Mike Hammer

The girls had Terms of Endearment, Places In The Heart and One Life to Live; we had Mike Hammer. Fair swap. Fast and silly and tongue firmly planted in cheek, this series must've decimated Hollywood's supply of uplift bras and clinging tops and was just the thing for a twentysomething bloke with lots of hormones.

OK, it wasn't rocket science, but it's Spillane, not Shakespeare. Mike was cool, there was enough plot to see you through to the next starlet and there were some genuinely funny moments. Unfortunately, it was all cut short by Keach's arrest in England on drug charges; but even before that the politically-correct brigade had managed to dilute it of most of the things we watched it for to begin with.

Pity. I still want to know who the Face was.

I wish they would properly convert these into a box set. The 90's series (tango)are horribly done. The ones with Velda had some great chemistry. Even the sound and lighting (brighter) is better in the 84-89' series. The scripts were written much better and it shows. A few episodes are lighting in a bottle to view they were that good.

One of the new breed "Old School" detective shows, Mike Hammer was one of my favorite shows ever. The tough, hardboiled tough-as-nails detective that actually had to DO detective work to get his man! He wasn't afraid to pull out the fistcuffs, and he wasn't superhuman and invulnerable. They just don't make shows like this anymore!

Stacy Keach was the definitive Hammer. The sadistic Ralph Meeker, the only Hammer to not pack a gun, was the next best in the awesome Kiss Me Deadly. This series was loaded with punchouts of the antiseptic kind and lots of buxom babes in low cut tops coming on to Keach. For some reason, none of Spillane's stories were adapted for the series. Don Stroud, Kent Williams, Lindsay Bloom and other supporting players were very good. Why isn't this series on DVD when so much junk made years later gets fast releases? Why isn't this series in reruns at least with all the broadcast stations like H&I popping up. It's a crime. The final, disconnected Hammer series made in Canada in 1997 is worthless.

I used to watch this show when it aired in the 80's.It wasn't the regular Mike Hammer of the books but a tongue-in cheek version,the real Hammer had too much sex and violence for television. Stacy Keach is OK in the title role,manages to instill some drama when its needed and add some light hearted comedy the rest of the time. The plots are not far from standard 80's cop-fare,there's the typical supporting cast of cops and villains,Hammer also has a sexy secretary,and while on the case meets a whole bunch of beauties. I remember there was some criticism of the series about the girls,that there were too many of them, and in later episodes they cut down on the number of girls Hammer meets.I didn't see any point in this ,the show was not to be taken seriously by any stretch of the imagination. All in all not a bad Pr.eye series,one of the 80's series thats not available on DVD yet.