M Squad season one (1957)

M Squad was an American cop series starring Lee Marvin which ran on NBC from 1957 to 1960. It was a solid ratings success. It was made by Marvin’s production company, Latimer Productions, in conjunction with Revue Studios. Marvin had had good supporting rôles in feature films such as The Big Heat but it was M Squad that proved he had the charisma for starring rôles.

M Squad can be thought of as the anti-Dragnet. They were the two best police series of the 50s but they took diametrically opposed approaches to the subject matter. Dragnet invented and defined the TV police procedural. Jack Webb, creator of Dragnet, was obsessed not just with depicting realistic police procedures but also with ordinariness. These were just regular cops doing their day-to-day jobs. The emphasis was on plot and on structure. M Squad by contrast was in the larger-than-life maverick cop mould. The emphasis was on style and action. The film noir influence was considerable. There was nothing ordinary about Lieutenant Frank Ballinger, the character played by Lee Marvin. This was the cop as hero. It would be impossible, and futile, to try to decide which was the better series. Both achieved what they set out to do, and did so very impressively indeed.

While Dragnet doesn’t avoid the seamy side of life M Squad dives head-first into it. M Squad is decidedly hardboiled. Being a cop like Frank Ballinger is not for the faint-hearted. It’s dangerous and you have to deal with a lot of sleazeballs. You have to be tougher than the bad guys. That’s no problem for Ballinger, and it’s no problem for Marvin - he radiates simmering aggression and he’s like a pressure cooker about to blow. It’s not that he lacks sensitivity, but unlikely other sensitive TV cops the sensitivity feels real. When you’re as tough as Frank Ballinger you don’t have to worry about showing your sensitive side. If someone doesn’t like it you can always slug them.

Dragnet and M Squad were also fine examples of the production line technique of American 50s television. An episode could be cranked out in a couple of days but it would still be great television. In those days a season could be anywhere from 30 to 39 episodes so even though M Squad ran for just three seasons no less than 117 episodes were made.

M Squad also benefits from some pretty cool jazz sounds on its soundtrack.

There’s a bit of an exploitation movie vibe to this series. It’s lurid and violent and sometimes sleazy and while it’s careful always to take the side of law and order and decency you also get the feeling that, like exploitation films, it’s revelling in the lurid and the sleazy.

It’s set in Chicago which for some reason didn’t get used as a setting for crime movies and television shows all that often so it provides a great opportunity to get some glimpses of that city in the late 50s.

Timeless Media Group have released all 117 episodes in their Social Edition DVD set (which includes a disc of extras as well) but the quality is extremely variable. The source material came from all over the place. Given this show’s overall vibe it doesn’t matter - if some episodes are extra-grainy or a bit muddy you can just think of it as extra noir flavouring!

Selective Episode Guide

The Alibi Witness is a neat little story. Wally Gardner is an ex-con and a total loser so it’s no surprise when he gets fingered for a robbery with violence, which becomes a homicide when the storekeeper dies. Gardner claims to have an alibi, of sorts. A guy who saw him on the street a long way from the murder scene. Finding this alibi witness promises to be next to impossible but Ballinger decides to try anyway. He figures if a guy is facing a murder rap he should be given a chance even if he probably will turn out to be guilty. The witness proves to be incredibly hard to find and the reason for this provides a nice little twist at the end. An excellent episode.

Ballinger goes undercover as a hired guy in The Specialists, trying to get the dope on a very slick trio of professional criminals. Unfortunately it seems that they’re just too well organised - they don’t appear to make mistakes. But of course it only takes one tiny mistake. A good episode.

In Family Portrait Ballinger’s partner is killed trying to gather evidence against crime boss Sam Hinder. Ballinger is now determined to nail Hinder. He needs to find one weakness and he thinks he’s found it in Hinder’s daughter but the daughter has some surprises of her own up her sleeve. An excellent nicely plotted episode.

Having to act as bodyguard to a killer like Tommy Hatch is not a job that appeals to Ballinger but in The Palace Guard that’s what he has to do. Of course while they’re protecting him the police are also looking for the evidence to put him away for good. Tommy’s wife and sister-in-law make things much more complicated. Whit Bissell is terrific as Tommy, a guy who combines arrogance, cunning, rashness and cowardice in roughly equal quantities. A good episode.

The Slow Trap is a story of robbery, infidelity and murder. Bonded messenger Eddie Lucas is robbed and the evidence suggests he arranged the robbery himself but it’s not clear how he could have contacted his accomplices. The messenger’s wife thinks another woman is behind it and Frank thinks she just might be right about that. But does that prove Eddie’s guilt or his innocence? Frank doesn’t know for sure but he does think the answer might be found at the Heracles Health Club. A good episode with some nice plot twists.

The Cover Up is a messy case that threatens to get uncomfortably close to the District Attorney. At the centre of it is possibly corruption or it might just be a particularly tangled romantic triangle. A pretty decent episode.

Blue Indigo has Frank hunting a psycho who has strangled three women. He always plays a song to them before he kills them. Always the same song, Blue Indigo. It’s not much of a clue but if Frank is lucky it might be enough. A reasonable episode.

The Long Ride starts in class M Squad style, with three murders in the first sixty seconds. A convicted murderer escapes from custody not once, but twice. And then we get a great suspense-on-a-train story, always a bonus. Terrific stuff.

The Shakedown is one of those cases in which, as Ballinger ruefully admits, nobody wins. It starts with an extortion attempt against a dry cleaning chain. It’s gritty hardboiled stuff. A very good episode.

Dolly’s Bar is a blackmail story with a decent twist. A gossip columnist is found dead in the apartment of rising theatrical star Kathy Bane. It looks bad for her since he was known to indulge in blackmail. Kathy and Frank Ballinger used to have a bit of a thing going. A very good episode.

In Lover's Lane Killing a rich young woman arrives home frantic with terror after the young man she’d been out with is shot to death by a robber. The curious thing, the thing that the police don’t like, is the matter of the impending marriage. An impending marriage to the wrong person. An OK episode although there aren’t enough suspects to make it much of a mystery.

The Frightened Wife is somewhat predictable but wth a couple of interesting twists. A man has disappeared. It could be a missing persons or a murder case. It seems to be solved when the wife confesses, but she has a very strange reason for confessing. Fairly entertaining.

Frank goes undercover to trap a nasty second-rate hoodlum in The Black Mermaid. There’s practically no limit to the number of things that can go wrong on that sort of operation, and all of them go wrong this time. Plenty of tension and excitement in this episode.

The Man in Hiding is about a bank robber and an exclusive boys’ boarding school. There doesn’t seem like there could be any link between those two things but Frank Ballinger has a hunch. A good episode in which Ballinger does some real detecting.

The Chicago Bluebeard is a man suspected of preying on women at lonely hearts’ clubs. Ballinger has to go undercover as a lonely heart and he’s not entirely comfortable doing it. A pretty good episode.

Hideout is an exciting siege episode. A couple of bank robbers are holed up in a suburban house and they’ve taken a woman and her child hostage. Frank manages to get into the house but his gun is just out of reach. Good stuff.

Shot in the Dark concerns a sniper who shoots women. He shoots from long range but only ever wounds them and not seriously, which means he has to be a pretty good shot. It makes a kind of sense until he shoots a man and kills him. That doesn’t add up and Frank has to find out why. A good episode.

The Twenty-Six Girl is a girl who runs a gambling game, but she doesn’t seem to have any connection with a routine missing persons case. A married couple has disappeared but the wife’s sister is unusually worried. So is Frank. He thinks the couple may have been murdered. Lots of false leads to confuse things in this excellent episode.

Charles Bronson guest stars as boxer Eddie Loder in The Fight. His opponent died after his last fight but the autopsy showed he was killed by a blood clot which was not caused by Eddie’s punches. But now it seems that somebody wants Eddie dead. A very good episode.

Guilty Alibi is a straightforward hit-and-run case, except that it isn’t. Witnesses saw the man driving the car hit the girl and he admits to the offence, but two of the witnesses had a vague impression that the driver was a woman. If that’s so then the case could connect up with a murder case. A good well-constructed plot expertly executed.

The Healer deals with a disturbed young woman planning to murder her father but the real villain is a quack therapist. And Frank hates quacks. The trouble is that it’s incredibly difficult to get a conviction against such people but Frank has a plan. Of course he also has to stop the girl from committing murder. A good episode.

In Day of Terror Frank’s friends the Grevilles have adopted a child but now the biological mother wants it back. Everything about the adoption was shonky and Frank has to find a way to nail some very unpleasant people without Helen Greville losing her adopted baby. An OK episode.

The $20 Plates are the last plates made by legendary counterfeiter Doc Pierce before his death. And now notes made from those plates are circulating in Chicago. Frank is working with a Treasury Department Social Agent and he has one clue - a child’s colouring book. The way the notes are being passed suggests an amateur, or a professional trying to look like an amateur. A very good episode.

The Case of the Double Face is a straightforward armed robbery case with one slight problem. It doesn’t make any sense. The robberies are small-time stuff but the suspect has no need of the money. The evidence against him is overwhelming but it still doesn’t make sense. The solution is far-fetched but it’s still an enjoyable episode. And the laundry evidence is very cool.

The System is a system for winning at craps. There is no such system and that’s what worries Frank. He thinks this system might involve guns. He’s trying to shut down a floating crap game which is hard enough but with a guy running around with a gun it’s even worse. And Frank doesn’t even know how to find the game. A very good episode.

The Woman from Paris of the title has just arrived in Chicago and she’s just been murdered. There seems to be a connection with a rich Chicago society couple but what the connection might be is a mystery. Perhaps there’s something in the murdered woman’s past. A good episode.

In Accusation the suicide of a sick old man looks suspicious. And the old man had a very pretty and much younger wife. And a good-looking young male chauffeur. The inference that the wife and the chauffeur killed the old man is obvious, but is it true? Another solid episode.

Final Thoughts

Even without Lee Marvin M Squad would have been a fine cop series. It has clever scripts and it has a nicely gritty feel to it. With Lee Marvin it’s one of the great American TV cop shows. Very highly recommended.

The Samurai, Fuma Ninja (1963)

Onmitsu kenshi (given the English language title The Samurai) which was produced between 1962 and 1965 is a landmark in television adventure series aimed at younger viewers. It raised the bar to an immense degree. It also played a very significant rôle in introducing Japanese pop culture to the West. And in Australia it became an extraordinary pop culture phenomenon.

This series was so successful for a number of reasons but the main one was, it was simply a whole lot better than contemporary American and British TV programming aimed at the same audience. It moved a lot faster. It was much more exciting. It was visually imaginative. The action sequences were clever and innovative. The sword fights are like nothing audiences had seen before. The camerawork was more dynamic. The storylines were more complex and more intelligent. It didn’t patronise its audience. It assumed they could deal with concepts like the triumph of good coming at a high price, and that they could deal with the idea that goods guys sometimes pay the ultimate price. There was nothing nihilistic about it, it was simply realistic in accepting that bad things can’t be wished away. They have to be struggled against. It was enormously popular with kids (including yours truly) but it was sophisticated enough that adult viewers can enjoy it as a stylish action adventure series.

Compared to contemporary British and American adventure series pitched at younger audiences The Samurai can be quite dark. The good guys might win but they won’t all survive and it can be a close-run thing. And victory is never permanent.

The Samurai’s format, with 13-episode story arcs, obviously allows fairly complex story-telling. Fuma. Fuma NInja (Ninpō Fūma Ichizoku) is the fifth such story arc, broadcast in Japan in 1963 and in Australia in 1965. It’s possibly the best of all the story arcs.

It is 1789, in the days of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Edo is the seat of the Shogun’s government and the castle is extremely well defended, not just by regular guards but also by a large force of Iga Ninja, led by Tombei the Mist. In the world of this television series there are good ninja and there are bad ninja. The Iga Ninja are good ninja, brave and honourable and loyal. But the castle is under threat from some very bad ninja, the Fuma Ninja. Tombei knows something very bad is brewing but at first he has no idea what it is.

He does know that he is going to need some help from his old friend Shintaro, the legendary swordsman and samurai (and government secret agent).

The really puzzling and worrying thing in all of this is that the Fuma Ninja were all wiped out two hundred years earlier. How can they have come back? Whatever the explanation, they are back and they’re plotting something big. It concerns three mirrors, mirrors that have symbolic importance but that may also have some kind of supernatural or paranormal power. The Fuma Ninja are determined to get the mirrors and they’re prepared to kill anyone who gets in their way.

Shintaro’s sidekick is Tombei the Mist, but Tombei is not exactly a sidekick. He’s very much a hero in his own right, and his martial skills and his cunning are only slightly inferior to Shintaro’s. He is more an ally than a sidekick. There’s almost a buddy movie thing going - there is a strong friendship and complete trust between the two men. In this story cycle both men will face dangers greater than ever before.

This story cycle introduces a couple of slightly unexpected elements. Shintaro loses a sword fight. And there’s perhaps just the slightest hint of romance, or at least a hint that Shintaro is not entirely indifferent to the feminine sex. He is wounded and is nursed back to health by a charming and rather pretty young lady. He recovers his health completely, but the woman is still there. Shintaro is prepared to risk his life to keep her safe. Of course he owes her a debt, and of course he’d risk his life to protect any woman in danger. But he does seem very fond of her.

This story arc also features the series’ most memorable villain, the formidable and sinister Fuma Kotarō.

It also features lots of gadgets! Gadgets appear in other story arcs but this one features the awesome Fuma Dragon Ship. There are also the spider ninjas who are very cool, and very sinister. And the Iga Ninja meeting house, packed to the rafters with secret doors and other nasty surprises for the unwary. And, in case all that isn’t enough, there’s a sexy bad girl lady ninja.

There’s more glamour than usual. There’s also a beautiful princess. Shintaro gets lots of opportunities to demonstrate his chivalry.

Fuma Ninja also has a much greater sense of menace than other story arcs. The odds really do seem to be stacked against Shintaro and Tombei and they suffer a series of devastating disasters.

Interestingly enough a Christian convent plays an important part in this story and Shintaro finds himself with a nun who has to be protected. It’s no surprise that Shintaro, very much the gentleman, behaves with respect towards the Christian religion.

The fight scenes seem particular dynamic in this arc, and they’re also somewhat more violent than anything you’d see in British or American series of this type. These are fights to the death. There’s also, in one instalment, a double fight - two separate fights, both desperate, occurring miles apart at the same moment and there’s constant intercutting between them. You just aren’t going to see ambitious stuff like this on British or American kids’ shows of the era. And there’s the sword fight on the ceiling. There’s a constant attempt to keep the action scenes exciting and interesting.

There’s a bit of subtlety and character complexity in Fuma Ninja as well. The lady ninja is a superb warrior, except for one thing. She cannot entirely repress her emotions. When she’s put in a situation in which the rational thing to do is to kill a witness she can’t do it because she just can’t kill an innocent woman.  There are complex conflicts of loyalty, and there’s the ever-present difficulty of squaring loyalty with honour.

There’s perhaps a bit more nuance to Shintaro as well. He not only loses a sword fight, he makes mistakes. At times Fuma Kotarō out-thinks him. Of course there are also times when Shintaro out-thinks Fuma Kotarō. This is a life-and-death struggle not just between two great warriors but between two very clever men, but while they’re both clever neither is infallible.

Special mention should be made of Hirooki Ogawa’s excellent music for the series, a blend of Japanese and western influences.

It’s hard to judget the acting since I’ve only ever seen the English dubbed version but what can be said is that Kôichi Ôse as Shintaro and Fuyukichi Maki as Tombei have the necessary screen presence required of heroes whilst the actors playing the villains certainly have more than enough of the screen presence that villains require.

The Samurai is one of the great TV action adventure series and you don’t have to be a kid to enjoy it. And Fuma Ninja is this series at its best. Very highly recommended.

Perry Mason episode 2x05, The Case of the Curious Bride

Having just reviewed Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Curious Bride I’m now doing a parallel review of the Perry Mason TV series adaptation of that book which aired early in the second season (in October 1958 to be precise).

My review of the novel can be found here.

It would have been next to impossible to do completely faithful adaptations of any of the Perry Mason novels. A novel provides opportunities for levels of plot complexity that just cannot be translated to the small screen, and Gardner’s plots were very involved. The writers of the series therefore took considerable liberties when adapting the novels. In the early seasons most episodes were adaptations but in later seasons the bulk of the episodes were original stories. Most of the adaptations are quite good but obviously fans of the books were going to compare them to the books and be disappointed when particularly clever plot twists had to be discarded. For that very reason I think that on balance I prefer the episodes based on original scripts.

In this instance the basic outline remains pretty similar. A woman (named Rhoda Reynolds in the TV version) is newly married but she’d been married before and had never divorced her first husband because she thought he was dead. He isn’t dead and now he’s blackmailing her. Now the first husband has been murdered and she’s the very obvious suspect. She even admits to having struck him with an iron poker.

With that kind of evidence most defence attorneys would be dismayed, but not Perry Mason.

Complicating matters is the weak second husband, totally under the thumb of his obnoxiously domineering (and very rich and powerful) father.

There’s also Rhoda’s friendship with surgeon Dr Michael Harris, a friendship that is innocent but could very easily be misconstrued.

DA Hamilton Burger does not appear in the novel (this was an early Perry Mason novel and the character had not yet been introduced) but he does appear in the television version.

Perry pulls off some very clever tricks with bells and doors in this story and Hamilton Burger finds himself even more comprehensively outmanoeuvred than usual. While it departs from that of the novel in various ways the TV episode still boasts an eminently serviceable plot.

The TV adaptation of The Case of the Curious Bride can be considered as being pretty successful.

Thriller - Murder Motel, Sleepwalker, The Next Victim (1975-76)

Three more episodes of ITC’s 1970s Thriller anthology series, all written by Brian Clemens.

Murder Motel closed out season five in reasonably good style. Michael Spencer (Ralph Bates) is under suspicion for embezzlement so he and his sister Helen (Anne Rutter) decide to set a trap for the real criminal. Unfortunately they’ve chosen the Woodheath Motel as the trap and people who check in to this motel have a nasty habit of never being seen again.

Michael’s fiancée Kathy (Robyn Millan) decides to play amateur sleuth but she has no idea what she is getting into.

There’s lots of mayhem in this episode. The gruesomeness is almost entirely implied rather than explicit but there’s a prodigious body count. The villains are colourful and sinister with the chief villain being a most amusing and jovial monster.

I particularly liked Robyn Millan’s bizarre performance as the heroine. This being an ITC series and given Lew Grade’s obsession that using American actors would magically unlock the U.S. market most episodes feature an American star. Star is perhaps not the right word. These are mostly not has-beens but never-were stars, and most of those featured in Thriller were pretty forgettable.

But Robyn Millan makes Kathy an oddly appealing heroine. She’s a ditzy blonde and as an amateur detective she doesn’t have the slightest idea what she’s doing. But despite this she has a kind of steely determination which is probably mostly the result of her inability to comprehend the dangers of her situation. If something bad has happened to her boyfriend she’s not going to give up until she uncovers the truth and she doesn’t care how much danger she’s putting herself in. She should be no threat to the villains at all, but her very amateurishness works in her favour.

An entertaining tale with some genuine scares and a satisfying conclusion.

Sleepwalker kicks off the sixth and final season. Katey Summers has nightmares and walks in her sleep. Maybe it has something to do with the books her father writes - books on witchcraft and similar subjects.

Katey has been having a recurrent nightmare about a hidden room and an old man with a knife in his back. The house that her father has rented is actually very old and supposedly does contain secret passageways and concealed rooms. Of course that can’t have anything to do with her nightmares - or could it? How real are her nightmares?

While Thriller was basically firmly non-supernatural psychological horror Brian Clemens did occasionally venture into the realm of the supernatural, or at least he gave us reason to suspect that he might be capable of offering us a genuinely supernatural explanation. So we can’t be quite sure about this one. If there’s a non-supernatural explanation it’s not immediately apparent. The hints of a possible occult solution are nicely ambiguous.

Of course it’s also possible that Katey is mad, but here again Clemens offers us ambiguous evidence. Katey has acquired a trainee psychiatrist boyfriend named Barnstapple and he seems to think she’s sane.

There’s a quite outrageous explanation that combines both psychological and paranormal elements and both Katey and Barnstapple are prepared to consider it.

The eventual resolution includes a pretty satisfying twist. It’s a bit far-fetched but then it’s the kind of story in which all the possible solutions are equally far-fetched. In fact it’s probably the most plausible explanation and basically it works.

The special effects are of the kind that you get in 70s British television. They’re basic and a bit crude but they do work and the overall atmosphere of subtle weirdness and spookiness is pretty effective.

The Next Victim is a Woman in Peril story. While London suffers the worst heat wave on record a maniac strangler is killing women. Inspector Frampton (T.P. McKenna) is very unhappy because he’s sure this is a new killer - a man who has probably only ever committed very minor sex offences in the past but now he’s gone over the edge. He has a distinctive method of committing his murders and if he’d been active in the past the police would certainly have been aware of him. Tracking him down is going to be a lengthy and tedious business and he’ll go on killing until they do find him.

The audience will have a pretty fair idea from the start of the identity of the killer, or at least will have a pretty strong suspicion but obvious suspects are sometimes too obvious.

Sandy Marshall (Carroll Baker) is a wealthy and rather glamorous woman who is temporarily confined to a wheelchair following a car accident. Her husband is trying to close an important business deal and has to leave her alone for a day. So clearly we are expecting that Sandy is going to be stalked by the psycho killer. We are not disappointed.

It’s all very well executed. Sandy has good reason to believe that the killer has gained entry to her apartment block and she knows she is in extreme danger but she doesn’t know where exactly the danger is going to come from or from whom. She obviously has no idea what the killer looks like so any man at all could potentially be the strangler. The tension builds remorselessly as Sandy makes minor mistakes that could cost her her life. Meanwhile Inspector Frampton and his sergeant are making agonisingly slow progress in uncovering the strangler’s identity.

There are several possible twists that Clemens could have thrown in at the end. I had a pretty good idea which twist it was going to be, but I was wrong.

The Next Victim benefits from better acting than most Thriller episodes. T.P. McKenna is always worth watching. He makes Inspector Frampton a rather appealing character - a slightly untidy and apparently rather lazy policeman but a clever one. Carroll Baker does a fine job as a woman who is terrified but determined not to give up.

Three rather different episodes but all three are actually pretty good. Even as the series was getting towards the end of its run Clemens was still producing some very entertaining scripts.

Columbo - The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case

The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case was the third and final instalment of the truncated sixth season of Columbo. It went to air in May 1977.

As the title suggests this is a very light-hearted Columbo mystery. It’s a case of murder at the Sigma Club. The Sigma Club is a kind of social club for very high I.Q. people. The joke is that they’re all hopeless misfits and totally socially inept. They have nothing in common and don’t seem to like each other very much but without the Sigma Club they’d have no social lives at all.

Two of the members of the club are partners in a very large accounting firm. One of them, Oliver Brandt (Theodore Bikel) has been embezzling funds. The other, Bertie Hastings, has discovered the embezzlement so naturally he has to be murdered. These are of course not spoilers since, as in every Columbo episode, we know the identity of the killer right from the start. The murder method is the sort of thing that a very intelligent but very arrogant person might come up with - it’s incredibly ingenious but ludicrously over-complicated. It does involve some wonderful contraptions though.

As usual we get a battle of wits between the murderer and Columbo but the irony is that despite the killer’s high I.Q. we never believe he has a chance of winning - it just never occurs to him that policemen might actually know their jobs.

Much of the fun comes from the other members of the club who come up with their own theories to explain the murder. They naturally assume that a mere policeman could never solve such a difficult case and it’s amusing to see their discomfiture when Columbo has to break it to them gently that their theories have already been thought of by the police and dismissed as unworkable.

In this episode Peter Falk doesn’t have a major star to play off but Theodore Bikel does a fine job. His gradual psychological unravelling is so convincing that we feel kind of sorry for him.

Kenneth Mars is surprisingly restrained and doesn’t get very much to do which is a pity since his character, a welder with a genius-level I.Q., might have had potential.

Samantha Eggar is very good as Brandt’s wife, a woman who just assumes her husband will provide her with unlimited spending money and seems genuinely puzzled when he blames her for the mess he’s in. It’s impossible to conceive of a more shallow and selfish woman but what makes this performance interesting is that she is entirely unaware of her character flaws. She’s not conniving or deceitful or vindictive - she’s more like someone who simply hasn’t developed any adult emotions. She’s actually more interesting than the murderer.

Look out for Jamie Lee Curtis in a small but amusing part as a waitress. Carol Jones is excellent as a geeky 14-year-old girl genius. The two bitchy male secretaries are fun also.

The ending is perhaps a bit contrived.

This is not perhaps a Columbo episode of the first rank but it’s sufficiently witty and amusing that its minor flaws can be overlooked. Recommended.

It’s hard to make a judgment on the sixth season as a whole since there were only three episodes. The DVD release, quite reasonably, combines the sixth and seventh seasons in a single boxed set.

The Invaders season two (1967-68)

The Invaders started life as a mid-season replacement on ABC in 1967. It did well enough to get a second full season but that unfortunately was the end of the line. Which was a pity because it’s a fascinating oddity among 1960s American science fiction TV series. It was a Quinn Martin production and was their only serious foray into science fiction. As a result it plays more like a typical Quinn Martin series (such as The Fugitive) with science fiction elements tacked on. Surprisingly this works rather well, giving the series the feel of everyday life suddenly coming into collision with nightmare. The second season which started airing in late 1967 starts off being pretty similar to the first, and that’s not a bad thing.

The kinship with 1950s sci-fi paranoia movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers is very obvious. An architect named David Vincent accidentally discovers that alien invaders are among us. Nobody knew because the aliens look just like us. They’re from a planet that is dying and now they want our planet. They are most definitely hostile. They have already managed to infiltrate themselves into society, at least to a limited extent. As in other classic examples of the alien invasion paranoia genre David Vincent’s problem is that he can’t get the authorities or anyone else to believe him.

The Invaders however departs slightly from the usual formula. A few people do believe him. He acquires a few allies. Most of them are not in a position to do very much but sometimes he does get help. And at least he knows that are a few fellow believers. In fact there’s a slowly accumulating number of them. There isn’t the same sense of despair that you get in The X-Files where Mulder always seems destined to lose and to be the only true believer. The other key difference from The X-Files is that in 1967 when The Invaders began production it was still possible to believe that the government could be trusted. The problem isn’t that you can’t trust anyone. The Air Force officers Vincent encounters really would do something, they really would help him, if only he had hard evidence. But they won’t risk their careers without hard evidence. That makes Vincent’s task easier in many ways but also more frustrating. It’s more heart-breaking when he finds evidence and it slips through his fingers. There’s still plenty of paranoia but it’s more subtle. Like Mulder he gets labelled as a nut and a crank but let’s be honest - when you start telling people that aliens have invaded it’s quite natural for them to react that way. 


He is also a man who lacks Mulder’s cynicism. David Vincent really likes his country. Even though he’s a city boy when he finds himself in small town America he really likes that kind of society as well. There’s more at stake for him because he’s fighting to save a society that he very much thinks is worth saving. He’s also very intense. Perhaps too intense.

Being a Quinn Martin production The Invaders is naturally extremely well made with a surprising amount of location shooting. The special effects are simple but mostly effective. The fact the aliens look human means there’s no need for alien makeup effects which is a huge advantage. This series doesn’t really look dated at all.

It also doesn’t feel dated. If you can accept the basic premise then the plot lines are fairly believable. This genre lends itself to political allegories but fortunately The Invaders generally does not try to bludgeon viewers with political messages. You can of course read political subtexts into it. It’s up to you.

One unusual feature is that while the aliens have some advanced technologies they’re actually easy to kill. If you shoot them they die. Which means that while they’re formidable enemies they’re not unbeatable. It’s always believable that David Vincent has a fighting chance of survival and even a chance of winning some victories, without the writers having to resort to outlandish plot devices to explain those victories.

There is of course the matter of the crooked fingers which give away the identity of the invaders. The inherent problem with stories featuring aliens who look exactly human is that they would be impossible to defeat. It’s just too big an advantage. With means that they have to be given a weakness. There has to be something that reveals their identity. And it has to be something that most people would not even notice but that those in the know would be able to spot. The crooked fingers are a bit lame but they do the job and I’m not sure what else the series could have done. At least they don’t require any iffy make effects.

Which brings us to an unusual feature of this series - while the aliens have some advanced technologies they also have some serious vulnerabilities. Being able to take human form is a big advantage but it brings with a big weakness - when they’re in human form anything that can kill a human can kill them. They can also die in accidents, such as car accidents. They have a limited mind control ability but it can only be exercised at very close range and it isn’t fool-proof. They don’t have destructor beams that can level whole city blocks, they don’t have the ability to make themselves invisible or walk through walls or see through walls. The invaders are also not entirely united - at times some of the aliens will actually help David Vincent, although they do so for their own reasons. They’re formidable enemies they’re far from unbeatable. It’s always believable that David Vincent has a fighting chance of survival and even a chance of winning some victories, without the writers having to resort to outlandish plot devices to explain those victories. It’s a clever touch. The invaders win some battles and lose others.

There are several episodes in which David Vincent gets to see the aliens’ point of view, or at least we get to see that they have a point of view. They’re doing what they believe they have to do. It’s interesting that Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, made at almost exactly the same time, also shows us the the point of view of the aliens seeking to destroy us. What makes both series interesting is that knowing how the aliens see things doesn’t help. It’s still a case of either we destroy them or they destroy us. Understanding an enemy’s motivations does not necessarily mean that any kind of negotiation or compromise is possible. Both series approach the alien menace idea with surprising sophistication.

The tone is unrelievedly dark. David Vincent wins some battles, but there's always a price to be paid. Often a very high price. This series is actually considerably darker and more downbeat than The X-Files.

Episode Guide

Condition: Red involves a plot by the aliens to sabotage the computers at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). David Vincent uncovers the plot when a young woman is killed after falling from a horse. She later makes a full recovery and Vincent suspects she’s an alien. She happens to be married to an officer in the computer section at NORAD. As always Vincent’s problem is getting anyone to listen to him but occasionally people do and in this case intelligence officer Major Stanhope (who had at one time been involved in investigations of UFO phenomena) believes him. But can the plot be stopped? If it can’t be stopped twenty UFOs will be able to penetrate the NORAD defences. A solid season opener with some tense moments.

In The Saucer David Vincent finds a man who has not only seen one of the alien spaceships, he claims he knows when it will appear again. It looks like this is the break Vincent has been hoping for, especially when he manages to capture the alien ship. But things never work out that neatly. To complicate matters there’s a couple on the run from the police (with the girl played by the always awesome Anne Francis). They end up right in the middle of things which turns out to be both a good thing and a bad thing. This is an episode that tries to combine some human drama with the sci-fi plot, and does so fairly successfully. A good episode.

The Watchers starts with a shocking accident. A man walks in front of an aircraft that is landing at an airstrip at a remote mountain resort. But it’s no accident. David Vincent is soon on the scene and witnesses the arrival of Paul Cook and his blind niece Maggie. Cook is a very important defence contractor whose company is about to upgrade the country’s air defences. If the aliens can get hold of the secrets of those defences they will be unstoppable. Kevin McCarthy guest stars as Cook, a treat for cult movie fans given that he was the star of the sci-fi paranoia classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers which was a major inspiration for The Invaders.

It's a good episode that showcases one of David Vincent’s major assets in his fight against the invaders - he has the ability to talk about seemingly crazy stuff while seeming to be calm and reasonable and sane. A very good episode.

In Valley of the Shadow an accident threatens the invaders. One of their number is involved in a traffic accident. The alien murders a doctor who tries to examine him (the aliens have no pulse and no heartbeat). The alien is taken into custody. For Vincent it’s an opportunity to unmask them publicly and an even bigger opportunity when dozens of people see the alien vanish before their eyes after being shot. The aliens however are prepared to take ruthless steps to prevent any word getting out. Another good story in which Vincent seems to be so close to getting the evidence he needs.

There are some fascinating and devious twists to this story. They don’t exactly take the series in a new direction but they do raise questions and add extra layers of ambiguity. A very very good episode.

The Enemy begins with one of the alien saucers making a disastrous crash landing. One crew member survives and is rescued by a human woman, a nurse named Gale Frazer,  who is determined to nurse him back to health. Her plans are threatened by the arrival of David Vincent. This is one of several episodes in which we see a different side of the aliens. They’re not necessarily mere monsters. This particular alien might be a dangerous enemy to Earth but he’s a long way from home and he’s alone and frightened. He needs help. His emotions are the same as ours. Or at least that’s what Gale Frazer thinks. She’d better hope she’s right about that. If it turns out that his emotions are not the same as ours she could be in big trouble. This episode could easily have come unstuck but it works pretty well.

The Trial is a departure from the usual formula for this series. David Vincent is trying to save an old army buddy accused of murder. He didn’t kill a man, he killed an alien, but that’s not exactly easy to prove in court. And what actually happened is not clear-cut even to Vincent. Courtroom dramas are risky. They rely heavily on dialogue scenes and that means sacrificing the action scenes that fans expect from a series such as this. The challenge in this episode is that it seems like the only way to get Vincent’s friend off the hook for murder is to prove the existence of the aliens but the whole point of the series is that David Vincent never manages to get the hard evidence that would prove such a thing. The problem is solved fairly satisfactorily but by its nature it’s an episode that is a bit slow and static. It is an interesting experiment though.

In The Spores the aliens have a suitcase full of spores. It’s an experiment and if it succeeds they will be able to grow practically unlimited numbers of new aliens. The van in which the aliens are carrying the spores crashes and a cop sees two of them vaporise. The case of spores goes missing and the police, David Vincent and the aliens are all hunting it but it changes hands so many times it seems like no-one is going to get it. Another very good episode.

In Dark Outpost the aliens have problems. Their people are getting sick so they’ve had to set up a secret hospital for them, in a disused army camp. David Vincent, along with a party of student geologists, discovers their hospital. This episode takes the mind control element a bit further and there’s a psychological battle between the humans and the aliens. Not a bad episode.

Summit Meeting is a two-parter that moves the series into a paranoid conspiracy theory world that seems like an anticipation of The X-Files. A summit conference of leaders of the major powers may be a cover for some plan by the invaders to poison the world with radiation or maybe the radiation plan is a cover for something else. David Vincent finds out about the plot from Michael Tressider, a major defence contractor who knows that the invaders are among us. Vincent soon has reason to believe that the aliens have infiltrated the worlds of government and diplomacy and even the Pentagon at the highest levels. This is real Trust No One stuff.

The Prophet is Brother Avery, a travelling preacher with a large following who claims to have spoken to the heavenly multitudes. David Vincent suspects that these heavenly multitudes are the aliens and that Brother Avery is preparing the way for a large-scale invasion. Vincent infiltrates himself into the organisation but he has to convince Sister Claire to help him get the evidence and Sister Claire is very much a true believer. A good episode.

There’s such a thing as being too paranoid and there’s such a thing as being not paranoid enough and David Vincent makes both mistakes in Labyrinth. He has the proof he needs in the form of X-rays of an alien and he has the support of a government program set up to study UFOs but it’s not enough. Lots of terrific paranoid twists in this excellent episode.

In The Captive an alien is caught breaking into the Soviet Embassy. The Russians realise they’re dealing with something very strange. Like all the aliens this one has no pulse and they have other evidence that whatever he is he’s not human. Knowing his reputation as an investigator of UFOs they call on David Vincent for help. But will the Deputy Ambassador risk his career by reporting the presence of aliens to his government? And the aliens want Vincent’s help as well. There’s a clever mix of different levels and varieties of paranoia and risk in this extremely good episode.

The Believers represents a major change for the series. David Vincent has finally managed to convince a number of people that he is right abut the invaders. And they’re important, influential, powerful people. Now he has an organisation behind him - an organisation of believers. Unfortunately the aliens know this too and they’re determined to strike back. Interestingly this episode ramps up the paranoia even further. The more people you have on your side the more likely you are to be betrayed. An excellent episode.

In The Ransom Vincent and one of his followers capture an alien leader. A very important man, or so he says. So important that the aliens may be prepared to make an attractive deal to secure his release. But can Vincent trust him?

David Vincent continues to build up his anti-invader group in Task Force. He’s trying to get major news magazine publisher William Mace to support him but the aliens are in the process of taking over the Mace publishing empire. Not an outstanding episode but still quite decent.

In The Possessed Vincent gets a message from his old friend Ted Willard but Ted seems very confused when Vincent arrives. Ted and his brother Martin are doing research into mind control. This is another story in which the motives of the aliens are slightly ambiguous, suggesting that they’re evil but perhaps not entirely evil. And those who help the aliens have tangled motives as well. A good story.

Counter-Attack marks a further stage in the development of the overall second season story arc. Vincent’s group has now obtained the means to strike back at the invaders. The story however focuses mainly on questions of loyalty and betrayal. Even David Vincent’s loyalty is questioned. A very good episode.

In The Pit the aliens are trying to sabotage the work at a research establishment. They seem to be particularly intersected in the dream machine and in the electro-magnetic engine project. A fairly routine episode.

There’s a three-way battle going on in The Organization which starts when David Vincent is looking for alien wreckage, vital evidence of the existence of the aliens, in a freighter. The aliens got there first and removed the evidence but they removed something else, a narcotics shipment belonging to a drugs syndicate. The syndicate wants the shipment back but may they may need Vincent’s help. He may need the mobster’s help to get that evidence. And that aliens may try to cut a deal. It comes down to whether the mobsters trust Vincent more than the aliens, and whether Vincent’s group can work with gangsters. This episode is typical of the growing moral complexity of the second season and it’s excellent, with a fine guest starring performance by J.D. Cannon as gangster Peter Kalter.

There’s a subtle Cold War subtext throughout the second season and it becomes overt in The Peacemaker. Maybe a war to the death between humans and the aliens isn’t such a great idea? Maybe a negotiated compromise would be better for both sides. Peaceful co-existence. But of course it’s all a matter of trust. David Vincent isn’t sure he can trust the aliens but maybe there are people closer to home who can be trusted even less. If the major themes of the first season were paranoia and belief then the second season themes are trust and betrayal. This is an extremely good episode.

In The Vise David Vincent trees to persuade a Senate investigator that a man about to be appointed to a senior position in the space program is an alien. This puts the investigator in an awkward personal position. This is an episode that tries to address social issues, always a bad idea. This one is too predictable and not a very successful episode.

The Miracle starts in a small town where a girl witnesses what she thinks is a miracle in a grotto where the Virgin Mary supposedly appeared to some children years earlier. In fact what she saw was an alien dying and vaporising. The alien left behind a crystal, a key part of a powerful new weapon, and David Vincent has to find a way to get hold of it. A reasonably OK episode.

The Life Seekers is a further exploration of the theme that maybe the aliens aren’t quite as simplistically evil as they originally seemed to be, and that maybe they’re not united either. Two aliens want David Vincent’s help but they may be able to help him even more. Another very good episode.

The Pursued is one of several episodes in which David Vincent finds a possible ally among the aliens but this story offers some new twists. The alien involved is young, pretty and decidedly female. She’s a really sweet likeable girl. Except for one minor personality quirk. When she gets stressed she gets so angry she could just kill someone. And she does. She kills lots of people. She doesn’t mean to. It just happens. She’s real sorry afterwards. And it really isn’t her fault - she’s the result of a failed alien experiment in simulating human emotions. She could be very very useful to David Vincent’s resistance movement if he can just stop her from killing anyone for a while. So there’s interesting moral ambiguity, plus it’s an exciting manhunt (or womanhunt) story with no less than four groups wanting to get their hands on her. An excellent episode.

The series moves well and truly into proto X-Files territory with Inquisition. The aliens are about to launch an all-out attack but David Vincent and his organisation of Believers have more immediate problems - a corrupt ruthless ambitious Special Prosecutor who charges Vincent and the other leader of the Believers, Edgar Scoville, with murder. The government may destroy the Believers before they can take action to stop the alien offensive. The paranoia level is at maximum in this episode. 

Final Thoughts

There’s an interesting change that takes place midway through the second season. David Vincent acquires an organisation, informal but including important people. He’s not a lone crusader any longer. And the aliens are no longer a mysterious inexplicable terror. They are people, with their own hopes and fears. There is still deadly hostility but there are temporary truces and negotiations. It’s not just a war. There’s now diplomacy, of a sort. Deals can be made.

For those who think that thematic complexity, character development and ongoing story arcs are a modern phenomenon and a sign of the superiority of modern television this may come as a shock. The Invaders is more than a sequence of standalone stories. There is an evolving background story. David Vincent starts out as a man completely alone, regarded as a madman, desperate and paranoid. He remains paranoid (and quite rightly so) but he has to learn to trust people and form alliances. He has to become a leader and take responsibility. He has to be prepared, to a limited extent, to listen to what the aliens have to say. He has to learn to consider the long game. Over the course of the second season he does so, and he finds himself the leader of an organised resistance group rather than being a lone paranoid outsider.

This was to be the final season which is a pity in many ways but on the other hand it does mean that the series did not have to suffer the ignominious decline into silliness that was the fate of just about every other American science fiction series of its era. And perhaps there really wasn’t anywhere left for the series to go. The second season of The Invaders is very different from the first but it’s more complex and more multi-layered. Very highly recommended.

I've also reviewed the first season of this series.

Perry Mason - The Case of the Buried Clock (TV mini-review)

My current project is to pick the episodes of the 1957-66 Perry Mason TV series that are actually based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s novels and read the novel, then watch the TV episode and do parallel reviews of both the novel and the TV episode. My review of Gardner’s novel The Case of the Buried Clock can be found here at Vintage Pop Fictions.

The Case of the Buried Clock is a 1943 Perry Mason novel, with a typically delightfully convoluted plot. Of course if you’re going to adapt a novel into a one-hour TV drama you’re going to have to streamline the plot a good deal. Unfortunately that means eliminating some fascinating plot elements. Francis M. Cockrell’s script eliminates a lot of the best things in the novel (the sidereal time thing, the missing bullet, the interesting stuff about the murder weapon, most of the cross-examination fun). What I miss most of all from the book is the epic battle of wits between Mason and Deputy D.A. McNair. In fact the only thing it keeps is the central element in the eventual solution.

Lots of characters are eliminated. Even key suspects are eliminated! That’s understandable. There’s so much misdirection in the novel but to retain all of it would have made the teleplay hopelessly complicated and difficult to follow. A lot of incidents that all contribute to the plot are comprised into a smaller number of manageable incidents.

In the TV version Dr Blane has discovered that his son-in-law has been embezzling money from the family bank and now he’s turned to blackmail. When the son-in-law turns up dead the police draw the logical conclusions. There’s a clever unbreakable alibi element. The solution to the crime does seem to be pulled out of a hat - in the novel we’re more thoroughly prepared for it so the twist is more satisfying.

And in the TV drama the clock seems like too much of a gimmick rather than an integrate part of an ingenious story.

The Dr Blane of the television version is actually an amalgam of two of the key characters in the novel, which is probably a necessary change but it does make him a slightly puzzling and contradictory character. Is he a banker or a doctor? He’s both, but in Gardner's novel the banker and the doctor are two entirely separate characters.

Watching this episode I can understand why after the first season the producers turned more and more to original teleplays rather than adaptations of the novels. The episodes based directly on the novels usually compare unfavourably to the source material while the original stories tend to work much more effectively. When you try to compress a novel into a single hour of television there’s someways the danger that the major plot twists will come as too much of a surprise.

The Perry Mason novels and the TV series are in my view equally good (and both are very good indeed) but the TV series is best enjoyed as a series inspired by the novels rather than as an attempt at straightforward adaptation.

The TV version of The Case of the Buried Clock is definitely worth a look but you’ll like it more if you don’t read the book first.