KNIGHT RIDER - "Halloween Knight" (1984)

 

This evening's Countdown To Halloween Saturday Night Special is episode number five from season number three of "Knight Rider," and indeed, special it is!!

 

This episode's title is a play on words called "Halloween Knight," and aired on October 28, 1984.

The star of the show is the car named KITT, but David Hasselhoff, better known as "The Hoff," is the human star playing a super hero detective named Michael Knight! The Hoff is second in coolness only to The Shat, and both of them seem to be incredibly good sports!

Patricia McPherson as Bonnie Barstow was not in the first two episodes, but after that she was in all of the sixty-two remaining episodes except for two, but she still got credit in those two.

Just to make sure that you know this is a Halloween episode, there are inserts like this.

Bonnie has just moved into a new apartment, and is not feeling well, when she sees this scene through her apartment window. Because she is weak, she passes out, and then is not sure whether this really happened or not!

This episode has literally everything. To start with, it's got a guy in a gorilla suit!

 

And....... it's got a witch!

This shot cracks me up. The Hoff is in really good shape, but from this angle, the reflection off the hood of the car makes it look like he's got a big beer gut!

KITT is an acronym for "Knight Industries Two Thousand, and this car is like Alexa on steroids. Here Michael Knight has KITT analyze some gorilla fur he found.

In this shot The Hoff shows that he is not just some one dimensional pretty boy!

Just weird!!

"SHUT UP! 

Shut up I say.........Just don't talk if you're not going to tell the truth!"

Whoever is in the gorilla suit tries to unsuccessfully run Michael over!

The guy who lives here is extremely creepy, but he does have a cool M.C. Escher print hanging on his wall, so I kind of forgive him to a degree.

Whoever is trying to freak Bonnie out goes to all the trouble to hook up this 3D holographic projector in her apartment ala "Terror In The Haunted House," except in color!

Before this show even started, they make it very clear that this is a Universal production, and then they decided to double down on it by throwing the "Psycho" house, aka "The Bates Motel" into the mix! Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that the aforementioned creepy guy's name was Norman Baines! What a crazy idea it must have been to get "The Bates Motel" and KITT in the same shot!

You just can't have a good costume party without at least two patriotic clowns, and a guy in a tux with a pumpkin head!

That's Norman Baines inside the pumpkin head!

And then to completely cement the whole Universal deal, they end the show at a drive-in where they are showing one of the most iconic Universal monsters of all time, "Creature From The Black Lagoon!"

"Creature from The Black Lagoon" was originally in 3D so it's pretty legit that they show the kids watching the movie wearing 3D glasses!

KITT and Michael were in hot pursuit of the suspects hassling Bonnie, so what could possibly be a better 3D effect than a car bursting through the drive-in movie screen coming straight at the viewers?

In 1984, my head was in a completely different place, and I wasn't the biggest "Knight Rider" fan in the world, but recently my good buddy Lord Litter reminded me about this show, and from his German perspective, this show was like some pretty cool Euro trash, and I have to admit, that right down to the excellent music by Don Peake, he is once again 100% correct!

Catch it if you can!