The Untouchables (TV Series) Takeover (1962) User Reviews

This man has some SERIOUS daddy issues...

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 16 March 2016]

This is a very good episode of "The Untouchables" and it's about the flow of beer into speakeasies in Chicago. When a local respectable maker of legal near-beer (John Banner) is caught with real beer, an unexpected benefactor arrives in court to offer him an alibi. Leo Mencken (Robert Loggia) then uses this to force the brewer to work with him and he has an interesting invention...alcohol pellets in gelatin that melt in the barrels of near-beer to make it strong...and illegal. Plus, as the gelatin melts somewhat slowly, barrels of this stuff might test negative for alcohol if the pellets haven't dissolved yet. But here's the kicker...who Mencken REALLY is and why he wants to take on the reigning Beer King in Chicago, Charlie Zenko (Luther Adler).

The most interesting things about this show are the strange father- son relationship as well as the father's right hand man played by Leonard Nimoy. Overall, exciting and awfully sad by the end of the show.

The Northside Beer Wars

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 13 December 2013]

Eliot Ness and The Untouchables get involved in this episode in the Beer Wars on Chicago's North side. As is shown here it is a fact that brewers as opposed to those who made distilled whiskeys were able to keep open their plants by manufacturing what we still call near beer. The 18th amendment itself has a specific alcohol level in its language which if you go above you are in violation of the Constitution itself in those days. Years ago I remember how Jacob Ruppert anticipating Prohibition gradually shifted to near beer and soft drinks for his Knickerbocker brewing company. It was because he stayed legal and still made money that he was able to stock the New York Yankees and create a dynasty.

Now maybe Colonel Ruppert might have sold some illegal beer on the side just like John Banner does here. But he sure didn't caught and he never came to the attention of Treasury agents.

Banner is part of a war with Luther Adler leading the opposition and Robert Loggia playing both sides to come out on top. Playing a very sad role is Collin Wilcox who sees her boss killed whom she betrayed and her boyfriend Mort Mills on the other side also rubbed out and quite spectacularly.

Funny how in many Untouchables episodes and in real life how these gangster wars seem to resolve themselves, of course with some pressure from law enforcement forcing the bad guys to make moves they might not ordinarily make. Such an episode is this one from The Untouchables.

Great cast of guest stars

[mhettler · 8/10 · 9 January 2022]

60 years later, this episode is noteworthy for its guest stars. We have Leonard Nimoy as a mobster's goon, John Banner as a bootlegger, and Mayella from To Kill a Mockingbird playing an adult version of Mayella from To Kill a Mockingbird. Banner's performance is particularly enjoyable for viewers who remember him from Hogan's Heroes. He is very much in his future Sergeant Schultz persona, playing a German immigrant "brewmeister" who is essentially a less dim-witted Schultz, even at one point telling Eliot Ness, "I know nothing." That alone makes the episode worth watching for Hogan's Heroes fans. Nimoy's character, on the other hand, bears no resemblance to Spock, but it's still interesting to see him in the days before he became typecast as Spock.