Combat! (TV Series) The Gauntlet (1967) User Reviews

Trippy

[grantss · 7/10 · 29 June 2022]

A reasonably interesting though not entirely engaging episode of Combat. The producers get a bit too arty in the visuals though which makes for a style-over-substance experience at times.

The plot also feels reminiscent of other Combat episodes, especially the one where Saunders is deaf and pretends to be a German soldier.

Vintage Vic Morrow on Combat

[jmarchese · 15 December 2014]

"The Gantlet" is the essence of Sergeant Chip Saunders; persistence, determination, & undaunted bravery that never quits.

After being ambushed and taken prisoner by the Germans, the Sarge confronts one obstacle after another including cowardice on our side.

Paul Playdon & Bob Frederick wrote a fine screenplay centered around Saunders and highlighting reasons the viewing audience admire and respect him. Vic Morrow puts on a show amidst all odds with Sergeant Decker (excellently played by Tom Skerrit) as his antagonist. "The Gantlet" features a great canine scene and some excellent stunt work by Earl Parker, Vic Morrow's stunt double. Clever interlude gives us insight on the effects of morphine in humans. See if you can pick out the 2 separate & distinct uncredited cameos by favorite German Paul Busch within the episode.

Michael Caffey's superb direction is highlighted by several great close-ups including the canine & morphine scenes. His collusion with A.D. Flowers for night artillery fire is outstanding - Mr. Flowers must have loved putting this episode together.

The ending sequence with Sergeant Decker confronting the Sarge is priceless! Very, very entertaining episode to say the least.

Weak Episode

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 2 May 2020]

Sgt. Saunders is captured by the Germans, but flees from a train with a coward American sergeant. They need to cross the German lines and they pose as German soldiers wearing their uniforms. However, Saunders is wounded and drugged in a German hospital. What will he do next?

"The Gauntlet" could have been a great episode of "Combat!", but is not. Saunders' trip is boring and despite the good action scenes, the episode is weak. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Em Fuga" ("In Runawy")

Survival

[lor_ · 5 November 2023]

Vic is wounded and ultimately suffering from the effects of drugs in this show, with Tom Skerritt as a defeatist out to merely survive rather than try to escape like all the other international prisoners trapped with them on a train being shipped to a POW camp.

Led by Vic they make a daring escape at a train station while the prisoners ar e being shifted to a different train on an adjacent track. It's a tense story, with the soldiers having to contend not just with the Germans in pursuit but their canin corps of German Shepherds. Then he's stuck with a recalcitrant Skerritt in an arduous trek toward freedom, both clad in disguise as German soldiers.

Recaptured with wounds, he's drugged by German doctors and goes on the equivalent of an acid trip filled with nightmarish images, as they mistake him due to the uniform for a German soldier. Now he's back in survival mode, in constant danger of being discovered to be an American, but fortunately saved by a British squad, and ironically reunited with Skerritt. Vic's resiliency carries the episode.

Combat jumps the shark on this one

[spwyner-569-31055 · 11 January 2013]

As if there hadn't been enough implausible story lines by 1967, now Saunders is administered mind altering pain killers when he's wounded (for a change) and taken prisoner to a German field hospital.Then he manages to escape (of course) by hi-jacking a kraut motorcycle (of course) while the hospital comes under heavy American shelling. Speeding along wearing a captured German uniform during a barrage of heavy American shell fire through a wooded area bouncing over shell craters and managing to evade Germans on the run, Saunders is higher than the guy who must have written this cheesy script...laughing in a drug induced craze worthy of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in Easy Rider or otherwise trying to be trendy during the Sgt Pepper drugged out times that Combat was now finding itself in during its last season.