neuralclone | Entries tagged with the untouchables

Latest well-known actor spotted in "The Untouchables" - Leslie Neilsen as a a tough-guy convict working undercover for Elliot Ness. Last episode it was Dick York playing a gangster's younger brother.

A lot of these actors have a lot more range than you realise until you see them in one of these guest spots early in their careers. After they get known in a starring role they tend to get typecast in similar parts for the rest of their careers.

I find myself watching less and less contemporary television as I get older--maybe it's because with real life events being so ghastly I don't want ultra-violence and "gritty" realism served up to me as entertainment. Or maybe it's because there are so many shows these days spread over so many platforms that I can't decide what to watch or how to keep up with it all.

Luckily there are now many vintage TV shows available online and on DVD for me to watch! My televisual viewing these days has taken a decidedly retro turn (not that I haven't always included a lot of that in my entertainment schedule). *g*

Which leads me to... I've been watching some more of The Untouchables. I find the episodes are divided into two kinds: those which follow "The Untouchables", and those which focus on the crooks. And really, the latter are the more interesting (so far, at least). "The Untouchables" are the Good Guys, they fight crime, and by the end of each episode they win. The Bad Guys on the other hand.... Well, to start with, they are not necessarily pure evil, though some of them come close. They each have their own motives for what they do. Because they're not constrained by the show in the same way the heroes are, they can be unpredictable. You know they will be defeated in the end, but you never quite know what they'll do next.

I watched the first season episode "The Underground Railway" the other night, where Cliff Robertson (under a heavy layer of prosthetics) played a very ugly armed robber who escaped from jail. He's helped to the other side of the country by the titular underground railway in order to get his share of the loot from his last job. Along the way he gets all sorts of cosmetic jobs done and winds up looking quite handsome (Cliff Robertson without the makeup). Sadly, he's just as ugly inside as he's always been...

I watched the first episode of "The Untouchables" tonight. It started off with a bang--the first Big Bad was Al Capone himself!

What can I say? Well to start with, this first episode was originally a two-part drama produced by Westinghouse Theater, and later edited into a movie for theatrical release. It's thus not so much a first episode as a ... pilot? Precursor? The production values were high, and there was some great cinematography (particularly of cars cruising the wet, neon-lit streets of nighttime Chicago, occasionally stopping to throw out a dead body). I could imagine HBO making something like it today--except, of course, there'd be more gore and the sex would be much more explicit!

Robert Stack was competent as Eliot Ness (since the script merely allowed him to be efficient and incorruptible, there wasn't much scope for anything more). I felt more engaged with the side-characters, such as Georgie, a hapless stool-pigeon, and his wife Brandy, a stripper. Best of all was Neville Brand as Al Capone. The screen sizzled when he turned up about halfway through the movie--about where the cliffhanger would have been in the original two-parter.

Well, justice was done in the end, and Al sent off to prison. It left me curious to see more, and hoping that the character of Ness gets fleshed out a bit more and the high production values are maintained. I give it 7/10, overall.

I dropped into JB HiFi after work tonight to buy the first season of "The Fugitive". It was priced $24.95, but was also part of a '2 for $30' deal. So I grabbed the first season of "The Untouchables" while I had the chance, and am now the proud owner of two early sixties crime dramas. Now I'll have to decide which one to start watching first!

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Navigation

Ramblings from a Twisted Mind

Entries tagged with the untouchables

More Familiar Faces

Vintage TV and Me

"The Scarface Mob" (The Untouchables, episode 1)

Old TV Shows

Profile

August 2022

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags