1 9 6 8 – 1 9 7 0 (USA)
51 x 60 minute episodes
This was the last of Irwin Allen’s 1960 fantasy quartet following on from Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, The Time Tunnel and Lost In Space.
Basically a space-age version of Gulliver’s Travels with the commercial rocket ship Spindrift entering a space warp en route from New York to London in the future (1983!) and coming out in a land where everything mirrored Earth but was twelve times normal size.
The crew and the passengers trapped in the Land of the Giants were Captain Steve Burton (Gary Conway) – an arrogant macho man in a body-hugging red jumpsuit, co-pilot Dan Erickson (Don Marshall), engineer and wealthy tycoon Mark Wilson (Don Matheson), stewardess Betty Hamilton (Heather Young), beautiful but spoiled heiress Valerie Scott (Deanna Lund), mystery passenger Alexander Fitzhugh (Kurt Kaznar) and orphaned boy Barry Lockridge (Stefan Arngrim), travelling with his dog Chipper
Fitzhugh is ultimately revealed to be a master thief who is being pursued by authorities for stealing one million dollars (which he is carrying with him in a briefcase).
The gang were regularly menaced by gigantic insects, cats and scientists who tried to experiment on them – and this is where my pre-pubescent fantasies about a 1:12th scale Betty or Valerie kicked in . . . and I’ll say no more.
The castaways constantly battled to repair their craft and escape from their own little Brobdingnag, all the while hunted by Inspector Kobick (Kevin Hagen) of the SIB, a Nazi-esque police force.
One bizarre episode, ‘Pay the Piper’, featured Jonathon Harris (Doctor Smith from Lost In Space) as a pied piper who lured children away.
The biggest thing about the series was the effects budget. Costing $250,000 per episode (unprecedented at the time) Land of the Giants was the most expensive TV series made to date.
The effects (such as a slice of bread made from a four-foot slab of rubber) were truly impressive, even though a viewing of the show today will reveal a few inconsistencies in scale from scene to scene.
There were many other inconsistencies, such as the fact that the little people could carry a giant D Cell battery but could not break out of a spider web!
Steve Burton
Gary Conway
Dan Erickson
Don Marshall
Betty Hamilton
Heather Young
Alexander Fitzhugh
Kurt Kaznar
Mark Wilson
Don Matheson
Valerie Scott
Deanna Lund
Barry Lockridge
Stefan Arngrim
SIB Inspector Kobick
Kevin Hagen
Episodes
The Crash | Ghost Town | Framed | Underground | Terror-Go-Round | The Flight Plan | Manhunt | The Trap | The Creed | Double-Cross | The Weird World | The Golden Cage | The Lost Ones | Brainwash | The Bounty Hunter | On a Clear Night You Can See Earth | Deadly Lodestone | The Night of Thrombeldinbar | Seven Little Indians | Target: Earth | Genius at Work | Return of Inidu | Rescue | Sabotage | Shell Game | The Chase | The Mechanical Man | Six Hours to Live | The Inside Rail | Deadly Pawn | The Unsuspected | Giants and All That Jazz | Collector’s Item | Every Dog Needs a Boy | Chamber of Fear | The Clones | Comeback | A Place Called Earth | Land of the Lost | Home Sweet Home | Our Man O’Reilly | Nightmare | Pay the Piper | The Secret City of Limbo | Panic | The Deadly Dart | Doomsday | A Small War | The Marionettes | Wild Journey | Graveyard of Fools
