That is the lovely Sherry Jackson, maing her seco appearance on The Wild Wild West, down on all fours carrying an egg in a spoon alongside Ross Martin. “The Night of the Gruesome Games” carries on the tradition of just about every crime/action series of doing an homage to the 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game. As you can probably guess, The Wild Wild West took it most literally--to the suffering of the actors’ dignity, of course.Jim and Artie are in hot pursuit of Dr. Rekar, a researcher who has stolen a vial of deadly germs. The vial has to be kept at a certain temperature or else it will explode within a few hours, spreading disease all across California. Rekar is apparently killed in the pursuit, but our heroes learn he has sent the vial in luggage to the mansion of eccentric millionaire Rufus Krause, who had invited Rekar to his birthday party.
Artie poses as Rekar with Jim as his body guard in order to search the mansion for the vial of germs. Krause is an eccentric old coot who likes to humiliate his money obsessed gussets by forcing them to play children’s games in order to win gold, jewels, and furs. In the end, he announces he is going to leave his entire fortune to whoever is still alive in the morning.
The games are a red herring. It really is just a weird old man having fun by "torturing" people whose greed has destroyed their lives. Well, except for that brief interlude where his henchman, an obvious knock off of Goldfinger’s Oddjob name no Fun, attempts to boil Jim alive in a giant bird cage in the basement. Believe it or not, that is one of the saner aspects of the episode. The real plot is that Rekar faked his death. He is married to Krause’s hostess. The two of them plotted to kill eery guest I order to inherit Krause’s fortune, then use the vial of germs to gain political power.
Does that make any sense? How about destroying the vial of germs in a furnace because heating it up will cause it to explode, spreading deadly disease/ I am puzzled by that one myself, but this is definitely one of those episodes that you cannot give a whole lot of thought to or your head will explode. Just go alog with the silly atmosphere and enjoy it. “The Night of the Gruesome Games’ is fun, but dumb. Probably a lot like your prom date.
Rating: *** (out of 5)
