User Reviews

Ken Kolb's 'The Night Of The Sudden Plague' was the last 'Wild Wild West' episode to be made in black and white, and saw a return for producer Michael Garrison. 'Jim West' ( Robert Conrad ) and 'Artemus Gordon' ( Ross Martin ) ride into the small town of Willow Springs only to find the inhabitants in a state of paralysis and the bank vaults empty. Deranged scientist 'Dr.Vincent Kirby' ( Theo Marcuse ) has developed a new type of bacteria, and a gang of outlaws - led by 'Coley Rodman' ( H.M. Wynant ) - are putting it in the water supplies of towns which they then rob. Jim follows them to their hideout - a desert fort - and, with the aid of the lovely 'Anna' ( Nobu McCarthy ) - learns that Kirby's next big target is none other than San Francisco.

A good season finale. Marcuse' bald head and commanding voice made him ideal for playing Bondian villains ( he was 'Dr.Gamma' in the 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' pilot ). H.M. Wynant was the 'Askoy Brothers' ( see it and you'll understand ) in the 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' two-parter 'The Prince Of Darknness Affair'. Elliott Reid plays 'Governor Marcus Hawthorne', a man so snobbish as to defy description. When Jim threatens him with a knife, its a great moment! Jim has a dandy way of breaking out of a locked room; simply draw an outline of Artemus on the door, apply an explosive substance, stand well back and kick it down! You have to admire a man who can look cool even falling through a hole in the ceiling!

A similar story idea was later done in the British spy series 'The New Avengers' in the episode called 'Sleeper'.

7 is pretty good in my book, but for this series is among the lower ratings: No fancy deathtraps to break out of for Mr. West. The running gag is not funny, and just because of poor execution. There is good acting all around, Nobu McCarthy is excellent, and so is Theo Marcuse. The bunch of robbers are believable enough cowboy-types. What gets me, is that... SPOILER!!! ... when West sees the mad Doctor, he seems to recognize him and vice versa. West grabs the man's hair and pulls it off, the guy himself follows this up by defiantly removing his false beard as well. They stare at each other... and nothing ever comes of it. Maybe someone is able to spot meaning in the fact that the Doc was wearing false hair-stuff for no reason whatsoever (not in the least surprising his daughter, by the way). I thought, all right, maybe West (but not Artemus?!?) knows the man from a previous episode. But Marcuse had only appeared once before, as a mean-tempered Prison warden, with a strawberry blonde wife who (understandably) wants to escape just as badly as the prisoners do. Here, he's supposed to be a humanitarian gone mad because of ill-treatment, so that does not match. Maybe Mr. Moore had a hangover. Or the flu.

The good doc gets shot and dragged away with no evidence of blood. Good clean kill lol