One of the seminal westerns in TV history, “Rawhide” became overlooked and lost in the shadow of “Gunsmoke” and other westerns on TV simply because it disappeared from syndication and wasn’t as ubiquitous as the James Arness classic series. With Clint Eastwood in one of his first major starring roles, you’d expect that the studio would exploit the heck out of the show but surprisingly that didn’t happen. This set shows that Paramount is still a bit uncertain about the show as it is being released in “Volume” sets with seasons broken up in two. That’s annoying for fans but with a show like this that had lots of episodes, it does allow fans to more affordably pick up the sets at a more leisurely pace. ---

Image & Sound:

The second season looks extremely good with the crisp black and white images and top notch cinematography (before Hollywood went for a more generic lighting style later in the 60’s and 70’s for some TV shows), “Rawhide” looks anything but raw. Its clear that Paramount/CBS spent most of the budget in bringing this to DVD to make sure fans got the best looking presentation for one of the most adult westerns of its time. ---

Sadly there are none. I don’t know that Eastwood would be willing to go back and revisit (or has the time) this past and do a commentary track or more interviews, but it would be nice to have something charting the development of the series. ---

Final Words: