Martin Blaine Movies

Originally telecast on May 26, 1968 as Bonanza's 300th episode, "The Stronghold" finds Joe Cartwright and Ponderosa hand Candy chasing Josh and Mike Farrell (Michael Witney and Paul Mantee), the two men who swindled them out of a herd of cattle. Joe and Candy catch up with the duplicitous brothers at their hideout in Arizona, where a deadly game of cat-and-mouse ensues. The only hope for a happy ending lies with the Farrells, who are slowly but surely growing sick of each other's company. "The Stronghold" was written by John Hawkins and W.R. Burnett. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The British title of Billy Wilder's classic comedy was Meet Whiplash Willie -- for, despite Jack Lemmon's star billing, the movie's driving force is Oscar-winning Walter Matthau as gloriously underhanded lawyer "Whiplash" Willie Gingrich. CBS cameraman Harry Hinkle (Lemmon) is injured when he is accidentally bulldozed by football player Luther "Boom Boom" Jackson (Ron Rich) during a Cleveland Browns game. Willie, Harry's brother-in-law, foresees an insurance-settlement bonanza, and he convinces Harry to pretend to be incapacitated by the accident. To insure his client's cooperation, Willie arranges for Harry's covetous ex-wife Sandy (Judi West) to feign a rekindling of their romance. Harry's conscience is plagued by the solicitous behavior of Boom Boom, who is so devastated at causing Harry's injury that he insists on waiting on the "cripple" hand and foot. Meanwhile, dishevelled private eye Purkey (Cliff Osmond) keeps Harry under constant surveillance, hoping to catch him moving around so the insurance company can avoid shelling out a fortune. Wilder and usual co-writer I.A.L. Diamond were at their most jaundiced and cynical here, even if, after a sardonic semiclimax, the last ten minutes succumb to the sentimentality that often marred Wilder's later movies. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alarms start flashing all the way from California to Washington when Station 3, a top-secret, ultra-high-security research facility, is broken into -- and a group of flasks containing two deadly viruses, one of them (nicknamed "The Satan Bug") possibly unstoppable, are stolen. Counter-intelligence specialist Lee Barrett (George Maharis) is called in to work with the regular security and intelligence personnel in determining who has the deadly substances, and why. Working with him is Ann (Anne Francis), an old flame and the daughter of the man (Dana Andrews) handling this on behalf of Washington -- working against them are a pair of psychopaths (Frank Sutton, Ed Asner) reporting to a mysterious financier, Charles Reynolds Ainsley, who has an agenda he's keeping secret for now. And the sidelines are populated by a group of flustered scientists (Richard Basehart, Simon Oakland, Harold Gould) and administrators (John Larkin, John Anderson), one of whom knows a lot more than he's telling about why the Satan Bug was stolen. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

College football star Skip Baxter (Michael Parks) is in danger of expulsion because of his heavy drinking. Hoping to cure Skip of his booze habit, his prankish roommate, Doc Carroll (Joby Baker), cooks up an elaborate hoax. "Borrowing" a female cadaver from a medical classroom, Doc plants the corpse next to the sleeping Skip -- and when Skip awakens with his usual hangover, he is told that he has murdered a local waitress named Ruby (Jennifer West). The trick backfires when a panicky Skip sets about to dispose of the body, an act which not only ruins his life, but also claims another life in the process. This episode was originally slated to air on November 29, 1963, but was pre-empted for a special about the JFK assassination. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi