Episode 18: King of the Mountain
A suburban house at night. Two gunshots.
Sam crashes out of a window and scrambles toward the street, where Honey waits in her Cobra sports car.
Sam hops in, and Honey hits the gas pedal.
The two private eyes discuss their case while she drives. They are breaking into houses where they are photographing private papers such as tax returns. Their next victim is "Mr. King's nurse," Ida Bering.
Ida Bering (Allyson Ames) is, at that moment, pouring herself a drink. And pouring said drink into herself.
She walks upstairs, perhaps a bit unsteadily...
...then turns back when she hears the doorbell ring.
As a giant shadow is cast over her, Ida turns to face something that so frightens her that she screams. (Expertly. Screaming must have figured prominently in Ames's audition for this part.)
A big hand appears and pushes her down the stairs.
The next day, Sam and Honey meet with the board of directors of the corporation that hired them to investigate everybody in the company who might have confidential info, apparently unaware that Honey and Sam would resort to burglary.
The chairman, Mr. Ash (Charles Lane), is taken aback that even he has been burgled,...
...but H. West and Company had to investigate everybody to find out who in the company was selling out.
Honey dresses in a 1960s nurse's uniform, complete with the white cap and the traditional watch pinned to the breast of her uniform. (See notes below.)
Sam equips Honey with various gadgets. There's a camera hidden in the watch, for instance.There is also a microphone hidden in a thermometer, and another in the clasp on Honey's purse.
King's compound is surrounded by armed, uniformed guards...
...as well as a high voltage fence.
One of the armed guards asks Sam, "What are you doing up there?"
Meanwhile, Honey meets King's secretary, Mr. Carson (Dennis Patrick), ...
...who makes her wait in the drawing room (not necessarily better than drawing in the waiting room)...
...as an obscured figure watches her through a one-way mirror.
Curious, Honey plays around with the objects in a knickknack case...
...and the case suddenly rises to reveal that, standing behind it,...
...is a seven-foot-tall man named Groalgo (Richard Kiel).
"Well, whose little boy are you?" asks Honey.
Mr. Carson returns to inform Miss West... er, Nurse Miller, that she has the job. Her reluctance to talk about previous employers shows discretion, it seems, rather than fraudulence. (It turns out that Carson likes her while Groalgo thinks she's a bit too nosey; Carson only pretends that anyone else's opinion matters.)
She goes to meet the fabulously wealthy invalid, Kelso King (David Opatoshu). Like the recluse in the 1946 movie, "The Big Sleep," he has a problem regulating his body heat and lives in a kind of hothouse—or sunroom, as it is called here. King sits under a fan to cool down, then rolls to the fireplace to warm up. He also declines to shake hands.
Honey: That's a switch.
As her first duty, "Nurse Miller" is instructed to get medicine and tea from the kitchen. Before she goes, Honey manages to slip the microphone-thermometer into a flowerpot. Unfortunately, Sam later reports that it does not work, possibly indicating that radio jamming is in use. But this situation is inexplicably subject to change.
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| The short white stick next to the stem of the plant is an awfully tiny microphone-thermometer. This is probably a bonsai jade plant (Crassula ovata). |
Honey snaps a picture with her watch-camera.
She gets a revealing enough shot of King, which she later describes to Sam as "cheese cake." When she looks at the photo later, she recognizes that "King" is missing the prominent war wound on his upper body. So, this is not the real Kelso King, but an imposter!
Groalgo has been ordered to check up on "Nurse Miller." Honey dashes outdoors through the French doors in the den, then reenters the house through the French doors in the dining room, which is adjacent to the kitchen.
He finds Honey in the kitchen where he takes over the tea making duties and assigns the medical ones to her. (Apparently, Honey's hidden talents include preparing medicines convincingly. Maybe she was not joking earlier when she said that her nursing license had expired.)
She finds herself more or less a prisoner, confined to the house while her references are being checked. Indeed, she is confined to her room and the kitchen. She cannot even make a phone call or go outside for any reason.
Of course, she can communicate with Sam via the clasp-radio on her purse.
That night, Sam prepares for a rendezvous with Honey at the electrified fence. He puts a pair of half-tires on the ladder to insulate it.
He has a rope at his end so he can help Honey use the ladder like a seesaw. The private eyes are able to share what they have found out. The previous nurse was killed because she knew too much about the replacement of the real King with the fake one. The next step is to figure out what happened to the real Kelso King. (Call the police? Nah! We don't need to call no stinking police!) The trouble is that Groalgo has spotted the P.I.s together.
Carson is now convinced that Groalgo's suspicions are justified. Fake-King isn't so sure, but Carson is clearly the boss. Groalgo goes to bring Honey downstairs. Fortunately (if inexplicably), the microphone-thermometer is now working. Sam warns Honey that they are on to her. Carson calls security to have them check Honey's license plate, and finds out that she is a private detective. Carson accidentally finds the microphone-thermometer. Honey trips Groalgo when he bursts into her room, but he pursues her. In the best scene of the episode, he chases her around the dining room table until he finally just overturns it.
Still unfamiliar with the house, Honey dashes through a door and closes it behind her. Only to have Groalgo open the closet door and find her.
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| "Take me to your leader." |
What to do with her? They take her gun...
...but do not notice that her purse has a radio in its clasp.
Sam hears and records the whole of Carson's confession to Honey. He intends to crash the real King's private plane with King in it. When the value of King's stock goes down, Carson will buy it up. Then his fake-King will make an appearance, and the stock will go up again, making Carson a real killing. He wants to know where Sam is, and is willing to use any means necessary to make Honey talk.
He rigs a sliding strap over the wire, which allows him to ride the line over the fence and into the compound.
As soon as he opens a door into the house, an alarm goes off. This gets Carson and Groalgo to leave Honey alone with fake-King.
Climbing spikes are hard on the rugs, too.
Fake-King holds Honey at gunpoint,...
...but Honey overpowers him by pushing the wheel chair into him. Then she gives him such a karate chop. (His gun goes into the fireplace, however; so, Honey does not have a gun as a result of this play.)
As Honey escapes from the sunroom, who does she run into but Sam, (Sam points his gun at Honey's stomach and repeatedly does so.)
Honey shows Sam the secret doorway in the drawing room. They slip under the secret panel and explore the corridor behind it.
Unbeknownst to Sam, his revolver has fallen out of his belt. (It's the object in the light near the bottom of the picture.)
Honey and Sam follow the corridor to a dungeon-like cavern beneath the house.
They find themselves overlooking a natural hot spring under the compound.
Groalgo comes running up behind them. He grapples with Sam and pushes him against a wall.
Sam repeatedly uses his climbing spikes to dig into Groalgo's legs.
Then Honey takes a two-by-four to Groalgo, and he is down for the count that easily.
Next, our heroes find a man locked in a cage and free him. He looks just like Mr. King,
and the upper body wound tells them that this is the real Kelso King.
Honey and Sam break the news to King that the bad guys have guns while they have none.
Honey turns off the electricity and tells Sam to put electrical wires into the hot spring.
If you look carefully, you can see the wire on the left side of the pool. Honey then turns the electricity back on.
Carson and fake-King arrive.
Honey and Sam throw burlap bags full of who-knows-what at the villains and knock them into the spring. They get the shock of their lives.
Honey, Sam, and the real King enjoy the comeuppance of the bad guys.
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| Real Mr. King: Are they dead? Honey: Only stunned. Electrocution is illegal in California. |
In the epilogue, Honey is still nursing Mr. King—only, it's the real King this time. Sam wants Honey to realize that she is no longer undercover. It's time to leave. But Honey seems bent on staying to work as the billionaire's nurse. (After all, it is a steady job.) Sam wants to know if she really called in a nurse to replace herself.
Notes:
There is never a policeman to be seen in this episode. This is curious since a woman is murdered, and Honey and Sam discover the body. Never mind.
We are never told explicitly, but Groalgo is obviously the guy who pushed Ida Bering down the stairs.
How Carson found someone who looks just like Kelso King, and whether plastic surgery was necessary, is never revealed.
Villains always lay out their whole scheme to the hero, when the sensible thing would just be to kill the hero.
Honey West's disguises never last. She always gets caught out prematurely. It should be awkward and embarrassing for her, but that never stops her from coming up with another elaborate undercover identity on her next case.
Aside from the aforementioned reference to "The Big Sleep" (1946), the whole plot is suggestive of rumors surrounding the prominent American tycoon Howard Hughes (1905-1976). Reclusive and elusive, he could have been impersonated by someone without it being discovered. So some folks thought. As it happened, someone did try to steal his identity in 1972, attempting to publish an as-told-to biography of Hughes. The scammer was caught, and proof was established that Hughes was still alive and had in no way authorized the fake biography.
In the burglaries, Honey and Sam take the darnedest things from their victims. They are supposed to be looking for evidence of corruption, yet they steal the chairman's spectacles, only to return them during the boardroom scene in act one.
Nurse's uniforms have evolved into unisex scrubs that now come in a variety of colors. Hospital professionals once wore nothing but white, except for a stripe or other marking on nurses' hats to show the nursing school they attended, the hospital where they worked, or their rank. The design or shape of the cap could also represent similar distinctions. The hat's purpose was to keep the female nurse's hair under control. (Even in the past, male nurses did not have to wear such hats.) Traditional nurses wore watches, the shape of small pocket watches, pinned to their blouses since this was accessible when nurses took a patient's pulse or entered the time on a chart. By 1966, when this episode aired, nurses were transitioning to wrist watches, but many still pinned on their watches.
There is a mythical, fairy-tale quality to the way gadgets are treated in stories like this. Just as the heroes of fairy tales eventually use every magical device or power bestowed upon them, the hero of a spy or detective novel (whether it is James Bond or Honey West) eventually uses all of the gadgets given him or her at the beginning of the story. In this story, we have two hidden radios and a camera, all ultimately made use of. (A James Bond fanfiction illustrates this point.)
The cavern in the final act appears to double as a wine cellar, but since the space is heated by a hot spring, it is not ideal for storing wine. Wine should be stored at a relatively cool and stable temperature.
Watch carefully during the climax when John Ericson (as Sam) goes under the secret doorway behind the knickknack case. As he prepares to go under it, he first puts his gun in his belt; then, as he goes underneath, with his back to the camera, his arm moves as if he is fiddling with the front of his belt, undoubtedly taking the gun out and leaving it deliberately on the floor.
Cast:
David Opatoshu (1918-1996) was a well-respected actor who appeared in movies like "The Naked City" (1948), "The Brothers Karamazov" (1958), and "Exodus" (1960), as well as TV series including "The Twilight Zone," "Mod Squad," "Kojak," and "The Bionic Woman." He spoke Yiddish fluently and was the son of Polish-born writer Joseph Opatoshu. He often wore a goatee and often played villains and historical figures. Trivia: He was the father-in-law of Steven Spielberg's sister.
Dennis Patrick (1918-2002) was on the TV series "Dark Shadows" in which he played a conscienceless conman in one arc and a guilt-ridden, absentee father in another. He also played a less-than-exemplary dad in the 1970 movie "Joe," in which Patrick made a great foil for Peter Boyle in the latter's breakout performance in the title role. Patrick also appeared on many TV series including "Gunsmoke," "Peter Gunn," "The Untouchables," "Dr. Kildare," "The Fugitive," "Perry Mason," "Lost in Space," "Mod Squad," "Ironside," "Kojak," "Eight is Enough," "Hawaii Five-O," "Cagney and Lacey," and "Dallas."
Troy Melton plays a guard with lines and a credit. He was also a stuntman, but I cannot find proof that he did stunts in this episode, which is not to say that he did not.
More "Honey West":
Episode One: The Swingin' Mrs. Jones
Episode Ten: A Neat Little Package
Episode Eleven: A Stitch in Crime
Episode Twelve: A Million Bucks in Anybody's Language
Episode Thirteen: The Gray Lady
Episode Fourteen: Invitation to Limbo
Episode Fifteen: Rockabye the Hard Way
Episode Sixteen: A Nice Little Till to Tap
Episode Seventeen: How Brillig, O, Beamish Boy
Episode Eighteen: King of the Mountain (You Are Already Here)
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