Riding with Death

Someone at Universal thought it would be a good idea to make a show about a guy who can turn himself invisible. But, they made him a government agent, and made him mellow. Dr. Heywood Floyd, transported from the year 2001, assigns the ever cool and mellow Sam Casey to transport Murray from the MTM Show, from point A to point B. Oh there's also something about an unstable liquid. Anyway, Captain Stubing intends to doublecross our mellow hero and take off with ten million dollars. Then there's some scenes with Jim Stafford singing and driving a truck, Sam turning invisible and then finally a truck blowing up. Then we go into the fast paced world of raceing! There's the elusive Robert Denby and why he's elusive, we never find out. Dr. Floyd is harassed by his dentist and a woman named Cupcake plots and schemes. Sam and Buffalo Bill, as Stafford is known in this mishmash, throw some punches, drive some cars and thwart the machinations of the ever elusvie Robert Denby. Oh, and Abby is quite a gal. She's such a gal that she can view things in her lab and project her thoughts over space and time. Based on a story by H.G. Wells, and I think he's suing.

Typical cheese of the 70's. Good for laughs. Overly smug Ben Murphy plays a secret agent named Sam Casey who works for "Intersect", which is housed in a redressed parking garage.(Apparently Intersect couldn't afford a better office building). He was apparently involved in an accident earlier in his career that caused him to turn invisible, but he was cured. However, he was left with the ability to turn back invisible whenever he wanted, by using a handy wristwatch outfitted for him by Intersect. This we learn via vague flashbacks which leave us with more questions than answers. witness Murphy's narration of the flashback: "...all I could say was, 'What the hell happened?'"

The movie itself is not really a movie at all. It is actually two different episodes of the very short lived TV series "Gemini Man", which ran in or around 1976. It was probably spliced together because they were the only two episodes which also co-starred (I use the term 'starred' lightly) hillbilly music personality Jim Stafford.

The two episodes were obviously unrelated other than that, and the poor editing doesn't help to cover up this fact. Watch & listen for the edits where they try to tie these two together, you'll have a hearty laugh.

I actually wasted some time researching facts about the original TV series and found out that the second part (episode) of this movie never actually aired on TV. The show had already been canceled five or six weeks previous to its scheduled airdate. I guess the producer just couldn't bear to waste all that great footage of Jim Stafford yelping like a hyena in heat.

One word of advice: Do yourself a favor and locate the episode of the classic TV show "Mystery Science Theater 3000" which features this movie. Then you can *really* enjoy Riding With Death. Its one of their funniest episodes ever. (With material like RWD, how could it not be hilarious?)

Certainly not. This, the Master Ninja stuff, and two Kolchak movies (Crackle of Death, and Demon & The Mummy) display the odd penchant for taking two bad episodes of a TV show and stitching them together into one crummy movie. The strategy behind this is the studio wants to save the good episodes for separate syndication, so whoever makes these movies takes the worst episodes and stitches them together. I'm old enough to have seen Gemini Man, and these _are_ the worst episodes of that series, which displayed a modicum of intelligence at the best of times. They deliberately pick out the worst episodes to save the best for syndication, and the result is this unwatchable crap.

Two episodes of atrocious 70s TV show stapled together to make a film. Secret agent has ability to become invisible due to exposure radiation or something. Has a "Southern" character only slightly less annoying than The Dukes of Hazzard. If you see a copy of it somewhere in a used bin, buy it then burn the video.

This is actually two unrelated episodes of the 70's TV show "Gemini Man" strung together to form a movie. And a really bad one too. It's not hard to see why this show was so short lived. Stars Ben Murphy (of "Being From Another Planet" and "Parasite" fame) and the hideous Jim Stafford. A real awful, rotting chunk of 70's cheese.

Good MST3K episode, though.