I used to love watching the original Incredible Hulk series on TV when I was a kid, and I still like to watch reruns sometimes. Nice-guy-actor Bill Bixby played nice-guy-doctor/scientist Dr. David Banner. You probably know the basic premise, but one night he was experimenting on himself when a freak thunderstorm rolled in; like the movie Frankenstein. He received a massive dose of gamma rays, and from then on whenever he got really pissed off he'd undergo a "startling metamorphosis" and turn into the Hulk (played by nice-guy-bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno). It was fairly impressive at the time.
The effects were state-of-the-art for the day. When Banner got angry they'd show a closeup of his surprised face and he'd be wearing green contact lenses. Then they'd cut to innovative shots of green airbags meant to look like chest muscles inflating and ripping through Banner's shirt, or sometimes they'd have Ferrigno just put on a shirt that was ten sizes too small and film him flexing his arms and ripping through the shirt. I guess Banner figured out that it'd be best to wear stretch-polyester pants so they'd expand along with him. Otherwise he'd have been running around naked when he changed into the Hulk. A big green goober flopping around would've violated the ratings code I'm sure.
Every episode usually began and ended with him hitchhiking into or out of town. He'd take on odd jobs for a bit but then he'd have to split because something would make him mad and he'd trash the town, so when he turned back into David Banner he'd pack up and move along. All the while he hoped to find a cure and clear the Hulk's name. Since he was thought to have been killed in the lab explosion he also had to pretend to be dead and take on assumed names. He ended up helping someone somehow in almost every episode.
The lab was in his home, and when the lightning struck there was an explosion and fire and the whole house was blown to smithereens. All the commotion freaked him out and he turned into the Hulk for the first time. Banner's wife was killed and the Hulk tenderly picked her up and took her outside to try to revive her in vain. An investigative reporter named Jack McGee happened to be in the neighborhood and saw the Hulk holding her lifeless body, and assumed the creature had killed her, so for the entire series he pursued the Hulk because it was wanted for murder and he wanted the scoop of his life. Somehow Banner managed to stay just one step ahead of McGee; sort of like Dr. Richard Kimble and Lt. Gerrard in The Fugitive.
Every episode he'd "hulk-out" once or twice, and by the time he finished trashing things and kicking the bad guys' asses he'd have to pack up his duffel bag and move on to the next town since the heat was on, with Jack McGee always in hot pursuit. The creature was made of pure anger and rage and represented our dark side, but it had ethics. They've since made him smarter in movies and such, but in the TV show he was a bit dense, but he never hurt a single living creature. He never spoke a word but he growled a lot. It was a trippy show, and speaking of, I'd never seen this episode but when I read the blurb in the guide and it said something about David Banner being given LSD I knew I had to watch it. Plus it starred Mackenzie Phillips as a Rock chick. Bonus. The Hulk possibly tripping and Mackenzie Phillips in the 70s...right in the middle of all her crazy shit...it was a no-brainer. It was an interesting episode and possibly worth sharing.
I knew already it was going to be a great episode when I saw the stage set in the opening scene. The band was dressed in Kiss-style makeup. I have to mention that I recently did a post talking about how we've been seeing the same old eyeballs, pyramids and shit in various videos and stage sets for two decades, and this shows that it goes back much further. We see the pyramids and the lightning bolts, but I've already talked about that.
Here's Mackenzie. She played a singer named Lisa Swan. She looks a bit like a cross between Gene Simmons and David Bowie. Back then it was cheeseball as hell but it's almost charming now. The rest of the band was made-up all crazy and one guy reminded me of one of the ghastly percussionists/clowns in Slipknot. Rock on!
They even had a great prop I'll call a Tesla Coil. The bolt of electricity looked pretty realistic, but considering they weren't in a Faraday Cage it's just a good fake. Considering they had to add in the bolt frame-by-frame back then it's impressive. They spent a few extra bucks on this episode for special effects ("trick photography" back then), but that was probably around the time that Mackenzie was still into all her drinking and drugging and getting canned from her own TV shows, so maybe they got her for cheap. To be fair, maybe she was clean by then.
The show was a massive success but the fans stormed the stage and this poor girl got trampled. Shades of Altamont.
After the concert Lisa Swan and her manager were driving back to Lisa's mansion. She was bummed about the girl who was trampled. She started driving way too fast and crashed her car. Her manager got out but she was trapped inside. True to form David Banner was hitchhiking and happened upon the scene.
He managed to free her from the car just before it blew up (naturally). She went to the hospital and was treated and sent home.
Out of gratitude Lisa offered David a job helping out in the studio. The guy on the right wasn't too happy since he'd been with her the whole time and probably had a thing for her and considered David an interloper, but he didn't have much choice. Lisa's manager tried to cut David a check for saving Lisa from the burning car but he wouldn't take a penny, because that's just the kind of guy he was.
Soon Lisa recovered and got back to rehearsals. Just by chance Jack McGee showed up to ask Lisa's manager some questions about the injured girl for a news story. It's unrelated to his pursuing the Hulk, and in fact David Banner hasn't yet hulked-out at this point. It adds some tension, as David sees him and has to hide. She doesn't like him and tells him to get lost, so he asks her if she's heard of the First Amendment.
Here the jealous guy is telling Lisa's manager he's unhappy with David being around, and that he's been there from day one and he feels that David is taking over and becoming a confidante of Lisa's. He says he's "uncool" or something and she suggests that maybe he should get David loaded to loosen him up a little. Turns out the guy is a big pill-popper. At first I thought maybe he was going to slip David a Quaalude or some reds or maybe some Valium, but then I remembered that the blurb mentioned LSD. Oh, no. Doing acid isn't exactly "getting loaded."
Sure enough he produced a vial of Orange Sunshine (by name) and offered some to David. He said it wasn't his thing and politely declined. The guy said "It'll show you a side of yourself you've never seen," which was interesting given the premise of the show. David said no. They nailed it on the tabs of acid. True Orange Sunshine was big orange tablets and looked just like this.
Since David refused the acid, the guy decided to dose him anyway, and he dropped it in David's OJ when his back was turned. Dirty bastard. It's generally not polite to dose someone without their consent.
Here he is about to finish off the last of his "magic" orange juice. Big mistake.
This shows him about three seconds before he got off on the acid. He's walking past some Ludwig tympani, a Musser vibraphone, possibly some original Gon Bops congas and he's on his way to mic-up a nice Rogers drum kit.
Uh-oh...the acid's kicking in. That mic sure looks funny.
I was wondering how they were going to simulate an acid trip and they didn't do too bad of a job. Here he's moving his hand back and forth and seeing "tracers" or afterimages of his hand. We've all been there.
Everything started to melt and get colorful. He had no idea he'd been dosed...
...but yeah, he was tripping. He was starting to see shit.
This is how they represented the last of his reality slipping away before the acid took over. After this it was Cartoon City.
Next thing he knew he looked down and saw that his feet were stuck in green slime. This was about the time the original "Slime" came out and I guess it was a big deal for special effects. They probably had to go to K-Mart and plop down $50 for a couple of cases. I got a kick out of that.
Here he is trying to extricate himself from the imaginary ooze. It's one thing to hallucinate green slime when you're tripping, but to actually feel physically stuck would be unlikely, even on superb acid, and Orange Sunshine was the real deal. It's only a TV show.
Here he's trying to get the attention of the manager and another guy in the control room to explain his imaginary predicament, but of course it's totally soundproof, and obviously the talkback mic isn't on.
He sees a piece of furniture turn into a hallucination of himself as the Hulk, which is another interesting plot twist. He's always dealing with his alter ego anyway, and the acid has brought it out in his mind.
Here he is "seeing" himself as the Hulk. He's standing in front of a pair of very nice Paiste gongs. He's pretty much said "Adios" to all things familiar.
He's completely left reality and entered into another dimension. You can't tell from this image but it shows a bare desert. I was surprised to see this. Not many people will know the reference, but this shows the "barren land" image that we see all over the place today in ads, movies, commercials, art and such. It's a biblical reference. He's confronting himself as his alter ego in his mind, but he's still Banner. Apparently even tripping on powerful acid isn't enough to make him turn into the Hulk. Acid doesn't generally make people angry anyway.
He's struggling with his inner demon as it were. That's some good acid.
Then things take a turn for the worst. He's still hallucinating but now he's back in the studio, and he imagines that the Hulk is going to stomp on him. This is enough to scare the shit out of him enough to piss him off. To the left we see a nice assortment of Roto-Toms and a couple more Paiste gongs to the right.
Sure enough here come the green contacts and we hear the spooky music with the voices and all that plays whenever he changes into the Hulk.
Here's a closeup. It's the "one eye" thing again for those keeping score.
This episode featured a rare shot of Banner in mid-transformation. Normally it just went from Banner with green contacts to shirts splitting and then straight to Ferrigno, and they only showed this image in a few episodes. It's expensive and time-consuming to do all that makeup, but I guess since they figured they'd shot the wad on the budget anyway they might as well go all-out. It is effective.
And there goes the shirt splitting open.
Now Banner had officially become the Hulk. Not only that but he was tripping his big green balls off, since he was really Banner and Banner had been dosed with some strong shit. He was mad as hell and tripping too. This was turning out to be an outstanding episode.
He was a big green trippin' mofo. In every episode whenever he hulked-out he never knew where the fuck he was or why he was there or even who he was anyway, so on top of being dosed I don't reckon he knew shit from apple butter, but also as in every episode some mysterious code of Sasquatchian ethics somehow guided him to do the right thing and help people in trouble. Problem is he couldn't seem to help arbitrarily wrecking things, or he'd try to help an injured person and get blamed.
Now the Hulk was tripping really hard. He looked down at the floor and saw some microphone cords turn into snakes. Damn. It's not easy being green and tripping too. He didn't like the snakes.
He picked up a floor tom to throw at the snakes. Unfortunately it was a Ludwig Vistalite acrylic drum, which is worth a few hunj in today's market. He hurled it at the imaginary snakes and it hit the floor and pretty much splintered. That was real and not effects, and I was surprised to see one of those drums all but disintegrate. I've seen them smashed with guitars, blown up with pyrotechnics, set on fire, thrown across the stage and everything else, but I've never seen one break like that. It'd make Bill Ludwig Sr, Jr and III wince and/or roll over in their graves.
The rim and head are somewhat intact but that's about it. Ouch.
The jealous dude heard the ruckus and made the mistake of going into the studio to check it out. When I first saw the gongs I was wishing I could hear them but I figured there was no way. Imagine my delight when the Hulk "played" the gongs by tossing the guy into them. You could clearly hear the gongs in the soundtrack. It was awesome. After the Hulk finished trashing the studio he broke through a wall and took off; presumably to come down from being the Hulk; not to mention the Orange Sunshine. That's rough.
McGee got wind of it, and was back questioning the manager again, only this time it was about the Hulk. She told him basically to go fuck himself, but he was persistent.
As usually happened at the end of every episode; after the Hulk had caused a scene and Banner had to leave town, he went to his employer to say goodbye. When he went to see Lisa Swan though, he saw that she was very upset about the girl who was trampled, and now lying paralyzed in the hospital, and that she'd decided to hit the bottle.
Here she's draining the last drops from a bottle of bourbon. Being the good guy he was, he realized she needed help, so he decided to stay and risk getting caught just to help her get over her guilt. I had to wonder how much this scene was like real life for Ms Phillips.
They visited the girl in the hospital, and Lisa gave her a tape player with some cassettes of some of her unreleased demos. The girl couldn't turn her head to save her life but she was obviously thrilled.
David and Lisa had a heart-to-heart. Lisa was very concerned about all the violence she was generating with her music. She decided the best thing to do would be to quit playing music. Of course that'd be pure bullshit in real life, but it seemed noble in the show.
Banner relayed the news to manager-chick but she wouldn't have it. She had her own version of a heart-to-heart and told him SHE knew best and SHE called the shots and blah-blah. The show would go on and that was that. She told Lisa Swan the same thing. It says something about the music biz but that's another story.
After hearing of her manager's decision and realizing that she had no control over her own career, Lisa Swan began to hatch another plan.
She turned on the Tesla Coil thing and marveled at its power. It did look pretty cool.
She walked up the steps and stood a couple of feet away from the beam of electricity. They made sure to show a closeup of her red shoes, which is a reference to Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, but again that's another story. One thing's for sure...if she'd have stepped into the beam it may not have taken her to Oz, but she'd have definitely left the building.
That night the show went on and it was rockin'. The smashed Vistalite floor tom had been replaced and now it was accompanied by the rest of the matching kit.
As usual, McGee was hanging around. He'd heard about the Hulk's visit to the studio. He had the best seat in the house but he wasn't interested in the show. He was looking for big green men. As always Banner was always one step away from being seen by McGee, but luckily the place was packed and he wasn't noticed.
Part of his job was to hold this device pointed at Lisa Swan so her wireless mic would work and he had to maintain a direct line of sight. The first wireless unit I recall was a Nady "True Diversity" system. It had dual transmitters and it broadcast the signal on two separate frequencies. It constantly compared the two signals and chose the strongest one. It worked pretty well. I don't remember this system but they showed it several times. Here he struggled to keep a line of sight. Is it about controlling an artist? Maybe that's a stretch but they did make a big deal out of it.
All of the sudden she started freaking out. She said all this stuff over the mic about "I'm going to Hell, and I'm taking you all with me!" and other alarming statements. It was a bit out of character but she was mad. Plus she'd written a love ballad but her manager wouldn't let her sing it because her fans wanted "energy," so she was sort of like "Okay then...I'll give you energy!" She walked back and stood under the beam. It soon became clear to a few people what she intended to do.
It got creepy and disturbing at that point. It was as if she was worshiping the beam. They didn't really need to throw that in, but I suppose it added to the drama, and possibly signified some "other" form of worship?
Banner realizes what's going on and gets upset. The crowd thinks that the beam-worship bit is part of the show and they go nuts. Here Banner, as he's in the process of hulking-out, struggles to keep the device pointed at Lisa Swan, but she's not singing anyway. She's doing the beam thing. He doesn't quite get pissed-off enough to completely change into the Hulk, so for good measure some chick in stilettos accidentally stomps on his hand and that does the trick. We hear the spooky chorale music and see the shirt rip open. He's green. Yea! It's whoopass time.
For about two seconds it's like "Where's Waldo" and nobody notices him. You can barely see him in the crowd of berserk fans.
In an instant though they realize there's a big, green, growling SOB who came out of nowhere, and he probably isn't a security guard or anything like that. Again, the Hulk doesn't know where the fuck he is or who he is or what's going on, and it's unclear whether or not he digs amplified Rock music but probably not, but somehow he knows what to do. He knows he has to get Lisa away from the beam or dismantle it or both. "GRRRRRRR!" he says.
First he picks up Lisa Swan and gently carries her stage right and out of harm's way. She's like "WTF?"
Next he goes over to the Tesla coil. He becomes a human resistor and for some unknown reason he fires a beam at the poor drum set...
...which explodes in a dazzling array of 70s pyrotechnics. I gathered he didn't like loud music after all. Interestingly the name on the bass drum is Shock. I guess the name of the band was "Lisa Swan and the Shock." I love it. It's unclear whether the drummer was still seated at his kit, because he'd have exploded in an event that would've made Spinal Tap look like Sesame Street, but he'd probably split by then, and the Hulk's ethics wouldn't allow him to kill anyway. Somehow the drum kit survived. The Ludwig family would've been proud.
McGee saw the action but there wasn't much he could do. He didn't want to get his ass kicked just to get a scoop. I always wondered why he never carried any camera gear, because half the time no one believed his story about a giant green creature, and rightly so, but what do I know? At least he was on the job, and added the additional tension factor to every show.
In what was by far the best part of the entire episode, the guitar player was in the middle of his solo and totally 100% oblivious to everything going on. By now the rest of the band had run backstage and were all wondering if someone had slipped something into their beers, but the guitar player played on. It was absolutely hilarious and an ode to guitar-wankers everywhere.
The Hulk picked up half the coil and smashed it to bits. Damn shame but it was effective, and it certainly wouldn't be threatening Lisa Swan again any time soon.
The guitar player hadn't noticed a thing...the singer gone...the rest of the band no longer playing and cowering in the dressing room...not to mention a giant green monster trashing the stage, so he just kept on playing. Too much.
After the Hulk finished smashing the stage to shit, he did his usual "angry bodybuilder" pose and took off. The crowd thought it was part of the show and they went even more berserk.The guitar player thought they were cheering for him so he cranked it up a notch and wailed on. It was absolutely outstanding.
On his way out he knocked over the beleaguered drum kit. Maybe that was a nod to Keith Moon. It was clear by then that the Hulk didn't like drums. He and I wouldn't have had much in common.
The guitar player played on. No joke.
The next thing I knew it was the end of the show, and as usual incredibly-sad piano music played as David Banner hitchhiked to the next town; resolved to try and find a cure and to remain calm at all cost, but destined sure as shit to turn green again and kick some ass. I'm sorry I can't tie up the loose ends, but I was still laughing at the guitar player and my mind wandered off thinking about some of the great guitar-wankers I've known personally. I don't know if Lisa Swan and the Shock kept playing and got signed to Epic Records or whatever, or if she got off the booze, or even if the guitar player finished his solo. I'm sure it was a happy ending. It was for me. Guitar guy cracked me up. I just had to blog about it.
THIS HAS BEEN A PICTORIAL SYNOPSIS OF AN EPISODE OF THE INCREDIBLE HULK. WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY-SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING. HAVE A NICE DAY.
