The Wild Wild West - The Fourth Season
by Alex Nicol, Bernard McEveety, Charles R. Rondeau, Herb Wallerstein, Irving J. Moore
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Beverly Todd, Patrice Munsel, Patrick Horgan, Robert Conrad, Ross MartinDirector: Alex Nicol, Bernard McEveety, Charles R. Rondeau, Herb Wallerstein, Irving J. Moore
Brand: AIDMAN,CHARLES
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Restored
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 1216 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of The Wild Wild West - The Fourth Season
Movie Review: Another Great 60s Gem
Summary: 5 Stars
As with some of the other 60s shows I've reviewed (ie. Mission Impossible - The Complete First TV Season), I should acknowledge I was born long after this series ended and only caught some brief snippets in re-runs on TBS. But I'm a fan of the 60s spy genre, and decided to give The Wild Wild West a look.
This series is great fun, and credit goes to Robert Conrad and Ross Martin for creating great leading characters that have aged fairly well. Conrad plays James West exactly like what you'd want from a James Bond character in the old west - a dash of charm, charisma and authority, and a whole lot of toughness (more on that later). Ross Martin gets to indulge in a parade of interesting disguises and accents - a few of these likely wouldn't be p.c. today, but hey those were the times. Unfortunately Martin suffered a heart attack this year, forcing some fill-in guest agents (including Gilligan's Island star Alan Hale Jr).
The stories hit all your spy genre and western staples and then some - there's a pretty effects-heavy episode that features a giant kraken, which given 1960s effects you have to take with a few grains of salt. Michael Dunn's Dr. Loveless appears for the last time with a steam-powered robot, and another episode features a tank-like device called the juggernaut. The stories are played straight even when they venture into sci-fi territory, and at their best recall the old 'Republic Serial' style of adventure. There also seems to be an endless line of hot 60's actresses that guest star in every episode, including Lana Wood. It's almost like Robert Conrad had some clause in his contract that required at least one pretty girl per episode....
And last but not least, the action sequences are great. You'll find fights from today's shows may look more brutal and intense at first glance, but that's with a lot of clever photography and editing. In The Wild Wild West, you'll see one-take wide shots with people tossing each other over counters, tabletops, climbing onto 2nd-floor balconies and throwing others off, hurtling from staircases into crates, etc. It's amazing what Robert Conrad and the stunt team pulled off for a weekly TV show. What shows today let their actors take the same amount of risk?
If you have any interest at all in retro-TV, this is an extremely worthwhile set. I picked up season 4 first but it's actually inspired me to buy The Wild Wild West: The Complete Series. Highly recommended.
Summary of The Wild Wild West - The Fourth Season
No Description Available.Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 18-MAR-2008
Media Type: DVD
At one uncharacteristically poignant point during Wild Wild West's final season, secret service agent James West raises a glass to toast "absent friends." That would be Artemis Gordon, West's resourceful sidekick and a master of disguise and the odd "diversion." Ross Martin, who portrayed Gordon, had suffered a heart attack and was missing in action for several episodes, so missed that it took several actors to fill his shoes: Charles Aidman as Jeremy Pike, William Scharlett (who early in the season portrays a villain in the episode, "The Night of the Gruesome Games") as Frank Harper, Pat Paulson, the hangdog mock-Presidential candidate on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, as the seemingly milquetoast Bosley Cranston in "The Night of the Camera," and Alan "The Skipper" Hale, Jr. as chemist Ned Brown in "The Night of the Sabatini Death," (which also features Jim Backus and contains a cute Gilligan?s Island in-joke at episode?s end). With or without Martin, this was a wild, wild season that offers genre-bending kicks in episodes that evoke James Bondian espionage, Jules Verne fantasy, bizarre Avengers-style villainy, and even The Phantom of the Opera. James and company are up against some entertainingly over-the-top megalomaniacs bent on world domination. Of course, the sun couldn?t set on the West without one last encounter with the series? most popular villain, the "dictatorial, vain, short-tempered, and occasionally unreasonable" Dr. Loveless (Michael Dunn), who re-emerges yet again to pass judgment over those he professes to have wronged him in "The Night of Marguerite?s Revenge." Two of TV?s comedy icons, Harvey Koran and a pre-Mary Tyler Moore Show Ted Knight, play it straight as formidable foes in "The Night of the Big Blackmail" and "The Night of the Kraken," respectively. "The Night of the Winged Terror," the series? only two-parter, is an effective creep show featuring a hypnotizing bulging-brained adversary. Conrad, as one character compliments him, is "better than ever," whether dispatching goons (he performed all his own stunts) or romancing the ladies ("He said something about showing the big dipper to the daughter of the Lithuanian ambassador," Artemis explains West?s absence in "Big Blackmail"). While there are signs that the series was poised to jump the shark, it is too bad it ended before further encounters with Professor Montague, who is introduced in "The Night of the Janis" as the Q-like creator of such nifty gadgets as a harmonica gun. --Donald Liebenson
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