WILDSIDE (1985) – After The Wild Wild West, The Barbary Coast and Bearcats but before The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. came this short-lived series about a secret crime-fighting group in the 1880s American West.
The group undertakes special missions for the governor and is based in Wildside, CA where they operate under the name “the Wildside Chamber of Commerce.” That’s not just a code name for their elite unit, though. Each member is a former outlaw who went straight before it was too late and all run legitimate businesses in Wildside. When they go on missions their cover story is that they are going off on a hunting party for a few days.
THE CAST:
HOWARD ROLLINS portrayed Bannister Sparks, who had been a demolitions man as an outlaw and retained that expertise as a crime-fighting operative.
Sparks ran a mercantile emporium which, in the kind of cutesy anachronistic humor that Brisco County, Jr. would later thrive on, was like a proto-shopping center of the future.
Bannister was the brains and de facto leader of the team.
WILLIAM SMITH played Brodie Hollister, gunfighter extraordinaire. Hollister breeds and trains horses.
William Smith hadn’t been in a role like this since his days playing a Texas Ranger Special Agent on the old western series Laredo.
On that old series his teammates were Peter Brown, Neville Brand and Philip Carey. Continue reading
THE BEST OF BROADWAY (1954-1955) – Balladeer’s Blog’s latest look at a Forgotten Television item deals with The Best of Broadway. The color program aired on CBS once per month and its failure to last more than one season may be explained by the fact that the other three weeks the program that aired in its time slot was … Pabst Blue Ribbon Bouts. 
THE ROYAL FAMILY (September 15th, 1954) – From the Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman comedy The Royal Family of Broadway. Paul Nickell directed this depiction of a Barrymore-esque thespian dynasty and the chaos that results when the family matriarch is outraged to learn that her daughter and granddaughter are considering leaving their stage careers behind for marriage. 
NBC OPERA THEATRE (1949-1964) – Believe it or not, television networks used to regularly broadcast presentations of operas. Gradually, declining public interest drove operas off the networks and onto educational television. 
ARREST AND TRIAL (1963-1964) – Decades before Law & Order came this forgotten television series which used one half of its 90-minute run-time to depict the police tracking down and arresting a suspect and the other half depicting the trial. Ben Gazzara, Chuck Connors and Don Galloway starred. 
Arrest and Trial lasted just one season (yes, some shows did 30-episode and even 39-episode seasons back then). Audiences may have been too used to the comfort food of crime shows where they knew going in who was guilty and who was innocent. Cop shows like Dragnet always showed the police nabbing the guilty and lawyer shows like Perry Mason always showed the defendants being innocent. No such convenience on this show. 
Balladeer’s Blog’s Forgotten Television feature wraps up its look at 
MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN (1964) – An example of Hicksploitation. H.G. Lewis of all people wrote and SANG for this movie. A country western singer, tired of the artificial feel of mainstream Nashville music, spends some time with his North Carolina relatives to soak up some authentic atmosphere. 
IT’S HOT IN PARADISE (1960) – This is a film about hot nightclub ladies and their schmoozing manager getting stuck on an uncharted island after a plane crash. They learn that a now dead mad scientist made the place his lair and his experiments spawned dog-sized spiders whose bite transforms people into half-assed human-spider creatures. 
THE RETURN OF THE GIANT MAJIN (1966) – We fans of oddball cinema have long loved Majin, the often-ignored distant cousin of kaiju favorites like Godzilla and Gamera. Majin is a gigantic samurai statue that comes to life periodically in Japan of a few centuries back. 
UNTAMED FURY (1947) – A very early hicksploitation movie. This black & white movie’s stock footage is set in the swamps of the Deep South but everything else takes place on the usual cheap sets we all know and love from Producers Releasing Corporation. 
GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS (1973) – From the maker of Alabama’s Ghost comes this tale of toxic gasses from beneath the Earth spawning a mutated sheep monster which walks erect and looks a little like Mr. Snuffleupagas and Joe Camel. The video cover looks nothing like the creature.
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