Ricercato vivo o morto

I usually write long reviews, but having just read the other 23 reviews that are here, I am going to keep this very brief. I am in my 70s and am giving the classic TV Westerns one more go-round, before hanging it up. What impressed me about this series, and I mean really impressed me, is the quality of the writing. It is sometimes spare, but it matters. I also think that, for a 22-minute show, the direction was unusually good. There were times that I had to remind myself that John Ford wasn't directing. Look carefully, and you'll see what I mean. The series brought the best out of a lot of pedestrian actors. Lastly, I agree with everyone that McQueen was a very cool guy, but what he was doing required attention to the director and a performance that is reminiscent of the best method actors (Brando, Steiger, others). I am glad I gave this series another look. It is more enjoyable now than it was when I was a kid.

Long before he became a "superstar",Steve McQueen broke ground in this rarely seen TV western from the 1950's. Here,he plays the cool as nails and reliable Josh Randall,a bounty hunter who goes after the bad guys and gets his reward for bringing them in. Coolest western I've ever seen!!! Catch McQueen at his best! Its worth seeing!

Wanted, Dead or Alive was a star vehicle in the truest sense of the term. It was a western calculated to exhibit the talent and charisma of its star, Steve McQueen. It lasted for three seasons before McQueen decided to devote full time to the big screen.

McQueen was after some of the most dangerous fellows in the old west, plenty who could shoot a lot better than he. His character Josh Randall needed an equalizer.

In John Wayne's classic western El Dorado, you remember that Duke discovers that James Caan can't hit the broad side of a mountain with a regular six shooter. Before going to El Dorado to aid Robert Mitchum, they stop off and see a gunsmith who fixes Caan up with a Josh Randall special. After that Caan's of considerable help to Wayne and Mitchum.

Of course the sawed off shotgun was also an evil weapon in the wrong hands. Take note of the Dan Duryea western, The Bounty Killer, a very Freudian piece where Duryea becomes hated and feared as a bounty hunter until an innocent bystander gets shot with it.

But with McQueen you knew the weapon was on the side of law and order. As for his Josh Randall character, you can see a bit of him in all the people Steve McQueen brought to the screen like Virgil Hilts, Nevada Smith, all the way to his last two films, Tom Horn and Pappa Thorsen.

Wanted, Dead or Alive was most folks first exposure to a screen legend. I wish that westerns like that were made today.

It seems to me that Steve McQueen's Wanted: Dead or Alive is a standout from many of the other Westerns of the great Western era, despite the intense competition of Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel, Rawhide, and all the rest, because of McQueen himself and many great stories shown throughout its three years, credited to the talents of the superb writers mentioned by other reviewers. I think too much emphasis is put on the technical aspects of the sawed-off Winchester. Most viewers thought--and think--it is a cool gun because of the looks and the noise it makes, and don't care enough to analyze its workings. It's a TV prop, for heaven's sake. McQueen used it effectively enough to impress his viewers. My only criticism is that he tended to blow away everybody he aimed at, when he could have been a little more discriminating.

But again, the reason I watch the show--on the Westerns channel, by the way--is for the stories. There are some really different stories, that make you think, some with twist endings, some really original tales on this show. I especially like the ones with kids in them, that I can share with the little kids in my family--the Christmas story; the one about the little boy (Richard Eyer) who is the outlaw's adopted son; and also the karate story with actor Robert Kino. The importance of story is what we're missing in many of today's TV and movie offerings, and that is why I like many of the older classic TV shows.

I was not expecting such high quality when I first starting watching this show, as I was new to it (I was a year old when it was released, so never saw it firsthand) but am now a fan of the very young Steve McQueen as well as the older McQueen whose movies I remember later in my life. It's wonderful that so many of these shows are being rebroadcast!

I'm just old enough to remember when Wanted Dead or Alive was first run, when I first went to the show to see The Magnificent Seven, and when I first realized Steve McQueen was on his way to being a "star".

I received the boxed set of the first season of this groundbreaking show this past Christmas and have been having great fun with it ever since. McQueen is the real star of the show, honing his craft for later career moves, with the truly offbeat story lines and resolutions coming in a close second.

Forget that it's 1877, he was in the Union Army in 1864, which would make him 8-10 years older than his real age at the time. Forget that his sawed off Winchester 1892 didn't exist in this time frame, that it fired short pistol ammunition like .44-40 and possibly .45 Colt, that it couldn't possibly accept the long .30-30 cartridges on his belt that weren't developed until the Winchester 1894 came along. In the first episode he has to bury a murdered doctor and he pulls a U.S. military shovel circa 1944 from under his saddle. While he puts 19th century cuffs on some prisoners, ties some with rope, on one occasion he puts old fashioned leg irons on a prisoner's hands, way too dangerous and way too stupid for a pro like Josh Randall. In a feat too fantastic to believe, an outlaw takes away his sawed off Winchester and removes the firing pin without the aid of tools and without so much as removing the bolt from the receiver. Of course there's also that sawed off rifle of his that sometimes has a D-ring on the lever and sometimes a teardrop ring, a gun barrel that changes from round to hexagon, and a gun barrel that always has a bigger bore than the .30 caliber slug in a .30-30 shell. And let's not forget that the outdoor scenes seldom match the geography of the story lines and that more times than not they use the same western street sound stage for towns ranging from Wyoming to Arizona to Texas with just the store front names changing! All this in just the first half of the first season. LOL

The show is all about watching McQueen, watching the offbeat stories that sometimes beg for more time for storytelling, and watching for all the goofs. It's great fun and well worth the time even 50 years later!