THE SECRET SERVICE - "A Case For The Bishop" (1969)

Tonight's Weird Wednesday presentation is a very krazy British TV show from 1969 called "The Secret Service." There were a total of fourteen episodes. "The Secret Service" is a strange show because it's a mixture or real people and/or marionettes of the same people. I still haven't figured out if I like it or not, but it is definitely odd!

Stanley Unwin is Father Stanley Unwin, Yes, they named the lead character after the man who was playing him, and that pretty much explains the whole thing!

 

You can be the judge as to whether you think this puppet is a good likeness of Stanley or not!
 

 

Even though you probably never heard of him, Stanley Unwin was famous for speaking "Unwinese", a made-up language of gibberish, that for some uncanny reason still seems to make sense. If this video doesn't make you snicker, then I don't know what will!

This first episode was called "A Case For The Bishop."

 

"The Secret Service" was another puppet show that was created by the Andersons, Gerry and Sylvia. You know, the "Thunderbirds Are Go," "Captain Scarlett," "Stingray," and "Fireball XL5" people.

Some of their creations are so realistic, they can be quite creepy, like this guy, The Bishop who runs the whole show!

Oh, and there are always lots of strange and interesting devices like this!

"British Investigation Services Headquarters - Operation Priest"

Father Unwin unwinds outside and is catching some rays.

Groovy Building!

This is the Father's gardener Matthew Harding whose voice was that of Gary Files. Gary has done voice over work in many other Anderson shows too.

But Matthew isn't just a gardener, he's also the Father's right hand man, and the guy who makes things happen!!

 

This creepy bad guy puppet looks like he was based on the look of Charles Bronson to me!

Just push a few buttons on this handy dandy unit, and watch what happens to Mathew!

Matthew goes from being a full-sized man................

.................To a pipsqueak in just a matter of a few seconds!

And now he can conveniently be placed in this spy briefcase. It looks a little claustrophobic to me, but Matthew doesn't seem to mind!

The whole show bounces back and forth between real people action, and puppet action!

Tell me that the look of this puppet was not based on Martin Shaw...........

.......................Aka, Doyle of "The Professionals."

After all the serious stuff gets taken care of, Father Unwin goes back and is just a priest again.

"The Secret Service" is pretty wild, and thanks once again to Lord Litter in Berlin, 

you can watch them all yourself and come to your own conclusions, and you can do it all right 

HERE!!

THE OUTER LIMITS / "Demon with A Glass Hand" - 1964

Today's story is about a man from the future that has the duty to save humanity from an invasion by an evil race from a distant planet. Written by Harlan Ellison and directed by Byron (THE WAR OF THE WORLDS) Haskin.

It stars Robert (I SPY) Culp, Arlene (Spock's Vulcan bride in the original STAR TREK) Martel, Abraham (HEAD) Sofaer and Rex (PANIC IN YEAR ZERO) Holman.

The Aliens' names are Arch, Battle, Breech and Budge!

So, a man named Trent finds himself in the present day US, he cannot remember who he is or what he's doing there. His left hand is a computer made of glass, but the three middle fingers are missing which limits the amount of knowledge the hand can supply. He does know that he is there from the future to save humanity from an alien invasion...

Trent's in a closed off high rise building where the aliens have a teleportation mirror they are using to come through to Earth with from the future. After going into a room, Trent finds a woman, Consuelo, who doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. One alien tries to capture Trent but is killed when our hero pulls the chained pendant off from around his neck! He then tells Consuelo everything he knows, according to his computer hand (that talks).

The computer tells Trent that in order to attain the first of the three fingers that the aliens have possession of, he needs to let them kill him!! Which he does.

The head alien attaches the first finger, and Trent is put in the room with Consuelo for the time being. But, the computer tells Consuelo how to bring Trent back to life.

Then, in the process of taking the second finger from an alien who has just come through the mirror, Trent is knocked out , so, Consuelo yanks the pendant off the alien and he goes poof before he can stomp Trent.

Trent has the second finger now, him and Consuelo listen to what the computer has to say. It says that the aliens are searching for a wire that has the lives of 70 billion Earthlings from the future on it, the aliens want to destroy the wire and take over Earth for themselves. Then Consuelo admits that she has fallen in love with him, he doesn't know what to make of it...

There's no way to logically speak with the aliens, to them, it's all out war! Boy, that reminds me of a political party here in the present! Anyway, Trent pulls the leader's chain off and that's the end of that brick head!

Trent goes searching for the teleporting mirror to destroy it. After hearing some strange mechanical noise, he locates the room housing the mirror. The alien with the third finger comes through and Trent then shoots the mirror, rendering it useless.

One alien grabs the finger, runs out the door and gets into an elevator car to escape from Trent. The episode was shot in the Bradbury Building in downtown LA.

Trent ends up with the third finger, but...

Another alien has found the room him and Consuelo are hiding in and he knocks our guy through a window where he tries to choke him out. Fortunately, Consuelo has been hiding out of sight outside the window and she pulls yet another chain from the neck of an alien, saving Trent again!

He gets her back inside where they listen to the final message about where the wire is. Well, it's inside Trent's body, because he's a robot, the reason he didn't die when the aliens shot him.

This thing's complicated - Not only did the human race put themselves on the wire, they also released a lethal dose of radiation with a half life of 200 years on Earth to kill every alien, then return 200 years later to restart life anew!!

But alas, Consuelo is devastated by the fact Trent's a robot. She quietly gets up, walks out the door and...

Disappears into the night. A sad ending for me...

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET - "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!" (1953)

Tonight's feature presentation is a real Smoking Saturday Night Special, and I mean that literally!

The title sounds innocent enough, but "Pickup On South Street" is a real mean film, so let's talk about something else!

Back in 1953, cigarettes and tobacco were just about as common as masks are today! People smoked everywhere, restaurants, clubs, hospitals, and it was something that was just taken for granted. The people who were intelligent enough not to smoke were the ones who were the weirdos. It was not even uncommon for Doctors to smoke! 

For years, cigarette machines were as common as phone booths! These days, you're not likely to find either one except in a bar or a casino!

Roosevelt included farm subsidies in the New Deal, and tobacco farmers were getting paid from the 1920's well into the 2000's, all in the name of stimulating the economy. Who cares that smoking was, and has, been killing almost as many people annually as Covid-19 for decades on end!

That's just the way it goes, tough shit!

 

Miss Ohio 1945, Jean Peters was married to Howard Hughes from 1957 to 1971 and basically disappeared during those years! She died in the year 2000, from leukemia, not lung cancer.

Richard Widmark also did not die from cancer, but lived to be 93 years old, and died from complications after falling down one day.

An odd pairing at best, back when people of different political ilks could still get along and work together, Jean Peters was a staunch Republican, and....................

.......................Richard Widmark was a super liberal Democrat, but at least they had that one common bond....................Smoking!

Smoking in cafes and restaurants was the worst, and it's only been the last twenty years that it has been banned in most public places. When we were kids, you could smoke in the local movie theaters as long as you were not in the main seating section, like that stopped the whole place from filling up with smoke anyway.

What an inexpensive way to kill some time in a film. A 'smoking a cigarette' scene must have been a scriptwriter's dream. I'll bet five to ten minutes of this film is just smoking in some form or another.

You had to be really bad, to be cool enough to use a cigarette holder, and not be ridiculed by your peers.

And when cigarettes don't stink up the room enough, there's always cigars to do the job!

"Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette) - Tex Williams and his Western Caravan circa 1947.

Murvyn (Voodoo Island) Vye as Police Captain Tiger also smokes his way through the whole film. Smoking, what a great way to be totally obnoxious without ever having to say anything.

Jean Peters' character's name is Candy!

I guess it all makes sense, or it's just one big lie, it's your choice!