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After bizarrely releasing the last season of "Walker"
first, Paramount/CBS started with season one and has continued
to (luckily) release them in order. The fun of "Walker:
Texas Ranger" was the element of pure evil and pure good
fighting it out. Whether Walker is chasing someone practicing
a bizarre form of conservative vigilante justice as in "Mean
Streets" where rich kids execute homeless folks for nothing
more than being on the street or whether it be Walker trying
to get some porn filmmakers to come clean so he can solve
a murder the show is pretty black and white which allows
you to root for the good guys and hiss the villains. ***
The formula for "Walker Texas Ranger" was fairly simple
which is why it was so successful; include one nasty villain,
some kick-ass martial arts and a conclusion where the bad
guy gets his butt kicked. Mix well and then chill to perfection.
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Image & Sound:
As with the first and second season sets, "Walker"
looks surprisingly good with compression artifacts occurring
only during darker sequences and scenes where fists are
flying at the speed of sound. The image is occasionally
soft which isn't a surprise given the age of the show or
the fact that these are the original 35 millimeter prints
that were transferred to video for its initial airing. Some
of the episodes look better than others suggesting that
either the original 35 millimeter print wasn't available
or used for all of these or that the compression was less
than expert in a couple of cases but this is an exception
rather than the rule. Walker's fists of fury have probably
never looked this good on home video bef ore. The audio
is presented in the stereo soundtrack used when the show
first appeared on TV in 1993. The dialogue occasionally
sounded flat but other than that the audio is fine. One
complaint--there are no English subtitles for those hard
of hearing folks. ---
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