The BEST episodes directed by Paul Wendkos
#2 - City Without a Name
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 9
1933. Violence and corruption were at an all-time high in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Detroit, Kansas City-- virtually every city in the U.S. The lone exception is an Eastern seaboard metropolis, referred to as City Without a Name, in which the voters had used the ballot box to vote corruption out of public office. And Federal agent Arnold Wainwright had kept organized crime out-- but on October 22, he is blasted by machine-guns while in a coffee shop. Eliot Ness and his men are called to the case. Ness goes to the hospital and talks to Wainwright's assistant, Gilbert Burke, who was injured in the attack; Gilbert tells Ness the hit was the work of Lou Mungo. Chicago. At the Montmartre club, Nitti is having a meet. Nitti decides that since Lou Mungo's done the groundwork, it's time for him to take over half of Mungo's action. Nitti sends for Sebastian, who specializes in such acquisitions without using muscle. Sebastian wins a high stakes poker game by bluffing. Nitti tells
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#3 - The Genna Brothers
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 4
In the years following WWI, there was a flood of European immigrants into the USA. In the early 1920s, the 6 Genna brothers, place of origin Sicily, were headed to Chicago. The Genna brothers are nothing but a gang of bullies, and in a few short years they are the ruling lords of Little Italy, an Italian neighborhood in Chicago. One night, as the 6 Gennas are beating up a street vendor, Agent Enrico Rossi whales into them. The leader, Mike Genna, asks if he knows who they are; Rossi says, ""Yeah, the Genna brothers-- one rat with 6 heads!"" Mike Genna says that Enrico Rossi is Italian, just like them; Rossi says he's ashamed. There are many illegal immigrants in Little Italy, and over 1,300 of them were smuggled in by the Genna brothers, who force them to make booze in small stills in their homes, to supply Capone-- over 1,300 cookers, each making a gallon a day; 40,000 gallons a month; almost half a million gallons a year for Capone. Many's the time that Eliot Ness and Rossi and L
#5 - Heritage
The Big Valley - Season 1 - Episode 6
While Heath investigates violence at one of the Barkley mines, he discovers that the miners hate the Barkley family for promises that have not been kept by the mines' managing partner.
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#6 - Cocoon (1)
Hawaii Five-O - Season 1 - Episode 1
Red Chinese agent Wo Fat uses a sensory deprivation chamber to procure information from U.S. agents. Steve McGarrett, head of Hawaii Five-O, investigates the death of a close friend who appears to have drowned. Steve's knowledge about his friend and a mysterious white substance lead him into a high-level intelligence matter involving a foreign agent. McGarrett, head of Hawaii's state police force, poses as "control," possessor of the names of other agents. He allows himself to be captured and placed in the chamber; will he be able to withstand the torture?
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#7 - Cocoon (2)
Hawaii Five-O - Season 1 - Episode 2
McGarrett is caught and cocooned, and must escape this torture and shut down Wo Fat's operation.
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#8 - Moonshot
The Invaders - Season 1 - Episode 15
Vincent helps a security official investigate the deaths of two lunar astronauts in a strange red fog.
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The Untouchables - Season 4 - Episode 12
June 1930. Speak owner Louie Akers-- about to go dry and out of business because Guzik couldn't supply him with hooch for that last 3 weeks-- buys his booze from another supplier. Akers pays Johnny $1,142 for barrels of beer and crates of whiskey, that some deliverymen just dropped off. Just then, a couple of Guzik's boys (Sully and Mac) drive up; they start blasting at the delivery truck (which still has plenty more booze in back), just as it's pulling away. Once the delivery truck is at a safe distance, Johnny gets out and hands the dough over to the booze supplier-- Eliot Ness! (Johnny is an undercover cop.) A short time later, Akers gets a visit from Jake ""Greasy Thumb"" Guzik and a few of his boys.
#10 - Young Marauders
The Big Valley - Season 1 - Episode 4
Audra is saved by a man who claims to be a mustang hunter, but his band of marauders is extorting protection money from the farmers and ranchers of Stockton.
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#11 - The Mutation
The Invaders - Season 1 - Episode 3
With the assistance of Vicki, a nightclub stripper, Vincent continues his search for an alien spacecraft.
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#12 - The Night of the Howling Light
The Wild Wild West - Season 1 - Episode 14
West is captured by Dr. Arcularis who doesn't want a message of peace delivered to Chief Ho-Tami, head of the Indian Tribes.
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#13 - Doomsday Minus One
The Invaders - Season 1 - Episode 8
Vincent is called upon to help avert possible alien infiltration at a government nuclear test site.
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#14 - The Gang War
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 13
1932. Chicago is a thirsty town, consuming 86,000 gallons of booze a day; that's 32-million gallons a year. Almost all this booze is beer and rotgut, but 1% is the finest Canadian scotch. Nitti's boys, armed with tommy guns, shoot up a rival speak, the Blue Lion, that's serving the Canadian scotch. Ness and his men investigate; 2 people dead, 3 critically injured. Nitti's plenty sore; there are half a dozen clubs, roadhouses just outside of Cook County, serving Canadian scotch. Where are they getting it? Just then, a bomb goes off in the Montmartre Club; Nitti and his boys are unhurt, but 6 pedestrians and a taxi driver are injured. Nitti orders in 100 hitmen from Detroit. It's a Gang War! To prevent further killings, Ness arrests Nitti and confiscates his gun. Although Nitti is sprung within the hour, Ness blackmails him: Ness tells Nitti, if one more person is killed in the gang war, ""Lee Hobson's gonna put a bullet in me with your gun."" (In the arm or leg, I suppose. Thi
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#15 - Vikor
The Invaders - Season 1 - Episode 6
A dying telephone lineman's fantastic story leads Vincent to investigate a huge industrial complex owned by a famous war hero.
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#16 - Stranglehold
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 27
New York, 1933. Racketeers are poking their greasy fists into every corner of the nation's business. The Fulton fish market in New York supplies fish on the East Coast to as far west as the Mississippi; they supply 700-million pounds of fish a year, worth $200-million. When Captain Joe McGonigle, owner of the fishing boat the Margie Mac, won't pay protection money, 2 of Frank Mercouris' hoods, Lenny Shore and Swede Kelso, drown his deck hand, and it makes the newspapers; it's only the beginning of trouble with the Syndicate moving in-- and so Eliot Ness and his men fly to New York. Dutch Schultz, speaking for the Syndicate, tells Frank Mercouris: ""no more rough stuff."" Meanwhile, Ness is talking to Capt. Joe McGonigle; Ness wants him to testify in front of the grand jury. Ness tells him he knows how the mob operates: a fee to tie up a boat at the city dock, a fee to buy ice, a fee to unload; and the wholesalers are being charged protection money, too. Ness tells McGonigle that h
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#17 - Jigsaw
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 7
September 14, 1932. At 11:30 p.m., Eliot Ness goes to the Odeon movie theatre (not the Odeon Burlesque theatre used in several episodes); he gives stoolie Marty Wilger an envelope with cash for his tips. Those tips had led to successful raids by Ness against Nitti's speaks: booze, girls, gambling tables; also 2 warehouses and a distillery in the last week. Nitti's plenty sore. At an Organization meet at the club Montmartre, Nitti grouses, ""The boys in New York are screamin', Cleveland's screamin', and I'm screamin'! Those raids cost us 200,000 bucks in the last 3 months."" A lieutenant, Charlie Banion, brings up that Capone used to have Walter Trager to keep an eye on everything, he even had a tap on the feds. Council member Harry Mailer points out that his wife Billie is married to Trager. And so, later, Trager has a meet with Nitti in his private office; Nitti's getting a rubdown from his masseur and Nitti quips, ""Hey, take it easy-- I wanna get knocked around, I don't hafta pa
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#18 - Nightmare
The Invaders - Season 1 - Episode 7
Vincent travels to a small town to check a possible link between the aliens and an attack of carnivorous insects.
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#19 - Arsenal
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 27
January 1929. Gangster Matt Malloy walks into a sporting goods store; he can't buy an automatic pistol without a police permit, however anyone with $150 can buy a machine-gun. Later, at the Club Montmartre, half a dozen choppers are laid out on Nitti's table. The Council says that now they can move in on the Northside and Bugs Moran. Nitti picks up a chopper and says, ""You got 'em-- use 'em!"" Gang war! The following weeks are the bloodiest in Chicago history; Nitti's gang strikes again and again with choppers at the Bugs Moran mob. The climax is the St. Valentine's Day massacre, Feb. 14, 1929. An immediate ban on machine-guns goes into effect. Feb. 16, Enrico Rossi and Jack Rossman are confiscating choppers from the sporting goods store; Ness and Lee Hobson, with a search-and-seizure warrant, raid Nitti's Montmartre club. Nitti tells Ness he'll get more choppers; Ness tells him there won't be a single one left in town. Nitti sneers, ""A lot of punks have tried to buck the Orga
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#21 - Loophole
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 6
Chicago, January 1933. Ness and his men raid a speakeasy owned by gangster Mikhail ""Red Mike"" Probich, and run by Connie LaVerne. At the trial, Probich is represented by his crooked lawyer Morton Halas, who grew up in poverty. The trial drags on for 5 days. Finally, Ness is ready to call the last prosecution witness, Connie LaVerne, who ""is 80% of their case."" Morton Halas objects, on the grounds that a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband. How long have Probich and Connie been married? About a week. Morton Halas specialized in getting crooks off on a legal technicality, a loophole-- chalk another one up for the shyster. Ness tells Halas he'll lock him up someday. Just then Whitey Metz tells Halas that bootlegger Larry Coombs wants to see him, pronto. Over at his place, Coombs shows Halas a bottle of Gray Stag booze, the Capone label; Coombs is building a plant to supply Nitti with all he needs. Coombs wants Halas to work for him exclusively; Halas says he al
#22 - Six Years and a Day
The Rifleman - Season 3 - Episode 15
A doctor seeks revenge on the man he blames for ruining his practice.
#23 - The Life Seekers
The Invaders - Season 2 - Episode 24
A pair of aliens who want to return to their home planet and make a political argument against the invasion of Earth ask David Vincent to help them elude an intensive police manhunt.
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#24 - The Leeches
The Invaders - Season 1 - Episode 4
Vincent is called on by a renowned electronics expert who fears he may soon be abducted by alien invaders.
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#25 - Storm
The Invaders - Season 1 - Episode 13
Vincent is contacted by a meterologist to help investigate the suspicious nature of a hurricane along the Eastern U.S. coast.
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#26 - Mr. Moon
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 25
Autumn 1934. An armored truck, loaded with the special paper used in printing U.S. currency, is headed for the Bureau of Engraving in Washington, D.C. The truck is hijacked, and the 3 armed guards are tommy-gunned. Since counterfeiting will be on a national level, it's a federal offense, and so Eliot Ness and 5 other federal agents from around the country convene in Washington, D.C., and are briefed on the situation. When Ness gets back to Chicago, the Untouchables go through a large list of forgers. They determine that the top man is Hans Dreiser, doing 20-to-life in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas. One night, there's an explosion in the high-voltage power transformer next to Leavenworth Prison. During the brief power blackout, Dreiser escapes over the 20-foot-high wall with a rope; 2 of Mr. Moon's men are in a waiting car. Next day, Ness is in Leavenworth County, and talking to the Power Company managers. Benny Joplin had been the inspector for the transformer, it turns out he's
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#27 - The Believers
The Invaders - Season 2 - Episode 14
David Vincent is kidnapped in a sneak attack on his new found alien-fighting allies, and he must try to escape an alien installation with a human psychologist.
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#28 - Testimony of Evil
The Untouchables - Season 2 - Episode 23
October 11, 1932. Chicago. Less than one month before the elections, David Mantley, running for State's Attorney on the Reform ticket, is making speeches: he says the power behind his opponent, Jeremiah Down, is mobster Bryan O'Malley. At the same time, across town, O'Malley is being feted at a testimonial dinner-- even though a week from now he'll have to stand trial for murder and income tax evasion. After Mantley's speech, and the small crowd has left, a speeding car goes by, and a chopper riddles Mantley full of bullets. Ness and his men are on the case. Henry Weiser is meeting with his boss Bryan O'Malley; it was Weiser who had Mantley rubbed out. O'Malley's murder trial (for the contract killing of Rocky Marlos) is in 4 days, and Ness will help the prosecutors; there are 2 witnesses who could get him convicted: George Davas and Stan Willinski, former associates of Weiser. O'Malley thinks they can scare Davas into not testifying, by getting to his girlfriend Julie Duvall.
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The Untouchables - Season 4 - Episode 20
Chicago, 1931. On the Southside, on a dead end street, there is a junkyard-- but it's really a front for a narcotics empire, run by gangster Victor Salazar. Ness and his men are on the case; they keep intercepting his trucks, carrying shipments of narcotics. Barney Howe tells his boss Salazar that his problem is the operation's too spread out; but one big shipment will give him the Northside, too-- Barney says he will ""put Chicago in his pocket."" Late at night, they get a call from a hood named Kierson who has info in his briefcase: the time and route of a $2-million commercial shipment of morphine crystals to a medical research center; he's to meet them at the corner of Mohawk and 23rd in 10 minutes. But rival hood Steve Ballard takes out his silencer, and pumps Kierson full of lead, and makes off with the briefcase. Around midnight, Salazar orders all his boys to find Kierson; ironically, one of Salazar's ""Enforcers"" is Steve Ballard, the guy who bumped Kierson off! But it seem
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#30 - None So Blind
The Rifleman - Season 4 - Episode 25
Mark befriends singer-banjoist Lafayette Bly, a blind man with an acute sense of hearing and a very strong grip.
#31 - Power Play
The Untouchables - Season 3 - Episode 2
By the Summer of 1933, a new wave of crime has engulfed Chicago. Due to a public outcry for action, Willard Thornton is appointed as a new commissioner to clean up the town. At a press conference, Thornton arrogantly says his office does not publicly constitute criticism of any law enforcement agency-- while his tone of voice implies he privately does criticize them. Eliot Ness is standing right next to him, looking more dour than usual. Ness and his men go on a raid, they find a shipment of heroin in a hideout. Then small-time dope-pusher (and junkie himself) Joey Loomis shows up, sees the Feds, and runs. Loomis gets captured. After interrogating him, and getting nowhere, Ness releases him. Rico asks, ""I know he's a small fish, but you just gonna throw him back?"" Ness reveals his strategy: he's going to let the big fish find him. Willard Thornton is really a crook, in cohoots with lawyer Barney Lubin (czar of the enormous Chicago bail bond racket), Felix Varsack (representing t
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