Skip Young

This farcical send-up of the movie business borrows a plot from the classic 1968 Mel Brooks film The Producers. It stars Tony Curtis as J.P. Sheldrake, a movie producer sorely in need of a flop for tax purposes. Imagine his delight when a very young would-be filmmaker shows up on his doorstep with what could be the worst B-movie ever made, Lobster Man From Mars. In the story-within-a-story, a Martian lobster-man who has come to earth to steal some badly needed air for his home planet grows increasingly addicted to munching on humans. He is pursued by an addlepated professor (Patrick Macnee) a couple of all-American teens, and a trigger-happy military man. The movie looks guaranteed to be a flop, but of course it foils Sheldrake's plan by becoming a huge success. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Paul Newman served as co-producer of this allegorical drama and stars as Rheinhardt, a opportunistic drifter who ends up in New Orleans and hits up his old friend Farley (Laurence Harvey), a con man-turned-phony preacher, for a job. Farley is able to get Rheinhardt hired on as an announcer at a local radio station, WUSA, but the station is a right-wing propaganda mill that devotes its air time to venomous tirades against political and social progress. Rheinhardt is happy to be making decent money, and he makes the friendly acquaintance of a local working girl, Geraldine (Joanne Woodward), so he refuses to look his gift horse in the mouth. However, when he finds out that WUSA is actually involved in shadowy political actions, he is at a loss for what to do, especially after a naïve and troubled social worker (Anthony Perkins) is tricked into starting a race riot. Robert Stone wrote the screenplay, adapted from his novel A Hall of Mirrors. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This episode of Green Acres was cunningly timed to air just before the 1968 presidential elections. Upset over the do-nothing record of incumbent state representative Ben Hanks (J. Pat O'Malley), Oliver (Eddie Albert) angrily declares that there is more to being a good politician than handing out gifts, slapping backs and kissing babies. The result: Oliver ends up running against Hanks on the "reform" ticket. Skip Young, best known as the goofy Wally on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, is here cast as an equally goofy campaign worker. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A few days before her wedding, wealthy Lisa Garrick (Pamela Lincoln) insists that her father move the ceremony out of the family's massive ballroom. It seems that, as a child, Lisa had a recurring dream in which, while standing in the middle of the ballroom, she was killed by a falling chandelier. Ultimately, and despite everyone's precautions, Lisa's premonitions come true--but not in the way that she imagined. This episode marks one of the first TV appearances by prolific character actress Julie Payne, daughter of film star John Payne)--as well as a guest spot by movie veteran Thomas B. Henry, perennial "general" in many a 1950s sci-fi/fantasy epic. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A man driving along a lonely back road at night is suddenly startled by what he sees, and is promptly killed by something that crashes through his windshield. The next day, in the nearby town of River Falls, teenagers Carol Flynn (June Kenney) and Mike Simpson (Gene Persson) decide to go looking for her father, who didn't get home last night. They find his wrecked truck and enter a nearby cave to begin searching for him. There they find his blood-covered hat and other signs of human remains and, as they go deeper inside, suddenly get trapped in a huge web -- then they spot its maker, a spider the size of a small house. They manage to escape and alert the county sheriff (Gene Roth), who doesn't take them seriously but does heed the warning of Mr. Kingman (Ed Kemmer), the science teacher at the local high school, to bring a pest-control crew along with his deputies, and a tanker loaded with DDT. They encounter the creature, and, after losing one of their men, dispatch it with the insecticide. Kingman persuades the sheriff to bring the carcass into town so that he can arrange to have it studied, leaving it in storage at the high school recreation room, for lack of anywhere bigger to keep it. As it turns out, the creature isn't dead, just stunned. As the local rock & roll band rehearses, the giant spider comes to bloodthirsty consciousness, breaking out of the building and ravaging the town. Bullets won't hurt it -- as Kingman says, you could punch holes in it all day without hitting a vital spot -- and the town is soon cut off when the telephone lines are knocked down. They get one break when the creature heads back to its cave; what the sheriff and Kingman don't know is that also out at the cave, not knowing of the events in town, and searching for a momento from her father, are Carol and Mike. The sheriff and Kingman intend to seal the cave up forever with TNT, but once they find out that the kids are in there, they know they've got to go in to find them, which means killing the spider outright. That's when Kingman devises a plan to electrocute it, if they can get to it before it goes too deep inside the caverns, and in time to save the two teenagers. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide