COLT .45 - THE COMPLETE SERIES (1957-1959) (Warner Archive Blu-ray Review)

COLT .45 - THE COMPLETE SERIES (1957-1959)

Label: Warner Archive
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 1875 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.33:1)
Cast: Wayde Preston, Donald May, Kenneth MacDonald

Colt .45 was a three-season Warner Bros. Television program, and is apparently a loose adaptation of the same-titles 1950 film that starred Randolph Scott. It's set in 1870s American West and starred Wayde Preston (Today We Kill... Tomorrow We Die!) as Christopher Colt, who travels the Old West under the guise of travelling gun salesman, selling Colt .45s 'natch, but who is secretly an undercover agent for the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps, meant to find places where law and order have fallen to the wayside, or to track down notorious outlaws, some based on historical figures, and to make sure that law and order is properly restored before moving on to to the next town. It's a pretty standard episodic western, most of single-episode story arcs with a baddies-of-the-week, but Preston is a charismatic lead and pulls you in, plus we get guest appearances from the likes of Adam West (Batman), Charles Bronson (Hard Times), Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek), Lee Van Cleef (The Grand Duel), Angie Dickinson (Dressed To Kill), Alan Hale Jr. (The Giant Spider Invasion) and even baseballer Sandy Koufax loads more familiar faces of the era. Interestingly, the second season was problematic and by third season series star Preston was replaced by actor Donald May (TV's The Edge of Night '67-'77) who played Sam Colt, Jr., a cousin of Preston’s character, though Preston eventually returned. Late-50's TV westerns are a bit out of my wheelhouse so I came into this pretty blind and unknowing, though for years I have heard TV and western collectors talking about this show an how it had fallen into obscurity. Well, the Warner Archive have answered those calls with a terrific three-season Blu-ray set that collects all of the long unavailable 67 episodes remastered from 4K scans of the original negatives.  I cannot say that the show did much for me on a personal level, growing up in the 70's I was never a big vintage western TV fan, but this set is sure to be an unexpected treat for fans of vintage TV westerns who might have grown up with it. 

Audio/Video: Colt .45 joins the HD digital age in 1080p HD frame din the original broadcast aspect ratio of 133:1 fullscreen, sourced from new 4K scans from the OCN. Holy cow, I have seen some vintage 50's TV shows make their way to Blu-ray and DVD, but I was startled with just how crisp and refined the monochromatic western looked in HD, I was blown away. The source looks immaculate with nary a blemish in sight, it's spotless, but the grain is unmolested.

The black and white image is nicely textured and has excellent grayscale with solid black levels. This is truly a wonderful presentation, and probably the best looking black and white 50's era television program I've personally seen on Blu-ray, yet. Likewise, the English language DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono presentation is pristine and well-balanced, dialogue, atmospherics and the scores all sound quite wonderful, appropriately vintage and of its era for sure, but clean and crisp without a trace of hiss or age-related wear. 

Sadly, no extras were prepared for this set, I think the drama around why Preston stepped away from the show and was  replaced might have made for a interesting featurette, but WAC are not known for creating new extras for their releases, choosing instead to funnel their limited budgets into top-notch audio/video restoration, and to that end they have succeeded admirably, this is a terrific looking/sounding set.  

The 10-disc set comes house in a sideloading slipcase, inside there are three individual keep cases, all oversized with flipper trays, one for each season. Again, while this is not my cup o' tea I know Warner Archive are making vintage TV western fans quite happy my bring this from the vault and putting it onto their shelves with pristine A/V presentation rarely afforded to these vintage TV shows.

Warner Archive continue to impress with their tasty and sometime unexpected catalog deep-dives, and this set was highly unexpected, as was their terrific 10-disc Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 animation box set. I do hope to see more multi-disc sets coming from WAC in the near future, there's lot of vintage TV series out there waiting to be restored to HD glory, and a lot of ravenous physical media junkies looking to snatch 'em up!

Special Features:
- None

Screenshots from the Warner Archive Blu-ray: 

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