Reviews

Problems: It takes a little too long for them to get to the trial too bad it wasn't a two-parter. Doc Adams is overused in this ep and it was really supposed to be about Kitty and Festus. It would have been better if Thad had stuck with very injured Marshall Dillon during the posse scenes, more believable it would have been.

The ep opens with Matt chasing some renegade Indians. Exciting opening and good too because what follows is about the worst adult family drama written in the entire 1960s ( a decade American TV shows usually showed far more ingenuity in). The scenes go on way too long and the actress playing the mom is completely neither here nor there in appeal. In fact the scenes of the family as a foursome or a father and son team are absolutely painful.

Before I go on let me add everyone who is a fan usually thinks the regular Gunsmoke cast became sometimes incidental to the show only in the color eps but this is a B+W one and they are already somewhat minor here too ( despite being prominent in dancing scene).

The episode is not entirely bad as the beautiful and highly interesting Julie Sommars plays lover to one of the 20-ish brothers. Her and her subplot are the best things by far in the whole ep. She is underused. Fortunately she would come back in a color ep and have a better role than here. I think they realized after this one was filmed how they woefully underused this great lady.

Ridiculous of posters to find the show best when Marshall Dillon is the central character. Except for Miss. Kitty only being more attractive to look at-- Festus was hands down the show's finest character. In this he makes an honest-to-goodness mistake and tells two wolf fur trappers that the catch they expected 301 dollars for is nearly worthless. Festus comes to realize his mistake and goes to the wife of the one of the trappers with the earned 301 bucks. From there he is kidnapped. Story is even and makes perfect sense throughout.

Most casual viewers may have presumed Newly had no major introduction but he did. He plays a former medical student turned gunsmith who meets Miss. Kitty on a stage. The two are kidnapped ( Kitty more incidentally) as a gang of crooks wrongly think Newly is a full-fledged doctor. As he is carrying a medical bag from his ( I think) uncle. The crooks need him to help a wounded man of their gang.

This episode was filmed in great crystal clarity and it has been beautifully remastered and restored that way.

Why DiD Matt attempt to ride out on his horse knowing full-well he could be shot? Why was Matt covered up with a sheet in the undertaker's office when he was badly injured? A medical risk no?

Despite this and a few other bits of curiosity this is a nearly totally great, suspenseful ep with fine cast. The idea of the city of Dodge being totally taken over by crooks.

A lawman of an Arizona town comes back and finds the town devastated by the Apache Brothers ( don't blame yourself if at first you think it was the Apache Indians). The lawman proceeds to Dodge City, Kansas ( about and at least over 310 miles away but not much is made of the great distance between the two points). The Apache Brothers it seems kidnapped his comely girl(?) and want to now commit robbery in Dodge. Also, the rejected lawman is an old good friend of Marshall Dillon's. How does all this tie in together in the end!?!

Linville is dynamic in his only Bonanza guest role. He plays a former Confederate officer who is forced to turn on his old commanding officer (John Anderson in an also excellent returning guest role) from the days in the Civil War when they ran a POW camp. Amidst all these male guests is fortunately a pretty lady one to be visually attractive. My reviews about left-wing radical Mash are worth checking out!

In the more or less lead character Peter Lawford is obviously rather drunk and very full of himself as former Rat Pack member and former Kennedy brother-in-law. The actions his character does, like getting feral girl Flower to count to 10 and trying to swap goods to the feral women, seem extremely scripted and highly unlike the probably real him.

As for the sexy women it's a toss up whose the sexiest. Performer Rosalind Chao or stage-named actress Jayne Kennedy or the blonde Steven Keats falls for are definitely the three best.

Now as to the far-fetched part of the title. Why have these women not been discovered sooner by civilized people? It is supposed to be 1979 and presumably many planes and modern boats pass by the island all the time. One maybe answer is this. Chao's Flower character is most likely supposed to be Vietnamese and seeing her alone and acting like a native islander girl may have fooled previous modern visitors to the island. This film BTW was made by Alan Landsburg who made also "In search of" hosted by Leonard Nimoy and the plane propeller being worshipped in a god-like fashion by the women is a hint he did because he often talks about were religion came from. Landsburg is wrong if he ever tries to say the Bible has space traveller visitor origins as the Bible is true with incredible science like jet streams and round Earth and much more to back it up as God's word. But maybe a few, say, Pacific island cults have airplane visitor origins pretty much as in this film.

This is the appearance by blonde Hollywood bombshell #3 -after Monroe and Mansfield- Mamie Van Doren. Although attractive she only has a non-distinctive supporting player role as a stripper. The lead actress in the stripper storyline is beauty Lorraine Stephens --irregardless how she spells her first name. Stephens, as a grown spoiled heiress,begins her role wearing a hat and sometimes dark glasses trying to hide from bring recognized as her picture is in the headline of the local FI paper. Eventually, though she had no prior experience, she learns how to strut like a stripper in the most enjoyable scenes in the whole episode. The stripper storyline is the best episode of the episode and thanks to Stephens it's a true winner.

Plot:Mannix kills a bad man in the line of duty. But that is just the beginning. The baddie's affiliated gang comes along to Mannix's neat apartment and kidnap him. They take him back to their street gang hideout and announce they are going to kill him. God, is this contrived! He gets shot while fleeing. He meets an obnoxious bum and gives him money to phone for help but the bum just gets drunk at a bar with the money. At a nearby restaurant works the mother of a new just-being-initiated gang member. The lady playing this mother is completely terrible at acting. It seems like the Mannix character is barely even in this ep groaning from his wound most of the terrible show long. Watch the way better Mannix ep I reviewed just before this one.

Avoid!!

PS To the odd poster who spoke so well of this dreck ep I ask. Are you related to someone acting in this episode?

Glad to see other posters on here know this episode is entirely worthless!

This is a very well photographed ep with very nice scenery including the best scenery of all --a beautiful and interesting lady. Comer starts off sitting in a radiant pose on the ede of a boat her character and her character's husband are riding round in. He goes below to mix drinks and comes back and she is gone. He hires Mannix to find her and soon she is located alive or is she?

This episode is tremendously well acted by James Best and the lady Katherine Bard as his wife. But suicide is no solution ever especially when there are beautiful ladies worth living for. The lead character should not had been written to kill himself and lose his beautiful and wonderful wife. A very tough and ultimately wrongheaded ep to get through . Women are more than worth staying alive for, fellas.

This is not Dwayne Hickman playing the role here of the ex-con. It is his very much loolkalike and less wimpy older brother Darryl Hickman.

All right the story about a young man newly paroled who moves in with his old gang member's brother and beautiful mother. Yes Miss. Dunnock is very attractive in her role. The ex-con, back to him, is trying to go straight as a mechanic. He gets beaten up and hassled by two strange men who we took at first to be other old members of their gang. But no. The mechanic does not know them. Turns out the landlady, whom the mechanic is beginning to call 'Ma', and her son only were good to him to find out where he stashed the gang's stolen loot. The mechanic does not know where it is and he is off to jail at the end when he murders her violent drunken son who was beating the living crap out of him and admitted to have hired the two goons.

If they ever wanted Dobie Gillis to act slicker they could have had Darryl play him for that particular episode.

And Hitch's own direction. This ep has a married writer named Babs who notices suspicious activity in the house next door. After the creep neighbor man glances in on her home she returns the favor by going over and sneaking into his house to search for his constantly elusive wife Babs has heard much about but never seen. A series of twists and turns happen after that leading to a happy ending.

Miss Scott carries what might as well really be a one woman show and with perk and sex appeal and brilliance. I do not understand the strange poster on here commenting about Robert Horton playing her husband and being hunky. He is a just plain fella!

Spoilers: This unusual horror filn which is possibly plot-related to Universal's Frankenstein film series has something even better than that maybe-connection. And that is-- a beautiful actress using all her talent and all her good looks to carry it at a time when extremely few women were central characters in films. Knight's beautiful teenage character, Trudy, lives with her Uncle who is assisted by Oliver Frank. Actually, he is really named Frankenstein and he just may have originally been Peter Frankenstein in 'Son of Frankenstein'. Thus, he May have originally been Peter Oliver Frankenstein. But with Sandra Knight in one sexy bathing suit scene after another that bit about Oliver Frank is really not the highlight. Frank hits on her but she has a boyfriend and she hotly rejects the mad scientist. Frank gives Trudy a potion turning her into a monster but Knight's good looks still come through the makeup. She is that great! Frank eventually first dates, then kills a mutual lady friend of Trudy's and turns her brain into that of a Frankenstein monster. He never makes Trudy herself into a creature again thus she gets to keep all her good looks permanently which she deserves to keep. Frank and his created monser are eventually killed and Trudy and her beau live happily on.

Spoilers.

The story is very well-done. Almost too heavily plotted in the first three minutes but you get into it very well. Miss. Gates is beautiful to look at and highly appealing in her role as a suicidal gangster-girlfriend. Her great character is the central. In comes Mr. Barry as the man who horribly wants to kill this beauty for obviously causing his brother's death.

This episode is almost all brilliantly done and it's ending is not known until just 30 seconds before its climax. An unusual filmed shot of Gates being shot. OTOH it is a total shame that a pretty girl gets murdered and the climax should have had Gates nearly get murdered by Barry but him deciding that he has grown to easily love her and the Two live-on together for good.

About Hitch's opening and closing narrations. I have seen them over the years and they are just filler space and I hardly care about them. The stories always matter more than them.

She plays the wife of a very modern 19h century doctor. The doctor lied about going to Harvard and he is in jail for it. Foster goes to the Ponderosa and uses the training her husband gave her to tend to ill patients coming down with influenza.

Spoilers

I also predicted a different ending for this. I thought the beautiful and talented Joan Hacket as the writer's foxy girlfriend,Sylvia, was going to be in the last scene. Probably the other poster did too. My probable shared view ends there.

Joan Hacket's scene where she gets a temporary brushoff is a scene worth watching over and again. This great talented appealing beauty is worth it in about every show she does. She is better more beautiful and appealing than the haggish, overrated Jo Van Fleet. Fleet can actually make you turn channels.

Slight spoilers. While hunting Hoss and especially Little Joe come across a beautiful unconscious gypsy girl-supebly played by Miss. Harrison. They take her back to the Ponderosa and discover she is the type who literally bites the hand that feeds her. The Cartwrights learn that she has been insanely rejected by her fellow gypsy people travelling in the area. She believes she is an inhuman animal. She is wild, suicidal and makes a howling call scaring their horses into a frenzy. Eventually Ben meets up with her people and convinces them to slightly give her a chance again. They do and eventually they accept her again and she goes off with them. This ep has less to say about gypsies and more to say about a young lady being rejected and the really horrible feeling rejection can bring upon her. Harrison's character is feeling the tragic sting of rejection no lady should ever know. She only survives because cared for in the meantime. If they had not reconciled her to her people who rejected her in the first place she would have soon died of the very bad internal feeling the gypsies gave her. A true great episode mostly indeed because of the ultra-talented and beautiful Harrison.