Alcoa Theatre (TV Series) The Silent Kill (1960) User Reviews

Too rushed...and so I see why they didn't make the series.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 15 February 2024]

Ken Clark is an ex-football player who now makes his living as a private eye. His client is someone who insists that a dead man did NOT die because of suicide as the cops have ruled.

"The Silent Kill" is an installment of "Goodyear Theatre" but originally was a pilot for a TV series that never became a show on the networks. It was very common practice in the 50s and 60s to take these unpurchased pilots and show them on other shows in order to recoup the production costs...or, possibly, to see if the public likes it and, perhaps, they'll give the pilot another chance. After seeing "The Silent Kill" I can see exactly why they didn't produce the series, and it wasn't because Ken Clark was bad in the lead. He was just fine. But the short time slot really hurt the show and it could have benefitted with a longer running time. After all, the show is about a private eye...but if the case is solved in 22 minutes, where's the suspense?!

Rejected

[lor_ · 7 November 2023]

Alcoa Theatre presented this failed TV pilot which proves to be self-explanatory as to why it was never picked up as a series.

The show bears the series title "Brock Callahan", and the segment title as a pilot is "The Silent Kill", referring to a deadly karate chop to the windpipe. Ken Clark stars as Brock Callahan, who is emphasized to be a former guard for the Los Angeles Rams. Whose real-life coach Sid Gillman has a cameo role on the bench playing himself. Now he's a private eye in Beverly Hills, all dressed up in a well-fitting suit, but still the muscular footballer able to defend himself in a scuffle.

The story chosen for the pilot is lousy: a businessman is found to be a suicide, but his partner, played for deadpan humor by Richard Deacon, hires Brock to prove it was murder and find out whodunit. This pilot has mainly a no-name cast, with Brett Halsey, as a suspect, the most recognizable face on-screen.

Don Siegel directed crisply, but casting Ken Clark was likely the key to failure here. He is decidedly ordinary as a leading man. Oddly enough, both he and Halsey both went to Italy and appeared in dozens of European movies starting in the Sixties after their domestic careers fizzled out, while Eastwood became a U. S. movie star following the major success of his Sergio Leone Westerns (all three released here in 1967) by starring for Siegel in "Dirty Harry".