The Wild Wild West (TV Series) The Night of the Human Trigger (1965) User Reviews

The Bird Isn't Dirty Here

[DKosty123 · 6/10 · 10 September 2009]

Burgess Meredith plays the heavy here in an episode where he is a Scientist going around creating earth quakes. He comes off kind of flat here, being much better as a Penguin on Batman later, & did better in episodes of the Twilight Zone prior to this. For some reason, while he is the bad guy here, the script seems to make him a confused one at best, an irritated one at worst.

There are better episodes than this one, but Meredith does bring some of his acting skills on board here. West & Artie nearly lose the race to catch up with him, & West is nearly done in by his own prop department so to speak. The show appears to have been assembled in a hurry, with the ending more than a little contrived in the jail cell.

I enjoyed it, but then it is the typical James Bond in the Old West

[steven-kovner · 6/10 · 18 June 2023]

Note at the end the professor is writing on a chalkboard in his jail cell, and one equation he writes is E=MC^2, which has little to do with earthquakes, but is rather famous.

Yet it only gives the conversion factor between energy and matter.

So I need to make the review longer. It was a fairly typical West show, with science fiction in the old west. A Not the greatest episode, but not the worst. Burgess Meredith played a typical mad scientist; his wife must have been having affairs with others to have such stupid sons (reminded me of the Swill brothers from Brisco County)

Fun enough for an episode of something that came out when I was 10. And enough for me to enjoy many years later,

The man who made earthquakes happen

[ShadeGrenade · 9/10 · 26 November 2013]

A few months before becoming 'The Penguin' on the 'Batman' television series, the late Burgess Meredith played an equally larger-than-life villain in a similarly outrageous series - 'The Wild Wild West'. He is 'Professor Orkney Cadwallader', a bitter geologist responsible for using explosives to trigger earthquakes along a natural fault in Wyoming. Each quake is preceded by a warning. Soon the towns are mostly deserted. He wants the state to become independent - with him at the helm. As one might expect, Meredith does not underplay the role. Orkney's daughter 'Faith' ( Kathie Browne ) sends her brothers to beat seven bells out of Jim and Arte. Luckily, Jim keeps Derringers up both sleeves and shoots both men dead simultaneously. Orkney's next target is the town of Sawtooth. While Arte tries to warn the townspeople of the impending quake, Jim seeks the location of Orkney's detonator. He gets caught in a mantrap, and the awful truth is finally revealed - he himself will be the detonator.

Compared to most 'Batman' episodes, this is John Le Carre standard. It is marvellous fun. Note the cheeky reference to 'High Noon'! There is an exciting sequence where Jim and Arte are put in a wagon which then rolls into a mine to be pulverised by an automatic rock breaking machine. Arte gets to disguise himself as an eccentric Austrian professor, distracting Orkney long enough for Jim to escape.

The Night Of The Burgess Meredith

[Mark_The_TV_Geek · 10/10 · 14 September 2020]

Burgess Meredith is absolutely wonderful in this very funny episode. A tour de force. It's worth watching for his performance alone. I literally laughed out loud many times throughout the episode. An easy 10 for me.

Too silly

[robert3750 · 4/10 · 17 September 2021]

WWW had a lot of outrageous scenarios, but this one went too far with the farcical tone. Too much winking at the audience, as if to say "see how silly this show is?"

Falls Flat

[uber_geek · 4/10 · 1 May 2016]

Even Burgess Meredith can't help this one.

Meredith plays an absent-minded heavy who is saddled with two sons who are dumb as a box of rocks. As much as I normally love WWW's crazy plot twists with megalomaniac world conquerors, this one falls as flat as Orkney Cadwallader (Meredith)'s plot to seize control by causing earthquakes.

In addition to his sons, he has a daughter who is clever, but is also preoccupied with finding a proper suitor. She spends most of her time either fawning over West or wanting to kill him. There's no love lost on her father, either, whom she sees a limiting the number of potential beaus.

Most of the early episodes were well written, but this one fizzles out like wet dynamite.

Where does the fault lie?

[blerpnor · 3/10 · 6 September 2023]

Does the blame go to casting director James Lister for deciding Burgess Meredith could function effectively as a WWW villain? To writer Norman Katkov for an unimaginative scenario which fails to balance the violence with humor (a balance crucial to this series)? Director Justus Addiss for his lackluster pacing? Or to Meredith himself for playing his part with no hint of jocularity--or so much as the slightest suggestion he was happy to get the role. It doesn't help that the character's large-scale homicidal plans have no logical connection to his chief grievance. I'd have expected Meredith to do a dynamite job in this role--but he bombs badly. Instead of an air of evil glee, he conveys a disposition of grumbling misanthropy. Maybe he was just having a bad week.