A little while ago, I reviewed Volume One of The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, and my only real complaint is that it only contained the adventures of the very young Indiana Jones, which means the stories were more family oriented and almost Disney-like at times. However, The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two – The War Years focuses on the teenage Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flannery), and spits us right into World War I.
As I only received this DVD set a few days ago, along with about ten other DVDs I need to review, I’ll admit that I haven’t watched even close to a majority of the items in this set, but, like Volume One, the box set is full of good stuff. The DVD box set offers eight full-length Indiana Jones movies, which are re-edits of the original Young Indiana Jones Chronicles series, along with 13 hours of special features (according to the box).
The Indiana Jones movies it contains are:
- Trenches of Hell
- Demons of Deception
- Phantom Train of Doom
- Oganga, The Giver and Taker of Life
- Attack of the Hawkmen
- Adventures in the Secret Service
- Espionage Escapades
- Daredevils of the Desert
I’ve only watched Trenches of Hell thus far, and I must say it still holds up pretty well. Yes, the war sequences aren’t nearly as gritty as what you’d expect nowadays, but they still work and don’t come off as cheesy. Flannery makes a pretty good Indiana Jones, though I didn’t see much that resembled the hero in this first film. Still, this one seems less forced into appealing to the Indiana Jones mold than the films found on Volume One (the stories where Indiana is a little kid seemed to cater to crazy adventures, whereas these ones seem more grounded in reality).
Fans of Indiana Jones or the Indiana Jones Chronicles would be foolish not to snatch up anything they can get their hands on. Fans of the character (including me) often forget that there was a whole television show devoted to the dude, and that they were produced with pretty decent budgets for the time.
