The Untouchables (TV Series) Arsenal (1962) User Reviews

Handcrafted machine guns....

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 20 March 2016]

When the episode begins, the Moran and Nitti mobs of Chicago are about to go to war with each other. The Moran gang, by the way, is the same one that had battled Capone and which was attacked during the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre a few years earlier. To fight Moran, Nitti wants machine guns and although they are ubiquitous on the show, apparently they couldn't find any and they went in search of someone to make them. Unfortunately for Mr. Tobek, a Polish immigrant, he has the skills to make such guns...and the Nitti gang is going to get them one way or the other! Once they get them, the Tobeks clearly are expendable...unless Ness and his men get to them first.

This is an odd episode as it features a mobster living with the Tobeks and keeping them prisoner BUT also bonding with them. When he's ordered to kill them, he's really conflicted...making for an interesting scene. Additionally, the ending is uber-violent..the sort of stuff fans of the series loved! It also features yet another example of Ness using brutality and illegal tactics to get what he wants! Well worth seeing.

For what it's worth, the final epilogue in this episode by Walter Winchell said that the mobs never had more than a few machine guns...which is odd since if you count all the episodes of this show together, you've seen hundreds and hundreds of Thompson machine guns!!

Weaponry

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 31 December 2013]

Al Capone is off in Florida and as gangland lore has it, to give him an alibi for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Now Bugs Moran has gotten himself a load of Thompson submachine guns that can be purchased at any sporting goods store, no questions asked. Then a law got passed banning those but Frank Nitti running things for Capone has been cut short.

So Bruce Gordon as Nitti makes a temporary truce with Robert J. Wilke as Moran. In the meantime he has Karl Swenson come to him with a semi- automatic weapon that he says a gunsmith cousin from Poland can turn into a fully automatic item, just what the syndicate needs.

Frank Nitti is no fool and he turns the cousin Kevin Hagen and his wife Salome Jens into virtual slaves turning out those weapons so he can double cross Moran and wipe him out permanently.

Of course Robert Stack and his squad are on the hunt for the arsenals of both gangs.

Not a bad episode especially in light of today's gun control debate.