Year:  1959
Genre:  Western, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  James Arness, Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Dennis Weaver
Creators:  John Meston, Norman MacDonnell
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Gunsmoke was famous because it was an iconic western TV series that lasted longer than any other.  The longest running prime time drama of all time, 20 years and 635 episodes, all featuring marshall Matt Dillon shooting people.  Some of those 635 episodes come to DVD on August 7^th from Paramount Home Entertainment with the release of Season Six, Volume One.

     As I was watching the set, I wondered how a show with pretty much the exact same plot in every episode could have lasted so long. Matt Dillon is incorruptible and honest. A good cop with an itchy trigger finger. He doesn’t want to have to shoot the bad guys, but invariably they put him in a position where he has to, and he’s pretty comfortable with that.  I just kept thinking that at some point this whole TV series had to run its course, long before the 20 seasons were up. But then, I just kept watching. 

     Then I realized that Gunsmoke is actually still on the air! Timothy Olyphant’s Marshall Raylan Givens in Justified is really just James Arness’s marshall Matt Dillon 2.0. It’s just that instead of shooting horse thieves and bank robbers, he’s shooting drug dealers and pimps.  This is the revelation I had watching season six volume one of Gunsmoke. Matt Dillon will never die.

Year:  1959
Genre:  Western, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  James Arness, Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Dennis Weaver, Ken Curtis
Creators:  John Meston, Norman MacDonnell
Run time:  8 hours 43 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I guess Gunsmoke can’t always follow the same formula.  It’s can’t always be some bad guy who rides into town looking to kill someone, and Marshall Matt Dillon gets in his face and dispenses some old west wisdom and then the guy doesn’t listen and the marshall shoots him.  But SOME of that formula really works.  I do like to watch James Arness shoot folks.  Folks who just won’t listen to reason, or folks who just plain have it comin’.

     And in the Fifth Season, Volume Two of Gunsmoke, out December 13th from Paramount Home Entertainment, I didn’t get to see ANY of that formula until at least the fifth episode!  First, there’s no murder at all, just a big misunderstanding.  Second, it’s CHESTER who shoots the bad guy.  Third, it’s another misunderstanding involving cattle drivers.  Fourth, it’s MISS KITTY who has to kill a dude. 

     And then finally Matt Dillon actually participates in a gunfight in the fifth episode.  (He kills a guy, but he’s at least sad about it.)  Then it’s back to the misunderstandings as the marshall and Chester end up doing all of a farmer’s chores for him instead of arresting him, for a crime it turns out he never actually committed anyway.

     So if you’re looking for Marshall Dillon to shoot a bunch of people, you can pick up any of the DVD sets from Season One Volume One to Season Five Volume One.  That’s nine sets to choose from.  If you’re looking for misunderstandings, comedic con jobs and for the killing to be spread out a little, Season Five Volume Two will be on DVD just in time for Christmas.

Year:  1959
Genre:  Western, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  James Arness, Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Dennis Weaver, Ken Curtis
Creators:  John Meston, Norman MacDonnell
Run time:  8 hours 43 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I have figured out the morality that exists in Gunsmoke.  It took me a while to get a handle on it – five seasons, in point of fact.  Paramount Home Entertainment releases Season Five Volume One on DVD October 11^th, and it’s full of morality plays, all contained neatly in one episode at a time.  James Arness, as always, is the arbiter of that morality, never questioning a decision and apparently never making a wrong one.

     Here’s how it works (I think).  If you’re greedy, you die.  That is, if you murder for money or personal gain.  If you murder for a passionate reason, on the other hand, like the love of a woman, you get arrested and go to jail for a (presumably) long time.  If you rustle cattle, you die.  If, on the other hand, you steal horses, you usually just get beaten up and go to jail. 

     If you’re a woman, (see video above) you are protected at all times no matter how unpleasant you are.  If, on the other hand, you are a murderous woman, you are treated gently on your way to jail.  That applies even to the ugly serial killer sniper woman who murders her husband and tries to murder another man just so people might think men are fighting over her.  Marshall Matt Dillon handles her gently, because he knows she’s just a weak-hearted woman who doesn’t know any better.

     Season Five Volume Two is on the way before Christmas, and I’m sure it will feature more of the same.  Cattle rustlers will be shot, horse thieves will be caught, and more justice will come from the marshal’s pistol than from the hangman’s rope.  The jail in Dodge City will remain empty.  There’s never anyone in the jail, you’ll notice – they’re either shot and dead, or they didn’t do anything bad enough to warrant being locked up.  That’s the morality of Gunsmoke.

Year:  1959
Genre:  Western, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  James Arness, Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Dennis Weaver, Ken Curtis
Creators:  John Meston, Norman MacDonnell
Run time:  8 hours 43 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     After the fourth season of Gunsmoke, I’m starting to lose faith.  Like, I get it – Marshall Matt Dillon is a certified badass, the toughest man in the world and the fastest gun and the wisest lawman and he always gets his man.  Or woman.  Or horse or whatever.  All good.  All admirable and cool and if I had been a kid in the 50s I would totally have wanted to be James Arness.

     But when I look at crime statistics these days, the percentage of crimes solved is not the main criteria for quality law enforcement.  No, more emphasis of late has been placed on crime prevention.  And it is in this regard that Marshall Dillon is clearly falling short.  His reputation precedes him – he’s the fastest and the toughest and he’ll gun ya down soon as look at cha.  And yet – no one seems overly concerned.  There is still an AWFUL lot of crime in Dodge City.  And a lot of killin’s and murders and people who want to kill the Marshall himself!

     It has now been four years.  And the crime rate in Dodge City, if anything, has gone UP.  That is not effective policing, I think you will agree.  And it IS tempting to place blame with the rest of the force, ie: Chester.  But on further reflection, I can’t place the blame at the feet of Chester, because the buck must stop with the top man.  And I’m afraid Marshall Dillon just didn’t make the cut.  I assume that the coming seasons of Gunsmoke will see a sharp dip in criminal activity, or Marshall Dillon is sure to lose his job.  There’s only a couple more seasons of Gunsmoke, right?

Year:  1959
Genre:  Western, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  James Arness, Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Dennis Weaver, Ken Curtis
Creators:  John Meston, Norman MacDonnell
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     On October 5th, Paramount Home Entertainment releases Season Four Volume One of Gunsmoke.  Like the fourth season, each of the first three seasons was split into two volumes.  Now, Gunsmoke ran for 20 years.  That means that if you’re going to collect the entire series, you will have to grab forty volumes.  Which would probably look really cool, all side-by-side on your DVD shelf, but will likely get rather expensive and take a long time to complete.  At the current rate of release, the final volume of the final season of Gunsmoke will be released sometime in 2026.

     Oh well, I have the time.  Besides, I don’t think I can handle that much Gunsmoke – 635 episodes in all – all at once.  After all, every season (so far) has been pretty much exactly the same.  Black-and-white justice, questionable morals and suspect characters.  Matt Dillon (James Arness) is the invincible sherrif, the fastest gun in the world, the toughest of tough guys, the ultimate arbiter of justice and conflict.  The bad guys are seedy lowlifes who either force the situation until they are shot, or get ridden out of town for their transgressions.  And that’s about it.

     The first episode of the fourth season sees Marshall Dillon getting framed for murder.  Of course, we all know that Matt Dillon would gun down an unarmed man from behind!  He’s too good and pure.  But he’d sure gun down several armed men face-to-face.  We’ve seen that many a time.  In this first episode, the feds have to send someone to bring him in.  He’s wanted for murder, after all.  So they send in “Wild Bill Hickock”, an old-west name meant to conjure up the same reverence and fear as Matt Dillon.

     This leads to a really strange, surreal scene which is actually pretty awesome.  Matt Dillon sees Wild Bill (they appear to be old friends), and says something along the lines of “I shoulda known they wouldn’t have sent some greenhorn to pick ME up”, and they hang out and joke and bond over the fact that they’re both total badasses on the right side of the law.  Then they join forces to take down the bad guys.  It’s awesome.  Like, we’re all just supposed to know Wild Bill Hickock – he’s famous!  I guess they’re right, as it turns out.

     The thing is, I have only seen four seasons now of Gunsmoke.  All four have been exactly the same.  I can only assume that for the next sixteen seasons, the same basic formula applied to the show.  So that’s 20 seasons of the same exact thing, episode after episode.  But – it works!  I really don’t mind sitting down and watching ten episodes of Gunsmoke, in a row.  Yes, it’s mindless after a while.  But it’s far better entertainment than A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, or any number of today’s television shows.

     Some things just work, and well enough to last 20 years.  Gunsmoke was one of them.  After all, AC/DC has been making the same song for 37 years, and I still love listening to it!

“What you’re about to see is a matter of human record.  Explain it?  We can’t.  Disprove it?  We can’t.  We simply invite you to explore with us the amazing world of the unknown.”

Year:  1959
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  John Newland
Director:  John Newland
Run time:  9 hours, 21 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     There is something breathtakingly cheesy about One Step Beyond, an old TV show about “true stories” of a paranormal variety.  The cheesiness is apparent from the first frame of the first scene of the first show, and yet, it’s glorious.  I revel in the cheese.  I absorb the cheese.  I get absolutely ecstatic about the cheese.  Host John Newland walks onto the screen, and intones somberly some claptrap about real people and real stories and real situations, and the paranormal…and then the episode begins.

     Each half-hour episode is based on a true story, re-enacted by some cheesy actors doing cheesy things and cheesing it up big-time.  These shows have been done several times since.  All kinds of TV series have used “true stories” of the paranormal in order to add an air of authenticity to the whole thing.  most have been reasonably slick presentations, but the original, One Step Beyond, is not one of those productions.  From the opening episode, where a woman becomes possessed with the spirit of a murdered girl on her wedding night, through the rest of the first season, the cheese cuts through each scene in spectacular fashion. 

     I liked the episode about the woman who was chased and almost murdered by the ghost of some guy who murdered his wife in the same room years earlier and was then executed.  I liked the one about the woman who finds her crying husband in the bottom of a ditch under his car following a storm.  Ah, what am I saying?  I like them all.  I like them mostly because of John Newland.  Not only does he add an air of preposterous certainty to the opening theme, but he also introduces the episode in suitably grave fashion.  And then, the most awesome thing about One Step Beyond, he walks onto the screen at the very end of the episode, as the actors exit stage left, to say some grave and important things in conclusion once the episode is done.

     It’s all so very glorious and silly, and yet classic.  Seen as a television show, One Step Beyond most certainly doesn’t hold up over time.  But seen as a time capsule, as a show that could have existed only in 1959 and at no other time, it’s spellbinding and bonkers.  And I love it.  How this show didn’t become the biggest cult classic supernatural show of all time is beyond me.  It’s like Plan 9 From Outer Space, except the televised version.  Of course, it’s better than Plan 9.  But it shares that cheesy sensibility that made the film such a terrific cult classic.  And this TV series is similar, and wonderful.