THE WILD WILD WEST: "THE NIGHT OF THE UNDEAD" (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

The four seasons of THE WILD WILD WEST were replete with all sorts of "wild" supernormal phenomena, almost always explained through the rationale of "the scientific-Gothic;" that someone came up with a new scientific discovery that emulated the effect of a supernatural phenomenon. In "Night of the Undead," though, writer Calvin Clements Jr-- a long-time TV scribe-- also throws in a plot with a strong sense of Gothic transgression.

West and Gordon (Robert Conrad, Ross Martin) are in New Orleans, on some vague government mission to protect a valuable scientist, Armbruster. Armbruster disappears and West has an encounter with what seems to be a voodoo ceremony. One of the worshippers, a bulky fellow (Rosie Grier), tosses West around and initially seems unharmed by a gunshot. Later the agents find the man's dead body and take a medallion off him. This device is simply present to give Gordon an excuse to pursue a separate course with his disguise-antics (more on which later), while West chases down the main thread of the story. Fortunately for him, Armbruster's old colleague Eddington (John Zaremba) happens to live in the same city where the agents were to meet Armbruster, so West interviews him. West also encounters Mariah (Joan Delaney), whom he saw earlier at the voodoo ceremony, apparently as a worshipper, seen walking barefoot over burning coals. Eddington mentions that he and Armbruster once worked with a disgraced scientist, Articulus, against whom they planned to bring charges of illegal experimentation. However, Articulus supposedly died in a lab accident. West keeps snooping around and ends up a captive in the house of the supposedly dead scientist. More specifically, he ends up beneath the house, in a mine where Articulus (Hurd Hatfield) maintains a small workforce of men-- including Armbruster-- enslaved by a potion that makes them as will-less as zombies. (That word is never used, though strangely West uses the term "robots" many years before it was invented in the 20th century.)      

   I'm not sure where writer Clements might've got the name of Articulus, which obviously suggests the word "articulate." Possibly Clements was being ironic, since what Articulus does is to render all of his slaves "inarticulate"-- including his new acquisition Mariah, who's now under his control and whom he plans to marry. (If he had her under his control enough to make her participate in a voodoo ceremony, why'd he let her go back to her father? I guess so that she'd be around when West got the first part of the story from Eddington.) The second part of the story, as Articulus helpfully provides, is that after he faked his death, he also allowed his bereaved fiancee to think him dead. Eddington then moved in and convinced the fiancee to marry him instead. Since the mother is absent and is meant to have passed on, Mariah is the naughty scientist's way of possessing the mother, through the daughter. However, Articulus also has in his service an age-appropriate housekeeper-confidante, with the odd name of "Phalah," and Phalah is clearly in love with Articulus and resents his plan to consummate his lost nuptials with a younger woman. 

Gordon dons two disguises in his endeavors. While in the first disguise, he flashes the medallion around in a tavern. This results in Gordon being directed to a certain house by a young Black woman named Domino, who plays no further role in the story. Maybe she was a contact between the all-White gang of the scientist and the Blacks who were helping Articulus perpetrate some voodoo illusion for unspecified reasons. That alliance might also explain her name, since a domino is both white and black. The house in New Orleans is never really explained, but that's where Gordon encounters Phalah, who feels the bumps on his head and gives every impression of her being a student of phrenology. There seems no particular reason for Phalah, if she was just a housekeeper, to be living in town, so it may be that she set up the phrenology shop as a way of maintaining contact with other agents in New Orleans. Does her practice of phrenology have anything to do with her collaboration with a guy who messes with brains? Quien sabe? 

Anyway, Phalah sends Gordon on to the house of Articulus and also sends a subordinate to tail the disguised agent. But apparently Gordon loses the tail, for the agent next shows up at the scientist's house in a different disguise. But Phalah is there too, and she recognizes Gordon by the bumps on his head. The two agents are imprisoned together but inevitably work their Bond-mojo, escape, liberate the villain's enslaved minions, and blow up the house. But this time West doesn't get to kill the villain. While West struggles with the demented scientist, Phalah gets fed up with Articulus' wedding plans and shoots him, causing him to fall to his death. 

One detail I omitted from the episode's "cold open" is that West sees the mesmerized Mariah wield a machete and chop down a dummy made up to resemble her father Eddington. The script never states outright that Articulus plans to have Mariah kill her father, but this too sets up reverberations with early Gothic prose fiction. The prototypical Gothic plot is that of a young woman menaced by an older man, sometimes a symbolic substitution for a "bad father." "Undead" presents Mariah as being caught between "good father" Eddington and "bad father" Articulus, and this time the latter's relationship is not entirely symbolic, given that Mariah could have been Articulus's daughter had he married her mother. If one took Eddington out of the equation, "Undead" could be the story of a natural daughter menaced by her transgressive daddy, but willing to fend him off with a deadly weapon in self-defense. Additionally, Phalah could be replaced with a genuine, and very censorious, mother, who's out to kill the bad dad for his unwholesome pursuits-- and maybe for finding the daughter more attractive than the mother. For a voodoo story set in New Orleans, "Undead" has far less to do with race than with incestuous sexuality. (It's also one of the few episodes where James West doesn't get to romance even a single female.)