Knight Rider - Knight of the Phoenix

Knight Rider - Knight of the Phoenix
Original Airdate: September 26, 1982

 Hoff Behind the Wheel

Episode Description:

When police officer Michael Long is shot and left for dead, his dying body is found by the Foundation for Law and Government.  Rather than take him to a hospital, they abduct him to the mansion of weirdo billionaire Wilton Knight, who has his own team of doctors perform plastic surgery on Long without his consent, in order to make him look identical to Wilton's evil criminal son Garthe Knight.  To make up for this horrible violation, they give a Michael a new identity as Michael Knight, and a talking car with super powers.  Michael is then able to use his new face and super-car to bring his own "murderers" to justice, and then teams up with the Foundation to fight crime as "Knight Rider."

Wait, what?  They brought in OSCAR GOLDMAN to perform Michael's reconstructive surgery!  Does that mean Michael is BIONIC?  If so, does that mean that Michael is performing all of the Turbo Boosts and stuff himself, and his car is just a regular Trans Am?  That would make the talking KITT just a hallucination of his brain, which can't cope with the idea that he has a different face AND super powers!  Hopefully I just blew your mind, readers.

So, this is the first episode of Knight Rider, and it's some fun, but strange, stuff.  First off, they did a great job of casting the actor who plays Michael Long, before he gets plastic surger-fied into David Hassellhoff.  The resemblance is close enough that you can believe it's the same guy just looking a little different.  The whole plastic surgery thing is weird, though.  The part where he is made to look exactly like Wilton Knight's evil son Garthe is not actually mentioned in the episode, I think that's actually a retcon that they added in season 2.  Instead, they claim they didn't know what he looked like and the surgeons had to reconstruct his face taking a best guess as to how he should look.  But that is nonsense, they knew he was police officer Michael Long, certainly there must be drivers license photos, other photos, fellow police officers who knew him and could describe him... it just doesn't make any sense.

David Hasselhoff summons every ounce of emotion from his actors' toolbox to show the confusion and dismay his character feels to wake up with a new face.

Second, Michael Long drove a Trans Am, and when he sees KITT, he is convinced that it is his Trans Am.  But it's clearly not the same car.  Long's car did not have a glowing red Cylon eye on the front, or a crazy high-tech dash board.  Does he just assume that every black Trans Am he sees is his?  This also doesn't make sense.

In a darkened room, KITT's Cylon eye stares at Michael... framed between his legs.  This seems oddly eroticized.  Are we sure that Michael and KITT are just friends?

Of course, I'm complaining abou logic in a "buddy cop" show where one of the buddies is a magical* talking car with super powers, so I'm clearly missing the point.  It's just a bunch of fun, 1980s nonsense, and on that score the show is a great success.

* Yes, I know, it's not "magic," it's science fiction.  But it's not really SCIENCE science-fiction, now is it?  The car basically does whatever nonsense they need it to do from episode to episode.

DEVO - SPEED RACER


More screencaps after the break...

Hanna Barbera Horror

Hanna Barbera's adventure, fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero cartoons often explored horror movie subjects, although in a generally safe, kid-friendly way.  Let's enjoy a few highlights for Halloween!

Frankenstein Jr. - The Shocking Electrical Monster

"Frankenstein Jr. in:  The Shocking Electrical Monster"

Frankenstein Jr. - The Shocking Electrical Monster
Orignal airdate:  September 10, 1966

A vampiric mad scientist named Dr. Shock turns his lab assistant Igor into a giant electrical monster.  The monster then goes on a Godzilla-like rampage through the ocean and city before kid scientist Buzz Conroy and his giant robot Frankenstein Jr. save the day.  This has some great looking horror movie visuals with the mad scientist, his lab, and the monster.  The scariest part however is the fact that Buzz's Dad lets him ride around on the back of a flying robot.  Think about it... would you let a child  ride on top of a moving car?  Or a bus?  Or a train?  Well this is actually more like riding on top of a flying plane, and with no seat-belts, or straps, or anything.  Face it, that kid would be DEAD.

Dr. Shock and The Shocking Electrical Monster Plot Their Wave of Violence

UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED (Part 1)

More exciting screencaps from this episode await you below!

Space Ghost - Creature King

"Space Ghost in: Creature King"

Space Ghost - Creature King
Orignal airdate:  September 24, 1966

This one has another crazy looking mad scientist, named "Creature King."  Space Ghost's sidekicks Jan, Jace, and Blip crash land on a planet, and are soon attacked by a giant red SPACE APE. They escape the mad monkey, but then find themselves captured by SPACE BATS!  They then find themselves CHAINED UP IN THE DUNGEON of Creature King, an alien mad scientist with a menagerie of weird alien monsters.

A Menagerie of Weird Alien Monsters.

Teenage Sidekicks in Bondage

More exciting screencaps from this episode await you below!

Dino Boy in the Lost Valley - The Vampire Men

"Dino Boy in the Lost Valley in: The Vampire Men"

Dino Boy in the Lost Valley - The Vampire Men
Orignal airdate:  December 3, 1966

Dino Boy (a kid trapped in a "Land of the Lost" style valley where cavemen, dinosaurs, and weird monsters exist) decides to build a homemade kite and then strap himself to it an fly around for fun.   Naturally he crashes in to a mountain, because of course he does.  Safety tip: DO NOT STRAP YOURSELF TO A KITE AND FLY AROUND LIKE AN IDIOT.  However, the story does not end with him dying on the mountain with broken bones and a cracked skull.  Because the mountain is full of caves populated with VAMPIRE MEN.  Half-men, half-bats!  So they take them to their Vampire King to kill him and eat him, I guess.  But then Dino Boy's caveman buddy Ugh shows up and "bats" the bat-people with his big wood club.

Vampire Men Out for Blood!

UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED (Part 2)

More exciting screencaps from this episode await you below!

Space Ghost - The Haunted Space Station

"Space Ghost in: The Haunted Space Station"

Space Ghost - The Haunted Space Station
Orignal airdate:  September 26, 1981

Now we jump forward from the 1960s to the 1980s for the relaunched version of Space Ghost.  Space Ghost and his crew get a distress call from a space station and go to investigate.  The space station is shaped like a GIANT SPIDER WEB!  Seriously, if you design your space station to look like a spider-web, you're pretty much begging for trouble, like being attacked by a GIANT SPACE SPIDER, or something.  But in this case, the station has been attacked by a SPACE VAMPIRE, who has turned the crew of the station into ASTRO ZOMBIES!  And if that sounds familiar, it's because I reviewed and episode of "Buck Rogers" earlier this month called "Space Vampire," that basically had the same plot.

Grizzled Face of an Astro Zombie

These people have only been Astro Zombies for ONE day, yet they are already dressed in rags!  Man, Zombies are TOUGH on clothes.

More exciting screencaps from this episode await you below!

The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians - The Fear

The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians - The Fear

The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians - The Fear
Orignal airdate:  October 2, 1985

The Scarecrow stumbles upon Batman's greatest fear when he tries to flee down Crime Alley, the MURDER site of Bruce Wayne's parents.  Batman usually uses his iron will to resist Scarecrow's Fear Rays, but in Crime Alley he breaks down in TERROR.  This was the first time the murder of the Waynes was shown outside of the comic books, and it is remarkably intense and mature for an episode of The Super Friends.  The episode is filled with rain, lightning, SKULLS, and shadows.  It's probably the best episode of the Super Friends ever, and it was written by Alan Burnett who would later go on to produce Batman: The Animated Series, and you can definitely see the roots of that series start to develop here.

The walls close in on Wonder Woman, as seen through the mouth of a skull!

UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED (Part 3)  Oh, man, now even Batman and Robin are getting in on the act, "Ghost Riding" on top of Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet!  At least Robin is holding on for dear life!  Batman is standing upright, not holding on to anything!  Dudes, in real life, you would both be DEAD.  Seriously, you two are supposed to be role models to little kids for Pete's sake!  FOR SHAME.

More exciting screencaps from this episode await you below!

More screencaps after the break...

Galactica 1980 - "The Night the Cylons Landed"

Galactica 1980

"The Night the Cylons Landed"
Galactica 1980 - Season 1, Episodes 7 and 8
Originally aired April 13 and 20, 1980

The Night the Cylons Landed

The Cylons crash land on Earth on Halloween, and it's up to Ponch and Jon... err, Troy and Dillon, to save the Earth from invasion, with help from special guest star Wolfman Jack!

"Hey kiddies!  Don't blow your stack, I'm Wolfman Jack!  Now pass me some crack and stand the hell back!  Awooo!!!"

I really hated the show Galactica 1980 when it originally aired when I was a kid, but I thought it might be fun to go back and watch the Halloween episode as part of the Countdown to Halloween.  I was wrong.  This show was boring and painful to watch.  The original Battlestar Galactica was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid, but it's sequel/spin-off/continuation (whatever you want to call it) is so terrible.

The Cylons Crash a Halloween Party

A quick history.  The original series Battlestar Galactica was cancelled after one season.  The show was a ratings success and very popular, but it was also extremely expensive to produce (I think it was the most expensive TV series ever made at that point in time).  Producer Glen Larson had some ideas on how to cut costs and do the show on a somewhat smaller budget for season 2, but ABC decided it was still too expensive to produce and canceled the show in April of 1979.

However, ABC had a change of heart later in the year, mostly due to massive outcry from the fans, and approached Glen Larson about reviving the series at a much lower budget.  But at this point, the sets had been torn down, and the cast had been let out of their contracts, and at a much smaller budget they had no way of rebuilding them and re-signing everyone.  They went through a few ideas about how to bring the show back.  Originally it was going to be set 5 years later than the original series (which would help to explain the loss of many of the original cast and sets), and morph into a time travel series on planet Earth, with Baltar traveling in time into Earth's past, altering history, and Starbuck and Apollo following him into the past to correct it.  But Dirk Benedict (Starbuck) had already signed on for another acting role and was unavailable, and Richard Hatch (Apollo) supposedly wasn't a fan of the script.  So then they decided to set it 30 years past the original, and have a now grown-up Boxey (Apollo's adopted son on the original series), now known as Captain Troy, as the new lead with a new character, Lieutenant Dillon, filling the Starbuck role.

They filmed the time-traveling pilot episode, but then ABC decided that a time-travel series would still be too expensive to film every week and decreed that all the future episodes had to take place on modern day Earth.  At this point the series would be like a cross between CHiPs and Knight Rider, with the two leads criss-crossing the country and getting into adventures on their sci-fi tech flying motorcycles. This was pretty far removed from the original concept of "Battlestar Galactica" but it still could have worked as a premise for a series.  But then ABC decided they wanted to air the show on Sundays at 7:00 PM, which they considered to be the "Children's Hour" of primetime.  They forced the producers to add children to the cast, which meant the two space heroes now had to care for a group of super-powered school kids known as "The Super-Scouts."  Further, ABC decreed there could be absolutely no violence on the series, even against robots, and all of the lead characters had to be clean-cut, wholesome, and morally upstanding.  This lead to a really wishy-washy series with no drama or excitement.  By making it so sanitized for the kiddies, they made it so no kid would want to watch it.  The first episode premiered to great ratings from an audience hungry for more Battlestar Galactica, but the ratings dropped every week as the audience saw what they were actually getting, and the show was cancelled after 10 episodes.

Dillon and Troy take the Super Scouts to the Movies

In this episode a Cylon ship crashes on Earth, and two Cylons survive the crash.  One is the typical robotic Cylon Centurion that we knew from the original series.  But the other is a new model of Cylon that can pass for a human being.  This idea would later be used on the 2000s Battlestar Galactica remake series.  On any other day, these two would cause a sensation being seen on the streets, but they had the good luck to crash land on Earth during Halloween, so everyone just thinks they are in costume.  They get picked up as hitchhikers by a pair of radio executives on the way to a Halloween party, where radio DJ Wolfman Jack will be in attendance.  The Cylons then plan to kidnap Wolfman Jack and force him to take them to his radio station, where they will use the radio to broadcast a message to the Cylon fleet in space alerting them to the location of Earth, which will then cause an invasion.

The Humanoid Cylon Shoots a Deathray out of his Hand and Kills the Microwave!

Wolfman Jack was one of Americas's most famous radio DJs during the 1970s and '80s.  I was certainly familiar with him as a kid, but I don't think I ever actually heard him on the radio.  It seemed like he was more famous for being famous back then, kind of like Paris Hilton or the Kardashians.  The two songs that Wolfman plays on the radio on this episode were a disco version of the old Buddy Holly song "That'll be the Day" and the theme song to the TV show "Bosom Buddies."  If that is an example of the sort of music he played, I can see why I never listened to him back in the day.

The Metaluna Mutant

There were a few minor bits of enjoyment I got from this episode.  There was a scene where Troy and Dillon take the Super Scouts to the movies to watch "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and don't understand special effects and costumes, and think the film shows real aliens and spacecraft.  That was fun for 30 seconds.

Planting the Seed for "Knight Rider" in Glen Larson's Brain

And there was an odd bit when the Cylons were picked up as hitchhikers.  Driving the car was actor William Daniels who went on to voice KITT on Knight Rider.  Knight Rider was also a Glen Larson production, and they reused the roving red Cylon "eye" and sound effect it made on KITT.  So when William Daniels was talking, but the with the Cylon in the back seat making the KITT sound effect, it made for a strange effect, like if you closed your eyes you could be watching some lost episode of Knight Rider, albeit one that didn't make any sense.  That was also fun for 30 seconds.

They seriously put a disclaimer on at the end.  Just in case someone watched this and thought the Earth was really getting invaded by Cylons.

So I had about one minute of enjoyment from this, and it was a two-part episode, so we're talking about 94 minutes of actual viewing time.  Even the Halloween setting wasn't enough to rescue this from the turd bin of TV history.

More screencaps after the break...

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - "Space Vampire"

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

"Space Vampire"
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - Season 1 Episode 14
Originally aired January 3, 1980

Space Vampire

Buck and Wilma are dropping off Twiki for a tune-up at a space station, when a derelict space-freighter crashes into the station.  The ship is the I.S. Demeter, carrying 8 crew members and 1 passenger, with all on board appearing to be dead.  The passenger was a bounty hunter named Helson.  If these names sound a little familiar, that's because "Demeter" was the name of the ship that Dracula traveled from Transylvania to England on in the novel "Dracula," and "Helson" is derived from Professor Van Helsing.  That's right, this episode is Buck Rogers vs. Space Dracula!

Space Vampire Gets Zapped by Buck

Believing the people on the I.S. Demeter to be the victims of a disease, the space station is quarantined.  Soon enough, the people on the space station start falling victim to the same malady, which is a state of suspended animation closely resembling death.  But the real threat is not a disease but a space alien known as a "Vorvon," which sucks the life energy out of it's victims' necks using two extended fingers.  Unfortunately, the monster can only be seen by it's intended victims, and it has set it's sights on Wilma.  The creature also has the ability raise his victims from their "death" and have them serve him as zombies.  Fun stuff. 

Buck is Attacked by an Astro Zombie

Most of the episode has the alien stalking Wilma, while Buck Rogers begins to suspect that he is fighting a Space Vampire, but has a hard time convincing anyone else that it is real.  He eventually lays a trap to destroy the Vorvon, but by then Wilma has been enthralled by the vampire and she gets caught in the trap as well, forcing Buck to make a last-ditch effort to save her life.

Wilma's Eyes Glow With Evil Energy

All in all, it's just a quick retelling of the Dracula story in sci-fi drag, but it is colorful, fast-paced and entertaining.  If you're a fan of horror and 1970s and '80s sci-fi cheese, there are worse ways to spend and hour this Halloween season.  

Talk to the Hand

More screencaps after the break...

Kung Fury

Just watched Kung Fury, an awesome "1980s" action movie about a time traveling Kung Fu cop... David Hasselhoff sings the theme song. Total flashback to the early days of VHS video rentals, when the video stores were full of cheap, weird, and sleazy movies that no one had ever heard of, but you'd rent them anyway because the cover art looked cool.  The full 30 minute movie is available to watch for free on YouTube.  Check it out: