As the world's biggest Untouchables fan it would pain me to write anything negative about this franchise. But this Pilot, at least the first part, though it does get a bit better, is pedestrian compared to the best episodes of the subsequent series, which of course we remember, forgetting the worst. First episode The Empty Chair a case in point. Of which the first few minutes even, are a step up in tempo.

Its funny that some of the original Untouchables such as Paul Dubov later sit on Frank Nitti's council and Peter Leeds is as a con in 3000 suspects!!. Eddie Firestone an Untouchable!!!! (sorry Eddie), and Paul Picerni does a complete about turn. The series has the benefit of the great music played during the episodes which this does not have. Which always adds great substance.

To me its ironic that the whole revolves around the prohibition of alcohol while most of the characters smoke like chimneys!!!

Bruce Gordon, Neville Brand, and Frank (F. Troop) de Kova are some of my all time favourites but for the first two in proper larger than life form watch the Big Train Parts 1 and 2 and Bruce and Frank in The Frank Nitti Story , Nick Acropolis etc.

Again a good watch but not a patch on the best of Series 1-3. but still way ahead of disappointing Season 4

Al Capone versus Eliot Ness--Evil versus Good--Darkness versus Light...

The late 'Fifties brought B&W television to its highest point and "The Untouchables" was a case in point. People have a way of forgetting that the series--with its graphic violence--was controversial in its own time.

Robert Stack(as Eliot Ness) was here the perfect film noir hero--tough, laconic and utterly loyal to his subordinates. Neville Brand, no slouch himself, lit up the screen as Al Capone--sadistic, as tough as Ness and totally without concern for his own people(or anyone else, for that matter).

The reconstruction of mood and ambiance in this movie(re-edited from the TV series) is flawless. The mythic world which you see here is one that psychologist Carl Jung would have approved of. It was the "world" in which my own Dad had grown up--as seen through a child's eyes.

But, as history, it is woefully wide of the mark. The real Eliot Ness left Federal service after a few short years and was much less moral and self-possessed than the character played by Robert Stack. The real Al Capone had a weakness for beautiful women which ultimately killed him.

While Ness put the Chicago Gangsters under financial pressure, an accountant from the IRS actually put this multiple murderer behind bars--for income tax evasion.

I saw this as a kid, with my Dad at my side. It made me feel that there is, in the end, no issue more important than simple justice. Since that time, like most folks, I've learned to live with moral ambiguity. But that's not all good news, by any means.

This was a HUGE TV EVENT when it first came on. Yes, it functioned as the pilot of the subsequent TV series, with Eliot Ness played by Robert Stack. But it was longer, and a lot better. Many epic scenes of tank-like trucks with snowplows on them BASHING through the gates of the warehouses where the bad guys brewed illegal beer. Then the feds would jump out of the truck and spray everybody with Tommy Gun fire. (Of course TV shows like this in the 1950s made America more than eager to do the same thing in third world countries--Korea, Guatemala, Vietnam, the mid-East --you name it). Neville Brand as Al Capone was not in the TV series, because he'd already been vanquished by Ness at the end of this TV movie. He was distinguished for his schtick in this film, of laughing and then turning angry and surly in a split second, as his henchmen mobsters sat around a banquet table trying to keep up with his mood swings, alternately laughing and glowering along with him. Bob Hope later did a satire of this scene on one of his TV specials--the laughing and glowering. It was pretty funny. I was a dorky pre-teen in the local Methodist Youth Fellowship when the most memorable scene of the film came on: --Ness had a sweet girlfriend in the movie, who pure as she was, didn't seem to wear a bra under her sweaters, all of which seemed to unbutton down the front. In the key scene, several hulking Italian-American criminals bash down the door to her single-woman's apartment, security chain and all, and then rip open her sweater and "admire" the merchandise. Pretty hot stuff for 1950s family-hour viewing! In the next scene she and Ness are getting married and Ness organizes a parade of Capone's confiscated beer trucks, to get back at him for feeling up his girlfriend, craven non-Anglo animal that he is. Now that's American justice! --Pretty good for the same company that brought us I LOVE LUCY for so many years. Anyway--if you want a TAPE of this movie, be sure it's the original film with Neville Brand, and not just episodes of the later TV show.-B2