Customer Reviews

Combat - Season 1, Campaign 2

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great series! but the DVD's are a bit strange... the episodes are grouped in order of "production" and NOT in the original air date/episode order. here are the episodes on "Campaign 2" in order:

DISC #1
- Episode 10: I Swear by Apollo (12/11/1962)
- Episode 30: Walking Wounded, The (04/30/1963)
- Episode 14: Medal, The (01/08/1963)
- Episode 16: Volunteer, The (01/22/1963)

DISC #2
- Episode 23: Survival (03/12/1963)
- Episode 21: No Time for Pity (02/26/1963)
- Episode 18: Next in Command (02/05/1963)
- Episode 22: Night Patrol (03/05/1963)

DISC #3
- Episode 20: Off Limits (02/19/1963)
- Episode 24: No Hallelujahs for Glory (03/19/1963)
- Episode 26: Battle of the Roses (04/02/1963)
- Episode 27: Hill 256 (04/09/1963)

DISC #4
- Episode 28: Sniper, The (04/16/1963)
- Episode 29: One More for the Road (04/23/1963)
- Episode 31: High Named Today (05/07/1963)
- Episode 32: No Trumpets, No Drums (05/14/1963)

you'll have to buy BOTH sets if you want to watch the series correctly - the way it was aired in the '60s.

If you are lucky to be old enough to remember "Combat", then I would say you are pretty lucky. This was one hell of a television show. I was 8 years old when the premiere episode came on and it was my father's favorite program. He was a WW2 veteran. This program premiered when writers knew how to write and they did not depend on fast cuts and digital images. The stories were very powerful and the acting was great! As a child , I was always waiting for the next episode and now I am happy to see these episodes on DVD. The main stars are dead now, Ric Jason and Vic Morrow and then Dick Peadbody. Also some of the production crew are now deceased. These people have certainly left a legacy!

Even though Combat! has aired on some cable stations and has been syndicated on broadcast television in a few markets, I had not seen the series since original broadcasts on ABC ended in 1967. So it was with great anticipation that I awaited the release of the series on DVD. The wait was worth it . . . Combat! is even better than I had remembered it to be. Like many youngsters who grew up in the 1950s/1960s, I was drawn to the show by its combat action sequences and now, as an adult, the human drama is of greater interest. The writing and acting in this series is top notch and I found the production values to be quite high for a television series from the early/mid 1960s. Yes, those French villages were really on the back lot of MGM Studios, but they sure looked authentic. And, although the final season of the series was filmed in color, the black and white film stock used for the first four seasons actually adds to the grittiness of the show.

Season 1, Campaign 2 contains 16 episodes and, like Season 1, Campaign 1, the episodes are shown in production order rather than the original broadcast order. Shecky Greene's Private Braddock is gone but Jack Hogan's better-known Private Kirby shows up in these episodes. The extras on Campaign 2 consist of six episode commentaries, and some anecdotal information on each episode provided by Jo Davidsmeyer who runs the Combat! web site. The commentaries are of variable quality. For example, actor Joseph Campanella, a guest star on the episode "The Medal," is a somewhat strange choice to provide commentary since his character is killed off during the first quarter of the episode. Campanella is affectionate when speaking about the show and his role, but he signs off abruptly, around the 25 minute mark of the episode. Perhaps, with the passage of over 40 years, he simply had run out of things to say. That's not the case with the other commentaries, however, the best of which come from Director Richard Donner ("No Trumpets, No Drums") and actors Ben Cooper and Tom Lowell ("Next in Command"). While certainly not of modern day "high definition" television standards, the quality of the audio/visual presentation on these DVDs is, for the most part, very good and likely the best that we'll ever see for this series.

Combat! remains one of television's key dramatic series of the 1960s and is highly recommended to those interested in classic TV and/or World War II dramas.

The writer who states that these episodes were edited is dead wrong. Vic Morrow in an interview with the Social Security Administration remarked that the episodes were about 47 minutes long and the rest of the time is spent on commercials. So who are you going to believe. Vic Morrow , who directed and stared in the series or conjecture after the fact.

It's easy to slap 5 stars on a Combat review, but one must be careful and realize that this series was 5 seasons long with over 150 total episodes...In fact, if I could give this first season 3 1/2 stars I would....the show was trying to find its' bearings in this first season, and would face many bumps as directors and writers came and went....these are valuable episodes though in setting up what will become the best television series which covered the WWII theater....

Some of the Highlights:

Lost Sheep Lost Shepherd....Jeffery Hunter is the guest star as a priest who fell from grace and is now a tanker...when he blows up the church steeple, you cannot help but think of his role in King of Kings.

Forgotten Front...guest star Albert Paulsen (who recently passed away) portrays a very sympathetic German who is captured by Saunders...the writers had to add the final scene between Caje and Saunders because the producers did not like the final outcome of Paulsen's character...

Cat and Mouse...a very exciting and tense story with Albert Salmi as a Seargent equal to Saunders in grit and determination.

Reunion....what does one do, when you find out your long lost father is a collaborator for the Germans?

The Medal....Frank Gorshin reluctantly, then aggressively, takes credit for a heroic act that he didn't do...

No Time for Pity....one of the many episodes which shows the war's effect on children....

The Sniper....German sniper picks off US soldiers in French town.

No Trumpets No Drums...Caje suffers through a period of angst after killing a little girl's father....

These epsisodes, and others are the high points of the first season...but since the characters have not yet fully evolved, there are some episodes that they are secondary to, at times, rather mundane characters:

Any Second Now....Hanley is caught under some rubble in a church with an unexploded bomb for company...a rather boring subplot between the British demo man and his love interest...

Missing in Action....Howard Duff as a downed pilot is again center stage to a romantic plot line

The Chateau...Doc #1 is given the star treatment in this episode..the problem is that he is not a very good actor

The Prisoner....Shecky Greene's comedic talents are on display but the episode is too "Hogans Heroes-ish" to be any good...

The Walking Wounded...this time we have too much Gary Merrill..

Off Limits....William Windom and Peggy Ann Garner are lovers and guess what?...Garner is married to one of Saunders men!...yawn

Well, I could go on but I will spare you....One of the niceties of the first season is that Vic Morrow and Rick Jason worked together in quite a few of the episodes. Future seasons would see them split the center spotlight with Morrow quickly becoming the dominant character...but other characters, like Little John, are barely fleshed out, and Kirby did not have his patented BAR by his side, though in one episode he petitioned to become the squad's BAR man (Far from the Brave)...Stephen Rogers as Doc #1 could not hold an acting candle to Season 2-5 Doc #2, Conlan Carter...

So by all means, pick up this first season because the price is right, and there is much to enjoy....as the seasons progressed, the show just got better, culminating in the 2 part masterpiece, "Hills are for Heroes" from season 4....

If I could rate the individual season now they would be:

Season 1 - 3 1/2 Stars
Season 2 - 5 Stars
Season 3 - 5 Stars
Season 4 - 5 Stars...though could be a 6 Star Season
Season 5 - 4 Stars

I'm jumping a bit ahead of the release schedule with these ratings but you have an idea on how I view the arc of the series.

Recommended with some reservations....

Actually, the poster's concern regarding the extra editing of original "Combat!" footage is well-founded. In 1962-63, broadcast standards (voluntarily adhered to by the NBC, CBS, and ABC networks) allowed only six minutes for commercials during each hour of prime-time broadcast, with an additional two minutes allowed for commercials from local affiliates. Thus, one-hour episodes for TV series were carefully shot and edited by the studio and crew to reflect a 52-minute running time.

However, when "Combat!" episodes were syndicated to local TV stations during the 1970's, the restrictions regarding the amount of ads per hour had been loosened. Thus, local programmers were able to sell 12 minutes of advertising for each hour of broadcast. The syndicating companies, realizing that local stations would take advantage of the extra commerical time, re-edited the episodes to 46-48 minutes each. Indeed, it is these re-edited episodes which Image Entertainment, for some reason, has chosen to package in DVD. (It could be that the 52-minute episodes were melted down, lost, or discarded.)

In any event, "Combat!" is one of the great television classics. Vic Morrow, if memory serves, was nominated an Emmy the same year the show premiered (on ABC, Tuesdays, 6:30-7:30), and I believe the honor was principally based on his performance in the Robert Altman-directed episode, "Survival," in which Morrow's character, Sgt. Saunders, is seriously wounded at the show's outset, but deliriously, miraculously, makes it back to the safety of American lines. The last five minutes of "Survival" are as powerful, in terms of acting, as anything ever witnessed on the small-screen.

Combat has to be one of the best shows to come out of the black and white era of television and though many times memories set us up for disappointment when we revisit decades later, Combat was no disappointment. The acting, the writing, the scenery stood up to the test of time.

"COMBAT" was a really great show, but this dvd edition of it is inexcusible. These shows have been edited (time compressed). My question is: Why did Image Entertainment allow this to happen? They didn't do this with I SPY, NAKED CITY, or DICK VAN DYKE. I understand that Image is just a distributor, but they should have DEMANDED that the masters used for these dvd sets be UNEDITED. "Time Compressed" is when they digitally edit out several minutes of a program so that they have more time for commercials. What's left after the editing is then digitally "compressed" together. These episodes should run approximately 50 minutes, but on these edited dvd's they run about 46 minutes. That means there's over 50 minutes of missing footage in this set!! In the old days, the rule was 5 minutes of commercials for every half-hour of programming (25 min. of show + 5 min. of commercials). Tell-tale signs of a time compressed show are:
The action moves a little faster (moving vehicles will sometimes skip instead of rolling smoothly)
The actors voices are higher pitched
The music is "choppy" (try singing while lightly karate chopping your throat--this is what it sounds like to me)

To me, a time compressed show is very annoying. I also feel like i'm being cheated because i'm not getting the COMPLETE versions of these episodes. I would highly advise you to rent these discs before you buy them. (...)

I disagree with the rater who indicated the episodes are edited. Watch the episodes carefully: pay close attention to the fade ins/outs from one chapter to another, and listen to the background music. Edits would compromise the music's continuity from one scene to another and I do not see no hear any obvious "breaks" that would indicate editing has taken place.

Bottom line, enjoy this for what it is: a truly great series for which many folks are truly grateful has been finally released on DVD.

Here again from episodes like "Survival", for which Vic Morrow earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Continued Performance by an actor in a series (Lead)to "Hill 256 and "One More for the Road" COMBAT! "Squad Members" both old and new will be excited, fascinated and moved by these episodes with some terrific turns by the guest stars and directing by Robert Altman and Richard Donner. I would also reccommend for those that are serious about the series that 1 - They purchase Seasons 2 through 5 and 2 - That they go to the book section and purchase Jo Davidsmeyer's wonderful book, COMBAT! A Viewer's Companion to the WW-II TV Series. It makes an outstanding addition to the DVD collection.
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