The Wild Wild West (TV Series) The Night of the Brain (1967) User Reviews

West's most cunning adversary

[drmality-1 · 8/10 · 24 April 2018]

Edward Andrews was one of the most typecast actors on TV He almost inevitably played a stuffy executive or banker. In "Night of the Brain", he gets to play a thoroughly diabolical villlain with a steampunk twist and he cuts loose with an enjoyably dastardly performance. I always hoped that Mr. Braine would be a recurring villain like Dr. Loveless.

Someone is sending Jim and Artie newspapers with the next day's date on them. The newspapers describe the deaths of men they know and that that they were helpless to prevent. Those forecasts come true in every detail. Some evil genius is manipulating the secret agents with ease.

That genius is Braine, who uses a steam-powered wheelchair loaded with death traps to get around. He uses the chair "to conserve energy". Braine plans on using West and Gordon's security knowledge to substitute duplicates for world leaders, leaving him to pull the strings.

As Braine, Andrews is chillingly unpredictable...jovial one minute, ice cold the next and capable of exploding in rage. He is such a calculating adversary that I sense the writer had trouble coming up with the proper ending. He is undone by his own sadism.

Like most episodes of "The Wild Wild West", you can poke holes in the logic of the episode, but this is one of my favorites

The Steam driven "Wheel Chair"

[theowinthrop · 7/10 · 1 October 2006]

I enjoyed watching THE WILD WILD WEST because of the crazy 19th Century versions of 20th Century devices that were constantly being thought up. 19th Century technology was nothing to sneeze at, with steam driven railroads, ocean liners, telegraphs, telephones, electric lights, and phonographs. Yet THE WILD WILD WEST takes place during the two administrations (March 4, 1869 - March 4, 1877) of President Ulysses S. Grant. The gramophone of Thomas Edison Edison first appeared in 1877, after Grant left office, but it is frequently used in the show. Steam powered missiles, and huge weapons that were impossible to imagine in 1871 or 1875 pop up. It was curious to see these - but they were never on the drawing boards of that day.

Also, the villains tended to be vindictive or power hungry madmen, using their abilities to get back at enemies or to get into positions of authority. Ed Begley Sr. as a corrupt Federal Judge hoping to massacre the Supreme Court so he can get a seat (after he was rejected). Or John Dehner as a man who was left for dead in a Mexican War incident by soldiers including then Captain U.S. Grant, and who has been repaired with steel and wire so that he can't be shot - now he wants to kill Grant. Or, best of the lot, diminutive in size if not talent Michael Dunn as Dr. Miguelito Lovelace, who keeps trying to take over first California, then the U.S (and later the world) and rebuild it according to his ideas of a future (which would include smaller sized people).

This episode illustrated the strengths and weaknesses of the series.

Somebody is killing off various friends of West (Robert Conrad) and his partner Artemas Gordon (Ross Martin). These include West's old military commander (Col. Arnette - John Warburton), who is killed while West is momentarily paralyzed by a drink that has been targeted, and a comedian friend of West and Gordon killed by a bomb on stage while they are watching. It turns out, after they are summoned, that the perpetrator is one Braine, a super genius and megalomaniac (played by Edward Andrews) who rides around in a wheel chair driven by a steam engine. He has plans for taking over the globe (naturally), involving replacing Grant, and several other world leaders with doubles who will do his bidding - here to cause universal warfare.

Whoever did the research got somethings close to right - but not quite. One of the leaders is Archduke Maximillian of Austria. In 1869 - 1877, Maximillian would not have been much use anywhere - he was dead by a Mexican firing squad in 1867 after Juarez finally defeated the Austrian archduke/ would-be Mexican Emperor at Querataro. Braine would have had some problems convincing anyone to support a dead Archduke.

The episode of course would follow how James West and Artemus Gordon would defeat Braine and his plan (eventurally hurtling the madman towards the doubles, so that the steam driven wheel chair becomes a weapon of mass destruction (another anachronism, but this one from me)).

I liked the technological goofs, and Ross Martin's impersonations (mostly for laughs). But for logical plots, you did not watch this type of escapism.

The typical W W West topic

[searchanddestroy-1 · 8/10 · 2 March 2019]

You can enjoy this episode as the common best W W WEST show topic where our leads fight against a kind of Hitler kind dictator who dream of world conquest. They will or already hav met many of such lunatics all over the series. I can't say more because I don't want to spoil the episode.

Brainiac

[a_l_i_e_n · 14 July 2008]

A madman tips off West to a series of impending assassinations so perfectly planned that they occur right in front of the Secret Service agent without his being able to prevent them.

The veteran character actor Edward Andrews plays the calculating evil genius of the week, Mr. Braine. Andrews was a familiar face in comedies from the 1960's including the Disney classics "The Absent-Minded Professor" and "Son Of Flubber", so it's quite a switch to see this guy, usually cast as lovably befuddled types, playing a demento so mean he kills a henchman for missing a button on his uniform. The prerequisite scene in which Braine explains his grand scheme for world domination features Andrews doing some powerful scenery-chewing, followed up by a globe bursting into flames to accentuate his point. Frankly, with his feathery haircut and excessive use of eyebrow pencil, Andrews looks kind of silly here. However, in an episode filled with gadgets (one scene includes both a trap door & an ejector seat), Andrew's Mr. Braine gets the coolest prop of all: a nifty self-propelled wheelchair equipped with rockets and nasty triangular blades for people-gutting.

As stated above, "The Night Of The Brain" has quite a high gadget (and action) content, which is fine as these are certainly among the main attractions to this kind of escapist entertainment. At the same time, there are nagging little aspects that do stick out and bother a fan. For example:

-employing knockout gas is all well and good, but relying on it three times in the same episode may be over doing it a bit.

-West takes on a trio of guards, one of whom apparently misses his mark and blocks the camera before stepping out of the shot. Odder still is how Artie simply watches from the sidelines instead of helping West take them out.

-Mr. Braine pursuing West with his steam-powered wheelchair is fairly exciting and well shot- that is, until the end when unimaginative staging doesn't show West using any kind of cleverness to get himself out of trouble. He just suddenly jumps on board the armored conveyance and sends Mr. Braine rolling to his doom.

-Also stretching it a bit (so to speak): Gordon's "double identity" is a tad unbelievable as it would imply Artie carries on him the means to whip up full facial appliances in little more time than it would take to read the front page of a newspaper.

Interestingly, "The Night Of The Brain" is helmed by Larry Peerce, who over the years made terrific films like "Goodbye Columbus", and directed everyone from Henry Fonda & Elizabeth Taylor in "Ash Wednesday" to Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch in "The Ghost Busters" for Saturday morning TV. Hm, considering a career as varied as his, perhaps he was particularly in his element for this good, if uneven episode.

Edward Andrews is a worthy opponent

[aramis-112-804880 · 6/10 · 11 February 2023]

Edward Andrews (without his trademark spectacles) is a power-mad genius who intends swapping world leaders with duplicates wearing his masks.

One of my favorite shows along with WWW is "Mission: Impossible" but I never bought their masks. The same sort of masks appear here and present even more difficulties. No matter how much of a resemblance they share with the real people world leaders would be surrounded by people who know them intimately. Keeping up the deception would prove impossible.

Andrews' ultimate plan is unworkable, but that doesn't matter for the space of a TV episode. More seriously to logic is thay Andrews' chatacyer suffers from a dichotomy that plagues tyrants like Napoleon and der Fuhrer. On one hand they're treated as geniuses who can't be defeated; on the other hand, they're called mad. Can it really be both?

He's also a stern taskmaster, as a character missing a button can attest. But no doubt many of his folks follow him out of love as he promises to do away with war: a typical tyrant's ploy. All they have to do to achieve it is take over and crush freedom.

Andrews is a worthy opponent to West. He's especially good at the end on his suped-up wheelchair.