Wanted: Dead or Alive - Season Two (1959-1960)
Let's Go
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Buy Wanted: Dead or Alive - Season Two on DVD
I checked out four episodes of this new 4-disc box set. "The Healing
Woman" (1959) features a teleplay written by Charles Beaumont and
Richard Matheson, two incredible genre writers with tons of good
material in their resumes. "The Empty Cell" (1959) includes the unlikely
duo of DeForest Kelley ("Star Trek") and Lon Chaney Jr. (The Wolf Man).
"Angela" (1960), co-stars Warren Oates as a thug. And "The Monster"
(1960) stars Martin Landau as a renegade circus performer with a killer
elephant. All four are professionally done, good-looking (the great
cinematographer Stanley Cortez, of The Magnificent Ambersons and The
Night of the Hunter, shot at least one episode), but rather plain. Steve
McQueen plays Josh Randall, a bounty hunter with an unusual, sawed-off
gun (called a "Mare's Leg"). McQueen is superb, but his method mumbling
offsets the more workaday aspects of the production. As far as Western
television shows go, Sam Peckinpah's "The Rifleman" is sillier, but a
lot more fun.
DVD Details: Released by BCI Eclipse, this box set contains 32
episodes (each with an optional French language track) and a featurette,
"The Women of Wanted: Dead or Alive."
Starring: Steve McQueen, Warren Oates, Martin Landau, Lon Chaney Jr. DeForrest Kelley, Bek Nelson, Fay Spain, etc.
Written by: D.D. Beauchamp, Mary M. Beauchamp, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, etc.
Directed by: Thomas Carr, etc.
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 800 minutes
Date: August 15, 2007
