Whenever a successful movie appears, you can be sure television will capitalise on it somehow. In 1967, Robert Aldrich's 'The Dirty Dozen' overtook that year's Bond movie - 'You Only Live Twice' - to be top box office draw, and ( along with Arthur Penn's 'Bonnie & Clyde' ) ushered in a new wave of violent cinema. Things would never be the same again. 'Garrisons Gorillas' was on air within months of the Dozen firing their first shots. It starred Ron Harper as 'Lt.Craig Garrison', who like Lee Marvin's 'Major Reisman', is put in charge of a band of convicted criminals recruited to fight the Nazis; they are the handsome 'Actor' ( Cesare Danova ), chirpy Cockney 'Goniff' ( Christopher Cary ), gambling-mad 'Casino' ( Rudy Solari ) and native American 'Chief' ( Brendon Boone ). They are given a choice - fight for Uncle Sam or go up before a firing squad. Each week, the Gorillas went on missions as daring as stealing a new German aeroplane engine, substituting counterfeit printing plates for real ones, kidnapping a German Colonel's son, recovering important microfilm hidden in a painting in a Dutch museum, and helping Americans escape from an Italian prison camp. It was the 'A-Team' of its day, with a dollop of 'Mission: Impossible' thrown in for good measure.Characterisation was sparse, though in fairness there was chemistry between the cast. Though Garrison was their 'keeper', the Gorillas grew to like him, bestowing him with the nickname 'Warden'. When, in one episode, he was suspected of crimes, they went out of their way to clear him. Had Alistair Maclean been hired to write a series, it probably would have looked a lot like 'Garrison's Gorillas'.The team often found themselves behind enemy lines, and their favourite escape method was impersonating Germans. I used to marvel at how they managed to find perfectly fitting uniforms without any difficulty whatever! 'The Dirty Dozen' connection was reinforced by the presence of Telly Savalas in the premiere episode as the argumentative 'Wheeler' - he was religious fanatic 'Archer Maggot' in the Aldrich movie.The combat scenes were unusually violent by then-television standards; each episode had a body count worthy of 'Rambo' with Nazis machine-gunned to death at a rate of knots. As an 8 year-old, I loved it!But the Gorillas' war was to be short-lived. Though popular, an anti-violence crusade sweeping the networks in the aftermath of Bobby Kennedy's assassination led to the show's unexpected cancellation after only 26 episodes. It was last shown in the U.K. in a late-night slot on I.T.V. in the early '90's. Since then, nothing. Despite the formulaic 'Boys Own'-style plots, it was an entertaining and exciting show, and should it ever appear on D.V.D. I'll be ready with my pre-order!

I was really wanting to watch this show and was thrilled that I found it through a collector. OK so how did it measure up? First let me say that I like drama in a war setting, All Quiet On The Western Front comes to my mind as a favorite, Hell Is For Heroes as another not that they are in the same league but thats a cross section of my tastes for war movies. For TV shows Combat! is most widely known and what I watched in reruns in the 70's as a pre-teen. For the record I hated Combat! as it was lame, you knew certain characters would live, so whats the point, I realized this as a youth. Garrisons Gorillas (notice they didn't use the term Guerilla) is basically a mix of mostly the Dirty Dozen (Telly Savalez was in the pilot and the redone pilot first episode), mixed with a bit of maybe Mission Impossible. It's extremely light on character development, it's full of action (the cowboys vs Indians action), and it's tedious. It has no redeeming place for a war film lover like myself, it's to the point that it's dare I say it, like Combat! boring. Combat! at least had it's character interaction, this is very devoid of good dialog, "lets go get in the back, you know something? It's gonna be light soon", as examples, it's just really lame action packaged in a WW2 TV show. The whole show is totally implausible and it is not helped that we never see any one higher than the Officer in charged handing out the missions, we just take his word that he got them, it's lazy writing (how about the officer questioning any of this? Some 12 O'Clock High TV show dialog would have worked here very well). How not to write a WW2 or war drama should use Garrisons Gorillas as an example. Definitely targeted for youths and I doubt even they would have liked it after 5 or so episodes.

I watched the show when it was first on TV when I was 12 & fell in love with the characters. My favorite was Chief & he became a teen idol during that time. The stories were good, the humor I loved! Even my parents enjoyed it. The TV show was shown on GoodTime TV about 4 years ago and I tried to tape all the episodes. For the time period that the show was made the sets were OK. The costumes/uniforms were great. Loved the give and take between the characters. I would recommend this to anybody! It was a take-off from the movies but it was still well done. Comparing it to today's TV shows is not fair. Acting, special effects and such have come along way in 40 plus years. The main story was that people could change and improve themselves especially when working for the greater good. Many times the guys could have escaped but chose to do their job and honor their commitment and the Warden. It had a great theme running through the entire show.

Combat! went off the air in 1967 after a successful, five year run. Garrison's Gorillas, also from Selmur Productions, took over Combat's same time period on Tuesday nights on ABC. Where Combat had a great character actor in Vic Morrow leading a strong supporting cast, Garrison had Ron Harper in the lead, and by time he got to the Planet of the Apes TV series some years later, he was still just as wooden and one dimensional as he is here. Only Christopher Cary and Cesare Danova(you know him as the mayor in Animal House) are any good acting-wise, and the writing wasn't nearly good enough for a show that was TV's attempt to cash in on the success of The Dirty Dozen, released the same year. CBS's take on the genre, Jericho(1967) was slightly better but was also filmed on the same MGM back lot just like Combat and Garrison's Gorillas were. By now you would see the same sets and backgrounds on three different war shows. And by the late 60's war was a little too real on the evening news and these type of WWII shows looked unrealistic and had run their course. Garrison's Gorillas was canceled and replaced by The Mod Squad in 1968.