Search - Shotgun Slade on DVD

Shotgun Slade . . . not much new here

Robert Huggins | Suburban Philadelphia, PA United States | 03/21/2007

(3 out of 5 stars)

""Shotgun Slade" meshed two popular television genres of the late 1950s/early 1960s into one . . . a private detective in the Old West. B-Movie actor Scott Brady starred as Slade (no first name) and his weapon of choice was a rifle/shotgun combination. The series ran for two years (1959-1961) and a number of episodes from the first season haven fallen into the public domain. Here are the episodes that are included in this collection:

1. Lost Gold
2. A Flower For Jenny
3. The Fabulous Fiddle
4. Ring Of Death
5. Crossed Guns
6. Sudden Death
7. The Golden Tunnel
8. The Salted Mine
9. The Killer Brand
10. Donna Juanita

While there has never been an official release of the series, several companies specializing in public domain material have released episodes. One of those releasing companies, the Platinum Disc Corporation (now Echo Bridge Entertainment), released a 2-DVD set containing 15 episodes of the series in 2004. That collection remains the largest collection of "Slade" episodes on commercially available DVDs. This newer collection of episodes from the Timeless Media Group contains 10 episodes from the series; unfortunately, all but one of the episodes, "The Salted Mine," appeared on the Platinum set making this collection redundant. Frankly, the low selling price would be the primary reason to consider acquiring this set.

I've yet to see a great release of this series on DVD and, given the series' comparative obscurity, it's not likely that we'll ever see one. The Timeless set is your standard public domain release . . . the episodes are watchable but are sourced from the usual beat-up 16 millimeter syndication prints. Further, Timeless has an annoying habit of eliminating the opening title sequence of each episode on many of its "Timeless Television" releases (including this one), preferring to show the titles once, before the main menu appears. Incidentally, the Platinum set wasn't perfect either; while the opening title sequence did appear on each episode, the company's logo flashed several times in the bottom right corner of each episode.

Bottom line: If you're looking for a low cost collection of "Shotgun Slade" episodes, this collection will suffice. If you already own the Platinum set, you can pass on this collection unless you want to pick up "The Salted Mine" episode which, to the best of my knowledge, has not previously appeared on commercially available DVDs of the series.
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