With The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on the horizon, all things Indiana Jones are nearing an apex unseen since the late ‘80s.  On the DVD front then, it’s no surprise that the third and final volume of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones has hit the racks mere weeks ahead of the re-release of the famed archaeologist’s first three cinematic outings.  With World War I drawing to a close, 19-year-old Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flanery) must move past the carnage he witnessed in Europe’s trenches and start down the road that will make him the whip-snapping, wise-cracking fortune hunter with a heart that Harrison Ford brought to life in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  The seven adventures on tap in the prosaically titled “The Years of Change” do just that with tales that turn our protagonist toward a pursuit of relics, the first of many female conquests, and even teach him the skills to survive perilous truck chases through the roads of Cairo.

“Tales of Innocence,” which finds Indy romancing a young Italian beauty (Veronica Logan) and befriending a young Ernest Hemingway (Jay Underwood) is the weakest story in the set, but the charming author of A Farewell to Arms makes a worthy addition to the recurring ensemble that backs up Flanery’s Jones.  Indeed, Underwood’s cameo in a later episode makes for a lovely Easter egg for the attentive viewer.  The second story, “Masks of Evil” finds Indy infiltrating the castle of Vlad the Impaler in Transylvania and marks the first chronological appearance of the supernatural in the franchise.  Note Ben Burtt’s lightsaber effects making a rather obtrusive appearance on the soundtrack as Indy observes a peculiar electric phenomenon in the castle’s corridors.  As with the aged stereo audio adorning these programs, the re-use of such an iconic sound cue is a little beneath the standards one expects from Lucasfilm.

The revolting romantic dialogue and supernatural shenanigans aside, the final five installments represent some of the best educational drama the series has yet attained with Indy and his volume two sidekick Remy Baudouin (Ronny Coutteure) re-teaming to recover the Peacock’s Eye diamond in Indonesia.  Along with embarking the former on his adventurous career, “The Treasure of the Peacock’s Eye” also establishes our hero’s pursuit of the artifact that he will finally attain in the opening sequence of The Temple of Doom.  The following four installments see an unfair peace between Germany and the Allies established in “The Winds of Change.”  Lloyd Owen reprises his uncanny impression of Sean Connery as Professor Henry Jones, Sr. as Indy opposes his father’s wishes and sets off for the University of Chicago.  

 

When Lucas decided to excise George Hall’s framing sequences as a 93-year-old Jones that opened and closed the original episodic versions of these stories, he should have sparred Harrison Ford the indignity of playing a 50-year-old Jones in the framing sequence of “The Mystery of the Blues.”  The scenes stick out like a sore thumb, and Ford (who’d starred in The Last Crusade less than half a decade earlier) looks uncomfortable and laughable in a role few guessed he’d be reprising over ten years later.  Rub your Sankara Stone in the hopes that the actor fares better in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  Ford’s dalliance with the saxophone and Frederick Weller’s grating performance as Eliot Ness aside, “Blues” works as the beginning of a trilogy wherein the hapless undergraduate must raise his tuition money first as a waiter in a speakeasy, then as a stage manager on Broadway (in “Scandal of 1920”), and finally as a stuntman for John Ford (in “The Hollywood Follies”).  The middle episode finds Jones developing his affinity for womanizing with the innocent Peggy (Jennifer Stevens), the intellectual Kate (Anne Heche), and the affluent Gloria (Alexandra Powers).  The French farce that develops as Indy juggles the three ladies more than makes up for the weaknesses of earlier episodes in the script and the adventurer’s stint in Hollywood closes out the series in fine form with some familiar stunt work.

While the wealth of documentaries on subjects from prohibition to anthropology makes for a profound educational experience, it’s a shame that Lucasfilm didn’t see fit to produce a documentary on the globe-trotting series itself.  Indeed, episodes intended to be filmed as season three would have included appearances by Raiders of the Lost Ark villain Rene Belloq, Indy’s mentor Abner Ravenwood (soon to be embodied by John Hurt in the new film), and even a crystal skull.  The 16mm images are mostly free from dirt and scratches, but as with the preceding sets, some of the CGI is getting quite embarrassing by modern standards.  There was also a lack of careful color timing in some of the earlier installment s that saw skin tones varying quite a bit between shots.  No snoozing at the telecine, folks!  Quibbles aside, this boxed set marks the end of a long and arduous journey from Saturday nights on ABC to a DVD shelf near you and if, like me, you have a Peruvian fertility idol in your living room, you’re happy to have this artifact in your life.