Product Description

James West and Artemus Gordon are two agents of President Grant who take their splendidly appointed private train through the west to fight evil. Half science fiction and half western, the Artemus designs a series of interesting gadgets for James that would make Inspector Gadget proud. A light hearted adventure series.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9960 in DVD
• Brand: Paramount
• Released on: 2008-03-18
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, Restored, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 6
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 1216 minutes

Amazon.com
At one uncharacteristically poignant point during Wild Wild West's final season, secret service agent James West raises a glass to toast "absent friends." That would be Artemis Gordon, West's resourceful sidekick and a master of disguise and the odd "diversion." Ross Martin, who portrayed Gordon, had suffered a heart attack and was missing in action for several episodes, so missed that it took several actors to fill his shoes: Charles Aidman as Jeremy Pike, William Scharlett (who early in the season portrays a villain in the episode, "The Night of the Gruesome Games") as Frank Harper, Pat Paulson, the hangdog mock-Presidential candidate on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, as the seemingly milquetoast Bosley Cranston in "The Night of the Camera," and Alan "The Skipper" Hale, Jr. as chemist Ned Brown in "The Night of the Sabatini Death," (which also features Jim Backus and contains a cute Gilligan’s Island in-joke at episode’s end). With or without Martin, this was a wild, wild season that offers genre-bending kicks in episodes that evoke James Bondian espionage, Jules Verne fantasy, bizarre Avengers-style villainy, and even The Phantom of the Opera. James and company are up against some entertainingly over-the-top megalomaniacs bent on world domination. Of course, the sun couldn’t set on the West without one last encounter with the series’ most popular villain, the "dictatorial, vain, short-tempered, and occasionally unreasonable" Dr. Loveless (Michael Dunn), who re-emerges yet again to pass judgment over those he professes to have wronged him in "The Night of Marguerite’s Revenge." Two of TV’s comedy icons, Harvey Koran and a pre-Mary Tyler Moore Show Ted Knight, play it straight as formidable foes in "The Night of the Big Blackmail" and "The Night of the Kraken," respectively. "The Night of the Winged Terror," the series’ only two-parter, is an effective creep show featuring a hypnotizing bulging-brained adversary. Conrad, as one character compliments him, is "better than ever," whether dispatching goons (he performed all his own stunts) or romancing the ladies ("He said something about showing the big dipper to the daughter of the Lithuanian ambassador," Artemis explains West’s absence in "Big Blackmail"). While there are signs that the series was poised to jump the shark, it is too bad it ended before further encounters with Professor Montague, who is introduced in "The Night of the Janis" as the Q-like creator of such nifty gadgets as a harmonica gun. --Donald Liebenson

Customer Reviews

The Wild Wild West's season 4: The Night of the Dead End!
Witness if you will the fourth (1968-1969) and final season of "The Wild Wild West", still produced by Bruce Lansbury and that continues his updated and rugged treatment of the series with the paranoid political tales: "The Night of the Doomsday Formula" (guest starring Kevin McCarthy as the fanatical General Kroll) and "The Night of the Pistoleros" showing a future nations' conflict triggered by Mexican look-alikes of American military officers.

You will meet James West's new partners because Artemus Gordon is sent to Washington: secret agent/master of disguises Jeremy Pike (played by Charles Aidman) in four episodes ("The Night of the Camera", "The Night of Miguelito's Revenge" that is the last Dr. Loveless' offering, "The Night of the Pelican", "The Night of the Janus" that is Charles Aidman's best performance as Baron Klaus Esterhauser and in which we catch a glimpse of James West's training academy), secret agent/master of disguises Frank Harper (played by William Schallert) in the two parter "The Night of the Winged Terror", and chemist/agent Ned Brown (played by Alan Hale Jr) in the gloomy "The Night of the Sabatini Death".

Moreover, we will again foray into the off-centered and the macabre fantasies as the Hammer Productions-like "The Night of the Sedgewick Curse" dealing with the theme of the fountain of youth, the tribute to the classic "The Phantom of the Opera" in "The Night of the Diva" (Robert Conrad even sings "Buffalo Gals" with his friends Richard Cangey and Red West) and a veiled reference to Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in "The Night of the Bleak Island", and two Jules Verne-oriented ones in "The Night of the Kraken" (which highlights a Captain Nemo type of character) and "The Night of the Winged Terror, Part I & II" (describing a secret organization of subversive mad scientists ruled by a hypercephalic mastermind).

One episode, directed in late season 3, depicts Robert Conrad's tragic fall while performing his stunt: "The Night of the Fugitives" (guest starring Simon Oakland).

The last round up for Jim and Arte
Well here we are, the final adventures of James T West and Artemus Gordon. Hard to believe the series only ran 4 years. Growing up in New York, the reruns ran aplenty during the 70s. Sadly though, series co-star Ross Martin didn't get to appreciate the whole season as he was side lined by a heart attack. Replacing him was a young Charles Aidman as Jeremy Pike who was as good at his trade as Arte (you get the impression he learned from the master himself) and others including Alan (the Skipper) Hale, John Dehner and William Schallert (Carson Drew, Nils Baris, Martin Lane) in a 2 part episode. Their names got billed in the ending credits in the episodes they appeared in though Martin continued to appear in the opening credits for the remainder of the run. Martin would recover to be able to do the sequel films made in 1979 and 1980, Wild Wild West Revisited and More Wild Wild West which according to http://www.tvshowsondvd.com will sadly not be included in this set. Fortunately, they are shown often enough on Encore Westerns so you can copy them yourself uncut (the prerecorded VHS tapes I believe are copy protected). Martin passed away soon after making the sequel films, but I am sure if we looked up him up on the IMDB we would find a lot of good stuff under his name including a villain on Wonder Woman in 1977, and an attempt to bring Charlie Chan back just before or after More Wild Wild West. So get this last season, and appreciate 4 years of one of the shortest yet popular Western series of the 1960s.

Wild Wild Wild West - way ahead of it's time
I have been a fan of the Wild Wild West since I was a kid. It's great to see that all the seasons are finally available on DVD. It won an Emmy and was nominated for 2 Golden Globes!! Like most successful TV shows it got better each year. What is interesting about TWWW is that is was a show that was way ahead of it's time. It was without a doubt the X-Files of the 60's.I firmly believe that the creator of the X-Files(Chris Carter) grew up watching The Wild Wild West! Robert Conrad was a health buff and trained in karate and boxing which allowed him to perform his own stunts that made Secret Service Agent James West that much more realistic. Even Ross Martin was an experienced stage actor which made Secret Service Agent Artemus Gordon believable. The show was an amazing mix of spy, western and sci-fi television and also was the first TV show to cross-mix with other successful TV shows - In episode #97, "The Night of the Sabatini Death", there was a tribute to the TV series, "Gilligan's Island" due to the fact that both Alan Hale Jr. (The Skipper) and Jim Backus (The Millionaire) were guest-starring on the episode. At the very end of the episode, Alan Hale's character said that he's going off to a deserted island for a vacation while a few notes of the Gilligan's Island theme song played in the background! That was cool to watch and again way ahead of it's time.
The show's theme as well as the spellbinding music within made the show that much more intriguing and exciting. The humor that was introduced at times also added to the success of the show. On top of all this it introduced other stars into each episode. Robert Duvall, Don Rickles, Alan Hale Jr. Jim Backus, Boris Karloff, Victor Buono, Richard Prior, Jack Elam, Ray Walston, Willam Schallert,Agness Moorehead,Burgess Meredith,Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Carol O'Connor,Ricardo Montalban,Suzanne Pleshette, John Astin, Martin Landau,Ed Asner,Ted Knight, Richard Anderson,Red West, Martin Brooks,Norman Fell and many more!!!Unfortunately however the movie remake of TWWW in 1999 starring Will Smith/Kevin Kline was an insult to not only the cast and characters of the original TV series but to the original series itself.However it now lives again on DVD and I suggest you check it out for yourself especially if you were a fan of the X-Files.