"November 9th, 1932. At 15 minutes past midnight, Eastern Standard Time, the Associated Press from Palo Alto reported this three-word flash: 'Hoover Concedes Defeat.' Three years of depression had thrust Herbert Hoover and the Republicans from control of the government and elected New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt president of the United States. The Volstead Act was doomed. Repeal of the 18th Amendment, Prohibition, was inevitable. At 2:15 AM Chicago time, the Untouchables, led by their chief, Eliot Ness, celebrated the beginning of the end of Prohibition by destroying the last of the breweries operated by Al Capone and company." - Narrator Walter Winchell in "Unhired Assassin (Part 1)"
The Untouchables: Season 1, Volume 2 DVD Review
By Jude Clement
In April 2007, The Untouchables: Season 1, Volume 1 was released on DVD. Set in 1930s Chicago at the height of Prohibition, the series follows federal agent Eliot Ness (Robert Stack) and his group of Untouchables...investigators who are so morally upright that they will be impervious to bribes and graft...as they begin the fight to rid the Midwest of gangsters, hoodlums, and other criminals. Now comes The Untouchables: Season 1, Volume 2, another collection of fourteen brutal, noirish, sometimes campy, and always entertaining episodes.
The set starts out with the January 1960 episode "The Star Witness" in which Thurston Howell himself-Gilligan's Island's Jim Backus-gets beaten to a bloody pulp by a hood with brass knuckles and then kicked in the head after he falls to the ground. Later in the show his young daughter, who dreams of becoming a ballerina, gets deliberately run down by a car, crushing both of her legs. Guess it's time to retire that tutu!
If you enjoy seeing future stars getting beaten, Claude Akins later shows up as a mobster who has his clock cleaned in an extraordinary, realistically choreographed fight sequence ("Unhired Assassin: Part 1"). Other familiar faces in this collection include Majel Barrett (Star Trek), Lee Van Cleef (The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly), Richard Deacon (The Dick Van Dyke Show), Sterling Holloway (voice of Winnie the Pooh), Eleanor Audley (Green Acres), Leslie Nielsen (Police Squad!), Henry Jones (Phyllis), J. Pat O'Malley (Maude), Peter Falk (Columbo), Thomas Mitchell (Gone with the Wind), Jack Warden (Crazy Like a Fox), Phyllis Coates (Adventures of Superman), and Richard Anderson (The Bionic Woman).
Several episodes are campy fun. In "The White Slavers," Mig Torrance (Mike Kellin) is the Capone gang's chief white slaver. He's also a fey, pinky ring-wearing dandy who wears gloves, carries a cane just for affectation, and sings the praises of vigorous massages. All of those traits presumably make him the perfect guy to be in charge of the gang's drug-addled prostitutes. Except his hand is a little too light-guess he doesn't want to break a nail-so he is order to recruit Mrs. B. (Betty Field) to help run the operation. Mrs. B. is a former madam who retired after a stint in prison. Now the only "ladies" she's interested in watching over are the large number of birds that twitter in her living room. She gets into a battle of wills with Mig, who has his homicidal brother, Ernie (Dick York, Bewitched) run interference. Despite some violence, like the slaughter of a truckload of Mexican "recruits," this episode is a hoot. Equally amusing is "The Doreen Maney Story" costarring Anne Francis (Honey West, Riptide) and Connie Hines (Mr. Ed) in a tale that combines Bonnie and Clyde with Lil Abner.
The fourteen episodes that make up The Untouchables: Season 1, Volume 2 are divided onto four discs. All four discs are housed in what, from the outside, appears to be a standard DVD keepcase. An interior swinging arms holds two discs while the remaining two discs are affixed to the interior front and rear covers. Each DVD is individually accessible, meaning that you won't have to fumble around and remove one disc to get to another. There is one flaw in the design-the keepcase is clear, allowing the double-sided coversheet show through to the inside of the case. The interior features episode titles, original airdates, and brief plot synopses. Because discs one and four attach to the interior covers, the discs must be removed in order to read the episode guide.
The static menus are bland but functional. Viewers can choose to play all episodes on each disc consecutively or individually. There are no scene selection menus, but chapter stops are included.
