Vendetta For The Saint
There's a Saint movie out on DVD called "Vendetta For The Saint." Is there any reason to own this if one has all the TV episodes?
shareMaybe, it was a two parter on the show, but the DVD is movie length with Sir Roger and friends giving great commentary. It's cheap enough, anyway....
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"Vendetta" is cut together from two episodes of the series. On the DVD collection I possess, these episodes are called "Vendetta" parts I and II, so check to see if they are listed in yours. The guest star is Ian Hendry.
"Duck, I says..."
I just watched the DVD from Netflix and it was horrible. Now I didn't really like the story but thats not what I mean. The transfer looked good, but the framerate was all messed up, causing everything moving faster than it should.
Anyone else have this problem?
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Nope. I have a store bought copy and it, and the story and production, are excellent. In fact, it's probably one of the most exciting stories of the entire Roger Moore series. It's very faithful to Leslie Charteris' book and we actually see the "real" Templar and not the somewhat watered down version Moore portrayed though out the series. I refer you to the scene with Templar and the shotgun as just one example of the literary Simon coming through.
"Every Troll Matters When Message Board
Domination Is Your Goal."
I read just recently that the novel "Vendetta For The Saint", which came out in 1964, was actually written by someone else under Charteris' direction. Ah well. It's a damn good book in any case. Watching the movie version of the 2-parter (CBS did not run the 2-parters when they re-ran the color episodes in the 80's), I was amazed to see the tv version followed the book almost scene-by-scene!
The one exception is, when The Saint and his friends raid the villa, in the tv show, that's it! But in the novel, the main villain escapes by car, and a long chase ensures before Simon finally catches up with the guy. Checking the date, it seems the novel came out one year after Fleming's "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" novel, which suggests the climax of the Saint novel was inspired by the Bond novel's climax.
The final color season had 2 2 part shows "Vendetta" was one and "The Fiction Makers". On the American DVD release by A&E, they list them on their boxes as part 1 and 2, but both copies are the feature length versions. There was another copy released on Acorn I think of the feature length version of "Vendetta" but with the A&E copy being feature length, the Acorn copy is worthless. The British copy released by Network offers both the episodic versions and feature length versions of both "Vendetta" and "Fiction Makers". Had I realized this, I might have bought both British sets from Amazon UK (the b/w ones were not released complete here in the US), but one of my favorite Marketplace Sellers on Amazon US was selling the color mega set cheap and in great condition. I also bought Return of the Saint with Ian Ogilvy from Amazon UK. That series is not in the states. On that series there is also a 2 parter which was later reshown feature length and the set offers both renditions. Also had I bought the color Moore set from England I would have gotten the second of 3 documentaries released on the 2 Moore sets and the Ogilvy set combined. Fortunately, I got a standalone copy of that documentary with the whole thing as 1 documentary and with footage not previously released in the 3 set copy.
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