“Untamed & Uncut” DVD Review

• Release Date: February 24, 2009
• Publisher: Animal Planet
• Price: $11.49 on Amazon.com (Buy It)
• Rating: Not Rated
• Run Time: 163 minutes
• Special Features: None
• Genre: Nature

I don’t watch a lot of Animal Planet programming so I went into this review completely blind, having no idea what “Untamed & Uncut” was even about. What I found was an average collection of animal attacks that wasn’t all that great but could be worth watching if you are into that kind of thing.

Thirteen episodes of “Untamed & Uncut” aired on Animal Planet last year but unfortunately only four of them made their way onto this disc. I don’t like when DVD releases are incomplete and I had to take a few points off my score because of this. The four episodes included are:

• “Cobra Attack”-A cobra attacks an animal trainer. In addition, a shark attacks two fishermen and a black bear climbs up a power pole.
• “Double Great White Attack”-A surfer has the horrible misfortune of being attacked by not one, but two sharks at the same time. Also, a mule race in Brazil goes bad and an alligator wrestler has the worst experience of his life.
• “Cheetah Attack”-A TV host is attacked by a cheetah, an elephant goes crazy, and a skiing dog survives a 200-foot tumble. No, I’m not kidding about the last one.
• “Elephant Shock”-An elephant wraps her trunk around an electrical wire, a bull terrorizes a crowd of people, and a group of rescuers attempt to save a baby polar bear caught in a trap.

Video and audio quality are both disappointing but passable. Some of the footage isn’t much better than YouTube clips but the computer graphic imaging the series uses looks pretty good. Since the YouTube-like footage is minimal, overall video quality isn’t too bad.

If you are interested in purchasing this release, take a look at the episode descriptions. If any of those interest you, you’ll probably enjoy this four-episode collection. Otherwise, I would probably pass.