was this ever released on video?

No, it hasn't been released...but there's a gentleman named S.L. Kotar (if memory serves), who is the co-webmaster of a beautiful website (www.darrenmcgavin.com) honoring McGavin and his wife. Kotar can produce a dvd from a 16-mm print...the quality isn't great: the film has taken on a slight reddish tint, but you get used to it after a while. Check out e-Bay; just hit "McGavin Challenge" or something like that; he's always posting a copy for sale for about $25...and he ships fast. If you don't have an eBay account, get his e-mail from the McGavin website.

And yes, the movie's as good as you remember.

Here is another source for "The Challenge" (1970), starring Darren McGavin:

Video Search of Miami

http://www.vsom.com/SearchResults.asp?search=Darren+McGavin&anyallexact=all&submit=Search

Theres a lot of copies on ioffer.com.

I like the taste of play-doh in my mouth!

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Try freewebs.com/vhs2@dvd. No reddish tint. No commercial breaks. Video quality is a little better than fair, but a little less than good, somewhere in between, but very watchable. I wasn't disappointed. I don't think you will be disappointed either. The video quality gets even better about 8 or 10 minutes into the movie to near-good. I think the only way to better the quality from this reproduction is to find the master film and digitally remaster it.

It's a terrific movie that is long forgotten and I wish it wasn't. There's a number of name actors in it. Some of those actors are recognizable only by people over 45 years of age. But if you're a fan of Darren McGavin of "Kojak The Night Stalker" fame, or better yet, "Christmas Story", then you'll enjoy the movie even more. This is the only movie I can think of where Darren McGavin played a tough-guy, action hero.

Darren McGavin is Jacob Gallery, former U.S. Army captain, who was courtmartialled during the Vietnam War and dismissed from the service. Now working for himself as a mercenary for hire or big game hunter guide. The American government has agreed to dispatch only one man to a deserted South Pacific Island to engage in single combat with a single Asian soldier from an unnamed Asian country, probably Burma or Indonesia. The winning country gets to claim a crashed American nuclear satellite on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, instead of engaging in a major war to claim it. Both countries come to the same conclusion. Send a unorthodox warrior who thinks outside the box and will be completely unpredictable to his adversary. A conventionally trained, expert special forces warrior, no matter how good, is too predictable because his military training is regimented and predictable. This makes for an interesting confrontation between Gallery and his nemesis, played by the late Japanese American actor, Mako. Both men have similar personality characteristics and its like looking in the mirror for both men. Each is fully confident to the point of cockiness although you might still sense some deep underlying sense of insecurity within both men. Possibly that might arise from the fact that each man knows completely for certain that he is facing an adversary that is the equal to himself.

Belle and Blade War Video has it for $24.98.
http://www.warshows.com/Detail.bok?no=10434