If you can look past the ethnic stereotypes and the white actors playing Indians, Chinese, Latinos, and just about everyone else (with the exceptions of Sammy Davis Jr. and Richard Pryor), there’s still much to enjoy in “The Wild Wild West.” Not the execrable movie from 1999, starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline, and Kenneth Branagh, but the classic television series with Robert Conrad and Ross Martin that ran for four seasons on CBS, from 1965 to 1969 – before finally being tossed under the stagecoach by the network for being “too violent.” My, how times have changed.
A canny marriage of the western, a genre which, by the mid-‘60s, was honestly approaching oversaturation, and the spy-fi craze, sparked by the success of James Bond, “The Wild Wild West” depicts the exploits and derring-do of secret service agents during the Grant administration.
Each week, James T. West (Conrad) faces off against an outlandish, Bondian villain of megalomaniacal ambition – he or she often keen to control large swathes of the United States and its territories, if not the world – and, aided by borderline implausible gadgetry fabricated by his sidekick, master-of-disguise Artemus Gordon (Martin, on their tricked-out train), brings said villain to justice, or death, as the case may be.
Roy and I will be tipping the brims of our Stetsons to the series on June 21 with a conversation as rambling as the great American West, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.
Despite its television budget, with its obviously redressed sets and frugal, but cleverly deployed, studio orchestra on the soundtrack, “The Wild Wild West” is unabashed entertainment in the old style – formulaic, with recognizable guest stars (too many to list, but I’ll single out Michael Dunn, magnetic in every scene he’s in as West’s recurring, diminutive nemesis, Miguelito Loveless – in early installments accompanied by future Bond villain Richard Kiel), and clear dramatic beats always cresting just before a commercial break. I remember watching this in reruns with my grandparents on a Sunday afternoon.
The series only got better the bolder it went, with serial thrills of a type we now associate with Indiana Jones and crazy sci-fi conceits, such as invisibility, miniaturization, and the psychic force of disembodied human brains.
I’ll be rather disembodied myself, I’m sure, when we talk about “The Wild Wild West,” on “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” Bring your harmonicas and bass guitars to the comments section. We’ll be performing all our own stunts – shirtless too – just like Robert Conrad, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., next Friday evening, June 21, at 7:00 EDT!
https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner
Looking to bone-up on the series? All the episodes are posted for free on Pluto TV.
https://pluto.tv/us/on-demand/series/63726e731ac5b40013b79c9f/season/1
[** PLEASE NOTE: This conversation was originally scheduled to take place tomorrow night, but I just learned there is a major technical snafu that needs to be addressed, so regrettably it will have to be postponed until next Friday. I’ve edited this post to reflect this eleventh-hour, revolting development. Thank you for your patience. On the bright side, this will give you more time to watch “The Wild Wild West!” **]
