The Wild Wild West Revisited (1979)

Wonderful character development!

ridiculous rating

Excellent, a Must See

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The Wild Wild West lived at 7:30 (6:30 Central) on CBS / Friday nights. As I recall - for 5 years. A most enjoyable show especially for an 11 year old up through its cancellation. I must have seen all the episodes. Now I remember in 1979 being at my parents home and watched it with my mom. We tuned it in because we liked the original. Nothing though can match laughing out loud with a parent after you are an adult. This was done as a spoof of themselves. "Have you been sick?" No Artie why? He only went 6 feet when you hit him. West goes to pick up a girl at the saloon only to find out that she knows him because he use to date her mother. Slam on the old age stuff - I liked it - it was what it was suppose to be. Just saw it again on DECADES TV. What a treat.

This made-for-television movie was my first real taste of 'The Wild Wild West'. It was shown in a peak-time slot one Saturday night on B.B.C.-1 in 1987. I enjoyed it then, but having seen the original series like it a lot less. It is now 1885, and both Jim West ( Robert Conrad ) and Artemus Gordon ( Ross Martin ) are no longer on active duty in the U.S. secret service, the former lives in Mexico, the latter is part of a travelling troupe of performers. Robert T. 'Skinny' Malone ( Henry Morgan a.k.a. 'Colonel Potter' of 'M#A#S#H' ), the new head of intelligence, brings them together for a perilous assignment - the son of the late Dr.Migelito Loveless ( Paul Williams ) has kidnapped the President of the U.S.A, Queen Victoria of England, the Tzar of Russia and the King of Spain and has replaced them with perfect doubles. The mad genius has also developed two super-humans he wittily calls 'Six Hundred Dollar People' as well as a prototype atomic bomb. West and Gordon's problems are further compounded by continual interference from other country's agents.The director was Burt Kennedy, whose speciality was comedy Westerns such as 'Support Your Local Sheriff' and 'Support Your Local Gunfighter' ( both starring James Garner ). Unsurprisingly, much of 'Revisited' has a jokey feel rather at odds with the more subtle humour of the series. At times it threatens to turn into another 'Blazing Saddles'. Conrad and Martin were thankfully young enough to play their roles without looking too ancient, but even so West's fights are nowhere near as thrilling as before. And where are his famous gadgets? He gets out of a dungeon with the aid of a lock pick! How disappointing. In the old days West would probably have blown the door off with a tiny bomb produced from his sleeve. As 'Loveless', the cherubic Williams is far more menacing than Kenneth Branagh in the 1999 movie.Jim and Arte re-teamed a year later for 'More Wild Wild West' which featured Jonathan Winters as an invisible villain. It was not much better than 'Revisited', and alas proved to be their swan-song.

I was excited when I first heard about The Wild Wild West Revisted. I loved the original series and enjoyed Conrad's more recent series, Baa Baa Black Sheep. I was all set to see one of my favorite series reborn. I was soon to learn a harsh lesson: you can't recreate the past.The movie finds Jim and Artie retired, but pressed back into service. Now, one thing they got right was not pretending that Jim and Artie were still young. Unfortunately, they used this to try to mine laughs, rather than drama. We are introduced to Dr. Loveless Jr., played by Paul Williams. It's a nice idea, and Williams tries hard, but it doesn't work (still better than Kenneth Branagh, though). Add 70's TV staples Shields and Yarnell, as steam era cyborgs (in a bad parody of The Six Million Dollar Man) and you have a complete mess.The elements that made the show great are missing. There are no wild stunts, no clever gadgets or steampunk devices (Shields and Yarnell aside) and it's rather lacking in the bizarre, or at least interesting bizarre. The atomic bomb shtick also ends up to be overly jokey.Conrad and Martin still had good chemistry, and it's fun to see them, but the material just wasn't there. Fan's would have been better off with a retrospective, or a more straightforward, dramatic script; but, instead, they get one big lame joke.

I was so excited when my ebay search found this video and then even more excited when I won it on the auction. I was really surprised when no one else bided on this video since I know that there are so many fans of this program. I never even new that this video originally existed till I surfed the web on The WWW sites. I still want to find the other video "More of The WWW." Now my thoughts on the video WWW Revisited. It was great to see them in action again. They looked great. Even though the production wasn't quite as good as the original TV series a little hammed up. Of course all reunion shows are never as good as the original. It was still very entertaining to see my heroes from my child hood back in action. I will say this. The start of the video about where Jim and Artie were in there retirement could not have been more perfect. It just seemed so natural that Artie would be traveling in a side show being that he was so dramatic and so able to act like so many different characters. And where else would Jim be but kicked back with beautiful women taking care of him. The producer/director must have let them write this part of the script, cause it seemed so "them." Now I want to know from someone what the hell happen when they were making this movie. And what idiot and how know one did anything to catch and change the script CAUSE JIM WEST WAS KNOWN FOR ALL HIS GADGETS. Jim West did not use any of his gadgets in this movie. Oh it showed him checking out a couple of tricks in the train but what were they thinking when they made this movie. No heel on the boot gadget, knife in the toe of the boot, gun up his sleeve, no nothing. What's up with this, blows my mind.