User Reviews

We tend to treat this series as iconic, and indeed it is. Which is not to say that every episode was a gem. As I already covered in my review of the series as a whole, they took shortcuts here and there, like recycling the same Chinese character actors into different parts, gambling that North American eyes would not notice. (TV was strange in those days -- in the Six Million Dollar Man, they saved a few bucks in the action scenes by repeating the same footage, in slo-mo, sequentially, gambling that viewers, distracted by the slo-mo, would not notice that Steve Austin was seemingly stuck in a Star Trek "time loop.") And they had trouble coming up with new story ideas week to week. If I had a dime for every episode that starts with Caine being mistaken for someone he is not (and getting arrested); or accused of doing something he did not (and getting arrested); or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time (and getting arrested); I would be writing this from my island. This episode re-teams the star with his actor-father John Carradine and I have to say that director Robert Michael Lewis outdid himself. The lighting, the sets, the way the actors peer at each other from dark spots in the room, contribute to making this episode unique in the series, a wonderful mixing of Gothic terror with the usually dusty, open-space, western theme.

John Carradine returns as Serenity Johnson, the blind preacher from episode 2 "Dark Angel," currently living in Ninevah, a tiny community held in the grip of fear by a mysterious stranger without a name, identified only as 'The Hanged Man' (Morgan Woodward). Serenity has posted a reward for the murderer of his mute assistant Sunny Jim (played in the previous entry by Robert Carradine), who was brutally ambushed for his gold, his head nearly twisted off his body. No one is willing to talk, and silently waiting in the local saloon is Bascomb (Shelly Novack), a bounty hunter tracking the killer himself (among the poker players is James Gammon from "Urban Cowboy"). Just when Bascomb meets his adversary face to face, the deformed stranger cleverly provides a distraction by showing him the WANTED poster of Kwai Chang Caine... A genuine horror episode (another would be "One Step to Darkness"), graced by the presence of Morgan Woodward (previously seen in "Sun and Cloud Shadow"), unrecognizable behind heavy makeup, depicting the botched hanging by a vengeful mob that tried to lynch him. In trying to forget, he maliciously murdered Sunny Jim in cold blood, supposedly because the poor lad wouldn't speak to him (being mute of course, he couldn't speak). Always hiding in the shadows, he waits, gun in hand, at the local soap factory, where the unarmed Caine must stand alone against him. Keye Luke's Master Po advises on the nature of evil, the opposite of good, and the great John Carradine, David's father, provides another masterful performance as the blind preacher, a role he would repeat once more in the third season entry "Ambush." At no time before did he portray a character that was blind, and he totally convinces, especially in a tense confrontation with the taunting killer (he went on to do a comic cameo as an old blind man in 1983's "Monster in the Closet").