Airwolf: Season Four

In a nutshell, the 4th season is horrendous. Truly awful in every way compared to the first 3 seasons. Its videotaped rather than filmed and it shows when they insert the recycled stock footage from the first 3 seasons, the "special effects" are just plain lame and the audio and rolling camera effect (to simulate flying) when they are in the chopper is terrible too. The acting, accents, and writing is just plain bad. I don't know how anyone who was a fan of the original version can stand to watch this one, let alone pay money for it!

It's about time they got this season of the new AIRWOLF series released on DVD, especially since Universal has already had AIRWOLFs first 3 seasons out on DVD since the Spring of 2007, despite the fact that this season wasn't as good as its predecessor since this season had no Stringfellow Hawke, no Dom (Ernest Borgnine), no Archangel(Alex Cord), & no Caitlyn O'Shannessy(Jean Bruce Scott) anymore in this revived series of this show after AIRWOLF was cancelled by CBS in the Spring of 1986, due to remaining low ratings.

Therefore, the USA Network decided to revive this series in the Winter of 1987 with the original cast & crew completley written out this abbreviated 4th Season with only Jan-Michael Vincent appearing in the 1st transitional episode for a last time when Dominic Santini(Ernest Borgnine) is killed off in an explosion & gets replaced by Michelle Scarabelli as Dom's niece(Jo Santini)who inherits Santini Air from Dom; the hard-nosed Michael Archangel(Alex Cord) was said to have suddenly been assigned overseas with the FIRM and got replaced by Agent Jason Locke(Anthony Sherwood)from a government agency called "The Company", but had no mention made about Caitlyn which was replaced by Air Force Major Mike Rivers(Geraint Wyn Davies).

Additionally, Hawke's long lost kid brother(St. John Hawke)who had been missing in action since Vietnam is suddenly revealed to be alive & well, having been working for many years under deep cover for American Intelligence & Locke's predecessor(Archangel) knew where St. John was the whole time and was just using the recluse Stringfellow to control Airwolf in the original series that ran on CBS from 1984 thru 1986.

St. John Hawke(Barry Van Dyke) was rescued & subsequently replaced his predecessor Stringfellow Hawke(Jan-Michael Vincent)to control Airwolf as the central character and production moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with a smaller budget that was less than 1/3 of the original CBS budget.

Therefore, the production crew no longer had access to the original Airwolf chopper, and all in-flight shots were recycled from earlier seasons; the original full-size studio mock-up was re-dressed & used for all interior shots leaving the new actors of this revived series little room to develop their characters along with the fact that this revived revived version of AIRWOLF flopped after only 24 episodes leading to this shows cancellation in the Summer of 1987, not to mention this season doesn't even compare to the original 3 season series from CBS on top of that either.

In the meantime, Universal will be releasing AIRWOLFs Fourth Season on DVD Tuesday February 1st, 2011 for you AIRWOLF fans out there.

Ah, the much maligned fourth season of the cult series Airwolf. When CBS cancelled the series due to high production costs and low ratings(and possibly Jan Michael-Vincent's alcoholism)the show had a total of 58 episodes. Not nearly enough for a successful syndication run. So, following the example of other early-cancelled shows(The 80's Twilight Zone, 80's Alfred Hitchcock Presents) a new, cheaply made season would be filmed in Canada, specifically Vancouver. These 24 episodes existed merely to bump up the total amount of episodes so Airwolf could be sold to more syndication markets. The belief was a series had to have more than 70 episodes to be aired on second run stations.
The expensive original cast had to go, but Vincent came back for the first episode Blackjack. Vancouver offered tax breaks that helped keep production cost down. With the exception of Barry Van Dyke in the lead and the occasional guest star, all the other cast and crew were Canadian. The show was filmed on 35mm film and then transferred to videotape where all the post work was done. This was a common technique in the 80'. Other shows like Star Trek The Next Generation(the first two seasons), Friday The 13th, The Series, etc were also filmed this way. It does occasionally give the show a cheaper video-looking quality in comparison to the earlier seasons.
Van Dyke is good in the lead, very much the squared jawed traditional hero. Geraint Wyn Davies is the joker of the group but has some good dramatic moments too. He seems to fly the copter more often than the Dyke. Michele Scarabelli is cute and tough. Much better than Jean Bruce Scott who was too annoying. Anthony Sherwood is a fine replacement for Archangel.
The other cast member not returning to this season was Airwolf itself. The copter had been sold off already so season 4 is loaded with stock footage. All 24 episodes were filmed in 6 months, a hectic schedule, and in what appeared to be the wettest year of Vancouver's history.
Despite all the limited resources, stock footage, reduced budget, bad weather, this final season of Airwolf is actually not that bad. Many of the stories are as good as the early seasons and there is a return to the international flair of the first season. The copter stock footage is reasonably well incorporated and the new cast do their best to put on a good show. Some of the guest stars are weak but all in all it just seems like everyone tried to make it work.
It sure is nice to finally have this season on DVD. Universal has done a great job cleaning up the print. With the film-to-video conversion this was never the prettiest looking show, but the episodes actually look great here. Colors are bright and sound is acceptable. Squeezing five shows on one disc is pushing it though. No extras sadly. Each single sided disc comes in a thin plastic case that holds two discs and has a printed summary of each episodes. Hilariously, some of the summaries are completely wrong!

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