The Rat Patrol - The Complete Second Season dvd movie.|
The Rat Patrol - The Complete Second Season buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
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List Price: $39.98 Our Price: $20.99 You Save: $18.99 Features • Box set • Color • DVD-Video • Full Screen • Subtitled • NTSC In Theaters : 12 September, 1966 DVD Release : 12 June, 2007 |
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The Rat Patrol - The Complete Second Season description The 26 episodes in this three-disc set are less than half an hour long each, but The Rat Patrol packs a lot into every one of them. There's action and adventure galore as our Yank heroes and their German foes chase each other across the parched dunes of the North African desert. There are Nazi bad guys biting the, er, sand, lots of stuff getting blown up, daring rescues and other dangerous missions, moral dilemmas, torture, beautiful women of various persuasions, perfect hair… even a guest appearance by Jack Jones, who croons to his Nazi captors (in "The Do-Re-Mi Raid"). At the heart of it all are the four members of the Rat Patrol, led by intrepid Sgt. Sam Troy (Christopher George). These boys will do anything, from transporting weapons and munitions to stealing diamonds and secret Nazi documents, from saving innocent Arabs to delivering babies; and somehow, no matter how many times they're pursued, ambushed, shot at (and occasionally wounded), and captured, they always emerge relatively unscathed. At times, the Rats seem to be carrying on a private turf war with their principal nemesis, Hauptmann Hans Dietrich (Hans Gudegast, who, as Eric Braeden, would later find stardom on The Young and the Restless); in several episodes, Troy and Dietrich, a character refreshingly free of the usual Nazi stereotyping, even declare a temporary truce when it suits their mutual needs. It's all consistently entertaining, not to mention fat-free--given the time constraints, there's precious little room for sub-plots or sideshows. The writing's good, the acting's good enough, the production values are first-rate (every installment is in color, which was unusual in the mid-'60s, when these episodes were produced), and the vibe is reasonably authentic. Bottom line: though it lasted for just two seasons, The Rat Patrol ranks as one the better World War II TV dramas, and even without bonus features, this set is a treat. --Sam Graham |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | History and the German Army Take a Beating |
| The second, and sadly the final, season of THE RAT PATROL. Christopher George's real life jeep accident combined with less then stellar ratings contributed to the demise of the show. The 1960s war genre consisting of COMBAT!, TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH, MCHALE'S NAVY, GARRISON'S GUERILLAS, and THE RAT PATROL was fast coming to a close. Only HOGAN'S HEROES survived to see the dawn of 1970s.
The North African action continues with Troy and his jeep teams frustrating the Germans at every wadi. Season Two is bit grittier with the Rat Patrol suffering jeep casualties and frequent temporary capture. The Germans, uniformed in their department store khakis, are finally up to their game in anticipating the patrol's activities. Captain Dietrich (Hans Gudegast a.k.a. Eric Braedon) ingeniously sets up elaborate traps for Troy. Unlike the first season where Dietrich's character only appeared in half the episodes, the restless German captain shows up in almost every show. Despite his efforts, the half hour always concludes with poor Dietrich bested once again admist the smoking ruins of a desert base, burning vehicles, and heavy casualties. In real life this fellow would probably have been rewarded with an assignment to the Eastern Front for his troubles. As with Season One, THE RAT PATROL is military fiction. It is an action packed western set in World War Two North Africa. If you evaluate the stories against historical works such as Rick Atkinson's fine AN ARMY AT DAWN you will be sadly disappointed. This is simply the story of good guys versus bad guys with lot of gunfire. As such the Rat Patrol is able to destroy German tanks with fragmentation grenades and cause half tracks to explode by gunfire. Small arms fire that mows down dozens of German soldiers only provides an occasional non-lethal flesh wounds to members of the patrol. These guys lead charmed lives. Without looking too carefully you will see some familiar MGM backlot sets dusted with sand to appear as if in the Sahara. In one episode the Rat Patrol takes on a German railroad depot with an exciting shoot-em-up around the rail yard. This was the same railroad set used in a two-part episode of COMBAT! Unlike the first season, in which half the series was filmed in southeast Spain, all of the second season was filmed in California. There are several episodes where despite the use of a wide angle lens, windshield glare of contemporary highway traffic is visible in the background. The main drawback to this series is that each episode is only a half hour long. Although this does move the story smartly along it also rushes each episode to the finish line. An hour would have been better. The DVD set is very high quality with the color better than was ever viewed on television sets during the series' original run. There are no special features afforded with this release. The DVD box graphics are slightly enhanced with cast photos superimposed over images other than the vehicles and hardware used in the series. For example, Dietrich is shown as if he is standing out of the hatch of a Sturmgeschutz assault gun with a Tiger Tank following in the background. As I noted earlier, military fiction. |
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