Television series aired by CBS from 1965 through 1969.

In the mid-1960s, CBS married two adventure concepts, secret agents and the old West, and created a series called The Wild, Wild West. The show premiered in September 1965 and starred Robert Conrad as James T. West. West was an old West version of James Bond. He worked for the Secret Service during the Grant administration. Like any good spy, West was armed with a myriad of gadgets and hidden weapons. These included:

  • A derringer hidden in his coat sleeve that would slide into his hand.
    "You are powerless, Mr. West. My evil plan will succeed, because I have disarmed you!"
    "Really?" (Small gun slides out of West's sleeve into his hand)
    Bang!
    Villain dies.
  • A throwing dagger hidden down the back of his coat
    "Put your hands behind your head, Mr. West! None of your sneaky shooting me with that little gun, like you did my brother! I have it and your other guns, so my evil plan will succeed!"
    "Really?"(Knife appears in West's hand from down his coat)
    Stab!
    Villain dies.
  • A false heel in his boot that contained whatever he needed, but most often plastic explosives and a fuse
    "We have you locked in this cell, Mr. West, and have taken all of your weapons! You killed our two older brothers, but the other six of us have defeated you! Now our evil plan will succeed!"
    "Really?" (A bomb appears from West's boot and is attached to the door)
    Boom!
    Lots of villains die!
West was helped on his missions by his partner Artemus Gordon played by Ross Martin. Gordon was the science geek and master of disguise, who played all of the major roles a sidekick is supposed to play in an action series.
  • Someone for the hero to explain the storyline to ("So, Jim, what do you think the Indian chief meant by "metal stick of fire?")
  • Someone to pull the hero out of a deadly situation ("Thanks, Arty! If you hadn't dressed up like Molly the barmaid, I wouldn't have been able to get away.")
  • and Someone for the hero to rescue ("Thanks, Jim! If you hadn't come in and kicked the ass of those thirty guys, I wouldn't have been able to get away.")
The Wild, Wild West ran for four seasons. West and Gordon traveled all over the southwest, fighting evil in its many forms. Their reoccuring villain was Dr. Miguelito Loveless, a evil genius with big plans and a little body. The part was played by dwarf actor Michael Dunn.

Film review:

In 1999, Hollywood decided to make the TV-Series noded above into a movie.Barry Sonnenfeld directed, and Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Brannagh and Salma Hayek starred in this production that failed to achieve box office success, but was still watchable.

The basic premise is based on the original TV-series, so I won't go into that. The plot of the movie comes into motion, when American President Ulysses S. Grant (Kevin Kline) sends two of his best agents, James West (Will Smith) and Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline) on a mission to investigate the kidnappings of Americas leading scientists. Meanwhile, Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh) has an ultimatum delivered demanding the surrender of the United States of America to him. And so West and Gordon must find a way to defeat the evil scientist Dr. Loveless and his gadgets and rescue the kidnapped Salma Hayek as well.

Artemus Gordon: We have the element of surprise. What does Loveless have?
(They look down into a canyon)
Artemus Gordon: He has his own city.
Capt. James West: He has an 80-foot tarantula.
Artemus Gordon: I was just coming to that.

But Dr. Arliss Loveless seems not only to be a mad scientist able to conceive the wildest gadgets, but to have also read some of the Evil Overlord list, advising his henchpersons not to shoot Gordon in the heart, as he requests, but in the head instead, or fails to reveal his plot to the captured West. But he didn't read it too well, as he always fails to make sure of the death of his opponents. Well, they all must fail somewhere, I guess. His weird science gadgets are quite neat, like the magnetic guillotine, or his mechanical wheelchair, giving us a hint of Steampunk-Western adventure...

The movie itself is lacking good scriptwriting, about half the jokes fail to deliver, and most characters, excepting Brannagh's Loveless remain rather bland. The Smith/Sonnenfeld dream team of Men in Black fails in this effort. Some of the visuals are spectacular, especially the mechanical spider, but SFX alone have never saved a movie. And so it remains a movie with great potential, which is wasted by sub-standard scripting. When watching it, I also felt that there must have been some severe cuts in the editing. But hey, I good some neat ideas for my next Deadlands: Weird West game...

James West: That's it, no more Mr. Knife guy.


Every time she'd see her exposed genitals in the mirror as she looked between her legs, she wondered if this would be her last night on earth. She'd also catch herself looking at her face in the same mirror and this would start the circular thinking of, "What the hell must I look like up here?" which was immediately followed by, "I've got to look good up here to keep my job," which never failed to lead to, "What the hell must I look like up here?" And on and on. Her thoughts seemed to revolve in this pattern perfectly in tune to the mirrorball above her brunette head.

She'd been dancing at this strip club out by the airport for almost six months now. Unlike most of the other girls, she did not belong to a biker and she did not have any tattoos and she did not fuck either the customers or the owners. She showed up every night at 7 PM and she danced for fifteen minutes each hour for six hours. At 1 PM she changed clothes and counted her money and went home to her six-month old baby who'd been born without any arms.

It disturbed her greatly when The Escape Club song came on the jukebox. It wasn't that she disliked the sound of "The Wild Wild West." It was fairly easy to dance to. In fact, she had this one move on the pole when the chorus came around to the "wild, wild hair" part where she'd flip herself upside down and her brunette hair would touch the stage as she remained there, hanging like an inverted crucifixion, looking right into the eyes of the filthy loser who'd put the most money in her waistband that evening. It was always worth at least an extra hundred bucks.

No, what disturbed her was that the club was now showing the video of the song on a large screen as the juke box played the tune.

The childbirth had been perfectly normal at first. Billy was there, and even though he hadn't made the final leap into marriage, he was being supportive and was coming home at night and was providing a living for them. He was a bricklayer. He had rented a video camera just to record the birth of his (and her) first child. Billy was overjoyed as the dilation led to the final act. The head enlarged his lady's privates and there it was (he thought to himself), his legacy. He'd play baseball and football and basketball with this little boy and his life would be complete. Then the head was through the orifice and here came the rest. When Billy saw that the baby's body had no arms, he dropped the video with eyes wide open and backed out of the room. The video camera continued to record a small portion of the delivery room floor (where someone had dropped a used Kleenex) for the next ten minutes, before the battery ran down. She never saw Billy again.

She'd taken the baby home and lived for one desperate month on what she had saved up in the bank, and then she took the job at the strip club. She'd work six nights a week and then come home to care for her baby. All of this neglect and all of this debasement and none of it had driven her to the brink until this video began showing every time the song came on the juke box. There they were. Arms waving about without bodies. Legs walking in squat position without bodies. The deformation of the human body on video. The used Kleenex lying on the floor in that delivery room. Her genitals in the mirror. Her baby, kicking his little legs and waiting on her to leave this place and come home again.

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