Though this is a blog about movies I thought I would highlight some enjoyable TV show episodes that can watched on DVD as an alternative to the usual Halloween viewing fare.
Dragnet: The Big Girl- From the fifties version of the show, Sgt Joe Friday and his partner Frank Smith track down a cross dressing hitchhiker who robs and kills men who give him lifts. Though full of the standard rat-a-tat dialog delivery and methodical showing of police procedure, the ending is a chilling sequence with the detectives tracking their suspect though a shadowy building and engaging in a slam bang shoot out.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea: Turn Back the Clock- Before it morphed into a sea monster of the week show Voyage was one of the best sci-fi shows on the air mixing cold war espionage, deep sea rescues and the occasional mad scientist/ sea monster plots in their first two seasons. This episode chronicles Admiral Nelson taking the crew of the Seaview on an Arctic rescue mission and discovering a lost continent full of dinosaurs. Producer Irwin Allen’s reuse of footage from his film Lost World (1961), which ironically also starred David Heddison allows the episode to have a much bigger looking budget than usual for sixties TV.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.: The Gazebo in the Maze Affair- Another show that started out really good before falling into campy cheesiness. This episode was a smooth blend of genuine suspense and light humor as maniacal George Sanders and his cheerfully homicidal wife Jeanette Nolan kidnap U.N.C.L.E. agent Illya Kuryakin in order to lure his hated enemy Napoleon Solo into rescuing Illya from Sanders’ dungeon, where he plans to do them both in. Though their escape through a trap laden garden maze while being hunted by a tiger is an extremely tense laden sequence, nothing tops the frightening scene of Nolan’s upbeat demonstration to Sanders on the proper way to inflict torture with a branding iron on a cowering Bonnie Franklin as the proposed victim.
Lost In Space: Follow the Leader- A surprisingly serious episode from late in the campy hit’s first season with Professor Robinson getting possessed by an alien entity, who at first seems to want to help the Robinsons fix their ship and get back to Earth, only to later reveal a more sinister intent. The episode’s climax where the entity tries to force the Professor to kill his son Will Robinson, proves that when it wanted to this show could produce true character based dramatic tension.
The Wild Wild West: The Night of the Druid’s Blood- One of the few Man From U.N.C.L.E. knock offs to actually outlast it’s inspiration and most of the other spy shows of the sixties. The reason? No matter how weird things got it never forgot that at it’s core it was a western (something the Will Smith/ Kevin Kline version never quite grasped) and there was never a weirder episode than this one. Frontier Secret Service Agents Jim West and Artemus Gordon investigate the strange spontaneous combustion death of West’s old college professor, which leads them to a witch’s sabbath located under a graveyard and led by magician Don Rickels (who is surprisingly effective as the sinister cult leader) where they eventually uncover the Frankensteinian plot of an evil genius to harvest his victim’s brains for their scientific knowledge.
The Saint: The House on Dragon’s Rock- One of the most successful and long running imported shows from England, it ran for almost the entire decade of the sixties, and had plots that bounced around from standard mysteries, science fiction, espionage, and heist/ sting operation against criminals. Based on one of author Leslie Charteris’ stories the episode was one the few forays into genuine horror as famed adventurer Simon Templar answers a call for help from an old friend to investigate strange deaths in the English countryside and uncovers a mad scientist creating giant ants that if left unchecked could destroy the world.
The Monkees: I Was a Teenage Monster- Halloween always needs a good horror spoof and the Monkees did several, but this one was one of their best. Hired by mad scientist John Hoytt to teach his creature Richard Kiel to play music, he really intends to zap their musical ability into his creature’s body and make millions. Full of quips and sight gags, plus the obligatory chase at the end, the funniest moment is Kiel’s hysterical effeminately gestured imitation of an interior decorator during one of many failed attempts the gang has of getting their musical talent back.
Starsky & Hutch: The Vampire- A straight out horror plot played perfectly serious from the seventies action hit. Detectives Dave Starsky and Ken Hutchinson investigate a series of bizarre murders where the victims are all bit on the neck and blood is missing from their bodies. Clues lead to crippled ballet teacher John Saxon who turns out not to be crippled and was part of a devil worshiping cult. His murders are part of a dementia inspired satanic ritual to bring his dead wife back to life.
Magnum P.I.: The Woman On the Beach- A long running show that continually played around with the genre conventions on what a detective show was supposed to be like and is still one of the most beloved and popular detective shows today. You could always count on a few episodes every season that had a bit of spookiness in it, and in this one they haul out the old chestnut of the mysterious ghost. Magnum pal Rick meets a beautiful woman on the beach and spends most of the night with her. She disappears in the morning and Rick asks Magnum to find her, where she turns out to supposedly have been a woman who was murdered almost forty years ago and is believed to haunt that stretch of beach.
Firefly: Bushwacked- Joss Whedon’s short lived sci-fi western was probably his best and most overlooked work (Okay I admit it, I’m a die hard Brown Coat), an intelligent adventure show that focused more on character than action. This was their creepiest episode with Captain Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of Serenity coming upon an abandoned space ship. Preparing to loot it they discover that it was attacked by Reavers, savage nomadic pirates that attack ships for the sole purpose of mutilating people. The lone survivor of the attack is so traumatized that he becomes a Reaver himself and goes on a murderous rampage, stalking Malcolm through the vast empty corridors of the abandoned ship.
