The Untouchables (TV Series) The Gang War (1962) User Reviews

One of the most violent episodes I can recall...

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 5 March 2016]

"The Gang War" is certainly not one of the more cerebral episodes! In fact, it starts off with one of the most violent scenes in "The Untouchables" history. A group of young people are enjoying booze and dancing at a roadhouse when some thugs arrive and being blasting away with a Tommy Gun. Soon, folks who work there respond with their machine guns and explosions, death and mayhem abound. It's sure obvious that the audience is going to be in for a bumpy ride!! What follows is a gang war between Nitti and an outsider (Victor Buono) and folks bringing GOOD liquor into the States from Canada. If the violence in the show isn't enough, Ness responds by ignoring civil rights FAR more than usual...with a trumped up charge against Nitti following an illegal search!! Again...this ain't cerebral!

Now considering that the show abandoned it's original format and began becoming "The Frank Nitti Show" (as almost every episode featured him from then on), the audience KNOWS who must win in the end...and that's a big weakness of the show. Still, it's much more exciting than usual and well worth your time.

A Violent Episode

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 23 April 2012]

Wow, this episode has a lot of violence, particularly in the first part of the story. It's tommy guns ablazin' with some pretty wild scenes as gang wars begin just outside of Chicago.

A new threat to "Frank Nitti" (Bruce Gordon) - who seems to get a new one every week, in addition to battling the intrepid Untouchabes - is a guy named "Purnise Suragao" (Victor Buono). He's getting the best whiskey available flown in from Canada. Once Nitti finds out, he's none too happy but "Surgao" isn't going bow down to him.

"You keep Chicago and I'll run this area," he tells him. Frank is not happy with that. Surga's booze is causing a shortage in Nitti's territory.

The two groups - with "Elliott Ness" (Robert Stack) in the middle and aware of what is going on - prepare for a big showdown but Ness is tired of blood in the streets, even if it's just gangster blood. He wants an end to this violence, so we get a violent ending!

Overall, a very good story.

Threat from the burbs

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 9 December 2013]

One of the bloodier episodes of The Untouchables is this one where Victor Buono who cut his gangster teeth in the opium trade is setting up road houses just outside Cook County which the Capone organization controls. Buono is smart because he's using imported Canadian liquor instead of bathtub rot gut that the organization has and he's bought that particular county lock, stock, and barrel.

When Bruce Gordon orders one of Buono's roadhouses hit, it's a bloody massacre with innocent bystanders hurt. There is a very tender scene with Robert Stack at the bedside of a dying Anne Whitfield who was one of those bystanders.

Buono's delivery service is an a broken down airshow run by three World War I aces and Ed Nelson crashes and is later captured by Frank Nitti's hoods. It all leads to a bloody climax.

I have to say that in the end all that was accomplished was that The Untouchables did Frank Nitti a favor and got rid of his burgeoning competition. Still it's a good story, but a bloody one.