The Champions (TV Series) The Gun-Runners (1969) User Reviews

The Champions Look for Japanese Rifles

[bensonmum2 · 6/10 · 26 March 2017]

A gun-runner, Hartington (William Franklyn), in Burma has acquired a cache of WWII-era Japanese rifles. He intends to get them out of the country and into the hands of the highest bidder. The Champions are sent to stop the shipment. When this fails, their off to Africa to use any means available to get the guns.

It's entertaining in spots, but overall, The Gun-Runners is a very inconsistent episode. Other than Craig's escape from a cellar, the scenes supposedly set in Burma are some of the worst of the entire series. We're introduced to far too many characters to keep up with who is who and why we care. It's pretty confusing. I mentioned Craig's escape, now that was terrific. His acrobatic escape was plain old cool. Once things shift to Africa, the episode picks up quite a bit. The scenes where all three sneak through the jungle to get near the shack holding the guns is very well done. And the final explosion and death of Hartington are, once again, plain old cool. The African scenes are as good as the Burmese scenes are bad.

A few other thoughts: 1. The Gun-Runners includes some very tacky looking rear projection. It's laughable. 2. Hartington's head bandage is ridiculous looking. It's impossible to take him too seriously with that thing on his head. 3. I'm sure William Franklyn was a fine actor, but he's hardly menacing enough for The Champions.

Overall, The Gun-Runners is a real mixed bag. I think a 6/10 seems about right. Too bad, I had hoped the second-to-last episode in the series would have been better.

Exotic actioner

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 9 January 2022]

Some action in the Burmese jungle enlivens this exotic episode full of the usual derring do and political intrigue. A particularly adept supporting cast helps a lot, with David Lodge and William Franklyn a little underutilised as the bad guys alongside veteran Chinese star Ric Young and even Frank Butcher himself, Mike Reid, in a bit part.

Not one of the better episodes.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 5/10 · 18 August 2023]

A group of gun runners kill a team of solders who unearthed a stash of Japanese arms that was unearthed deep in The Burmese Jungle. The champions set of for Burma in order to stop the gunrunners making a deal for that weapons.

This is perhaps my least favourite episode of The Champions, there are some nice ideas, but overall it's a jumbled mess, it just doesn't work, it's almost as if it was rewritten several times, it just doesn't flow, it lacks that little something that The Champions so often had.

There are some decent action sequences, and of course it's good to see The Champions hurling themselves about the place, but the story is so weak, what was so special about the arms, why did the trio of Nemesis agents have to travel half way across the world to recover them, if seemed like small fry for them.

Some of the special effects, even for the time are diabolical, it's such an inconsistent episode in terms of production, some of the sets, like the jungle look really good, but the overlays are terrible, the scene with the giraffes for example looks bad.

It does fortunately feature a great cast, but the likes of Wolfe Morris and Ric Young (I could listen to that voice all day long,) are wasted.

I struggled with this one.

5/10.

Have guns, will sell

[ShadeGrenade · 8/10 · 28 July 2012]

A wartime cache of Japanese guns is found in a Burmese jungle, and a recovery party is massacred by a group of men ( among them a pre-'Comedians' Mike Reid ), led by ruthless arms dealer 'Hartington' ( William Franklyn ). The Champions must find out what he intends doing with them, and stop him. When a woman tries to shoot him in a Burmese restaurant, Sharron saves his life by throwing a plate, skilfully deflecting the gun-shot. Craig meets Hartington in a warehouse, and is almost killed when henchman 'Filmer' ( David Lodge ) causes a crate to fall on top of him. His unconscious body is dumped in a cellar. He recovers, getting out by swinging on a beam and kicking the hatch open. The plane carrying the guns is traced firstly to Brussels and then to the African state of Ngano, where Hartington intends selling them to local revolutionaries...

Dennis Spooner's 'The Gun-runners' is a standard episode, made watchable by the Champions themselves ( including an amusing scene in Tremayne's office where they take turns to throw Styrofoam cups into a waste-paper basket, managing to land them neatly on top of one another ). The urbane Franklyn is rather wasted as the pipe-smoking arms dealer; he was probably better suited to 'The Avengers' ( he appeared in the episode 'Silent Dust' ). David Lodge had previously played 'Porth' in 'The Night People', also directed by Robert Asher. The crashed plane in the jungle looks like the one in 'Reply Box No.666'.

A recurring theme was the villains getting killed by their own weapons - 'Dr.Voss' ( Rupert Davies' ) was blown up by his own fission gun in 'Project Zero', 'Stanton' ( James Maxwell ) and 'Minoes' ( Marne Maitland ) got a whiff of their own heart attack-inducing gas in 'The Silent Enemy', and here Hartington gets destroyed along with his guns. Poetic justice indeed.