(069) Vendetta

Written by Ron Bishop and Wells Root

Directed by John Peyser

First aired 22-Sep-1964

Episode 2 of Season 3

While roaming the countryside in Rat Patrol-style jeeps, Hanley is allied with a horde of dancing Greeks, commanded by Colonel Kapsalis (Telly Savalas). The Colonel deceives Hanley by promising to lead them back to the American lines. Instead, Hanley and his men are coerced into joining the Greeks' battles and following the Colonel's orders, which Hanley thinks are suicidal. The Greeks dance, drink, and blast their way to a fiery conclusion where Savalas dies a hero's death.

Writer Wells Roots gives a tip of his hat to Zorba the Greek in this tale of a man obsessed with death and dancing. A few interesting moments are found between commercials. For action fans, the night battles are spectacular, with jeeps and trucks engaging in the dark, tracers lighting the night sky, and search lights blinding the drivers. Quite lovely. Director John Peyser again uses a small plane for aerial views, this time of the jeeps in action.

Unfortunately, the battle sequences have no continuity; they are flurries of action strung together for some pretty pictures, but little more.

· Opening sequence must have been filmed many, many times: lots of tire tracks everywhere on the jeeps' first entrance.

· Captain Jampel is King Company's C.O.

· Some of the German soldiers carry U.S. Army carbines.

· When the planes attack the jeeps, Hanley identifies them as Messerschmitts. They are American P-51-C Mustangs.

· Germans standing in front of searchlights are killed by sprays of bullets that leave the lights behind the soldiers intact. Windshields and tires of the chase vehicles seem resistant to bullets.

· During much of Savalas' dance, a string from his tassel is caught in his moustache.

On a lunch break, Dick Peabody joined Rick Jason and Telly Savalas in Rick's trailer. Both Savalas and Jason skipped the catered lunch, since they were dieting. They played gin rummy. "I gorged myself while they continued to play cards, casting occasional wistful looks at the food I was attacking," said Dick Peabody in a 1990 column for the Mountain Democrat. Rick's homemade lunch consisted of two hard-boiled eggs. "Rick was between wives then and, having no one to boil his eggs for him, had boiled them himself that morning." He ate the first, then he cracked the second one and raw egg spread over the playing cards and oozed onto Rick's lap. "He jumped up and shouted, 'One of them didn't cook!'" Outside, a crowd of extras and stuntmen were watching through the window and laughing. Phil Altman had swapped a raw egg for one of Rick's eggs. "But what was so funny was not the practical joke itself but Rick's reaction to it: One of them didn't cook!"

Rick Jason as Lt. Hanley

Vic Morrow as Sgt. Saunders (does not appear)

Guest Star

Telly Savalas as Colonel Kapsalis

Jack Hogan as Kirby

Conlan Carter as Doc

Dick Peabody as Littlejohn

Athan Karras as Hot Dog

Peter Deuel as Szigeti

Alexis Boden as Greek #1

John Aniston Greek #2

Peter Bravos as Greek #3

George Michaelides as Greek #4