Starring: Jim Nabors, Frank Sutton, Ronnie Schell, William Christopher, Roy Stuart, Allan Melvin, Elizabeth MacRae, Barbara Stuart

It"s Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. - The Third Season, marching onto store shelves today! Gomer Pyle (Nabors), the lovable - if slightly goofy - marine from Mayberry, North Carolina is back at Camp Henderson with his favorite Sergeant, Vince Carter (Sutton), and barracks pals Slater (Schell) and Haynes (Christopher).

Season Three sees Gomer through an encounter with a Hollywood starlet, a stint in the infirmary, an alien invasion, and the early stages of romance with his sometimes girlfriend, Lou Ann Poovey (MacRae). The comedy doesn"t stop there, there are many more hilarious episodes packed into this delightful collection.

DVD Features:

• 5-disc set featuring all 30 episodes from Season 3
• Full Screen Format

Critique:

After watching reruns of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. on cable for many years, one of the first things that stands out about this digitally remastered version of Season Three is picture quality. The collection earns full marks for color and clarity, making it a pleasure to watch television that’s over forty years. It says a great deal for the actors and the writers, that the eager-to-please Private and the seasoned and salty Sergeant can generate just as many laughs today as they did when these episodes originally aired in 1966-1967.

A spin-off of The Andy Griffith Show, the Gomer Pyle show never achieved the critical acclaim of its host series. It was never nominated for an Emmy, but has enjoyed the support of fans who’ve ensured the series’ survival through four decades of syndication around the world. It did what it set out to do ... it made the viewers laugh—it entertained.

You can’t have a sweet, simple character like Gomer without a strong counterbalance, and the show’s producers struck gold with their hot-headed Sergeant Carter. Both Nabors and Sutton put the full force of their enormous talents into bringing their characters to life, and their on-screen chemistry almost always resulted in a laugh a minute.

The most obvious shortcoming in this DVD set is the absence of any special features, but each DVD compensates with an easy access menu of episodes to allow the viewer to pick and choose favorites, or an option to play all episodes in chronological succession.

To the alert viewer, another shortcoming in the Season Three set is the editing of some episodes from their original version. In some cases, background music has been changed and there are some very minor scene deletions, neither of which actually affect viewing enjoyment, but some viewers may find these changes disappointing if they were hoping for exact duplications of the original broadcasts. 

All in all, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. - The Third Season is good, wholesome family entertainment that can be enjoyed by all audiences.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."