Customer Reviews

The Lone Ranger

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a suberb boxset, containing 19 of the later (1956/57), colour, episodes from this classic series.

If you've a hankering to invest in some Lone Ranger shows for your collection - this is one for you. Great care has been taken in the packaging, in the DVD menu structure and, most importantly, in the remastering.

I couldn't believe how clear the picture was. The Lone Ranger and Tonto appear in razor-sharp clarity. And the location shots at Corriganville are superb. Just look at the snow-capped mountains on the horizon; and you'll wish ALL the Lone Ranger episodes had been filmed in colour.

The episodes included in this package are:
1. The wooden rifle
2. Sheriff of Smoke Tree
3. Counterfeit mask
4. No handicap
5. The Cross of Santo Domingo
6. White Hawk's decision
7. The return of Don Pedro O'Sullivan
8. Quicksand
9. Quarter horse war
10. The letter bride
11. Hot spell in Panamint
12. The twisted track
13. Decision for Chris McKeever
14. Trouble at Tylerville
15. Christmas story
16. Ghost Canyon
17. Outlaw masquerade
18. The avenger
19. The courage of Tonto

Rhino Home Video was given the nod for another installment of the leading Western hero known as the Masked Man "The Lone Ranger", featuring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels as Tonto...our Masked hero on his white horse (Silver) and his faithful Indian companion Tonto rode (Scout)into our lives and we've never been the same since...our children and grandchildren will enjoy this clean wholesome fun...when the good guys always won, good guys hat never fell off in a fist-fight and the moral to the story was fair-play.

Who ever thought back in 1931 a small Detroit radio station two men John Kunsky and George W. Trendle would be the start of our hero...later Trendle asked writer Fran Striker to develop a character that was sort of a Robin Hood and Zorro, thus The Lone Ranger was born and the very first broadcast January 31, 1933, America came to love and embrace this legendary lawman...then in 1949 Moore and Silverheels worked together in a film called "The Cowboy and the Indians", this was just the beginning of a long working friendship between to wonderful actors and human beings.

Every week in front of the tube the announcer would open with..."A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi-Yo Silver! The Lone Ranger"...then the Masked Man would ride in and we would hear..."With his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, the daring and resourceful Masked Rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early West! Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear! The Lone Ranger rides again"...we would sit glued to the TV and ride those dusty trails with our hero with plenty of action coming our way...so tighten up those cinches and get ready to ride.

All 19 episodes were beautifully remastered in color and restored...the Ranger films were always first class and the early years had some of the best of the best...they need to be out there for all of us who loved and looked up to Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels...both actors gave their characters life, their word was bond...never quit on a friend in need, always giving the other fellow an even break...this was the way of the early West...the code they lived by, they'll never be another Lone Ranger and Tonto!

This is truly fun stuff and even today holds up as a great western adventure...original airdate was from September 1956 thru January 1957...he was our hero & now once again because of film preservation this restored digital DVD Box Set we can escape to the old west...Great package and family entertainment...just the way it should be!

Total Time: 4-DVD-Box Set ~ Rhino Home Video 970088 ~ (3/25/2003)

I won't rehash the details that have been mentioned in some of the other excellent reviews, but to prevent confusion from P.Hayman's peculiar review, a few points (or at least one major one)... This box set contains episodes from the final season.

As such, including the first episode would probably seem out of place. It is available in several other DVD releases, including the AMC first 14 episodes 2-disc set and in a dvd that combines the first 3 episodes into a movie of the origin of the Lone Ranger, each of which sell on Amazon for $9.99.

The final few seasons were intentionally (so far as I could surmise) filmed in color. Again, if this is a selling point, purchase a set containing earlier episodes and you will be able to see the Lone Ranger in his B&W glory.

This period in the series contains some classic episodes, and the production quality of these later episodes is quite good compared to earlier years. I think most fans of the masked man would not be disappointed with this set.

I've given this five stars because of the material itself. It is subjective and sentimental and even Zen Master's cry! Obviously this is for Post WW11 kids! The kids of today won't get it because their jaded at 8! We weren't! So there! And too bad too!
Some months ago I had purchased a 2 DVD pack with 12 episodes of the first season of the Lone Ranger. {Platinum Disc Corp}
Well, almost. They're a few out of sequence, but I won't sweat the small stuff! I was very surprised at the print quality of most of the 12, and it has the first three episodes that intoduce the Ranger & Tonto. I got such a kick out of seeing these again, and so many memories flooded back in from those hours spent sitting in front of our 17" black&white Admiral t.v. on Saturday mornings of 1950's in Southern California, whew, that I had to have MORE! Thus this purcahse! The colors great like the other fellow says, and clean good prints! What makes this different besides the color {and the last season of the show as well} of these episodes is the different locations that are used in just about every episode. Oh, yeah...Corriganville, Ivereson Ranch and the Susana Hills or 'Mts' if ya like are present in many, but you'll also go to Kanab, Utah. Columbia State Park in Central Ca. near Fresno. And outside of the Utah shots, my favorite; the Lone Pine Ca. location with the snow capped Sierras and the Alabama Hills as a back drop! WOW! I was a bit reluctant to plop down the $$ but I found a good deal at Fry's or Best Buy! Sorry Amazon old pal! But when I got home and started playing the dvd's I was really happy I made this purchase! ITS FUN! How many things do we buy any more that are FUN? Continuing onward; you'll have 19 episodes all in order of the airing dates of the last season. From Sept. 13th. 1956 thru Jan 17th. 1957. That leaves 20 episodes still remaining to be stamped into DVD's! {I hope}for the remainder of the 57' season, which ended 6-6-57. Yes, you read that right!! 39 episodes in a t.v. season! As was the common practice of t.v shows back in the day! Now, we are lucky to see our favorite program before a November air date, and end in March? But I ramble. If ya realy want to go a little further with a Lone Ranger Rush, read Clayton Moore's book; "I Was That Masked Man" other wise "return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. Out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again!"

I am amazed that none of the early reviewers mentioned that the episodes are not the complete ones. The color transfers look great, but what a huge disappointment to discover that each episode runs only about 22 minutes, including the credits. Oh, yes, the opening segment is not the original one either. Rhino gets five stars for fantastic color and clarity, but it loses two stars for presenting incomplete episodes.

Got out this set from its honored place in my DVD collection and re-viewed it yesterday while at home nursing a sprained ankle. What a great way to give yourself some "R & R" !!!!

The Lone Ranger was always a superb television series, but the addition of color near the end of the series' run was a great idea on the part of producer Jack Wrather...and a shrewd
set-up for the upcoming feature film productions. And when Wrather went to color, he did it right. Some of the color work on the last seasons of "The Adventures of Superman" was uneven, but Wrather's "Lone Ranger" and "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon"
shows were photographed gorgeously. The colors in this Ranger collection are vivid and eye-catching.

The stories and acting hold up well, too. When LR creator Geo. Trendle first began shooting this series (as "Apex Film Corp.")in 1949, he had Clayton Moore act somewhat wooden and stiff (Trendle's idea of "stoic & heroic") and directed him to use
perfect diction in the delivering of his lines. After Wrather took over in 1954 this loosened up a bit and allowed Moore a
bit more leeway in his interpretation of the masked Mr. John Reid. Moore took the opportunity to infuse more and more of himself into the Ranger (while still using good grammar) and the meld became so perfect that the two---the actor and the character---virtually became one (as was also the case with William Boyd as Hopalong Cassidy and Duncan Renaldo as the Cisco Kid).

Jay Silverheels likewise had become the quintessential Tonto.

The three-episodes-a-week shooting schedules used in those days (for a half-hour show it could be done, but the pace was exhausting)
result in something one notices immediately in this collection---wherein episodes can be watched back to back; that being that the same actors can often be seen(sometimes in the same costumes) over and over again. In one show a young would-be
Sheriff is helped by the Ranger and Tonto to rid a mining town of bullying outlaws, and, the next thing you know, this same young fellow (now wearing a stick-on mustache) is a deputy town marshal , helping the Ranger help the blinded chief marshal get back his hope for living. And one of the baddies from the previous episode is in this one as well, wearing the same clothes. When you watched these on t.v. years ago...shown a week apart...and often out of shooting sequence...you didn't catch this sort of thing. Only now can you see how they worked this and it gives you a greater appreciation of how much inventiveness and ingenuity went into these rush-job productions.

Clayton Moore's principle stuntman, Bill Ward, shows his stuff to good effect in these episodes. Ward was great at "ape-ing"
Clayton Moore's carraige and body language and this makes the
doubling much more effective and exciting. Ward...not that well known compared to other Hollywood stunt stars like Yakima Canutt,Dave Sharpe,Tom Steele, or Dale Van Sickle...was, nevertheless, wonderful at his trade. In his athleticism, agility, and coordination, Ward was strikingly similar to Dave Sharpe in his stuntwork. In fact, for a long time this reviewer believed that the fabulous "bulldogging" stunt at the end of the 1956 Warner Brothers theatrical movie "The Lone Ranger" was DONE by David Sharpe (an awesome leap from Silver, coming up from behind stuntman Bob Morgan...doubling "baddie' Robert Wilke...followed by a tremendous rolling fistfight down a steep hillside). This "gag" had all the athletic earmarks of Sharpe, but in his book "I Was That Masked Man", Clayton Moore reveals that it was, in fact, Bill Ward wearing the mask in that amazing sequence. All Ranger fans owe it to themselves to see this great western and to marvel at the climactic fight, but Ward is on his game in this television collection as well, and does a bang-up job of providing exciting physical action on the Ranger's part.

One of the hallmarks of the entire Lone Ranger saga, on radio, in the movies, and on television, was its respect for the American Indians and their cultures. This respect is there in all the Clayton Moore productions, to be sure. This is quite true in an episode called "Ghost Canyon", where cowboy baddies try to crook a local tribe out of their heard of horses. They do this with assistance of the chief's "nephew", the only "bad" Indian around. Turns out, though, that the "nephew" is a fake,
a half-breed ex-con who doesn't really have an Indian heart or soul after all. He has killed the real nephew and taken his place.

This set is enclosed in a "saddlebag" package by Rhino Video that is pretty nifty and attractive. It is a good buy for the money, great nostalgia, and just good old fashioned storytelling
about the kind of hero/role-model for young people that we see
FAR too little of today.

After buying a multi-region DVD player so I can watch foreign DVD's I purchased THE LONE RANGER:THE COLOUR EPISODES via Amazon UK.This edition has all 39 of the 5th season color episodes, so if you have or are willing to buy a multi-region DVD player the U.K. Lone Ranger boxed set is a much better buy.And don't be fooled by any misguided reviews criticizing these episodes for being "colorized".All the 5th season episodes were originally filmed in color.

This is an excellent set, but I want to know if instead of rereleasing the same episodes in different boxes they'll ever actually release the entire Lone Ranger series. Are they waiting for their main customers (those who were kids when the show originally aired) to die before releasing it? I know that my dad, along with thousands of other fathers and grandfathers, would jump at the chance to own the whole series. I can't imagine how much money the studio is loosing by not making it available.

This is a very good collector's item for every Lone Ranger fan. captured in color.

You really ''return to those thrilling days of yesteryear'' an action adveture series with the forever hero of the west The Lone Ranger wearing the white hat against the evil doers.


The package was carefully made like a ''saddle bag'' with alot of info about the radio series as well as the t.v. series.

Highly recomended to a true Lone Ranger fan

While it was a pleasure to watch the 'Lone Ranger' and his faithful Indian companion Tonto on television, the really great pleasure and time came from listening to them on Radio. My brother and I used to wait eagerly to hear those famous words,

"A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi-Yo Silver! The Lone Ranger"
In hushed expectation we would wait to hear how the Lone Ranger and Faithful Indian Companion Tonto rode in to the town in trouble,somehow mysteriously solved the problem, got the bad guy, and then rode away.

I sit and remember now so many years later, remember and cannot remember.
The past is gone even if we see some aspect of it again in video or film.