The Best of Mission Impossible, Volume 1 (1966) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)"Mission Impossible" originally ran from 1966 and 1973, telling tales of the Impossible Mission Force, a group of highly specialized government agents who were usually involved in disrupting the activities of small foreign powers trying to mess with the United States and the Free World. The group leader, Daniel Briggs (Steven Hill) in the first season and Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) for the rest of the show's run, put together the team and developed the complex plan to pull off the impossible mission; Cinnamon Carter (Barbara Bain) was the the beautiful female member of the team, Rollin Hand (Martin Landau) the master of disguise, Barney Collier (Greg Morris) was the electronics expert, and William Armitage (Peter Lupus) the muscle.
This first tape in the "Mission Impossible" series has the pilot and a choice episode from the show's second season. In the pilot episode (9/17/66), Wally Cox plays a safecracker who has to sneak into the vault of a hotel to steal a couple of nuclear warheads from a military dictator. This was the only episode of the show written by series creator Bruce Geller. This is not a classic episode per se, but it clearly sets the template for the entire series. "The Photographer" (12/17/67), written by two of the show's most productive writers, William Read Woodfield and Allan Balter, deals with biological warfare. Enemy agents intend to spread pneumonic plague and a top photographer (Anthony Zerbe) is the key contact. The IMF fakes a nuclear attack on New York to get the key to the code. Yes, there is a large degree of irony in watching this particular episode today, but remember what things were like in the Sixties. "The Photographer" is a classic MI episode and along with the pilot makes this an excellent tape to have for fans of the series.
Final Note: For my money the title sequence for this show is definitely one of the ten best ever, not just because of Lalo Schifrin's memorable theme music but because of the way shots from the episode were mixed in with the burning fuse and shots of the cast. You always saw enough to get interested in what was to happen, but they never let the cat out of the bag enough to ruin the episode.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Best of Mission Impossible, Volume 1 (1966)

Click here for more information about The Best of Mission Impossible, Volume 1 (1966)