The Rat Patrol: The Complete Series [DVD] DVD – Color, July 6, 2010

Good Stuff, well worth watching. The series starts out a little slow but picks up speed by the third episode. The stories are excellent, dramatic, exciting. Although..., some of the action is a little too unrealistic to believe. German guards and soldiers occasionally fall down a little too easily. Also, the scoring seems a little too upbeat and cheerful at times considering the circumstances of the war.The characters are excellent, very well portrayed, you grow to care about what happens to them as individuals in the course of the series, particularly Seargents Troy and Moffit. Dietrich, the Captain commanding the German forces in the area seems at times to be a little too easily duped to be in charge of all the artillery and vehicles and troops that he handles. But the doubtful spots seem to get ironed out as the series progresses. The episodes become better with more thought given to how things might have really played out, and given the half-hour format the show does a remarkable job of presenting a full mission story in that limited time frame.Some of the best episodes are directed individually by John Peyser and Sutton Roley both who also directed various episodes of the Combat! series. In fact if you have not watched the "Combat!" series already I recommed getting that one first, every episode of it is a five star production and there were a long line of very famous guest stars. Follow up that series with this one. Together they provide the best collection of high action WWII televsion series dramas produced in retro era TV.The disks worked well , except for one disk which had a vibration problem, it would not align correctly in the player and caused a slight buzzing , although it corrected itself during actual play of the episode. but the buzzing returned when an episode was not playing on that disk. Strange. I'm not sure what caused it, but it was only on one disk and could be watched regardless. The quality of the transfer is excellent, the color and sound were top notch.- Mike S.

I never saw the series on TV but I remember my older brother talking about it so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm only on the second disk (8 episodes per disk each about a 1/2 hour) but I must say that I've enjoyed every minute and am impress with the picture quality for such an old series. Each episode is about 1/2 hour so the stories move quickly and often seem to jump ahead but it works. Do you really need an indepth conversation as to why the group is attacking the enemy during war? Some of the episodes are ridiculously simplistic (four guys walking into an enemy camp in broad daylight, through the front gate, with guns drawn, managing to place explosives in the ammo dump, then escaping unharmed) but this series is fictional entertainment not true stories. I also found it refreshing that there is no gore or disturbing images that are so prevailent in the series and movies today. Yes, it is a war series and people get shot and die but you don't see gaping holes in the body with blood and guts gushing out. It's more like watching you kids play war, or cops and robbers, or cowboys and indians. They get shot, they fall down, their dead; that's it. I also found it interesting in the episode I watch last night that they had a run in with muslem radicals trying to kill anyone that didn't convert to their religious beliefs, sound familiar?As I said earlier, the picture quality is great as is the audio. In many of the scenes you can hear the jeeps idle in the background. I'm not talking about the canned engine idle of hollywood, it sounds just like my grandpa's army surplus jeep back in the day. Low and slow.In summary, this is great series that's fast moving and action packed with excellent audio and picture quality. I would highly recommend this series.

What a great show! Love to see those jeeps running circles around the German halftracks and tanks. Unrealistic for sure, but still fun.I watched the show in the sixties as a teenager and enjoyed it, enjoyed even more MAD magazine's hilarious parody of it "The Ratpacktrol" which neatly summarized every one of the show's shortcomings. (Issue #114 October 1967)But I still loved the show and when WGN started showing it after baseball games in the late 1990s I got hooked on it again, to the point of getting really irritated when games went into extra innings and preempted the Rat Patrol! My kids thought I was nuts.So when I found the entire 58 episodes available on DVD, I was quick to order it, although I wondered if I would still find that guilty pleasure watching the show.Oh yeah, I do. The DVDs are remarkably good quality, far better than the reruns I remember on WGN. The plotlines are still just as unreal of course, and this is apparent when you watch one episode after another as I have done. And of course the re-use of footage is kind of amusing, especially when the truck lumbering off into the distance is the same one you've seen half a dozen times before.But so what? Love the jeeps! Love the way the guys risk life and limb week after week to rescue one another from improbable escapades! Love to watch Dietrich stand shaking his head at the end of the show after the Rat Patrol pulls off another dumb stunt! Love to hear Troy growl "Shake it!" And Moffit to say smugly "Piece of cake!" after another impossible mission. And Hitch saying to Troy reproachfully "Who was there, Sarge--you or me?" And Tully--well, he didn't say much. But he did chew a mean matchstick.My dad's favorite was Combat and he was in France during WWII, so he should know, but for me it is Rat Patrol.Airborne jeeps! Manly guys blowing things up! Good triumphing over evil! What's not to love?