paskuniag

I never missed a show for the first three or so seasons. I knew all about the men of the squadron, but I had questions the show didn't answer, like how come Lt. Hanley wasn't on every week? Did he have obligations elsewhere that occasionally kept him from leading his men into combat? This meant that, once again, most of the grunt work was done by the sergeant and the other non-coms. Also, why did every French town they went into have a river with a step bridge over it? It's like that TV executive I saw in a movie once who said that the audience wasn't smart enough to notice little things like the above. An eight-year-old noticed it. So much for the intelligence of TV executives, whose IQs haven't risen much some 50 years hence.

The end of "Combat" came as a result, I guess, of the media's turning on the soldiers fighting in Vietnam. The news readers' anti-war stance suddenly made the depiction of fighting men on TV unfashionable. While it was on, it gave me an idea of what it was like for my father to do battle in little French towns like the ones Sgt. Saunders and his men fought in.

The only good thing about this episode is that the outdoor scenes were filmed outdoors, as opposed to, say, in a leaf-strewn cardboard jungle like the set where they filmed "Ramar of the Jungle". And John Russell plays the hero very well. Otherwise, it's just a curiosity piece- with psychological overtones, no less.

The script is the usual stuff- an American couple hires the two "soldiers"- Tim and Tebow- I mean Toubo- to take them through the jungles of Burma. They soon meet up with the local headhunters. This is where credibility exits, stage left. First of all, this is Burma, not Africa. There were no headhunters in Burma back then. Secondly, the Burmese men look mysteriously like Apaches, as if they wandered in from a John Ford western. They look to be dressed for winter on the prairie, wearing long-sleeved tops and buckskins. It's about 90 there, and our American entourage is sweating like pigs, yet here are some local natives who look like they live inside an icehouse. The viewer will have to watch to find out about the psychological drama previously referred to, which has to do with the husband's unfounded insecurity about his wife.

Speaking of curiosity, I, myself, am curious- about how this show lasted two years on the network. Presumably, the scripts got better.

I won't change anyone's minds with this post. A lot of people who are fans of musicals- especially classics like "Singin in the Rain" and "My Fair Lady"- disdain this musical version of "Lost Horizon" because it is an anti-musical. Unlike Arthur Freed, who produced (and co-wrote the songs for) many classic musicals at MGM, producer Ross Hunter hired mostly non-singers and non-dancers to sing and dance. First mistake. Then he gave the actors a script that was a watered-down version of the original. Second mistake. Then he hired a highly-competent British director, but one who had never directed a musical before, to helm it. Third mistake. And so on and so on. Yet the passion displayed by posters on the message boards here suggests that not everyone is put off by the shortcomings of this wretched big-budget movie that plays more like a TV musical. Too bad you supporters weren't around when it first hit the big screen. You might have saved LH from becoming what one critic called "Lost Investments".

Even if you do like this film, you must admit that there had to be some validity to the criticism. Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who respectively wrote the music and lyrics for this epic, never worked together again, even after years of success. The question is- who talked who into taking the money to write songs like "Question Me An Answer"? I'm guessing that is what the post-release estrangement was all about.

Why don't you LH fans see a real musical from the classic period of the 30s to the 50s, when they were made by pros who knew how to "put on a show"? Check out "On the Town", or any of the Astaire-Rogers musicals. That way, even if seeing them doesn't change your opinion about one of the only disaster films of the 70s not produced by Irwin Allen, you'll at least understand why this "forgotten" film holds up so badly when placed along side one of the real classics mentioned above.