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The Gratuitous B-Movie Column: The Six Million Dollar Man
The Gratuitous B-Movie Column Issue #475: The Six Million Dollar Man
Cyborg September: Week 1
Hello, everyone, and welcome once again to the internets movie review column that has never been the subject of a super-secret government project to create a badass secret agent with amazing powers, The Gratuitous B-Movie Column, and I am your host Bryan Kristopowitz. In this issue, issue number four hundred and seventy-five, Cyborg September begins with a look at the first of three The Six Million Dollar Man pilot TV movies, The Six Million Dollar Man, which debuted on the ABC television network in March of 1973.
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man, directed by Richard Irving, is the first of three TV pilot movies made by Universal Television and ABC in 1973 that eventually led to the weekly TV show that started in 1974 and then lasted for five years. This first movie can best be described as a lean and mean sci-fi action adventure story that is obviously meant to be the first in a series of something. While it isn’t all that spectacular, it’s still fairly entertaining for what it is and is definitely something fans of 1970’s pop culture should check out.
The movie stars Lee Majors as Steve Austin, a civilian astronaut and test pilot who is horribly injured while testing a new military jet. Austin loses an eye, his right arm, and most of both of his legs in the incident and is sent to a military hospital so he can be worked on by military doctor Rudy Wells (the immortal Martin Balsam) who also happens to be Austin’s best friend. Dr. Wells, while being a brilliant surgeon, is also a scientist developing nuclear powered bionic body parts for people who need that kind of thing. As a result of Austin’s accident, he’s going to be one of those people in need of those bionic limbs (you know, as long as he wants them and the process of using him for those limbs works out).
Now, while all of that is going on, Oliver Spencer (Carl Kolchak hisself Darren McGavin) of the Office of Strategic Operations (OSO), is looking for money and approval for his group’s next big endeavor: a super spy/super-agent that, through advanced technology, can complete sensitive missions on his own. Basically, Spencer is looking for seed money to create a bionic superman. And, holy hooey, it just so happens that Dr. Wells is working on something similar to what Spencer wants to do. So Spencer gets the necessary approvals from the powers that to be to initiate his big plan, heads to the military hospital Dr. Wells has Austin cooped up in, and makes Wells an offer that he can’t refuse. If Dr. Wells agrees to work with Spencer and the OSO, Wells will have what amounts to unlimited resources to complete his research and manufacture of the necessary limbs and whatnot, and Austin will be made, truly, better than new. Dr. Wells, eventually agrees to Spencer’s terms and acts on Austin’s behalf, something he isn’t necessarily comfortable doing. Spencer assures Wells that everything is okay and will be okay and, besides, he already had OSO personnel move Austin and all the necessary equipment and whatnot to a secret facility in Colorado.
As all of that is happening, Austin is recuperating from his injuries and trying to come to terms with his new existence. Austin isn’t exactly depressed or suicidal, but he is confused by the whole thing. Why should he be given a second chance to live? And what the hell is the deal with this bionic shit anyway? How is any of it supposed to work? It all sounds so ridiculous and insane and wrong. When Austin isn’t being tended to by Dr. Wells, nurse Jean Manners (Barbara Anderson) is his main caregiver. Nurse Jean does a great job, sure, but she’s also developing feelings for Austin, and Austin is reciprocating. That kind of thing probably shouldn’t happen, but it is. Spencer, a gruff and mysterious kind of douchebag, sees this and believes that Austin should interact with her outside of the medical wing of the facility. Well, eventually interact with her, because first Austin will have to figure out how to walk and move around again.
So then we get a training montage, where Austin learns to walk again. Austin also regains his regular strength and learns how to use his new bionic arm and, eventually, his legs. The bionic parts allow Austin to lift and move around heavy objects and allow him to run at 60 miles per hour. When all of the initial tests work out and it’s deemed that the Steve Austin project is a success, Austin goes on a picnic date with Nurse Jean. They flirt a bit more and then go on a drive. It’s at this point that we get to see Austin’s bionic strength in action as he comes upon a road accident and rescues a trapped child from a car that’s about to explode. During the rescue a section of Austin’s bionic arm skin was ripped off, exposing the circuitry and whatnot underneath. The mother of the child he rescued freaks out when she sees those circuits and shit, and suddenly Austin is upset.
So Austin goes back to the Colorado lab and thinks about his place in the world. In the middle of Austin’s existential angst, Spencer shows up at the lab and tells Austin that he has an assignment for him. It’s a sensitive assignment, but, under the circumstances, Austin may be the only one capable of completing it. Austin wants nothing to do with the assignment or anything else the OSO has up its sleeve for him. Austin knows that the OSO is no good and that the outfit will use Austin when and how it sees fit until it decides he’s no longer useful. Austin doesn’t want to be a pawn in the OSO’s bullshit. After listening to Austin’s complaints, Spencer gives Austin a patriotic speech and convinces him that his country and the world needs him. Eventually, and reluctantly, Austin agrees to become an instrument of the OSO and agrees to the big mission. And what is that mission?
Austin has to go the Middle East and rescue an important Israeli from a band of terrorists that have captured him. If the Israeli isn’t rescued, the Middle East as a whole could explode. So Austin parachutes into Saudi Arabia, runs in the desert, gets captured, rips a chain out of the wall, and then attacks a bunch of bad guys with grenades. Austin also rescues the guy he was supposed to rescue (or a guy who was with the guy he was supposed to rescue. I’m unclear about who this guy actually is).
And that’s pretty much the entire movie. The whole thing ends with Austin being put into a kind of deep sleep so he can be repaired and used again for another mission. And, yeah, there will be other missions.
The Six Million Dollar Man functions quite well as a TV pilot movie. It tells its story quickly, economically (it doesn’t waste time at all), and treats its science fiction premise seriously. It doesn’t really have the budget to engage in outright spectacle, so whatever action it has in it the movie just does it and moves on. The camera doesn’t linger on anything, the story just keeps moving. That’s a terrific strategy (and it’s something I wish more modern movies would do. Nowadays you either get a camera that barely moves at all and we are forced to watch something in mega slow motion, even if it isn’t all that interesting, or the action moves by so quickly you can’t see what the hell is going on. The Six Million Dollar Man exists in a kind of “middle ground”). The movie also offers up a nice balance between heartfelt drama and action.
Now, what the movie doesn’t have in it are the slow motion sound effects that the TV series is known for. There is a moment where we see Steve Austin running in slow motion, but that’s all he’s doing. He’s just running in slow motion. I do believe that when this movie was chopped in half and turned into two episodes for the TV show’s syndication run that the well-known sound effects and whatnot were added. Is it weird watching Steve Austin without the sound effects? Yes. But then this is the movie that started it all. The show wasn’t even a show yet and hadn’t had time to figure itself out yet.
The bionic arms and props and stuff look decent enough. They’re obviously fake and don’t look anything like real arms, but they are cool looking nonetheless. I’m also a big fan of how Austin’s bionic arm is kept in a wooden briefcase. Not a metal case, a wooden one. Would we ever see anything like that today? No way.
The music, by Gil Melle, is a little too jazzy for me but it works. And the stock footage the movie uses at the beginning during Austin’s plane test is better than you’d expect. It’s obviously stock footage but it meshes quite well with the shot footage.
The cast is fabulous. Lee Majors does a great job as Steve Austin. He’s smart and humble and has an inner strength that just oozes off the screen. Majors also helps ground the fantastic elements of what happens to him and is totally onboard with the whole “just keep moving” action strategy.
Barbara Anderson is wonderful as Austin’s nurse Jean Manners. She isn’t involved in the action, she mostly just watches Austin do his thing, but she has a few nice scenes where she tries to build up the clearly not very confident about all of this Steve Austin. She also has nice romantic chemistry with Majors, even though they never really do anything beyond go on a date and look at each other. Why the hell didn’t they keep her around for the show or the two movie sequels?
Martin Balsam does his usual bang up job as Dr. Rudy Wells. He never overdoes it and comes across as a cool authority figure, exactly the kind of doctor you’d want to have if you had to be outfitted with bionic parts for some reason.
And then there’s Darren McGavin as Oliver Spencer, the head of the OSO. Spencer is an asshole and McGavin makes you hate him. He may be a patriot and willing to do whatever it takes to protect the country, but he’s always a jerk about it, and you end up asking yourself if his way is the best way to go about completing the OSO’s mission? Probably not. McGavin did this movie the same year he did the second Kolchak movie The Night Strangler, and I’m going to assume that he didn’t appear in any of the Six Million Dollar Man movie sequels because of the Kolchak: The Night Stalker TV show, which started in 1974. But once Kolchak: The Night Stalker ended, why didn’t the Six Million Dollar Man people bring him back into the fold?
The Six Million Dollar Man is a nifty little science fiction movie. It’s an interesting, it’s entertaining, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s also a pretty good way to start an eventual TV show. I liked it.
See The Six Million Dollar Man. See it, see it, see it.
So what do we have here?
Dead bodies: Less than 10.
Explosions: A few.
Nudity?: None. It’s a 1970’s TV movie.
Doobage: An airfield, a guy walking alone, a guy walking with a limp, federal building hooey, a special locked briefcase, asking for six million dollars, a plane crash, being stuck in bed for days and weeks and months on end, bionic body part making, a bionic arm in a wooden case, nuclear power source hooey, surgery, nurse touching, training, a picnic date, multiple “when I was on the moon” stories, an off screen road accident, car door destruction, destroying a car seat with brute force, a small explosion, a damaged arm, a one-way mirror, face slapping, parachute hooey, running in the desert, a camp in the middle of the desert, karate chop across the face, clothes stealing, attempted mild chain bondage, total chain destruction, drop kicking a door, multiple grenade attacks, machine gun hooey, tank attack, and an indefinite sleep.
Kim Richards?: Almost.
Gratuitous: An onscreen explanation of what a cyborg is, Martin Balsam with a mustache, Lee Majors, Darren McGavin, Darren McGavin walking with a cane and a limp, people getting on and off an elevator, NASA stock footage, electro sleep, multiple vending machines in the breakroom, Martin Balsam stretching, a fake eye, a revolving new hand, multiple “When I was on the moon” stories, a training montage, Lee Majors running, a 1-way mirror, a super jazzy soundtrack, Lee Majors sweating, Martin Balsam pissed off, Lee Majors throwing grenades, and a filthy name that we never hear.
Best lines: “What’s going on here? Where does he think he is?,” “Good luck, Steve. Have a good day,” “Don’t take any chances, Steve,” “Just keep him alive,” “I was told this is where you take your breaks,” “Steve Austin isn’t anyone,” “I may as well begin to deal with it as fact,” “This is your arm, Steve,” “We’ll take care of his future, you take care of his present,” “Dr. Frankenstein, I presume,” “May I touch you?,” “That’s it, Steve. Put your back into it,” “What are you so suspicious of?,” “He’s not even breathing hard!,” “Look! It’s impossible!,” “A man flying. We’re always trying to imitate nature. To try to do one better. Why do we do that?,” “He’ll be all right, ma’am,” “What are you?,” “Is that a one-way mirror?,” “I will not work for the OSO, period!,” “You’re more of a robot than me,” “We’re in a time bind, doctor!,” “You lied!,” “Why didn’t they kill you, too?,” “How were you able to do that? Vitamins,” and “Jean. I was in the desert today. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to make it back.”
Rating: 8.5/10.0
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Things to Watch Out For This Week
–Trench 11: This World War I set horror flick is quite good (my review of it should be appearing soon. I hope). It features a good cast, an interesting story, and some absolutely disgusting special effects. The ending is a bit of a letdown and the movie doesn’t have enough suspense in it (a majority of the movie takes place in a bunker filled with tunnels. Why aren’t there multiple sequences of cat and mouse and shit?), but it’s still worth checking out. And, really, how often do we get a World War I horror movie? I can’t remember the last one.
–Damascus Cover: This is apparently some sort of lowish budget spy flick starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers. John Hurt is also apparently in it, as are Jurgen Prochnow and Olivia Thirlby (she was Anderson in Dredd). I’m just going to venture a guess and say that the movie isn’t all that action packed (I don’t know why I have that feeling but I do) and the whole 1980’s setting worries me, but this looks good enough to rent, just to see what it’s all about. Meyers is a good actor and he doesn’t typically phone in his performance, so the movie has that going for it.
–Hostile: Well, this movie looks incredibly depressing, but then show me a modern post-apocalyptic movie that doesn’t look depressing. Still, based on the trailer below, it looks like the movie has scope and a good lead in Brittany Ashworth, not to mention messed up zombie creatures that we get a glimpse of. There also appears to be a series of flashbacks in the movie that deal with Ashworth’s character’s life before the big apocalypse, so it will be interesting to see if those sequences are good or just bullshit. Anyone out there see this?
–Ghost Stories: The fine folks at Shout! Factory/Scream Factory are releasing this ghost story movie that, I guess, is actually some kind of anthology deal. Martin Freeman is in it, so that’s a draw, and, as I always say when it comes to a Scream Factory release, even if the movie stinks the actual home video release will be worth it. This apparently received some sort of limited theatrical release but I have no idea when it happened or where it played (it certainly didn’t play anywhere near me. It’s from IFC Films and the IFC Center in New York City usually shows these movies, but I don’t remember seeing it advertised in the New York Times). Anyone out there see this? Anyone at all? In an actual movie theatre?
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Did you check out Cult TV?
The 1970’s TV thriller Kolchak: The Night Stalker is first up! Check out what I think about the show with the links below!
#4… coming soon! It really is! I’m not lying!
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B-Movie News
–Wesley Snipes could play Blade again: Well, that’s what this story over at Cinemablend claims. At the moment there’s no way to know if Snipes and his people are just saying stuff to generate buzz or simply to remind people that he played Blade in three movies, and as far as I know Marvel hasn’t said if it’s interested in bringing the Blade character back in some form, so, again, who knows how true this story is. But I will say that if Snipes is in the running to play Blade again, I’m all for it.
Snipes has shown us since his return to movies in The Expendables 3 that he can still kick ass and take names on screen and still has the necessary presence and charisma to do it. Now, presumably, this potential Blade would be some sort reboot type deal (I doubt Marvel would want to get New Line Cinema involved in any decision making for whatever they plan to do) but it would still kick ass anyway. Again, Snipes still has the goods to do it.
Now, would this reboot be a movie? A TV show? I’m guessing that it would most likely be a TV show, as the Blade character would be better off existing in an “R” rated world and Marvel doesn’t seem to be too keen on doing an R rated movie. A streaming show, though, for like Netflix, that could work, and that’s where a new Blade would likely show up.
Unless Marvel is planning on branching out into the lowish budget movie world. I’m sure that some enterprising movie maker could make a nifty new Blade flick for like 10-20 million and it would then make a small fortune in theaters. It showed that R rated fantasy horror has an audience and that it can make money. An R rated new Blade could work.
Anyone else think this could be viable? Would you want to watch Wesley Snipes put on the trench coat, the sword, and the gun and go kick vampire ass?
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Who is the Douchebag of the Week? Go here and find out!
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Next Issue: Cyborg September continues with The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women, and War!
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Interviews
david j. moore
Jino Kang
Vladimir Kulich
Paul Mormando
Shahin Sean Solimon
Michael Matteo Rossi
Tyrone Magnus
Hector Barron
Jeffrey Orgill
Michael Baumgarten
R. Marcos Taylor
Don “The Dragon” Wilson
Paul Kyriazi
Eric Jacobus
Juju Chan
Luke LaFontaine
Marco Siedlemann
Sam Firstenberg
Amariah Olson
Alexander Nevsky
Mathias Hues
Kristanna Loken
Steve Mitchell
Albert Pyun
Brad Thornton
Mathieu Ratthe
Damien Power
Kelsey Carlisle
Mike Dwyer
Nicholas Bushman
Brahim Achabbakhe
Etcetera
Richard LeMay
Andrew David Barker
Cynthia Rothrock
Leslie Simpson
C. Courtney Joyner
Shahin Sean Solimon (2)
Eric Miller
Alexander Nevsky (2)
Christopher Lawrence Chapman
James Mark
Casper Van Dien
Chris Mark
James E. Wilson
Barry Hunt
Vincent J. Roth
Mathew Ziff
Brandon Tyler Russell
Barry Hunt (2)
Lobsang Tenzin
Dylan Reynolds
Paul Kyriazi(2)
Lincoln Bevers
Nassasin Nuri
Hannah Janssen
Harry Mok
Daniel Roebuck
Sage Croft
Stephen van Vuuren
Cheryl Wheeler Sanders
Eric Jacobus (2)
David William No
Nicholas Verdi
Luke LaFontaine (2)
Roger Yuan
Dominik Starck
Tamas Nadas
Tyler Savage
Robert McGinley
Tim Gouran
Billy Ray Brewton
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Well, I think that’ll be about it for now. Don’t forget to sign up with disqus if you want to comment on this article and any other 411 article. You know you want to, so just go do it.
B-movies rule. Always remember that.
The Six Million Dollar Man
Lee Majors– Steve Austin
Barbara Anderson– Jean Manners
Martin Balsam– Dr. Rudy Wells
Darren McGavin– Oliver Spencer
Dorothy Green– Mrs. McKay
George Wallace– General
Directed by Richard Irving
Screenplay by Terrence McDonnell and Howard Rodman, based on the novel Cyborg by Martin Caldin
Not Rated
Runtime- 73 minutes
Buy it here
