The Rifleman Season Sets in 2013 ? (1 Viewer)

[Ockeghem]

SGR,You're right about it being a very dark television western. I believe that much of this has to do with the music of Herschel Burke Gilbert. Thank goodness there won't be any music replacements or I would not be purchasing my all-time favorite television western.

I don't know which episodes are my all-time favorites, but The Marshal, The Money Gun, and Eight Hours To Die (all of which I own on VHS tape and have watched countless times) are among my most cherished.

 

[Darby67]

Brad:

Thanks for the detailed review; your efforts are deeply appreciated.

I purchased my copy online on Monday so it should be here in a few days,

Darby

 

[John Hermes]

Whew...The Rifleman has to be without a doubt the darkest of the TV westerns. I eagerly await each season's release...but will probably stop after season 4. While I'm here...I gotta list my favorite episodes...the Superlative Seven

1. Gunfire
2. The Marshal
3. The Money Gun
4. Eight Hours To Die
5. Two Ounces Of Tin
6. Skull
7. Seven

My favorite is Deadly Image when Lucas' double comes to town. Great dual-role acting by Chuck.

 

[Roy Wall]

Agreed John...another Dick Donner directed classic just like "Gunfire".

 

[Gary OS]

No doubt that The Rifleman was on the darker side of TV Westerns on many occasions. Even though it could come off as a family style western, primarily because of Mark's inclusion as a small boy at the outset, it still had some intense episodes. I think, and this is just my opinion, that Rawhide, HGWT, and Gunsmoke were all just as dark at times though.


Gary "great actors and great scripts - a winning combination for sure" O.

 

[Roy Wall]

Gary...I think Peckinpah's influence at the beginning stuck with the show throughout and gave it a slight edge of darkness. The Rifleman Makers even made a dark character out of Buddy Hackett.

 

[oldtvshowbuff]

No doubt that The Rifleman was on the darker side of TV Westerns on many occasions. Even though it could come off as a family style western, primarily because of Mark's inclusion as a small boy at the outset, it still had some intense episodes. I think, and this is just my opinion, that Rawhide, HGWT, and Gunsmoke were all just as dark at times though.


Gary "great actors and great scripts - a winning combination for sure" O.

Just think of it as "western noir".

 

[Roy Wall]

Hope they include all 4 different openings to the show, not just the "walking/shooting" opening.

I've only seen two...the dominant....the Peckinpah opening and the 5th season opening...just found pics of other two openings...thanks Richard V.

 

[Roy Wall]

This definitely looks to be right up somebody's alley on here.

 

[hypnohighball]

This definitely looks to be right up somebody's alley on here.

Awesome!!! 120 series kills - who knew?

 

[John Hermes]

This definitely looks to be right up somebody's alley on here.

I was thinking when Lucas was talking to Vic Morrow in that first clip, how many Germans did Sgt. Saunders kill on Combat!, 500? I think in the Night Of The Vipers episode of WWW James West killed about 23. Lucas is a lightweight.

 

[Roy Wall]

Truly....I see the composer of the "Massacre" video missed some classic Lucas' Killings. I was hoping that the finale from "Gunfire" would be in there as Lucas scored four killings with the demise of the Charlie Gordo (Lon Chaney Jr) Gang. Truly love that one episode best...as Dick Donner really generated what is probably one of the darkest episodes in all of TV Western Land....rivaling even Harry Julian Fink's "A Quiet Night In Town" and "Gene Roddenberry's "El Paso Stage" both from "Have un Will Travel". Great Stuff.

 

[Ockeghem]

I love the first season of this series on DVD. The promo spots for the show with Connors and Crawford are interesting (as is what I saw of Niven). I have never seen these before. I also like the introductions to various episodes provided by Connors.I watched the first episode (including the 'slightly edited' version) last night. I'm going to watch the two versions again and ask my daughter (the one who loves this show) if she notices what is missing. Not having the classic HBG music is quite surprising in one of the versions. The entire episode has a very different feel as a result.

 

[Darby67]

I have finished viewing the discs 1 and 2 and I am loving this series! The episodes are all well-scripted and perfectly cast and the moral message is always a strong one. While the set is pricey, the video and audio quality are quite good. I look forward to purchasing seasons 2 through 5 as they become available.

Darby

 

[Joelcan]

I'm a long-time Rifleman fan and got the new release 1st season DVDs for Xmas. My big disappointment is what a few others have noted here, the original openings for the episodes are not used. Instead, the exact same walking/shooting open we've all seen over and over on most reruns and DVD releases is slapped on every single episode. I remember as a teenager watching reruns on Channel 5 in NY that (a) this was the only channel where I saw ALL the original show openings used and (b) even with the walking/shooting open, there were an endless variety of different uses of sound and music. Sometimes there was an announcer, sometimes it was just music and sound effects and titles, sometimes there was a different treatment of the Rifleman theme (the new version they used in Seasons 4 and 5 episodes) and sometimes the sound effects for the rifle flipping were altered to be more dramatic.

Quality of actual episodes on DVDs is good, but the interview with 100 year-old Arthur Gardner, no disrespect intended, is painful! He doesn't really remember anything and the interviewer seems to know more than he does. Other than that interview and the original pilot and promo with David Niven, special features are almost non-existent.

 

[smithbrad]

I enjoyed the intro's for the seven or so episodes by the older Chuck Connor's. I thought that was a nice touch.

As for the openings, could it possibly be that your memory is based on episodes across seasons? Just curious, since when I think back to shows I watched as a kid in syndication it wasn't always easy to differentiate when one season ends and another starts. A show like Dick Van Dyke was fairly easy because of the changes in the openings across seasons, but without that I wouldn't have had a clue. And generally openings don't change much within a season, other than maybe the first episode having a different opening (and this is just the first season). When I contacted them earlier they said these were using the original opening off the masters.

Everyone's capacity for remembering these types of details is different. I know I wouldn't trust mine when it comes to something I saw as a kid already in syndication, but maybe yours is much better. It would help to have someone that actually watched the show when originally broadcast respond with their thoughts.

 

[Joelcan]

I was slightly obsessed with The Rifleman, and I was a little older when I began watching the reruns, like around 12 or 13. Also, I used to actually make audio recordings of the episodes off the TV on my cassette recorder! So I started noticing all the little differences in the sound mixes on the opens. For example, the Season 5 night opening started in the first few episodes with minimal sound effects. Near the end of the opening, when Lucas flips his rifle around, the sound effect had grown comically exaggerated from a simple "click, click" at the beginning of the season to something resembling a jet airplane flipping around in mid-air by the end. We got both Philadelphia stations and NY stations where I lived, and the Philly station episodes all had that same familiar opening, while the NY episodes had all the different (and presumably original) ones. No, I did not see the show during its original network airing, but I can't imagine the NY TV station creating their own different opens! Someone posted on this thread earlier about there being four different (visually, that is) opens - that was what I experienced on the NY reruns.

 

[Ockeghem]

Joel,That's cool that you used to make audio recordings of the episodes off the television on your cassette recorder. Mark Collins (he frequently posts in the Dark Shadows, Peyton Place, and Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea threads, among others) did this as well with Dark Shadows. I did it for a few shows as well, but not quite as often (or as thoroughly) as he did.

 

[smithbrad]

Thanks for sharing Joel.

It is hard to explain what you experienced and I have limited knowledge myself on how the whole industry works. My only guess is that maybe they were experimenting with the audio along the way during the original broadcasts. So possibly the NY station was working from 16mm prints of the original while the Philly station had the revised syndicated tapes where they simplified the openings to what they considered the most consistent audio wise. Obviously, we aren't going to get the version with all the audio tinkering, but we may still get the various visual openings from the original show.

While I believe the claim that the prints they are using originated from the film elements, I'm not convinced that they retransferred them, but are just using existing tape masters. And these tape masters do not have the nuances you remember. We will just have to wait and see how the second season goes. I'm still hoping that they improve upon their approach regarding the subtitles. The first disk has five episodes with and without subtitles and the pilot, which makes for eleven total episodes on the one disk.

 

[Regulus]

Joel,That's cool that you used to make audio recordings of the episodes off the television on your cassette recorder. Mark Collins (he frequently posts in the Dark Shadows, Peyton Place, and Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea threads, among others) did this as well with Dark Shadows. I did it for a few shows as well, but not quite as often (or as thoroughly) as he did.

I used to do this as well in the late 70s to early 80s. I called these recordings "Poor Man's VCR". I stopped doing this after I got my first VCR in 1984.