On Sunday the landlord came by to pull the broken key out of the front door and also had someone come in to fix my kitchen faucet. He’d just installed a new one a couple of weeks ago but it was already loose. The landlord had told me that I could fix it and I probably could have but it’s kind of his job. I think it took less than a minute for the guy to tighten it.
I
decided after coming home after dark on Saturday that I probably wouldn’t be
taking anymore long recreational bike rides until next April. This is my last
free weekend before school starts so I had to get caught up on my writing and
get the reading done. I really don’t want to ride after dark unless it’s
necessary for getting to and from school and work. That reminds me that I have
to figure out how to tighten my front flasher before I have to work on
Wednesday evening.
So
I stayed home and worked on writing about Saturday’s food bank adventure.
That
night I watched the final half of the final episode of Mike Hammer, Private
Eye. Hammer spends the weekend in the Virginia mansion of the Sterling family,
who are all pretty much coo-coo but one of them is a murderer. The head of the
family is General Sterling and he thinks he is George Washington so much that
he dresses the part and has a small militia dressed for that era as well,
except that they all wear red like the British troops did. His daughter Livia
thinks that her brother’s son Third was abducted by aliens and replaced by one
of them. His daughter-in-law Margaret is an alcoholic. The only normal sibling
is Marcus and he us Black. Auggie is the oldest and he runs the tobacco company
and is married to Margaret.
Hammer
finds the missing disc in the General’s office. It contains proof that the
tobacco company has produced and is trying sneak into public consumption a
strain of tobacco with 3.5 times more nicotine than normal. Livia falls from
the mansion balcony and dies.
Meanwhile
Skip, the police captain and Barry the DA come down to Virginia from New York
to investigate the tobacco company. They stop to help two women on the street
but they are arrested for trying pick up two transvestite prostitutes. Mike
Hammer is played by Stacy Keach Jr. The judge in this case is played by Stacy
Keach Sr. He puts Skip and Barry on a chain gang for contempt of court for two
and a half weeks.
Hammer
finds Margaret lighting a candle and crying beside a boulder on the lawn. After
she walks away he discovers there is an 18-month-old child buried there. Henry
Spencer is the groundskeeper on the Sterling property. His son was abducted a
few years before when he was just 18 months old but DNA shows that the buried
body is not his child.
Margaret
attacks Hammer while shooting at him from a crop dusting plan, so we have a
little bit of the scene from Hitchcock’s North By Northwest as Hammer runs like
Cary Grant from the plane. He shoots it down and Margaret dies. Hammer figures
out confronts Auggie with the fact that Auggie and Margaret had accidentally
killed their own toddler and buried him in the lawn. They abducted the
groundskeeper’s child and raised him as their own. Auggie had killed Livia and
another one of his siblings. Auggie pulls a gun but the General comes in with a
musket. He’s overheard Hammer's revelations and he declares that the son of
Danny Spencer will inherit his entire fortune. Auggie shoots his father and
runs but Hammer kills him.
Of
all the Mike Hammer movies and shows, Mike Hammer, Private Eye is the worst
I’ve seen. Stacy Keach's Mike Hammer is my least favourite as well. There’s a
lot wrong with the 50s Mike Hammer TV show but it was a more engaging series.
Livia
was played by Teresa Ganzel. She's played a lot of ditzy blonde comedy roles
such as in Transylvania 6-5000. She was a regular cast member of The Tonight
Show with Johnny Carson as The Matinee Lady.
Margaret was played by
Phyllis Katz who is co-creator of The Groundlings Improv Troupe and school.
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