in all in this '64 series. Set 1 starts with "The Little White Elephant," and it is about smuggling using animal cages and it moves slowly. "The Little Wonders" has considerable humor with its hoods dressed as clergymen and a shoot-'em-up finale (possibly meant to be taken seriously but funny all the same) that makes the last scene of "Titus Andronicus" look tame. "The Wringer" is very much like "The Ipcress File" film with its brainwashing episodes. "Mandrake" has the first great sexy-woman vs. he-man as Cathy tosses a sexton (played by a popular wrestler) around a graveyard. [That is the same wrestler that tosses Mr. Humphries around in a late episode of "Are You Being Served?") "The Secrets Broker" is purely about blackmail and "The Trojan Horse" about Dick Francis kinds of doings on the racetrack.
Please watch these without the foresight of what is to come and try to keep a 1964 frame of mind when this was the hottest stuff on the telly and a female character never had it so good before Cathy Gale blew into town.
Movie Review: Most Fans Haven't Seen These Before
Summary: 4 Stars
Most Avengers fans in this country know of the Avengers as John Steed and Emma Peel. But before that there was Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale, who paved the way for Emma Peel. Cathy is a no nonsense character, very smart, very cool, very efficient. These episodes have been shown on American TV only once - in early 1991 on the A&E netwoork (A&E has sunce lost the broadcast rights), and at that time they were almost 30 years old. These were done like live TV, and are in black and white. The theme song is altogether different from the Laurie Johnson theme, but it does grow on you. Because they are like live TV there are some timing mistakes and there is sometimes a little difficulty hearing the dialogue. Contrary to published reports, there are no subtitles on the DVDs, and the only reason I don't give the collection a full five stars is that there was some sloppiness in the transfer - in two episodes on Set 1, a fly obviously got in the machine, and can be seen crawling around. Here we are trying to pay attention to the plot, and are distracted by what looks to be a fly crawling on the actors' faces in close-up. The fly is absent from these same episodes when I taped them from A&E nine years ago.Why they started with the last episodes on the Blackman series is beyond me. There are many great episodes from both her first and second seasons with the show, as well as quite a few episodes where Steed (a bit of a cad in these shows) "uses" other civilians to help him with his missions. I look forward to their release as well.