Anyone else remember Cliffhangers!, a short-lived (10 episode) attempt to revive old fashioned Saturday matinee adventure serials in prime time?Like Sloane, it was another 1979 production, in this case, developed by veteran genre TV producer Kenneth Johnson (The Incredible Hulk, Alien Nation) for NBC.
Each weekly installment featured 15-minute chapters of three ongoing serials – Stop Susan Williams, starring Susan Anton as a sexy reporter in constant peril, The Secret Empire, an unabashed rip of Gene Autry's 1935 Western/sci-fi serial, The Phantom Empire, but without the singing, and The Curse of Dracula, featuring Michael Nouri (The Hidden) as a romanticized King of the Vampires, teaching history at a California college!
It's another show that I, as a 16-year-old kid, loved, but its unlikely to ever see a legit DVD release. Still hoping for Man From Atlantis, Tales of the Gold Monkey, and Project: UFO, though....
5 comments:
YOu brought back some memories here. I really liked "tales of the Gold Monkey." Was a big fan of the Indiana Jones kind of story. I remember Cliffhangers too, although can't remember any particular epsidodes.
Rumor has it that Tales of the Gold Monkey might be getting a DVD release from Universal this Summer to tie-in with the new Indiana Jones movie. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
"Cliffhangers" is high on my DVD wish list too. A couple of things about the show that may be worth noting:
-- In "The Secret Empire," the scenes in the lost city were filmed in color, while the scenes in the outer world were in black & white.
-- In "The Curse of Dracula," a mother and daughter were competing for Dracula's attention, which I thought was pretty kinky at the time.
I'm still a Kenneth Johnson fan. Just got a copy of "V:The Second Generation," a novel he wrote.
I've never seen Cliffhanger, though I've always wanted to.
Now CLIFFHANGERS sounds like something that I could get behind!
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