The Power Within

4 years before we gasped as Emperor Palpatine emitted Force Lightning from his hands onto poor old Luke Skywalker, this little gem came and went with a lead character who could do the same thing.

The premise was simple.. guy gets struck by lightning and instead of being fried, absorbs the electrical current and soon after discovers he can shoot lightning from his hands. The only other thing I recall is he is given a wrist watch of sorts to control this ability and has to recharge or he'll cop it. Of course he could use this ability to fight crime for some organization somewhere, and this pilot proposed he do just that.

I remember bits of it vividly, but the rest is now a distant memory and by the looks of it, will probably stay that way as aside from this IMDb entry, there is sadly no sign of it ever seeing the light of day again.

I enjoyed it immensely when I was 6, and would love to see it again now to see if it lives up to how I remembered it, and to be able to give it a fair score. Hopefully whoever did make it will one day dust it off and put it out there somewhere. To this day it is the only thing i've remembered from childhood that I haven't found a clip of ANYWHERE, not even YouTube. Maybe an old VHS rip will show up eventually. It may have failed as a pilot, but doesn't deserve to be lost for all time.

I assume this was made as a pilot for a TV-series, but it just as well could have come straight from the imagination of Stan Lee, and adapted by the writers of all those hyper-popular superhero film franchises! Stunt pilot and professional womanizer Chris Darrow works at a carnival with his good buddy Bill. Chris has always and inexplicably been immune to small electrical shocks, but when he gets struck by lightning one night, he miraculously survives that as well, and even awakes with the ability to discharge electricity from his fingertips! Chris' father, an army general, arranges for a hot military doctor to develop a device to keep his electric energy under control, while enemy spies try to kidnap him without really knowing his powers. "The Power Within" is nothing special, on the verge of very dull, even. Here we have a daredevil with electrical superpowers, yet there isn't any stunt work or fireworks going on. If whoever invented this concept sold it to Marvel, or any other production company, it probably would have become an exciting superhero flick. Now, it's easy to see why it didn't even work as a pilot. Good old John Llewellyn Moxy can't be blamed, for sure, his direction is as surefooted and reliable as always.

I remember this film. I was a Senior in High school. It was an okay pilot. With a little polish, I think it would have made a pretty good series. The real star of the show was Art Scholl's (RIP) Super Chipmunk stunt plane. I suspect that Mr. Scholl performed the stunts for the show. Since the show was on ABC, it seems that he may have done some contract work for them as the plane also appeared in an episode of the Six Million Dollar Man at about the same time.

The premise was a bit weak, but I believe in time it could have shaped up. It seems that ABC did a number of pilots in this fashion hoping for audience approval, I guess. Charlie's Angels was one of the few that sold, as did Starsky and Hutch.

I gave it an 8 because it had one of the best stunt planes ever built and did demonstrate some good stunts.