Ghost Story/Circle of Fear 01x06: Alter-Ego

1972’s Ghost Story is a complicated show.  

For the first thirteen episodes, it’s what I like to think of as “relaxedly paranormal” – there’s not a lot of blood or trauma, and the endings are usually more depressing than ironic. And there are framing segments featuring Sebastian Cabot as your host Winston Essex, a mysterious author who lives in a great big mansion full of weirdos who come to be his guests and tell him spooky stories.

Then, all of a sudden, Sebastian Cabot is gone. The show’s title is changed to Circle of Fear, and the promotional materials insist that there’s less emphasis on the supernatural. Just things like cursed wooden horses, a satanic office cult, more ghosts than ever before, and some elemental demons trapped in glasswork. Straightforward, scary situations anybody could find themselves in.

Producer William Castle – responsible for some of the most fun you can have with Vincent Price – had decided that a change was needed. While he’d patterned the host segments on his idol Alfred Hitchcock, he quickly had second thoughts. The radical changes to the genre brought about by Rosemary’s Baby in 1968 were trickling into television, and nobody could make up their mind what that would look like.

HGWT 01x35: The Return of Dr. Thackeray

Have Gun – Will Travel is probably my favorite show of all time, which is impressive given the sheer amount of television I enjoy. Is it the best thing ever objectively? Maybe not. But this is a show that will be mentioned in my writing – probably way more than it should be – so I felt we should have at least one episode on file for early reference. Let’s get the basic rundown out of the way:

HGWT debuted in 1957, and stars Richard Boone as “Paladin.” It’s obviously a nom de guerre, but we never learn what he was called before. Since Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t around back then, it stands to reason that he picked it to liken himself to one of Charlemagne’s knights. He’s a professional gunfighter in the 1870’s, putting him a little after Bonanza’s time period, and contemporary to The Big Valley, in case you wanted to write crossovers.

Paladin sends his minimalist business card to people with problems, and if they answer, he shows up and solves those problems for a thousand dollar fee. The implication is that he’ll shoot things, but he very rarely does. He prefers to grandstand like an ADA in the last ten minutes of a Law & Order and it’s great. The card has a stylized drawing of a chess knight, and reads: “Have Gun – Will Travel. Wire Paladin. San Francisco.”