Rat Patrol - The Complete First Season
Veteran TV writer/director Tom Gries (East Side/West Side,Helter Skelter) created this action-packed drama about a four-man commando team (three Americans and one British) battling the German Army's Afrika Korps in World War II. Though primarily a vehicle for adventure fans,The Rat Patrolbenefited from smart scripting (Larry Cohen and Richard Landau both penned stories for the series) that refused to paint the German antagonist, Capt. Dietrich (well played by Hans Gudegast, who's better known today as Eric Braeden), as a stock Nazi heel; in fact, Christopher George's Sgt. Sam Troy and Dietrich occasionally partnered up to combat a common foe, as in the series' fifth and tenth episodes ("The Chain of Death Raid" and "The Moment of Truce Raid," both of which are included in this four-disc set), which pit them against Arab fighters. Other highlights from the 1966-67 debut season include "The Kill or Be Killed Raid" (Gary Raymond's Moffitt must impersonate a German soldier to find a map to a hidden water source), "The Wildest Raid of All" (the Rat Patrol's plan to capture an important Nazi general goes awry), and "The Blind Man's Bluff Raid" (the Germans impersonate an American unit to trick a sunblinded Troy into revealing the Rat Patrol's location), but all 32 episodes deliver plenty of action and excitement. Unfortunately, no extras are included in the set.--Paul Gaita