Customer Reviews

The Untouchables - Season 1, Vol. 2

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After getting the first volume, I was more than pleased with it. The stories are fun thoughtful and action packed. These are tales of bad guys, I mean bad guys who face off with the Untouchables. Good guys who could not be bought. I will be the first to admit that we are not talking history here, but you get the feel of an era in American history. Prohibition and bathtub gin, mobsters and molls. Put a great dramatic and action filled story together and frame it with narration by Walter Winchell and you get classic entertainment.

Retro television shows have never done particularly well unless they were set in the Old West. Shows set in the 20's, 30's, 40's, etc, any era outside of the one in which they aired have never lasted long except in three major exceptions - Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and The Untouchables.

The Untouchables succeeded for a number of reasons. First, the veil that had been on the Mafia for a number of years was slowly but surely being peeled off due to gangland killings and the fame of gangsters such as Al Capone, Bugsy Siegel, Dutch Schultz, Lucky Luciano, and others. Even before the Godfather and its outstanding first sequel, the public had a fascination and curiosity with the mob. So take some true events, ture characters, heavily fictionalize them with Hollywood gloss and pathos, and you get a very successful show that made a star out of Robert Stack and brought new fame to a Treasury agent named Eliot Ness.

The Untouchables' First Season collection should not have been split up into multiple sections. That's greed, pure and simple. But the lure of this show - its great characters, performances, grit and intelligence will draw buyers even though they know they're being ripped off. Stack's Ness is one of the best alltime detectives - fearless, relentless, and absolutely ruthless with the bad guys. The supporting casts were always excellent, and Bruce Gordon brough the right amount of humor and menace to Frank Nitti, Capone's chief lieutenant.

The Untouchables - Season One, Volume 2 is not untouchable, but it is irresistable.

The Untouchables TV series stands the test of time, it was, and still is one of the best TV shows ever made in my opinion. Robert Stack is great in the role of Elliot Ness, the quintessential and imperturbable G-Man. I will get the entire series on DVD as they become available, but I agree with the other reviewer that said splitting the seasons up in to different volumes was stupid, and can only be intended to maximize profits for the studio.

Praised for its quality and famous for its drama, The Untouchables (1959-1963) roared like the decade it portrayed in grand theatrical style. It was epic, unique, and violent as it brought to life the nightly wars between good and evil in the streets of Prohibition Chicago.

With legendary law man Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) and his band of incorruptible federal agents leading the way for justice, famed reporter Walter Winchell providing staccato narration, and guest stars breathing life into colorful underworld characters, the true story of The Untouchables has become legend in a film noir mix of true history and Emmy award winning television fiction...

This set presents the latter half of the first season, as the series begins to mature and find out what works and what doesn't.

The writing gets tighter, the characters get more colorful, Ness loses a man or two, and the stage is set for enthralling second season.

Check out "The Unhired Assasin," "One Armed Bandits," "The Noise of Death," "3000 Suspects" (with Leslie Nielson in a straight role!) and "The Frank Nitti Story" as highlights from the latter part of Season 1, Volume 2.

Praised for its quality and famous for its drama, The Untouchables (1959-1963) roared like the decade it portrayed in grand theatrical style. It was epic, unique, and violent as it brought to life the nightly wars between good and evil in the streets of Prohibition Chicago.

With legendary law man Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) and his band of incorruptible federal agents leading the way for justice, famed reporter Walter Winchell providing staccato narration, and guest stars breathing life into colorful underworld characters, the true story of The Untouchables has become legend in a film noir mix of true history and Emmy award winning television fiction...

This set presents the latter half of the first season, as the series begins to mature and find out what works and what doesn't.

The writing gets tighter, the characters get more colorful, Ness loses a man or two, and the stage is set for enthralling second season.

Check out "The Unhired Assasin," "One Armed Bandits," "The Noise of Death," "3000 Suspects" (with Leslie Nielson in a straight role!) and "The Frank Nitti Story" as highlights from Season 1.

Season 1, Volume 2 includes "The Lucy Show: Lucy the Gun Moll" as a special feature. Seeing Robert Stack, Bruce Gordon, Steve London, and even Walter Winchell sending up their old rolls is worth the price of the set alone.

Still holds up well after 50 years - one of the greatest TV shows ever featuring compelling performances by Robert Stack, who is an excellent Elliot Ness and an extremely under-rated actor (Stack is simply brilliant in everything I've seen him in and this is no exception). The Untouchables is THE gangster TV show set in Prohibition America. A fine cast of regulars and many guest stars of high calibre, this show was one of the first with a docu-drama approach that really intensifies the action and plot of each episode. If you thought The Sopranos and The Wire were the beginning of televised corporate crime, look again - it all started here first on THE UNTOUCHABLES with Frank Nitti (the successor to Al Capone when he was jailed) and the very start of organised crime.

As a kid, there was a single show that my parents were adamant that I not watch. That was "The Untouchables". Too violent for my delicate psyche to handle, I guess. So, when I discovered the first season available on Amazon, I had to have it -- recession or no. There have been no disappointments. The B&W film has been masterfully reproduced to DVD. The only thing missing is the commercials. The bumper music between segments is intact as is the end credit music. Seeing some of the guest stars before they made it big is always interesting and the cars, oh my word, the cars. Wouldn't I love to have one of those old 30's pieces of iron! Anyway, if you're looking to rekindle some forgotten memories, I would highly recommend this product. From the reviews I've read, the first year is far superior to any others that have been reproduced. That said, I'll stick with this one.

With the first half of the untouchables out ,and watching all the episodes left me wanting more from that first season. Robert Stack played the part as Ness great as can be plus the guest star actors and Winchell's narration add great credibility for the show. I recall a tv station here in the San Francisco Bay Area KOFY TV20 would show the untouchables in reruns during the day and at night but different episodes sometimes there would be a untouchables marathons for two whole days 48 hours of Ness and the boys slugg'in it out with Capone and the gang in the streets of Chicago.

The Untouchables only lasted 4 seasons, but they were memorable seasons. Having been very young at the time I still remembered bits and pieces of these great shows. Unlike today there wasn't 12 episodes or so to a season. Usually there were around 30 which makes the sets even better, a lot more to enjoy for the price. The show came on the air just two years after the deeath of the real Eliot Ness who was portrayed by Robert Stack. Stack had a very unemotional style to his acting which in this case was appropriate considering some of the low lifes he encountered. I was particularly pleased in a two part episode rntitled "The Unhired Assasin" which I actually remembered from that time. It was an envolved story and much deeper than the usual shows which ran less than an hour without the commercials. The show was produced by Desilu, a company owned by Desi Arnez abd his wife Lucille Ball. It is a violent show, but less so than most everything else on television or movies today. In an age of virtually unlimited westerns, "The Untouchables" are still real classics.

This video is great. The price was unbeatable, and my husband (the gangster movie lover) really enjoyed this and will be ordering the other seasons, now that we have season 1-vol. 1 & 2.
It arrived fast and packaged very well. Thanks Amazon!