Original Air Date: November 1, 1995
At last! An episode that is funny on purpose, not by accident, heh heh. In fact, it's so funny, you'll hardly notice that the story is actually supposed to be about some guy's spirit that's been trapped in a reel of film which Kwai Chang Caine has been schlepping around in his backback for the last 15+ years. <G>
This Week's Aging Guest Star: Edd Byrnes, Kookie from "77 Sunset Strip" (1958). I don't know if this is meant to be an amazingly hokey in-joke or not, but the character he plays here is named Manley Coombs, and as Kookie his "trademark" was that he was always running a comb through his Brylcreem-saturated locks. (Some of you may barely be able to recall the extremely unsanitary song, "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb.") In any case, there are enormous amounts of Hollywood-type in-jokes in this episode but most of them are not so subtle that even us mundane types can't spot them. There are also KF in-jokes, such as the mention of the "fan club babes, Valerie and Lenore" who actually were the co-founders of the first official KF fan club. Valerie Bristor and Lenore Hutton were also co-ordinators of some of the earlier Fu Fests. (Valerie Bristor was the sole coordinator of the later ones.)
Blooper Alerts: Although everyone else in the entire show refers to Dustin Nguyen's character as Lo Gee (hard 'g' as in 'go') Caine insists on pronouncing it as a soft 'g' (as in "gee whiz"). In one scene where Chris Potter is talking to David Carradine he mirrors the mispronunciation, but then a few lines later, he too switches back to the hard g. When Pita arrests Nigel Davies, he refers to him as "Nigel Davis." Potter fluffs a couple of other lines as well, although he covers beautifully (probably from all the practice he gets covering for David Carradine). In the scene where he tells Davies, "Go to jail...go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" it looks as if he meant to start out saying, "Go directly to jail." Also, when Pita arrests Manley Coombs he says, "I've learned a few things in this business about it in the last couple of days," but the line was obviously supposed to be "I've learned a few things about this business in the last couple of days." But he is SMOOTH, heh heh!
Almost interesting facts: Although usually listed as co-producer and sometimes writer ("A Chinatown Murder Mystery"), Martin Borycki puts on yet a third hat for this episode, playing the movie's scriptwriter, Marvin Borman...I wonder how they thought THAT name up? <G> Marina Anderson, David Carradine's wife, makes her second appearance on KF. She is Mona, the brainless actress starring opposite Wolf Gannett. She was previously seen as Stella in "Rain's Only Friend" and appears once more as Clancey, the bartender, in "Special Forces." According to her IMDb profile, she has also worked under the names Nina Penn and Coco d'Este, sheesh. She did not marry Carradine until 1998, a couple of years after the series went out of production.
Quote to remember: These martial arts blokes are quite sinister, what?
Slash comes to KF:TLC!! Caine and the Ancient hold hands, exchange chi and grunt and groan as they are getting "close...closer...closer..." I would like to suggest "A Shaolin Orgasm," as an alternate title for this episode <LOL>