John Dehner makes his second appearance as a villain in a year, but does not play the ame character this time around. Evidently, changing him into a steam punk cyborg for ‘The Night of the Steel Assassin” is supposed to be enough to throw us off. Dehner plays Torres, a former Unnon colonel who was gravely wounded when a Confederate cannon ball hit the ammunition depot. Torres had drawn the low card when his unit was choosing who would guard the depot and who could go to a party that night. Torres suspects his me cheated, so he therefore blames them for his injuries.
Torres miraculously survived. A doctor patched up his wounds with steel plates and bars, giving him an inhuman appearance, but incredible strength and invulnerability. He is an interesting twist o the usual Wild Wild West super villain.
Torres goes about murdering each man from his old unit in revenge. He uses the hypnosis technique he utilizes to control his pain on the pretty niece of one of the murdered men. She is played by Sue Ane Langdon. She is one of my favorite of the beauties featured on the series. My fondness for her probably has a lot to do with her Slave Girl Leia moment. She is normally a doctoral candidate in psychology, but Torres convinces her she is a showgirl, complete with skimpy outfit.
She looks nice:
Torres’ final plan is to assassinate Ulysses S. Grant. Our heroes stop him and reverse the hypnosis on the girl, so she put more clothes on. Bummer.“The Night of the Steel Assassin” is one of the more solid episodes of the first season. Torres does not show off a whole lot of the abilities he has gained from his steel body, but his act is pretty impressive for a low budget show. One wonders why he killed the other men in his unit with his bare 9steel) hands, but did not want the satisfaction of doing so with Grant. He attempted to usea rocket there. Weird, but the viewer is so distracted by Langdon, it does not really matter.
I imagine that was part of the plan.
Rating; *** (out of 5)
