Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Shazam: "The Brothers" (September 14, 1974)

The second episode of the Filmation live-action series Shazam first aired on September 14, 1974 and is titled “The Brothers.”

In this didactic tale, an older brother, Danny (Steve Tanner) refuses to acknowledge that his younger sibling, Chad (Lance Kerwin) can take care of himself, because he is blind.  Danny is over-protective and smothering, and his behavior irritates Chad, who wants to hold on to some semblance of a normal life.

Meanwhile Billy Batson (Michael Gray) learns from the Elders that he is destined to share his secret identity as Captain Marvel with Chad.  This prophecy comes to pass, as Michael and Mentor (Les Tremayne) attempt to rescue Danny from a life-threatening rattle-snake bite.  

In this crisis, Danny must place his trust in the blind Chad, and Chad comes through.

“The Brothers” follows almost-to-the-letter the narrative outline of the first Shazam installment, “The Joyriders.”  The Elders warn Billy about a lesson he must learn, quote a famous historical figure on the subject of that lesson, and then set Billy out to save the day.  Billy does so, but only by becoming Captain Marvel.

In this case, the lesson is that sometimes you must reveal your true self to help another human being, and the quote of the week comes from the Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) and Lyrical Ballads, his work with Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.”  

As a critic, I’m pretty much a sucker for works of art that contextualize their stories in terms of pertinent quotations, because -- generally-speaking -- such quotes provide us an insight into how an artist would like his or work to be seen.  I loved the quotes that opened Millennium (1996 – 1999) episodes, for instance. They always helped to contextualize the story in terms of human history, and literature.

And I can plainly see the appeal of including “famous” (or at least relevant) quotations in a live-action Saturday morning kid’s program.  With a little luck, the inclusion of such quotes encourages kids to learn more about Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Aristotle, or the “writer of the week.”

At the same time, however, the overtly preachy or heavy-handed nature of stories like “The Brothers” probably does much to drive kids away from a series like Shazam!  It is relentlessly moralistic. And therefore the quotations from famous writers feel more like an English class assignment than a part of an exciting superhero program.

Also in keeping with the format of “The Joyriders,” parents don’t seem to exist in this dojo.  

Instead, children are left alone for long stretches of time, and must ferret out moral problems without the supervision of adults.  Only Mentor is present as an “advisory” figure, at least so far.  The thematic concerns, as I noted in my post last week, are all juvenile ones.  And the opponents for Captain Marvel are mostly small-potatoes.  This week, he must only contend with Danny’s injury from a (stock-footage) rattle snake.

Similarly, there are very few interior shots in “The Brothers.”  There’s just a scene or two in Danny and Chad’s house, but the rest of the episode takes place on desert roads and in rocky canyons.  I’m not complaining about the approach, just noting, again that sometimes Shazam boasts the feel of a guerilla production.  There’s no home base (save for the mobile recreational vehicle), and no recurring settings, either.

As before, there are also some unexplained aspects of the Elder/Mentor communication in this Shazam episode. The Elders seem to be able to hear everything Mentor says, even though he does not travel with Michael on the boy’s weird vision-quest like trips to the Elders’ realm.  Mentor isn’t present visually, in other words, for the meet-ups, yet he always knows exactly what was spoken during the conferences.  Is he just eavesdropping?

Next week: “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” starring 70s child star Pamelyn Ferdin (The Mephisto Waltz, Space Academy, etc).

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: ElectraWoman and DynaGirl: "Glitter Rock" (September 18, 1976)

In “Glitter Rock,” the King of Tourembourg, Alex X (Michael Blodgett) visits with Lori (Deidre Hall) and Judy (Judy Strangis) while attending his high school reunion in the States.  

He has brought with him the valuable Key of Tourembourg.  Anyone who wears the key automatically becomes ruler of the country.

Unfortunately, a villain operating out of an abandoned theater, Glitter Rock (John Mark Robinson), tricks Alex into meeting him, and steals the crystal.  

His plan, however, is not to take over Tourembourg…but the world.  Specifically, he wants to put the key’s beautiful crystal into a satellite he plans to launch, and make the world's population his slaves.

Electra Woman and Dyna Girl race to save Alex, but instead fall into Glitter Rock’s trap.  He puts them in a “tight squeeze” and the only thing can get them out of it is the new Electra-Vibe app on their Electro-Comps.

This is the episode of ElectraWoman and DynaGirl that I most clearly remember watching on the series original run in the Bicentennial Year.  I recall, specifically, Glitter Rock’s crazy outfits, and the fact that, just a few years later, Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century 1979-1981) used the same plot line in “Space Rockers.”

Because of Glitter Rock’s outrageous appearance, this episode may qualify as being one of the campier of the bunch.  That notion is amplified by Glitter Rock’s song titles and overall plan for world domination, which involves funny song titles, and a satellite launched into space.  That satellite is represented on-screen by a lunar lander model kit, commercially available at the time.

One thing I noticed watching this time is that “Glitter Rock” and indeed, many EW and DG episodes, have nary a wasted breath. There are many scenes (and camera set-ups...) but all are extremely terse and short, meaning that there weren’t a lot of lines to learn per scene.  

The short, numerous scenes give the series a kind of breathless quality that is commendable, and harks back, in a way to the serials of the 1930s.

This episode also features a good long look at the Electra Car. There’s a scene in which the heroes board the vehicle, and then we track it as it leaves the Electra Tunnel Base.

The camera-work is impressive, and the ca -- though built over the body of a boat, I think -- is still kind of cool in a retro-futuristic way.

Next week: “Empress of Evil.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "The Cheerleader" (October 2, 1976)

In “The Cheerleader,” Ann (Laurette Spang) is desperate to head the school’s cheering team, and plots to steal the answer key to a chemistry test to keep her academic scores high. She lures Tut out of Ms. Thomas’s (Joanna Cameron) room, and Rennie has to find the missing raven. When Rennie returns, Ann has copied all the answers.

Then, to exacerbate her sin, Ann frames the top cheerleader on the squad, Wynn (Colleen Camp) for cheating on the test.  While the academic board debates what should happen to Wynn, however, Ms. Thomas looks into the matter and determines the truth.

When Ann is nearly caught for cheating, she flees in her car.  But after a strange turn of events, the car nearly runs her down on a hillside, necessitating a visit from Mighty Isis.

Battlestar Galactica’s (1978-1979) Cassiopeia -- Laurette Spang -- makes quite a splash in The Secrets of Isis, playing a ruthless, manipulative and scheming cheerleader.  She’s a good actress, and Spang makes one both loathe and then feel sorry for Ann, a girl who “wants everything,” according to Wynn, but who is not “willing to work for anything.”  

The result?  “She could end up with nothing.”

Despite a good guest appearance by Spang, “The Cheerleader” certainly raises some issues of continuity in terms of the series. 

 For example, the first half of the episode involves the fact that Ann frees Tut, Isis’s bird, and that the bird becomes lost, and later endangered in the great outdoors.  In her first appearance in this segment, in fact, Isis must save Tut from a wild dog.

But we already know from other episodes that Tut flies out of the lab quite a bit, and can handle himself just fine.  

He flew into a junkyard in one episode from the first season (to rescue Cindy Lee), and had to go find and recruit Captain Marvel in another episode, late in that season.  

So why is he suddenly helpless and at risk in the great outdoors?

Secondly, this episode seems to point out just how little the faculty actually does at Ms. Thomas’s school.  While Rick and Andrea walk the grounds working and fretting, they leave a student --- Rennie -- to type up the chemistry test answer key.  Isn’t this something they should be doing, rather than requiring a student to do it? (And Rennie is in the class, isn’t she?  How does that work if she prepares the exam’s answer keys?)

Isis saves the day (and Ann…) in “The Cheerleader” when she levitates the cheerleader far from the ground, and lets the runaway car go by her.  The superhero also manages to make the offending wild dog disappear, so she can retrieve Tut, and keep him safe from harm.  These powers are ones we’ve seen, in one form or another, on the series before. She used levitation in "Dreams of Flight," for example.

Next week: "Year of the Dragon."

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Valley of the Dinosaurs: "A Turned Turtle" (September 21, 1974)

In the third episode of CBS’s Valley of the Dinosaurs (1974), titled “A Turned Turtle,” the Butlers learn of an old hermit who may know the pathway out of the valley. 

The only problem is that to reach the old hermit, and find the pathway itself, is quite a dangerous journey. The hermit lives in the territory of a fearsome dinosaur called “Godon.”  And unstable volcanoes threaten to erupt at any moment. 

While Kim and Kate go to speak to the hermit about his knowledge of a path, Mr. Butler and Gorak realize they need a way to reach them after an eruption, and use a giant turtle shell to create a vehicle that will help them pass through a submerged passageway….

In “A Turned Turtle,” The Butlers have a chance to escape the prehistoric land where they are trapped.  Uniquely, the cave-man family is confused by their desire to leave. To the family, life in the valley of the dinosaurs is quite normal. The Butlers explain that they have “a world” of their own out there, a world where they “belong.”

As is clear from this episode, the third in the series run, a format is developing. Each week, a prehistoric crisis occurs, whether it is an army of ants, a dinosaur attack, or a volcanic eruption that blocks egress to family members.  The two families then work together to solve the problem.  

That solution, almost every week, has something to do with the Butlers’ knowledge of 20^th century science.  For instance, a hot-air balloon was used last week (“What Goes Up,”) and a lever and water siphons were used the week before (“Forbidden Fruit.”)  

This week, Mr. Butler -- the high school science teacher – explains how the turtle shell, when upside down, will create a pocket of air that they can breathe, while traversing the underwater passageway.

The format is predictable, but leaves enough room for some intriguing and fun stories.  

Even more predictable than the formula becomes, however, is the solution to the crisis this week.  The Butlers realize there is no passage out of the Valley that they can traverse and that -- until one is discovered -- they are trapped.  

Alternately, the series would have ended if the old hermit was able to take them out of the valley. Like the castaways on Gilligan's Isle, there's an awareness here that our heroes will never make their escape.

Next Week: “Smoke Screen.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "The Hitchhiker" (September 8, 1976)

In “The Hitchhiker,” two high school girls -- Hope (Jewel Blanch) and Joanne (Lynn Tufield) -- make a habit of hitchhiking. 

One morning they almost die when their driver, an irresponsible teenager named Charlie (Barry Miller) takes them on a speeding trip that catches the eyes of the police and nearly ends with a deadly wreck.

Fortunately, Isis (Joanna Cameron) is present, and helps the girls avoid a deadly crash. Joanne promises that she will never “hitchhike again,” but Hope doesn’t seem to get the message.

The next day, rather than wait for the bus with Joanne, Hope gets back in the car with Charlie, and another dangerous ride ensues.

This time, however, his car breaks down on railroad tracks as a train barrels towards it...

According to Saturday morning television, hitchhiking was apparently one of the great social issues of the 1970s. It was dangerous…and everybody was doing it!

Secrets of Isis (1975 – 1976) takes on the problem in “The Hitchhiker,” an episode which sees the super heroine helping two teenage girls who fall in with the wrong driver.  

And yes, this narrative or plot-line was absolutely re-used on an episode of The All-New Super Friends in 1977 (“Hitchhike.”)  There, two high-school girls also ran afoul of a bad driver, and required rescue from the Wonder Twins.

The idea of both of these stories (and for audiences) is: get scared straight!  

Violent, dangerous hitchhiking incidents should prove how dangerous it is, and prevent people (especially kids) from doing it. Today it all feels like silly exaggeration, and much ado about nothing.  I find it hard to believe that teenage hitchhiking was ever quite the epidemic that Saturday mornings of the disco decade made it out to be.

Intriguingly, this is one of the few episodes of Isis in which we see Mrs. Thomas (Cameron) actually teach a class.  Here, she undertakes a chemistry lesson, but it’s really all about hitchhiking. She discusses the danger of a “catalyst” in an unpredictable situation, and likens it to the plight of Joanne and Hope.

The driver in this case, Charlie, is the episode’s real menace.  He decides to take the girls on a police chase, drives the car through a parked construction vehicle, runs off the road, drives without a license, and stalls out on the aforementioned race tracks. Charlie learns the error of his ways at the end (on Isis, the perps always do…) but if anyone on the series ever deserved some jail time, it’s this guy.

In terms of Isis and her abilities, we see her take apart the molecular cohesion of a vehicle in the road, so that Charlie’s car won’t crash into it.  

“Molecules by which we’re bound separate…let space be found,” she says, invoking the mighty goddess.

Vis-à-vis the series’ special effects, there appears to be some new footage of Isis in flight this week. I would say this is so, in part, because these shots feature Isis’s new hair-do and cut.

Next week: “Class Clown”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "Girl Driver" (November 29, 1975)

In “Girl Driver,” a young woman, Freddie Charleston (Susan Lawrence), is a mechanic and car lover running for Auto Club President at the local high school. She is the first girl to do so.

But a sexist boy at school, Mac (Steve Doubet), doesn’t believe that a female can possibly know anything about cars.

Hoping to settle the matter, Mrs. Thomas (Joanna Cameron) organizes a rally, a competition for the two drivers. It will occur in the mountains, and involve successfully following a map.

Mac, however, decides to cheat. 

It’s a decision he comes to regret, however, when he runs his car off the road, and nearly dies.

Fortunately, Isis is nearby and ready to intervene…

This episode of Isis (1975 – 1976) confronts an “attitude that is pretty old fashioned,” namely that women cannot be leaders, or even more basically, decent mechanics. Mac is the male chauvinist pig who says things like “No girl is gonna beat me!”

Of course, to prove his point about the inherent superiority of men, Mac cheats and nearly gets himself killed.  

Isis intervenes in the battle of the sexes and teaches Mac a lesson about treating people fairly.  By the end of the episode, he concedes that Freddie is not so bad “for a girl” and that he might even vote for her for Auto Club President.

Isis demonstrates some amazing powers in this episode. She snuffs out a gasoline fire in Freddie’s garage by declaring: “Power of fire at my command, disappear when I raise my hand.”  

Later, she gently rides Mac’s plummeting car down the mountainside to a cushioned impact. 

Perhaps most impressively, Isis is able to look back in time, into the past, and see Mac cheating during the rally.  That’s a power she has never used before, if memory serves.

Every week there’s a lesson to learn on Isis, which can make the series a chore to get through.  On the other hand, it was aimed at kids and every now and then a story would really work, sometimes in spite of itself. 

For some reason I can’t fully fathom, I found “Girl Driver” rather engaging, and found myself looking to see how Freddie would manage a win in the rally, especially with a competitor dedicated to cheating.

Next week: “Scuba Duba.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Mystery Island (1977): "Sentinels of Time"

In “Sentinels of Time,” the Mud-Men -- “people of darkness” -- return to claim their idol or God, P.O.P.S. 

The robot is taken to a cave on the island where none have ever returned from, and meets the “Sentinels of Time” there, small white, flying creatures, like insects, which can freeze people in time.

While Sue and the others are trapped in the cave with P.O.P.S. and the Sentinels, Dr. Strange reprimands Krieg for his failures (“you’re simply not up to dong the simplest tasks!”) and sends him into the caves to capture the robot.

As the story ends, Sue and her friends are trapped in the cave, asleep for “a thousand years,” and P.O.P.S. is powerless to help them without access to solar power.

The pulpy nonsense of Mystery Island (1977) continues in episode 6, which introduces strange little gnat like creatures which can suspend people in time.  The Sentinels are an interesting creation for sure.  What are they? How do they operate?  This episode doesn’t tell us anything about them, beyond specifying their cave habitat.  Hopefully upcoming stories will explain a little more fully about them.  But I don’t have my hopes up.  I think they're just the weird gimmick/danger of the week.

Meanwhile, the cliffhanger of the week on Mystery Island finds our heroes suspended in time by the Sentinels apparently not to awake for ten centuries.  Their only hope of escape and survival rests with the nefarious Dr. Strange.

The episode also features other typical “dangers” of 1930s-style chapter plays, including an attack by a black panther. Sue encounters one in the caves, and is relentlessly pursued by it until she is captured by Krieg.  Today, it's easy to see that the impressive-looking big cat was never in close-proximity to the damsel in distress.

There’s a lot of running around in this episode, and scenes of the bad guy, Dr. Strange, yelling at his underlings, but beyond the focus of action there’s not much to enjoy beyond the weird costumes (for the bush men) and the colorful sets. In particular, I like Strange’s subterranean, 1970s-tech laden underground base. 

Unlike Filmation programming, there is no focus here on delivering a message or moral commentary in Mystery Island.  Like Bigfoot and Wildboy, the stories tend towards phantasmagoria. But with cliffhangers in each tale, the stories tend to blend together, one pitfall after the other.  Of all the Saturday morning programs I've watched, this one is the most impenetrable.  But on the other hand, I was not able to see episodes 2, 3 or 4, and perhaps they offered more in terms of explanation.

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Mystery Island (1977): "Valley of Fire"

In episode five of Mystery Island (1977), titled “Valley of Fire,” the robot P.O.P.S. (voiced by Frank Welker) is a captive of the island’s indigenous mud-people. They believe him to be a deity.

Soon, however, P.O.P.S. is rescued by a Lava Man. The Lava Man is returning a favor since he was saved by P.O.P.S. and his friends in a previous episode.

Meanwhile, Dr. Strange’s (Michael Kermoyan) lead minion, Krieg, attempts to steal the much-sought after robot for his master…

Mystery Island -- a segment of The Skatebrids (1977 – 1978) -- plays best (meaning least painfully....) if you consider it a kind of campy 1930s pulp serial, only filmed in color. 

The focus of each fifteen-minute segment is action and some lame humor, but there is no depth whatsoever in terms of the storytelling or the characterization. Instead, it's all just a run-around with captures, rescues, captures, and rescues.

Dr. Strange, from his “Cave of Science,” is always trying to capture P.O.P.S. and the robot -- who notes here that it is “hard being a God” -- is always getting through one scrape after another with his trio of human friends.  

Here, a kind act (the rescue of the Lava Man) is rewarded, and the beat goes on.

Frankly, there’s not a whole lot more to say about “Valley of Fire,” beyond noting that it is pure, pulpy phantasmagoria.  

If the next few episodes don’t get better -- or at least more interesting -- I think I’m going to move on to the next 1970s Saturday morning series I’ve been wanting to re-visit (or at least the few episodes available on YouTube: Run, Joe Run).

Next week on Mystery Island, episode #6: “Sentinels of Time.”

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: The Secrets of Isis: "No Drums, No Trumpets" (November 15, 1975)

In “No Drums, No Trumpets,” a ham radio operator, Fred (Mark Lambert) is irritated that he loses a science fair to a friend, Dorothy.  At a crucial moment, his radio malfunctions, and he gets angry.

Fred speeds away from the scene in his car, and promptly drives it over a cliff.  

Isis (Joanna Cameron) arrives just in time to save him, summoning the wind to blow the vehicle back to the road.

Later, Mrs. Thomas, Fred and Dorothy visit a nearby ghost-town, where local thieves are hiding out. 

Mrs. Thomas loses her Isis amulet during a staircase collapse, meaning she can’t stop the thugs, or save the teens. 

Instead, Fred must use his twitchy ham radio to contact the authorities.

“No Drums, No Trumpets” is slightly more than the run-of-the-mill Secrets of Isis episode.  There’s still the Filmation standard here of the “lesson of the week” (in this case: sometimes you learn more by losing than by winning), but the danger is ratcheted up to a higher degree.

Specifically, Isis/Andrea loses her amulet in the middle of the story, which means she is unable to transform into the Goddess and save the day.  Instead, she must rely on a temperamental teen, and on a different skill-set too, to deal with the menacing criminals hiding out in the ghost town.

It may not sound like much, but this formula deviation is enough to make “No Drums, No Trumpets” stand-out from the pack  So many episodes of Isis drone on and repeat the exact same chronology and order of events that it is an actual relief to see something different happen for a change.

Also, the scene with the teen in a car – teetering on the verge of death -- is surprisingly well-vetted here.

Next week, Isis and Captain Marvel team up in "Funny Gal!"