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If I told you once I told you a million times that while I was growing up with my best pal of the day (mainly the television set!) I found GUNSMOKE one of those tee-vee series that older blue collar types of guys watched 'n no one else! I remember trying to sit through one back when I was heading on into the double-digits but tuned out after a good ten or so minutes I was that bored...dunno if it was because of the more grown-up plots (far from the old "draw, you varmint" variety of old low budget westerns that were made in the thirties) or the fact it wasn't exactly BEWITCHED but I just ignored the series for years. It wasn't until I got older and started to hone my appreciation towards non-har har television that I discovered this series, and with repeated reruns of the early half hour episodes (originally re-packaged for syndication as MARSHAL DILLON) and the pre-color-era hour longs I finally got the hang of the series. Surprisingly enough I even grew to love it for the way it captured the hard-edged tension and real-life emotional impact of the better series of the day, like DRAGNET for instance.
Anyway, by the time I had tuned into that one color episode way back when television was limping on only to get rejuvenated by the time the seventies really set in so let's just say that I wasn't exactly starting my GUNSMOKE fandom on the right foot. If those early half-hour ones got run 'round here when I was clocking into my mid-teens I'm sure I would have gotten on the old television "adult" westerns bandwagon a whole lot earlier.
The following are what I would consider my favorite GUNSMOKEs out of a whole batch of them that have kept me satisfied and downright happy these past XXX number of years. Yours might differ and if you have any to add or delete you can always let me know. And as you can tell from my selections I prefer the earlier the better even though there were many throughout the black and white run that I would say were pretty good 'uns even if they didn't happen to make the grade. Not being that familiar with the color episodes even though it was these that seemed to get shown repeatedly for years I didn't include any even though "Island in the Desert" which I mentioned a few months back would have probably made the list had I seen it a few more times and let it soak in deep into my oft-clogged cranium.
And if there are any of you liberal types out there who think that I only like old television programs such as these because they represent a time when women, blacks, gays and handicapped left-handed Sri Lankans were discriminated against well...once again you're as right as rain! It really amazes me just how astute and digesting of the facts regardless of your own personal prejudices and bigotries some of you people are out there...really!
HOME SURGERY (Season One, Episode Four)-Dillon and Chester come across high-cheekboned actress Gloria Talbott playing a teenager whose father's got a badly infected leg that needs amputated and like immediately! The hired hand who was supposed to get Doc seems to have just vanished, and Matt is forced to do the honors using the hair from a horse's tail as thread.
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OBIE TATER (Season One, Episode Five)-Royal Dano definitely made his presence known in screendom playing characters whether sympathetic or not throughout the fifties and beyond (still reelin' from his RIFLEMAN appearance as a mangled Confederate vet who's out for some deadly justice when the Union General responsible for his gross misshapen form happens to end up on McCain's ranch). In this, the first of many GUNSMOKE appearances, Dano sure does swell...show starts out grisly enough when two roughnecks who've heard about Dano/Obie Tater's big California gold strike drag the guy even after Tater tells 'em there's none left, then gets into high gear when one of the upstairs girls as I like to call 'em at the Longbranch starts sending heavy duty romantic spells Tater's way. Dano really gets sucked in heavily by his by-now wife right smack dab into a nightmare that Marshal Dillon sure saw comin' but eh, when you're old 'n ugly any positive vibes from a female are definitely a welcome relief in life ('n don't say """""I""""" should know).
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GENERAL PARSLEY SMITH (Season One, Episode Eleven)-A Civil War General comes to Dodge warning everyone that the man running the new bank in town is going to abscond with all of their savings. People are beginning to believe him much to the dismay of the bank's president, but when Doc exposes the General as a fraud it looks as if the truth has finally come to light. Or did it?
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REWARD FOR MATT (Season One, Episode Sixteen)-Dillon kills Mr. Stoner after attempting to take him in for murdering a local settler, and now his widow's taking her life's savings of $1000 offering it to anyone who kills the marshal. A cowboy who has a mad on for Dillon is bragging that he just might be the one to do it and a guy streaking through town in his own attempt gets gunned down. It'll take a whole lot more than all of this to get Mrs. Stoner to see the error of her ways.
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TAP DAY FOR KITTY (Season One, Episode Twenty-Two)-Along with Dano and many others soon to be mentioned, John Dehner also dominated the tee-vee and moom pitcher screens of the day and it wasn't like he was exactly a rarity when it came to Westerns. Here he plays Nip Cullers, a particularly unaware sixty-plus goofy looking country bumpkin who heads out to Dodge to find a wife now that his mother's dead. When Kitty defends Cullers after two of the upstairs girls cruelly mock the backwards and extremely gullible guy he decides that Kitty's the woman of his dreams! A somewhat dark yet romantic episode that for once actually has a happy and perhaps even euphoric ending and who know, it might even make YOU feel somewhat good inside! If you have any insides that is.
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COOTER (Season One, Episode Twenty-Seven)-Gotta say that for years on end Strother Martin wasn't exactly my favorite cult star, but then again I never understood the overboard devotion that throngs have towards other mid/late-twentieth century actors from Harry Dean Stanton to Warren Oates (both early GUNSMOKE and general tee-vee regulars come to think of it). This first season wonder does place him up there in the pantheon of my fave GUNSMOKE guests as you will see...here he plays this guy who was shot in the head and was thus rendered "mentally challenged", and he's so loopy that even Chester deems him inferior to his own self as if Chester was anything close to being a rocket scientist! Cooter "works" for gambler Ben Sissle (sitcom reg Vinton Hayworth, best known to you as General Shaeffer on I DREAM OF JEANNIE) who, after being exposed by Dillon as a cheat, gives Cooter a gun telling the Marshal that Cooter's going to kill him. Things don't quite work according to Sissle's plan, and it all ends in one of those tragedies that kind of leave you numb. Sam Peckinpaugh did the honors.
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PRAIRIE HAPPY (Season One, Episode Thirty-Three)-A guy who looks like an aged seventies rock star and talks like a Z-movie western sidekick starts spreading rumors around Dodge about an imminent Pawnee attack. Dillon seems to be the only one keeping a cool head as the townspeople, led by shop owner Wilbur Jonas, are all set on defending themselves while in a state of panic-stricken frenzy. The truth is eventually found out when the old coot is caught starting the fires he blamed on the Pawnee, totally breaking down into tears after being found out realizing that he was no longer part of the white man's world or that of the Pawnees who he had lived with either. The ending might not settle well given that the ultimate moral of the story is that death's the only real way out, but sometimes I do wonder...
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MR AND MRS AMBER (Season One, Episode-Thirty-Seven)-Another grueling one about a really down and out married couple who have it so bad that the husband is reduced to stealing sacks of grain out of Mr. Jonas' store. Mrs. Amber's religious nut father and brother who own the land the two reside on aren't helping out any and are more or less prone to act sanctimonious in their (and everyone else's) presence. When the husband's accused of stealing a calf from Pa the story goes into overdrive with plot twists and turns that end in one big tragedy, the biggest of which seems that the father is not shaken or humbled a bit by the grisly outcome that he was mostly responsible for. Many of these GUNSMOKEs do wind up on some extremely unpleasant notes mind you, but this one is rather core-shaking, especially when during the last minute of the show Mr. Amber tells the truth that Dillon and nobody else is supposed to know.
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THE ROUND UP (Season Two, Episode Four)-This is perhaps the most powerful GUNSMOKE ever. The drovers are heading into Dodge for a good time, the businessmen are all excited about the money that will be rolling in, and Chester is totally out of commission with a couple of bad sprains. Fortunately enough Dillon's old friend is in town and is deputized, but during a shootout in a local saloon the friend, who suddenly and unexpectedly appears from a doorway during the skirmish (he was supposed to handle the other side of the street), is accidentally shot and killed by Dillon. At this point the marshal's on the meanest tear I ever saw him, closing down all of the businesses and violently chasing the cowboys out of town much to the ire of the locals...even Kitty gets angry with Dillon during his grief-driven rampage The final scene's one to remember if only because, for perhaps the only time in the series, Dillon is on the verge of crying. Once again, hefty hosannas go out to Peckinpaugh.
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INDIAN WHITE (Season Two, Episode Six)-Local seamstress Mary Cullen claims that the obviously Caucasian Cheyenne boy who the cavalry captured in a roundup is the son she lost during an Indian attack years before. She gets custody of the kid even though, as she admits to Dillon, he actually is not her son. "Dennis" is too much for her to handle, refusing the ways of the whites running around shirtless, stealing money and getting into knife fights with the locals. Turns out that some renegade Cheyenne are on the warpath and the commander at Fort Dodge believes the boy knows where they're going to meet up, but "Dennis" has by now swiped a horse and his "mother's" rifle and is heading for the gathering with Dillon and Chester in pursuit. You might see the ending to this coming about halfway through but when it comes boy does it strike!
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NO INDIANS (Season Two, Episode Eleven)-Horse thieves are slaughtering families and burning down their homesteads to make it look like an Indian job. However it's a dead little girl's doll that will bring them, or at least the survivors, all to justice. This one's notable for an ambush scene where Dillon and Chester show no mercy and just mow the murderers down which would seem to be against normal police procedure true, but boy does it make for a particularly cathartic minute of pure adrenaline jolt!
***POOR PEARL (Season Two, Episode Thirteen)-Here's a borderline one that very could easily been left off the list but stays on if only for the sullen ending. Constance Ford does play it somewhat icky and too downright depressing as Pearl, the gal who has to choose between sharpie Webb Thorne or good-natured farmer Willie Calhoun (Denver Pyle), but the show sure gets in gear especially when Calhoun turns from happy go lucky to downright vengeful after Pearl chooses Thorne. Like I said, this has an ending that pretty much strikes the center of your very being, and once again kudos to Peckinpaugh for helping to make fifties television much more than the dump of golly gosh that the liberal readers who used to tune into this blog take it to have been with no evidence to back up their bogus claims whatsoever.
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THE COVER UP (Season Two, Episode Sixteen)-Sam Baxton's killing squatters on his land and is thusly arrested. Only the killing continues which certainly puts things in a different perspective. Dillon, Chester and Baxton set up a trap to see who the killer really is with surprising results. Look out for Theodore Marcuse playing an Anabaptist.
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BLOODY HANDS (Season Two, Episode Twenty-One)-OK I'm cheating just a little sneaking this one in a good day or so after having posted this, but I just to thinking how good this one was and wonder why it took so long for me to even remember it! Goes to show you the ineptness of my sieve-like brain. "Bloody Hands" really does need to be mentioned in the company of these episodes.
I remember how a load of concerned mothers types used to rail against violent television programming when I was a youth, and I wonder if this particular episode was something that got them in such a pious uproar. As the show opens Dillon is seen catching up with four bank robbers who murdered two people in the process, and after the holed up outlaws decide to shoot it out Dillon brutally kills three of them before the leader of the gang surrenders. After looking at the bodies laying about, the captive suddenly gets into this high and mighty schpiel calling Dillon a butcher, a man who might as well been out slaughtering pigs as if this guy is even remotely any sort of moral guardian! While riding with Dillon and the corpses, the man constantly taunts the marshal for being a heartless and cold-blooded killer all the way to the jail!!!!
The bank robber's rants actually get to Dillon, who suddenly has a dilemma about killing even to the point where he refuses to have a showdown with a gunman named Stanger (played by a pre-GILLIGAN'S ISLAND Russell Johnson) who happens to be a friend of the captured one. Being a lawman and using lethal force, even if it is in the line of duty, is suddenly just too much for him so Dillon quits.
For once we actually see the ex-marshal having a good time in his life, hanging out with the local children and picnicking with Miss Kitty. Its an extremely impassioned, powerful speech from Chester (so heartfelt that he's almost on the brink of tears) that really cuts to the quick about the law and one's responsibility to uphold it when no one else can that changes Dillon's mind. Whatever you do, don't tune out until it's all over.
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WHAT THE WHISKEY DRUMMER HEARD (Season Two, Episode Thirty-One)-A short creepy squeak of a man who supplies the local saloons with booze tells Dillon that he overheard two guys talking about killing him. Shortly after that Dillon is shot at and lets it be known via Chester blabbing to the denizens of the various saloons that he's actually dead. A couple of drunk cowboys proudly claim responsibility, but things drastically change when the drummer returns to Dodge. Great mystery with an ending that you'll once again see coming straight at'cha but you'll be happy when it does.
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WHO LIVES BY THE SWORD (Season Two, Episode Thirty-Four)-Harold Stone, who at times played some pretty nasty GUNSMOKE villains, gets even nastier as a gunfighter who goads two young and "aw shucks" brothers into drawing first, killing both within minutes. Stone "technically" was in the right but that doesn't stop Dillon from dragging him out of the Longbranch to give the guy the thrashing of his life (unseen but rather gruesome as one could tell from the agonizing looks on Chester's and Kitty's faces). From thereon in Stone is but a bundle of nerves prone to violent nightmares and unable to defend himself even when pressed into it. Great closing line from Dillon regarding people who kill versus people who murder.
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BLOOD MONEY (Season Three, Episode Three)-Vinton Hayworth, Ben Sissle in "Cooter", plays an equally unnerving man who gets his leg broken after being thrown from a horse while on the way to Dodge to take a job as a bartender. A Good Samaritan named Joe Harpe fixes the leg and even pays the doctor's bill for an ungrateful Hayworth while building up a solid reputation as one of the good guys in the burgh. Unfortunately a circular turns up saying Harpe's wanted for bank robbery and there's a reward for him dead or alive (which seems strange considering it wasn't like a murder 'r anything). Hayworth tips the guy off, leaves town with him then shoots him in the back. There's a similar hour-long GUNSMOKE from '62 which I'll blab about down the line.
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NEVER PESTER CHESTER (Season Three, Episode Ten)-Dillon's too whipped to call out some oversized toughies who are hitting on the local women so he tells Chester to go and calm things down. The larger than life cowpokes then start giving Chester the biz before lassoing and dragging him way out of town leaving Chester for dead. Dillon then extracts some of the meanest get back I've ever seen, first hogtying one of the men onto a horse and sending it back to Dodge with the guy howling in agony all the way, and second by challenging the other (played by former boxer and uncle to Jethro Bodine Buddy Baer) to a particularly bloody brawl out back of the jail. The final scene is really emotional and goes to show you that even with that tough exterior Dillon is a guy who can understand people, especially his friends.
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JOE PHY (Season Three, Episode Seventeen)-Dillon and Chester head out for Elkader, home to a gunman who tried offing Dillon a few weeks earlier. While there they find out that some guy is playing at being marshal, working on his "reputation" as a gunman and all 'round toughie to keep things quiet. Dillon has to expose this fake (played by Paul Richards, the same guy who almost kills Dillon in the debut episode) so that the attempted murderer will return home, and he does so with the help of none other than Morey Amsterdam as town drunk Cicero Grimes. The thing about this 'un is that, although Phy was a fake, he was sure keeping the town crime free. He wasn't really a bad man...just an everyday faceless sorta guy who only wanted people to admire him!
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MA TENNIS (Season Three, Episode Twenty-One)-Another GUNSMOKE out of many (OK, at least a few) dealing with wayward youth and close-knit families that handle things their way. All 'round jerkoff Andy Tennis kills an unarmed poker dealer at the Longbranch and is hauled away, only to be let go by Dillon after the kid's rifle-totin' ma demands that she take matters into her own hands! Strange for Dillon to do such a thing but he does so only to get to the hard truth of it all. This one also has what I would deem an extremely "down" finale.
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DOOLEY SURRENDERS (Season Three, Episode Twenty-Six)-Once again Strother Martin vies for the most sympathetic retarded person to hit the screens at least until the advent of Mitch Vogel. He's this hide skinner named Dooley who is led to believe by his boss, the all 'round gravelly voiced and downright irritating Ken Lynch, that he shot and killed his co-worker during a drunken spree. Since boss don't want no murderers workin' for him Lynch then strands Dooley in the wilds to fend for himself as the wagon rolls away, conveniently enough with the guy's wages.
Dooley walks twenty miles to Dodge to give himself up and is reluctantly jailed by a highly doubtful Dillon. However, when Doc discovers that the deceased was not shot but stabbed Dillon devises a plan to see what the heck really went on. Once again, a surprise and sad ending that still tends to stun even a fellow like myself who thinks he's man enough to not let emotions tackle the best of him.
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SNAKEBITE (Season Four, Episode Fifteen)-Ya just gotta LOVE it when the title of the program pretty much gives the whole show away like it does here? Well, without spoiling it even more this 'un has noted comedy short biggie and all 'round character actor Andy Clyde playing Poney Thompson, some old coot who comes into Dodge with his dog once a year just to get drunk. While in town the dog is shot by a particularly grimy cowboy who is eventually found stabbed to death after being threatened by Thompson. Sure doesn't look good for ol' Poney who is thusly arrested, something the prairie man dreads due to the claustrophobic conditions of being confined in a jail cell.
After escaping while being escorted to the marshal's office Dillon and Chester go looking for Poney along with the deceased villain's buddy (played by Warren Oates) and well...like I said I don't want to give the ending away because the title says enough but let me put it this way. Do you remember that story about the Spartan boy who stole a wolf cub and hid it under his toga and said pup started gnawing away at the boy's guts?
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ODD MAN OUT (Season Five, Episode Eleven)-Elisha Cook Jr. appears as this sad sack of a soul named Cyrus Tucker who aimlessly wanders into the marshal's office and tells Dillon and Chester that his wife of 32 years has just up and left him. The story does seem kind of peculiar, but when a settler ends up at Jonas's store trying to sell some of Mrs. Tucker's belongings Dillon decides to investigate. The last five or so minutes will be rather throat-lumping tough on any person who had to watch various family members die of Alzheimer's and dementia firsthand.
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FALSE WITNESS (Season Five, Episode Fourteen)-Wayne Rogers of M*A*S*H fame is accused of a murder by veteran character actor Wright King who played some rather irritating villains on GUNSMOKE (worst of all being the creepy farmhand who's supposed to be looking for a doctor but shows up only when it is too late in "Home Surgery"). Now a big man in Dodge, King brags up just what sort of a hero he is while Rogers is set to hang. Highlight comes during the finale where Dillon does a mighty beat-down that'll still shake you up even after repeated viewings.
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BIG TOM (Season Five, Episode Eighteen)-Prizefighter Tom Burr has seen better days, but the fact that he was publicly humiliated by down and dirty boxer Hob Creel makes him more than anxious for a re-match in Dodge. Unfortunately Burr's heart ain't exactly in the best of shape and Doc has Dillon lock Burr up thus he can't get some desperately needed revenge. But he tries... This 'un has an ending that is both happy and sad if you can believe it.
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THE BOBSY TWINS (Season Five, Episode Thirty-Six)-Two elderly and undoubtedly inbred brothers come across a couple camped out on the plains and shoot the husband after he refuses to share his beans and potato peelings with the rednecks. The wife becomes hysterical and wanders off only to die of exposure. Then the twins head out for Dodge where Richard Chamberlain tells 'em that Hank Patterson (aka Fred Ziffel) is really an Indian, and since they're on the hunt for 'em they try to hang the guy in Moss Grimmick's stable. These brothers coulda been from that zombie backwoods world you all read about in NAKED LUNCH I'll tell ya!
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LOVE THY NEIGHBOR (Season Six, Episode Twenty)-It's Family Feud gone deadly when the Scoopers (Ken Lynch as the Pa with Warren Oates as the son) and the Galloways (headed by Jack Elam with Harry Dean Stanton in the ranks) get into a row when the Scoopers catch the youngest Galloway with a sack of their very own potatoes. The twelve-year-old Scooper kid (who claims he was given the bag of spuds by an old man) ends up dying from gangrene after tearing his leg open on the Scooper's barbed wire (Pa Galloway's too cheap to fetch Doc until its too late). Raging revenge (the best kind!) leads to more killing back and forth until the (of course) surprise ending brings everything back to Earth. At least Oates and Stanton made up since the two ended up working together in DILLINGER a good twelve years later (not to mention a number of other by-now cult classics).
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THE SQUAW (Season Seven, Episode Seven)-Lonesome widower John Dehner wants a wife and gets one from the local Indian Agency, something which drives Dehner's son downright mad over the fact that his father's involved in race mixing. It's a slow coming to head situation which pops like a fetid zit on the day Dehner and his bride (played by the same gal who was spoused to Sgt. Carter in season eight's "Old Comrade") are set to be churched.
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COVENTRY (Season Seven, Episode Twenty-Four)-THE TWILIGHT ZONE just hadda've been an influential program back in them thar days because there have been a couple of episodes of other television programs that have copped more than a few ideas from it. A short while back I mentioned a WAGON TRAIN entry entitled "Little Girl Lost" where Charley Wooster meets the ghost of a girl who died during the Donner Party tragedy, and even LEAVE IT TO BEAVER spoofed it when Beaver was to have appeared on a television program but it never aired making him wonder if he dreamed it all! There may have been others and if so perhaps a few of you readers can point me in the right direction regarding who what when where and how the heck'm I ever gonna see any of 'em!
"Coventry" is somewhat different than these TWILIGHT ZONE-inspired wonders but it sure is powerful in an early-sixties television way. It begins with a couple stranded in a dust storm who are denied help by a totally self-centered and (as we'll discover as the show proceeds) evil man named Dan Beard. Beard's set on buying up all the farms around Dodge and becoming a land baron, and, like I'm sure most of you readers are, he's also a guy who doesn't believe in good or bad but can or can't. The woman miscarries because of Beard's callousness, and although things seem to calm down for awhile Beard arrives in Dodge and slick-talks a couple of illiterate and unaware farmers who are down on their luck out of their farms.
Things come to a head when Beard is personally confronted by the husband of the couple he left to fend for themselves during the storm, eventually shooting him dead. When acquitted due to lack of evidence the entire city gives Beard a cold shoulder that eventually drives the man bonkers, with the final five or so minutes of this episode one of the more grabs you by the nerves programs that ever hit the early-sixties (in fact, the same incidental music used on THE TWILIGHT ZONE pops up here so don't tell me this 'un was just a "coincidence").
"Coventry" does bear more than a few scant similarities to season three's "Blood Money" in the way two very evil men get their just dues, and because of this both of these entries into the GUNSMOKE canon make you feel great seeing a couple of truly despicable men suffer especially in the fashion that they do. Of course the way they get their fates handed to them sure does make my own heart feel nice 'n warm. If only real life could be this way...
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OLD COMRADE (Season Eight, Episode Fifteen)-None other'n Sgt. Carter himself Frank Sutton plays the town jerk who is believed to be the son of an aged General and his long-abandoned Indian wife. This could be the big break that "Billy Tooker" needs so he and his own Indian wife can lead a better life. Everybody who reviewed his 'un on IMDB seemed to hate it in varying degrees but eh, I really went for Sutton's retarded antics and the way the kids looked up to him as one of their own, only bigger.
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WITH A SMILE (Season Eight, Episode Twenty-Nine)-Its longtime moom pitcher and tee-vee fave James Best (see my review of SHOCK CORRIDOR from a few years back which mentions Best's shoulda won him an Oscar performance) playing it even more wired than ever as the spoiled brat son of one of the most successful men in Dodge, a character who is bound to irritate the viewer to no end. Best's convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, but he gets this bright idea that he's gonna get out of it due to Dad's influence and deep pockets. The jerk gets "panickier" as the days roll on, irritating just about everyone who comes in contact with him what with Best threatening, pleading and sniveling to the point where even his father can't stand him anymore. However, Pop's got a plan to make everything work out just swell, and after catching the ending you'll agree that it all did indeed succeed according to Hoyle.
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EASY COME (Season Nine, Episode Five)-John Prine plays it especially creepy as this nerdy looking guy named Elmo Sippy who is a grade-A sociopath as we can can tell early on when he abandons a dying cowboy because if he got him help people might think he's the one who shot the guy. Sippy has no qualms about robbing and killing, dragging an innocent drifter in with him and laying waste with no remorse because the gettin' sure is good. It's a weird and bloody story with Dillon and Chester trailing him from Dodge out to the boonies then all the way back home.
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THE MAGICIAN (Season Nine, Episode Twelve)-A particularly bitter one where a rotund, somewhat lovable and sympathetic snake oil salesman and his knockout daughter sell their wares while in Dodge which I will admit is strange considering the particularly anti-patent medicine sentiment shown in season one's "Professor Lute Bone". Pop wind up at the Longbranch where he's accused of cheating at cards and is roughed up pretty severely by yet another spoiled brat son of a rich man, the father of who doesn't seem to have much going for him in the way of humanity either. The strange thing is that the patent medicine dealer was not cheating but doesn't defend himself the way any other person called out like this would've. Spoiled brat then heads out to where the salesman and daughter are camped and rapes the girl. The salesman is tight lipped as far as relaying any incriminating details to Dillon, saying that evil will destroy itself. Sheesh, even the daughter refuses to identify her attacker making things even more confusing. But don't worry, we'll eventually get to hear the sound of evil exploding.
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NO HANDS (Season Nine, Episode Nineteen)-Once again Strother Martin plays it too true-to-life as yet another simple yet sympathetic character, this time a sign carver who runs afoul of the extremely sadistic Ginnis brood (led by Denver Pyle) after these drifters have to wait for service while Doc is tending to Martin. After an altercation where Martin's hand gets stomped on by one of the Ginnis clan and has to be amputated, Martin leaves Dodge to start off his new career as a traveling peddler with his dog and a few jars of smoked sausage. And if you have the idea that the Ginnis family and Martin won't ever meet up again you got another think comin'! Best thing about this 'un is the surprise ending where the Ginnisses actually get away with the heinous crime they commit but get their justice in a rather roundabout way.
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CALEB (Season Nine, Episode Twenty-Six)-It's one of those shows about a guy so down on his luck and lost in life that I can't see how any of you real life readers couldn't identify with the protagonist. John Dehner once again brightens up the cathodes as an extremely depressed mid-aged dirt farmer who's such a flop in life that even his wife thinks he's a loser who is beyond redemption. Aimlessly wandering into town, Caleb sees Dillon courageously roughhouse and jail the brother of a man heading for the gallows, doing it somewhat brutally but effectively. This show of power makes Caleb wish to high heaven he that could be a real man just like the marshal, able to be brave, handle tough situations and subdue the evil ones without fear or perhaps even caution. Caleb does get his fifteen minutes after standing up to this very same man Dillon jailed who was harassing one of the upstairs girls at the Longbranch, but loses it big time when forced to grovel to him with everyone watching thus going back to his former pariah self. He eventually does regain his dignity but at a pretty huge cost. Special attention should be paid to "Dog Dog Dog" (the same pooch who traveled with Strother Martin in "No Hands") who is about as good an actor as Dehner if you ask me.
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OLD MAN (Season Ten, Episode Three)-Pretty much a re-write of "False Witness" (throw in a little "Snakebite" as well) with a more dire outcome. This time it's Ned Glass (who played some pretty good sympathetic types on the series) whose neck's in the noose after he allegedly killed the bully who has been hassling him for being such a slob. Of course the truth comes out, but this time it's a little too late.
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CIRCUS TRICK (Season Ten, Episode Twenty)-Walter Burke's the ringmaster of a traveling circus complete with Angelo Rossitto as a clown, a psychic wife who might not be the hoax many would take her to be, a shifty beyond belief Warren Oates and the strongman who's yet another continuation on the old "Lenny" character from OF MICE AND MEN --- a mentally stunted wall of muscles who doesn't know his own strength (used to good effect in many a Warner Brothers cartoon). Dillon notices that everywhere the circus goes the bank gets robbed so he stakes out at Botkin's while the festivities go on. However, Burke's got another idea in store. Notable not only for Gomer Pyle galpal Elizabeth MacRae once again playing Festus' love interest April but for an emotional closing speech from Burke that just might make you feel sorry for the crook! Not so strangely enough but Burke and Oates worked together on the infamous OUTER LIMITS episode "The Mutant" two television seasons earlier.
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SOUTH WIND (Season Eleven, Episode Eleven)-Not exactly what I'd call a super-duper one, but Bruce Dern's mangled performance as the crazed father of two who murders a man and tries to get the guy's twelve-year-old son who's out for some justice makes this one a winner. Never was a big Dern fan but he does it good, especially during the final scene where you're just itching to see him get his ticket to Hell punched.
***And that's that. Like I said, if any of you more astute to the bared wire intensity of fifties television have any additions or subtractions to this list for that matter and want to let me know well...you must be a rarity since I wouldn't think that any of you would give a hoot and holler about old Tee-Vee programs when you have your hentai to keep you nice and happy!
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