SPACE PATROL U. K. / "The Robot Revolution" - 1963

Here's an episode from the British version of SPACE PATROL that ran from 1963-68. The original US series ran from 1950-55, weird, so what's going on here?.. The original name is PLANET PATROL! Anyway, I digress. This has nothing to do with Gerry Anderson.

It starts with the Galasphere ship landing on Mars with our gang inside.

Time to relax from the trip and chat with old friends.

Professor Heggerty has just obtained a new singing and dancing plant from Uranus! His talking pet bird Gabbler is fascinated by the thing! Talking plant from Uranus...

Captain Raeburn and two crew members are there to check out the underwater farms beneath the sea with the help of over 1000 robots. They take their hover boards out to the location and swim in some awkward looking diving gear.

Then, there's an underwater earthquake and for some crazy reason the robots go haywire!

They conk people over the head and then take over the transit lines.

I just love this shot of that robot on a mission of mayhem.

Professor Heggerty monitors one of the rampaging robots attacking Marla, but what can he do, there are so many of them!

Gabbler is taking care of the plant from Uranus when one of the out of control robots enters the room. But when the plant starts singing and dancing, the robot just stops moving and falls right over!

Professor Heggerty gets a brilliant idear and records the plant from Uranus's singing and then plays it over all the loud speakers!

And sure enough, the robots eat their own dust.

After the ordeal, the gang relaxes and they chat it up again, another adventure in the books.

Giving some credit to the men behind the scenes. Have a good week guys.

KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER EP 01 - "The Ripper" (1974)

 

Here's a pretty cool Saturday Night Special for you, the first episode of the 1974 TV show "Kolchak: The Night Stalker."

 

Before he died in 2006 at the age of 83, Darren McGavin managed to rack up 184 credits. He was a busy man, and besides Kolchak, he was the lead man in 79 episodes of "Mike Hammer" and was in the great film "Mission Mars" with Nick Adams, just to name a couple.

 

This first episode was called "The Ripper," because there's a modern day Jack the Ripper on the loose in Chicago, but is it a new guy or can it possible be the original Jack the Ripper even though he should have been long gone many decades earlier.

You might think, as is often the case in a show like this, that Carl Kolchak is a detective, but he's not, he's a newspaper reporter!

 

Carl is a free thinker, and because of it, he gets a lot done, but at the same time, he's in trouble most of the time for getting involved in things that aren't really his business!

Of course the first place The Ripper hits is a strip club!

The crimes of The Ripper are fast and furious, and just like the original, all the victims are women!

The next victim was a contestant in the "Miss Physical Therapist" beauty contest.

Unlike my Editor Lord Litter, who reminded me to watch this show, Carl and his editor are constantly going at each other! Simon (Psycho) Oakland as Tony Vincenzo was no slouch himself, and has 162 credits that include "West Side Story," two episodes of "The Twilight Zone," and one episode of "The Outer Limits."

Kolchak really wants to go after this Ripper guy, but Tony assigns him to pick up the duties for the "Dear Emily" advice column where people write in and ask annoying questions, while the regular writer is out.

Pursuing The Ripper, Carl sees some very strange things that just don't make sense. The guy can leap down off of multi-storied buildings without getting hurt, appears to have super human strength, and may possibly even be invulnerable!

At one encounter Carl takes a picture, but the film doesn't show anything at all.

Who or what can this Ripper actually be?

Next stop for The Ripper is the "Sultan's Palace" massage parlor, and it's not because he's feeling stiff!

This gal is not impressed with The Ripper's cane, but she will be soon.

Kolchak goes to the massage parlor to check it out for himself after that girl is murdered, and he gets arrested by this blonde female undercover cop for being a perv.

Thanks to Kolchak, they zap The Ripper with electricity, and are finally able to bring him in, but he uses his uncanny inhuman strength to knock the jail cell door right out of the wall!

Kolchak remembers that one of the letters to Emily that he had previously ignored, was from an old lady who said that the guy who lived across the street from her was a weirdo, and suddenly it all made sense, but the only other thing he remembers is that it was in a blue envelope, so they comb through all the letters looking for it, so they can get the envelope.

Kolchak goes to the dilapidated house described and breaks in, and when The Ripper returns home, Kolchak hides in the closet!

Most of the show is at night and it's very dark, and this is the first and last time we actually get to see the face of The Ripper.

Will Kolchak live through this harrowing experience? 

Well, he better, because there are still nineteen more episodes.

LIGHTS OUT / "The Angry Birds" - 1951

Here's a weird one for you, it's all about how an act of revenge that turns into a real nightmare when birds fight back...

It stars John (IN COLD BLOOD) Forsythe, Constance (GOG) Dowling, Vaughn (PSYCHO) Taylor, Warren (SHOCK TREATMENT) Parker, James (TORPEDO RUN) Winslow and Frank (Voiced 3 cartoons in the forties) Gallop.

Frank immediately gets in your face and asks you a few personal lead in questions before he fades to black before the story starts.

Waldo Bryan is a talented artist but has left the big city to live in the country where his attention has turned to illustrating birds (he's obsessed with them) instead of making lots of money from his usual publisher. His wife Adele is resentful, she misses the money and the big city social scene.

What's bothering Waldo is that his canary is not in its cage and he cannot understand how it escaped. And, why did Adele let their cat outside without its collar with bells on it, so that the birds can fly away before the cat can get them. In other words, he loves birds.

His neighbor Mr. Hanson pays a visit and notices that the birds are acting very strange with all their chatter. They never show the birds but play a soundtrack with lots of bird sounds.

Then Waldo notices his pet canary in the water bowl, apparently killed by their cat.

Waldo comes back into the house to ask Adele why she let this happen. Well, because she wants to go back to the city. She also tells him that he's a weak person, and has the heart of a bird!

His publisher pays him a visit to ask him to come back to the city, for Adele's sake, she just isn't a country girl and all...

There's a commotion outside, Waldo and Mr. Hanson try and get the cat out from under the steps because it has a bird and is mauling it unmercifully.

Waldo begs Adele to call the cat out, it will listen to her, but she refuses!

The sound of the bird crying out grinds on Waldo's soul, it's hard for him to take.

Adele thinks that her plan to get Waldo to move back to the city is a big success...

She decides to leave for the city, Waldo can follow later, but when she goes out the door she's greeted by a horde of angry birds!!

She runs back into the house where Waldo tells her that the birds will not forget and they are going to follow her for the rest of her life! His bond with the birds tells him that they will never forget!

Get ready... Waldo goes into the yard and lets the birds deep six him, much to the horror of Adele! DON'T MESS WITH THE BIRDIES!!