This is a strange one.
For quite a few reasons, actually.
Some of you may remember the long series of Travis McGee novels, about a hardboiled Private Investigator, which were best sellers back in the Eighties. They were written by John D. McDonald, who had written countless paperback original crime novels before he became famous.
But one of these paperback originals was rather…different.
Instead of a typical crime novel, it is a light-hearted fantasy, telling the tale of Kirby Winter, a mild and ineffective young man whose rich uncle died leaving him only his gold watch. He finds himself pursued by a seductive criminal, accused of theft and threatened with a lawsuit by a corporation which finds itself stuck with a major tax bill. However, he discovers that the watch he’s been given can stop time, allowing him to rearrange reality as he likes.
Now Fawcett reprinted it quite a few times, so the novel must have been fairly popular. Popular enough that Operation Prime Time — an independent syndication network, sometimes referred to as the Fourth Network at the time, which sold material, including Entertainment Tonight, to lots of local television stations — made a film version featuring Robert Hays.
This is slightly odd as well, as it came out before the release of the film that made him (temporarily, at least) a big star: Airplane!
While it ran as a movie in many markets, it was also released as a five episode “series.” Somehow, once the theme song (a rock ditty that sounds like it was borrowed from some Seventies sitcom) starts playing over a title card which practically screams Eighties television, you know what to expect. It looks like a cheap, Eighties TV production, shot on video and mostly using existing locations.
For all that the title already tells us about the girl and that gold watch, we are thirty-seven minutes into the film before we finally meet Bonny Lee Beaumont in a way that was surprisingly bawdy for Eighties television — as is the ultimate fate of the female villain. I suppose they were putting more explicitly sexy elements in TV shows at the time, but it’s hard to imagine that this was made for prime time.
Although, to be fair, I don’t know how many stations actually ran Operation Prime Time shows in prime time.
She’s played by Pam Dawber, who was appearing on Mork and Mindy at the time. The only other familiar faces here are Maurice Evans (without ape makeup) and Macdonald Carey in a bit part.
While it may seem strange that it takes thirty-seven minutes to introduce the girl, it is forty-nine minutes before Kirby learns what the watch does and start using it in comic ways. There is a brief bit with a dog vanishing and reappearing earlier, but even that moment comes well into the story.
Mind you, it’s almost impossible to summarize the story without mentioning either the girl or that gold watch. Particularly as it’s right there in the title, as well as in every description of the film you’ll ever read. So don’t blame me for any spoilers here!
There is a little reference to Kirby’s uncle being an inventor and physicist thrown in along the way (well, after Kirby figures out what the watch does) which technically makes this one science fiction rather than pure fantasy. Mind you, I have no idea whether that’s in the original novel or not.
Perhaps the strangest detail is that the film was so successful, they made a sequel, The Girl, the Gold Watch, & Dynamite, a year later, which was probably intended as the pilot for a series. However, they couldn’t get either Robert Hays or Pam Dawber, although it is stuffed full of familiar character actors like Jack Elam, Tom Poston, and Gene Barry which does suggest they might have had a higher budget.
Now if you’re looking for something deep, or a commentary on the dangers of seemingly unlimited power, you aren’t going to find it here. This was never meant to be more than a bit of fluffy entertainment. And you have to accept that this was a low budget production, shot like a TV show — that is, quickly, cheaply, and on a very tight schedule.
But it is amusing and imaginative, even if it isn’t quite the silly romp the idea suggests. Close, but not quite.
So, if your tolerance for Eighties TV is high enough, it may be worth a look, if you are looking for something silly.
But I’m still just a little amazed that they got away with showing this on TV in the Eighties…
rivets on the poster 