The Mind Machine
Reviewed by Bruce Dettman

One of the things I most hated about my childhood - right up there with my mother's salmon loaf, my father's favorite TV show All Star Golf (which much to my dismay ran in our video area opposite Lloyd Bridges in Sea Hunt) and mastering the decimal system - was Sunday drives. This was a 1950s phenomenon when gas was cheap and people told themselves how grand it was for Mom and Dad and the kids to pile into the car and with absolutely no point of destination head out into the country. Since my brother was seven years my senior he escaped this torture and as we pulled out of the driveway was invariably sitting on the front porch petting my dog, chug-u-lugging a Coke, smirking away and taking great pleasure in my displeasure. Sitting in the backseat for up to five hours listening to my parents talk about Eisenhower, the neighbors, Patti Page records and the whether to repaint the house was pretty awful in itself, but making it worse was that my mother, like most mother's of that era, thought that I had to be dressed up in case, at the last minute, we might decide to go some place nice, you know, like visiting the Taj Mal or dropping in on the Kennedy's. Consequently, rather than being decked out in my beloved Keds, jeans and Davy Crockett T shirt, I would be forced into a shirt and bow tie, slacks, sports coat and hard shoes which constantly gave me blisters. Even my Superman plastic puppet couldn't always alleviate what back then seemed to me an experience far eclipsing a jail sentence or extended stay in a concentration camp. But it still could get worse and often did. This had to do with the amazing post World War II boom in housing. Everywhere you looked, particularly in California where some 10,000 people were pouring into the state on a weekly basis, some contractor was putting up a new suburban development and it often seemed that my parents had to visit each and every one of them. Nothing more exciting for a kid with two much energy in the first place, to walk through thousands of empty, sometimes unfinished homes, following paths of stiff butcher paper from one room to another. My parents, of course, had absolutely no intention of moving but just liked looking. I didn't. I wanted to be home playing ball, viewing old cowboy movies, wrestling my dog, even reading Edgar Rice Burroughs or Conan Doyle.

Oddly, all of this comes back to me when I watch The Mind Machine from the first year of TAOS.

Clark and Lois are in their car and on the track of a government witness named Wagner (Harvey Hayden) whose mind has been tampered with by a mind controlling device called a hypnotherapy machine initially created for legitimate medical motives by a certain Professor Stanton (Griff Barnett) but now exploited for nefarious purposes by crime kingpin Lou Cranek (Dan Seymour). As the two persistent reporters leave the city behind, their car grudgingly moves up a dirt and gravel wasteland with the smoggy outlines of the city visible below. This spot, circa 1951, is, I am certain, just ripe for exploitation by some greedy land developer. A couple of years down the line and pre-fab houses will cover the landscape and kids like me will be trapped on Sundays inside them as their parents ogle fireplaces and new-fangled electric garage doors.

For the time though it's just Clark and Lois and this guy whose mind has now been altered so that he bus-jacks a school vehicle with three kids in it and is tearing down the winding roads not knowing - or caring - that the breaks will give out any moment. Lois and the bus driver (Lester Dore) are hot to save the moppets but Clark seems more concerned with helping a woman who has passed out in the car Wagner originally commandeered.

Chiding him for his timidity, the fiery Lois contemptuously snaps that he can do what he likes but she is going to try and save the children. With the bus driver in tow this is precisely what she attempts to do which provides Clark the opportunity he's been waiting for and he dashes behind a convenient rock and re-appears as the Man of Steel.

This incredibly energetic episode has several interesting takeoffs, obviously experimental stuff being tested in the early episodes. The stuntmen are instantly hoisted up into the air and out of camera range and it looks like it's quite a ride for them as they are propelled skyward. Must have been quite a shock to their torsos but it's also pretty darn effective.

This is a serious, no-nonsense show, but it also contains an unintentionally (I think it's unintentional) hilarious moment when Superman stops the bus and Lois and the driver catch up to him. While Superman is explaining the situation and the three kids inside are watching the goings-on ("Golly, it's Superman") Dorr gives Superman the most protracted once over with his eyes passing - and often pausing -over most of Reeves' anatomy. Why the director didn't re-shoot this rather amazing scene is anyone's guess, but perhaps there just was no time on such a tight schedule and budget for re-takes.

Again, this is a fast-paced and highly energetic first year entry with the action hot and heavy. Taking a cue from the headlines of the day when the real life Kefauver crime hearings were going on in the nation's capital, the fictional Taylor Commission is targeting Metropolis' top criminal kingpin Cranek (played with superb nastiness by the always deliciously unctuous Dan Seymour) and his stooges led by Ben Weldon in is his first TAOS appearance. They want to derail the witnesses who have agreed to give testimony against his operations but to do this they must kidnap Dr. Stanton and force him to turn his potentially lethal mind-altering device on them. Up next is Lois who, true to stubborn form, refuses to be intimidated and plans to go ahead and testify. The good doctor, having seen the human carnage his machine has wrought, refuses to cooperate any further with Cranek but the wily gangster has figured out how the gizmo operates and begins to train it on Lois as she begins her testimony. Meanwhile Kent and Stanton's assistant Hadley (the ubiquitous Steven Carr) are circling around in a plane trying to get a fix on the gangster's whereabouts when their radar divulges the exact location. Too late to warn Lois, however so, as Clark aptly puts it, there's only one thing to do. And with that, and having no other alternative, he blasts poor Hadley with a thunderous right cross that given Superman's strength should very well have taken off half his head. Instead he's just rendered unconscious as Clark strips to his Superman duds, flies down to Craneck's shack and cleans house (looking a bit suspiciously like stuntman Dale Van Sickel in the process) and just in time returns to the plane to land the mystified Hadley who later expresses (understandable) disbelief that he was able to land the plane while still unconscious.

In the spirit of most first year shows, this is a rip, roaring roller coaster of action and excitement from the get go and energetically directed by Lee Sholem from a script by Dennis Cooper and Lee Beckman. The opening credits have hardly disappeared from the screen before Cranek and his men charge into Stanton's laboratory beat up Hadley and kidnap the scientist and this establishes the frenetic pace of the entire episode. It's a great favorite of mine and one of the shows I continually return to when I want to recall how much enjoyment the series has always brought me.

Needless to say, had there been DVDs of TAOS back in those prehistoric days not even the threat of a cut in my allowance, a forced session viewing Lawrence Welk, the banishment of Oreos from our cookie drawer, or even Dr. Stanton's hypnotherapy machine would have got me out my room on a Sunday to look at houses.

July 2007
Return to Introduction

The Adventures Continue (TAC) is a website devoted to George Reeves and the Adventures of Superman. All contents copyright© by Jim Nolt unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Nothing from this website may be reproduced by any means, in whole or in part (excpet for brief passaged used solely for review purposes) without the written permission of either Jim Nolt (owner) and/or Lou Koza (editor).

The items contained in the feature pages titled In Retrospect by Bruce Dettman is the copyright and ownership of Bruce Dettman and cannot be reproduced by any means, in whole or in part without Mr. Dettman's written permission.

Superman and all related indicia are trademarks of DC Comics, Inc. and are reproduced for historical purposes only. Use of the name of any product or character without mention of trademark status should not be construed as a challenge to such status. Includes the video captures from the Adventures of Superman.