The BEST episodes directed by Bernard L. Kowalski
#1 - Legacy
The Rifleman - Season 2 - Episode 11
Lucas tries to do a good deed for the old town drunk but it backfires when the drunk's son believes he inherited Lucas' ranch.
#2 - Night of the Blood Beast
Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Season 7 - Episode 1
Movie Plot: After a rocket crash, an alien beast starts to attack people in southern California. Also riffed was the short "Once Upon a Honeymoon." On the SOL: The 'bots attack Mike with Mace and tasers / Crow plays the trombone / Gypsy imitates the woman from the short / Crow pretends to be pregnant. In Deep 13: Dr. Forrester's mother, Pearl, has moved in with him. She forces him to do a trombone recital / Pearl makes Dr. Forrester confess to the SOL crew, but he doesn't know what he is supposed to be confessing / Pearl treats Dr. Forrester like a baby. Stinger: "Wounded animal that large isn't good." Original film made in 1958.
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#4 - The Case Against Eliot Ness
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 23
March 4, 1933. The Windy City is getting ready for the Chicago World's Fair, also known as the ""Century of Progress"" Exposition. The 3 wealthy Endicott brothers, who jointly owned franchises at the upcoming Fair, are all rubbed out in short order. Restaurant owner Gus Dmytryk goes to the Licensing Committee, and it seems he will get the former Endicott franchises: 3 nightclubs at the Midway, and 5 other concessions. It will mean big bucks, since the Chicago World's Fair is expected to draw 50-million visitors. Ness knows that Dmytryk has been on the fringes of the rackets for years, and then District Attorney Beecher Asbury assigns Ness and his men to the case. Meanwhile, when ex-alderman Mitchell Grandin tells the Committee that Dmytryk is a bootlegger; it seems the Committee will give the lucrative franchise to Grandin instead. Later, Grandin gives Dmytryk some payoff money. Ness and Lee Hobson, trying to clean up the town, drop in on one of the hoods who has showed up (and is
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#5 - Let the Punishment Fit the Crime
Magnum, P.I. - Season 4 - Episode 17
While Higgins is preparing to direct a selection of pieces from Gilbert and Sullivan's 'The Mikado' to be staged at the Estate, Thomas is hired by an attractive young woman to find her missing brother, who she claims has disappeared after joining a religious cult. The girl has musical experience and agrees to help out with rehearsals of Higgins' production while Thomas seeks out her missing brother, but Thomas uncovers more than he expects and finds himself dealing with a radical political group and an assassination attempt revolving around a visiting cast member of Higgins' production...
#6 - The Case of the Renegade Refugee
Perry Mason - Season 5 - Episode 13
A journalist is murdered while tracking an ex-Nazi war criminal who may be posing as an executive at a company called Space Associates, Ltd.
#7 - Big Iron
Knight Rider - Season 2 - Episode 24
While investigating the theft of heavy-duty construction equipment. Michael and KITT are pushed into a quarry and buried with tons of gravel.
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#8 - Blind Spot
Knight Rider - Season 2 - Episode 5
Michael investigates a businessman who's exploiting illegal aliens. A blind woman is the only witness.
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#9 - The Case of the Posthumous Painter
Perry Mason - Season 5 - Episode 9
Artist Jack Culross fakes his own suicide and sees the sales of his paintings go through the roof. His only problem was that he forgot to inform his wife Edna of the scheme. After Edna sees a completed painting of Jack's that she knows he didn't finish while he was "alive" she gets wise. Edna manages to track down her "deceased" husband but they fight and she knocks him down. Then he's found dead. Edna must stand trial for murder.
#10 - Chariot of Gold
Knight Rider - Season 1 - Episode 18
Michael investigates the mysterious deaths of members of an exclusive club for geniuses, involved in an archaeological dig.
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#11 - Letter to a Duchess
Magnum, P.I. - Season 4 - Episode 6
Magnum is preparing for this year's big surf-ski race, while in a chance meeting, Higgins meets Lady Wilkerson, an English Duchess whom he has been smitten with after two brief encounters years before (which she does not identify him from). She is in the islands incognito, and must sell some valuable family jewels after being strapped financially, but Higgins ends up saving her from two men who accost her in an alleyway. As smitten with the woman as ever, Higgins offers her a job on the Estate, and plans to reveal his feelings towards her via a letter, but due to a mix-up and misunderstanding, she assumes the letter to be from Thomas instead, whom it becomes apparent she has eyes for, blind to Higgins' desires. But these confused matters of the heart seem trivial when the Duchess is kidnapped by the two men who had made a grab for her previously...
#12 - Pilot
Mission: Impossible - Season 1 - Episode 1
IMF team leader Dan Briggs assembles his team for the first time. The mission: to recover two nuclear warheads belonging to General Rio Dominguez from a hotel vault in Santa Costa. Jim and Willy sneak safecracker Terry Targo into the vault, who figures out how to get out. The team then captures Dominguez but Targo's fingers are broken in the attempt. With no other alternative, Briggs has himself and Dominguez put into the vault, and Briggs threatens to enter a random combination if Alicio doesn't tell him the code. Dominguez breaks. With the bombs defused, Willy takes the warheads out of the vault. Briggs remains behind and uses the information Targo gathered earlier to get out during a fireworks distraction set off by Barney. Briggs and the rest of the team make a desperate race for safety and get onto a plane heading to safety seconds before the military can catch up to them.
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#13 - A Spool There Was
Mission: Impossible - Season 1 - Episode 9
Rollin and Cinnamon go it alone to recover a reel of recording wire containing information on a chemical warfare project aimed at the U.S. The courier carrying it was killed by the enemy, and the wire is missing. The two fake a lovers' reunion and then Rollin slips out during a pre-recorded conversation. To duplicate the circumstances of the courier's demise as closely as possible, Rollin lets himself be discovered and then chased along the same route. He finds the wire, hidden in plain sight as part of a fence. He and Cinnamon plan to recover and smuggle out the wire the same way, but it is taken by a young boy looking for fishing wire. Rollin manages to recover it, and they send the wire out disguised as the wire on a balloon.
#14 - Death Lends a Hand
Columbo - Season 1 - Episode 4
A private investigator kills his client's wife after she threatens to expose his blackmail scheme. The client then hires the detective to assist Columbo in the search for the killer.
#15 - On the Fly
Magnum, P.I. - Season 7 - Episode 15
T.C. is giving Thomas helicopter flying lessons when he is shot. With T.C. hospitalised, Mac appears on the scene, "volunteering" his services to stand in running Island Hoppers. But it seems that the assailants were actually gunning for Magnum, after a week previously, somebody impersonated him when trying to blackmail a Mexican Mafia King. With Magnum marked as a dead man as a result of the mistaken identity, confusion and chaos reigns, and as per usual, Mac 'just happens' to be in the middle of it all...
#16 - The Case of the Pathetic Patient
Perry Mason - Season 5 - Episode 7
Perry finds himself defending Dr. Wayne Edley who has been accused of committing two murders.
#17 - Paradise Blues
Magnum, P.I. - Season 4 - Episode 15
T.C. drags a reluctant Magnum along to the newly-opened club of an old flame – a beautiful jazz singer who he fell in love with in Vietnam – who has just moved to the islands. Thomas doesn’t dislike the woman, but insists to T.C. that trouble always follows her wherever she goes – but T.C., still infatuated with the girl, refuses to listen. But sure enough, the woman is in trouble, searching for a man who owes her $18,000 and mixed up with Detroit drug dealers that are out to kill her...
#18 - No Big Thing
Knight Rider - Season 1 - Episode 8
Devon lands in a small-town lockup on a misdemeanor, but his predicament becomes deadly after a fellow prisoner is killed by the cops. Devon's the only one who knew the man was in jail. Town name is Lindhurst Flats.
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#19 - Give Me Liberty...or Give Me Death
Knight Rider - Season 1 - Episode 15
Someone is sabotaging the cars in an alternative-fuel race, so Michael joins the pack to flush out the saboteur.
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#20 - The Case of the Grumbling Grandfather
Perry Mason - Season 4 - Episode 27
A young man has his head turned by, whatelse, a woman. In his haste to protect her, and her good name, the source of her pain turns up dead.
#21 - This Case is Closed (1)
The Rockford Files - Season 1 - Episode 6
While investigating the fiancé of Warren Jamison's daughter, Jim experiences some strange events which include kidnapping by the mob and the FBI who are anxious to get a statement - it all relates back to Jim's recent trip to Newark...
#22 - The Case of the Injured Innocent
Perry Mason - Season 5 - Episode 10
A really weird courtroom confession scene highlights this episode about the murder of a race car driver.
#23 - This Case is Closed (2)
The Rockford Files - Season 1 - Episode 7
Jim is ordered off the case but this proves difficult after the fiancé Jim was investigating is found dead and the mob and the FBI still want answers, so Jim must track the real killer...
#24 - The Case of the Missing Melody
Perry Mason - Season 5 - Episode 3
Perry and Della attend the wedding of Polly Courtland to Eddy King. The ceremony is halted at the altar when Polly begins screaming, "No! No!" and hurriedly exits the church. It seems as though Polly had spotted slimy George Sherwin holding an envelope containing photos of her younger sister checking into a Las Vegas hotel with a musician named Bongo White. Sherwin plans to ruin Polly and her family's reputation unless she gives up Eddy for him. Sherwin's plan comes a cropper when he's found shot to death. Eddy King is arrested for the crime.
#25 - Jennie
Airwolf - Season 3 - Episode 9
Arriving in Airwolf in a war-torn South American country, Hawke, Dominic and Caitlin rendezvous with "living legend" freedom fighter leader El Gato, in a mission to rescue a US scientist who is being held captive. Dominic and Caitlin wait at the pick-up point as Hawke and El Gato set off on the rescue bid, but during the escape after locating the scientist, El Gato is killed, and Hawke's radio to Airwolf is destroyed. Hiding in from the pursing terrorist army in the area's dense growth, Hawke and the rather arrogant scientist meet a teacher and her group of hearing-impaired children, who are homeless after village was destroyed by the terrorists. Hawke attempts to lead the group to safety as they head to the pick-up point, trying to find a new home for the teacher and her students, and all the time avoiding the terrorist army along the way...
#26 - Fade in to Murder
Columbo - Season 6 - Episode 1
Ward Fowler, who plays debonair television detective Lieutenant Lucerne, has a reputation for being a difficult actor. His series is a hit, however, so the network and studio executives again and again capitulate to his demands. Although separated, husband and wife team Sid and Claire Daley continue to produce the Inspector Lucerne program. Claire continually advises everyone else to go along with their stars demands. Not even Sid knows that Claire is blackmailing Ward. Claire discovers Ward in Canada. She knows he deserted from the United States Army during the Korean War. If that information got out ,it would ruin Ward's career. When Claire takes a phone call in Ward's trailer, the actor overhears her saying she’ll be getting a sandwich at Tony’s Deli. Ward gets to Tony’s Deli just after Claire disguising himself with a ski mask and bulky parka he pretends to be a hold up man.
#27 - A Pretty Good Dancing Chicken
Magnum, P.I. - Season 5 - Episode 22
Thomas is hired by Jack Damon, Carol’s Uncle, to find his seventeen-year-old daughter Becky, who has been missing for two months, after leaving home against his wishes to pursue a career as a dancer. After a little investigating, Thomas finds that the last person known to have seen the girl was her former boyfriend Darryl Jacobs – who is now behind bars after being involved in a stolen guns deal that went bad. Magnum decides the only way to find out from Jacobs what happened to Becky is to go undercover as a convict at the prison farm where Jacobs is being detained...
#28 - Birds of Paradise
Airwolf - Season 3 - Episode 22
String comes to the aid of his nephew who asks String for help when his mother disappears for a week.
#29 - Playback
Columbo - Season 4 - Episode 5
An inventor video tapes his mother-in-law's death, and then replays it back to the security guard, to give himself an alibi.
#30 - The Final Verdict
Knight Rider - Season 1 - Episode 11
"In remembrance of R.A. Cinader. He was an original" A meek accountant can clear a friend of murder if Michael can find him before he's arrested for "creative" bookkeeping.
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#31 - Element of Danger
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 19
Chicago, August 29, 1934. That night, in the Haymarket district, special agent Daniel Gosden, a policeman on loan to the Untouchables, goes through a skylight and finds an opium laboratory in the top floor of a rundown tenement hotel. Just then, drug lord Victor Rait and 4 hoods (Gus, Sully, Max, and Trapp) show up, carrying crates of supplies into the place. Rait spots Gosden and gives chase; just as Gosden phones Ness for back-up, Rait blows him away with a shotgun. Then Rait blasts 6 bullets from his gun to disperse the crowd of tenants investigating the noise. Somebody phones the cops, because within minutes Eliot Ness and his men and some policemen are on the scene. Outside, Victor Rait and his boys are calmly loading the crates of narcotics onto their truck. When a policeman asks them what they're doing, Rait shoots the cop. Ness and his men come running; Rait tells his boys to drive off in the truck, fast. Then, Rait puts on a show for Ness: Rait stays behind, and fires h
#32 - Man in the Middle
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 21
November 7, 1933. Slot machines are big business; 2,000 of the one-armed bandits rake in $100,000 per week; ($50 per machine). One night, ""Moose"" Tobin and 3 other Bomer hoods drop in on Porker Davis' upstairs gambling joint. Tobin tells Davis that Bomer wants to teach him a lesson; the hoods chase everybody out of the joint. Then they start throwing the slot machines out the 2nd story window; when one of Davis' employees tries to stop them, the hoods throw him out the window. Ness and his men are on the case. 2 years ago, Ness had run the slot machines out of Chicago; now the slots are back. Joe Bomer, former kingpin in Capone's booze operation, now the czar of the multi-million dollar slot machine racket, calls Davis in for a meet. Bomer gives him a ""take it or leave it"" offer: from now on, Bomer is his 50/50 partner. Bomer also warns Davis: the machines take 30%; don't rig the machines so they take 50% or more, or the customers will stop playing. Bomer will supply 40 of his
#33 - An Exercise in Fatality
Columbo - Season 4 - Episode 1
A health club owner kills his partner who is about to uncover a fraud and makes it look like an accident
#34 - The Contract
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 25
New York City; February 4, 1934. 3 months of intensive investigation is paying off for Ness and his Untouchables; they have ""Smiley"" Barris cornered in an upper floor of an Eastside tenement. With the aid of local police, and some tear gas, Smiley is apprehended. But somebody wants Smiley dead; a sniper with a high-powered rifle, on the roof of a building, shoots at Smiley-- he accidentally kills the cop beside Smiley. Ness shoots and kills the sniper. When the sniper is identified as Marco Robles, it is obvious who wants Smiley dead: N.Y. Syndicate overlord Joe Kulak. Joe Kulak is ruthless; on the phone he says, ""Robles got what he deserved. If the cops wouldn't have got him, I would have got him. Sorry -- no tears."" So now Kulak turns The Contract over to his Enforcer: Ray Quist. (a Contract means: kill the guy who's been fingered, or get rubbed out yourself.) Smiley was just a schlep, an errand boy, in the Organization; but what he knows could put Kulak in the electric cha
#35 - Fall Guy
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 12
October 1932, Chicago. With Capone in the slammer, other bosses are biting off chunks of Capone's empire. One boss is Frankie Gruder, head of a group that is the forerunner of Murder, Inc.; Gruder wants control of all the Canadian imports and exports. Gruder and his boys go to a warehouse, Gruder shoots a longshoreman. Ness and his men show up and start blasting. There's a shoot-out. Gruder manages to escape. Another gangster is using a different approach: Julius Vernon, the bookkeeper, is trying to beat the stock market; he keeps long hours, working well after midnight. Around 1 a.m., Vernon gets a surprise visit from Gruder; since Vernon owes him one for a hit Gruder did 4 years ago, Vernon gives him 10-grand for on-the-lam money. Then Vernon goes to Janos ""Willie"" Willinski; he's a fixer, a contact man. His office hours are 12 midnight till 3 a.m.; his ""office"" is a table in an all-night diner. Willinski fixes an arsonist up with a 5-grand torch job, for $500. Vernon's tu
#36 - The Monkey Wrench
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 28
March 2, 1933. The remote section of the northern Michigan Lake front, 180 miles northeast of Chicago. The Chicago Syndicate, to improve the quality of their booze, is now smuggling in master brewers from Germany; the illegal immigrants had come 6,000 miles to the new country. Tonight, 8 new immigrants are brought in. One of them looks at the sign: ""Welcome to Chippewa Landing, Michigan""-- Bernd asks, ""Chippewa? What does that mean? But this is America, yes?"" Max Kerner tells him to move on. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Eliot Ness and his Untouchables are using their armored truck with the V-wedge on the grill to smash through the large metal doors of a brewery; they shut down yet another bootleg operation. March 22. Another raid by Ness and the police. No one is killed since the brewers surrender peacefully, but then one of the mobsters shoots Bernd in the back, fatally wounding him. Lee Hobson and the police chase the hitman, but he gets away. They find out Bernd was the maste
#37 - Poor Butterfly
Jake and the Fatman - Season 2 - Episode 6
When a dangerous pimp assaults McCabe's sole witness against him, Jake talks a scared prostitute into helping him set the pimp up.
#38 - It Ain't Necessarily So
Jake and the Fatman - Season 2 - Episode 7
With the help of a key witness whose testimony intrigues him, McCabe pursues a publisher he suspects of putting a hit on his wife.
#39 - Fakeout
Mission: Impossible - Season 1 - Episode 12
Anastas Poltroni is the head of an international narcotics syndicate, and has taken refuge in a country with no extradition treaty. The IM Force is assigned to lure him out without kidnapping him (to avoid the publicity). Cinnamon woos Carson until Briggs, pretending to be her husband, interrupts. Carson refuses to bribe Briggs, while Barney plants some of Carson's heroin in his own hotel room and tip off the police. The IMF ambush Carson and steal the heroin, and Carson later escapes. He grabs Cinnamon and follows Briggs to a deserted lodge to retrieve his own heroin. The police are hot on his trail, and he flees with Cinnamon still in his grasp. Thanks to confusing road signs altered by Barney, Carson ends up over the border where he is arrested and the heroin is taken into custody.
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#40 - The Hanging
Gunsmoke - Season 12 - Episode 15
Dodge City is the site where notorious outlaw, Billy Boles, is set to hang. However, the town is occupied by people determined for their own kind of justice.
#41 - Quaker Girl
Gunsmoke - Season 12 - Episode 12
When a dying deputy swears in Thad to capture killer Fred Bateman, Thad ends up in a Quaker town, in which the people can not tell which one is the wanted man.
#42 - Attack of the Giant Leeches
Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Season 4 - Episode 6
Movie Plot: Giant leeches attack a bunch of hicks in the Everglades. Also riffed was the short "The Undersea Kingdom." On the SOL: Joel finally gets rid of the Holo-clowns / Servo becomes a teenager / the 'bots discuss fashion for megalomaniacs / the crew discusses their dreams. In Deep 13: Dr. Forrester puts a leech on Frank's neck instead of a nicotine patch / Dr. Forrester tries to get Joel to bow down to him. Original film made in 1959
#43 - Takeover
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 17
Chicago, October 1932. The only ""beer"" allowed to be served during Prohibition is ""near-beer"" or ""Near-O""-- which is 0.5% alcohol, as opposed to real beer which is 4.0% alcohol. And so, a lot of legitimate beer producers wind up ""spiking"" the barrels of near-beer with pure alcohol, to get it up to strength. A northside brewer named Woody O'Mara wants to smash all his competition; he tells his girlfriend Amy Gratzner, a rather plain-looking 23-year-old secretary for rival brewer Franz Koenig, to blow the whistle on her boss. Herr Koenig is a kindly boss who refers to Amy as ""mein liebes Kind"" (my dear child). Ness and his men drop in on Franz Koenig; he claims all his beer is de-alcoholized, as prescribed by law. But when Ness gets through a false wall, he finds a truck loaded with beer barrels. Lee Hobson sticks a hydrometer in a barrel: 4.0%. Koenig says he was shipping the beer to a plant to be de-alcoholized, but can't answer Ness when he asks: where is it? Who runs it? Koe
#44 - Dead of Knight
Knight Rider - Season 3 - Episode 9
A young dancer ingests a poison meant for Michael, who races the clock to find the only man with a clue to the antidote.
#45 - Kind of a Drag
Baywatch Nights - Season 1 - Episode 10
Mitch becomes a delightful female impersonator when the agency investigates a series of assaults on a drag-show company.
#46 - Mitchell & Woods
CHiPs - Season 5 - Episode 12
Female patrolwomen Mitchell and Woods find themselves on the trail of a murder suspect. You look for the CHiPs here? Sorry to disappoint you.
#47 - The Thirty-Year Pin
The Streets of San Francisco - Season 1 - Episode 2
When a police officer is fatally shot 3 days before he is due to retire, Stone undertakes a relentless search for the killer.
#48 - Payload
Blue Thunder - Season 1 - Episode 8
The Space Shuttle Argo, privately funded and arranged without any governmental interference, becomes under threat by a group of weapon dealers who don't want their sales of bacterial weapons falling down heavily because of this. This is because, the shuttle has successfully performed an gene-splicing experiment in outer space, relieving the American Space Industry after it is set for the shuttle to re-enter orbit, but there is one slight problem. The experimental canister has to be transported from the moment the shuttle touches down, to an unknown designated laboratory, where it will be configured and analysed to affect the usage of bacterial weaponry, in 20 minutes. Only Blue Thunder has the speed capabilities to achieve this, and so Apex lends the unit to them. After a accident involving the helicopter's entire electronics being short-circuited by power lines at a nearby power plant where the team managed to apprehend two men linked to the trading of German Warfare products, Profess
#49 - The Enormous Fist
Rawhide - Season 7 - Episode 2
When Fred Grant slugs Favor he hits him back. Fred falls hitting his head against a fencepost and dies. There is an inquest. Favor has to deal with the widow and her three kids.
#50 - Corporal Dasovik
Rawhide - Season 7 - Episode 10
When a officer dies, Cpl. Dasovik is forced to take over the mission but he has no control over the men. The men pick up Favor when they take some of his cattle. Dasovik soon learns he is alone but he is determined to carry out his orders.