LAND OF THE GIANTS-DEADLY LODESTONE

 

DEADLY LODESTONE

PRODUCTION 19

AIRED 2-2-1969---17TH

WRITER-WILLIAM L. STUART

DIR-HARRY HARRIS

 

TEASER

Steve and Mark make a raid on a fish market at night. They are stopped when Inspector Kobick and Sergeant Karf arrive. The giants are very close to them above the curb and shine a flashlight at them. The two Earth men run to a piece of paper. Kobick moves to it and prepares to lift it, "This time we have them, Sergeant."

 

ACT ONE

Kobick lifts the paper and sees a ground drain underneath which Steve and Mark sit by, hidden but listening. Kobick tells Karf a new plot of his will snare the little people. Steve confines everyone to camp until they can get some idea of what Kobick meant. Kobick, later, shows the Secretary of the Supreme Council an expensive detector which homes in on inella--an alloy developed on Earth. Daytime at camp three days later--Betty drops a food plate on Fitzhugh's feet, who complained she made terrible biscuits. Betty runs inside the ship; Val tells Steve, who asks what's going on here---neither Fitz nor Betty meant what they said to each other. Steve thinks it is all petty nonsense, "Now look..."   Mark interrupts him, "No, look, Captain, we're all going stir crazy cooped up here."  He suggests a nice, long walk and to protests from Dan and Steve, adds, "The only visitors we've had have been two squirrels and I don't think they're working for Kobick."  (hey, in the world of Irwin Allen, one never knows). Steve tells Dan to let Mark, who wants to take a nice, long walk---Fitz and Val accompanying him--to go and stretch their legs. Fitz hopes to happen on some food--they do find some nuts. Kobick and Karf zero in on Val, Mark, and Fitzhugh on their walk. Val trips but the other two pull her over to a fallen tree or a tree root. As the two giants approach with a finding device, Val says, "We've had it."

 

ACT TWO

Kobick and Karf stop at the locket Val dropped when she tripped. Later, back at camp as Val nurses her ankle, the others figure out the locket is made of inella--Betty recalled that Val has a matching set with the locket--ear rings in box of junk jewelry. Val tells them it probably wasn't expensive--she bought it herself on Wiltshire Boulevard. Inella was developed ten years ago. Fitz agrees to find everything they have with inella and agrees to bury it if the other three men reraid the food market and really ransack it. At night again, the men must stop their raid--Kobick and Karf are tracking them again. They separate and meet back at camp. Mark yells at Steve, wanting to know which one of them put their lives in jeopardy--he knows it wasn't him. Steve tells him to calm down. Dan arrives and tells them it was him but he forgot about it. Steve is ready to chew him out but Dan explains an inella pin is just below his knee---to set a broken leg he received in the Olympics (which Steve recalls reading about in the newspapers), they set it with an inella pin. Dan doesn't need it now--the leg has healed a long time ago. Mark apologizes but Dan tells him not to. He decides to leave to a swamp area up north which they came across a month ago which has quicksand and bogs--no giant would search up there in safety. Betty goes to fix him up some food--dried things. Barry offers to come stand guard with Chipper but figures he and the dog would only be in the way. Dan tells him it is not that--he just has to get set up first. Barry nods, "Yeah, I guess we would be in the way."  At the swamp, Dan stops the croaking of frogs, grasshoppers, crickets, and other insects with a clap of his hands, "Benefit of a short term duty in Asia."  They test the bog--Dan tied to a rope moves out into it---and goes down some. Steve is holding the rope and tells him to turn around and come back---they know enough about how deep it is. Dan turns but Steve yells, "Dan freeze!"  A horrid, black and red, hairy, giant spider--a black widow maybe--crawls at Dan from a web above him!

 

ACT THREE             

Steve ties the rope to a rock and chucks a stick into the 8 legged horror, knocking down (and presumably into the quicksand). He pulls a frustrated Dan out, who tells Steve to just go. Steve is about to, but looks at his knife, which he used to cut the rope off Dan. He gets an idea ("Maybe the best idea I've ever had."). It is to operate if they can contact Dr. Brule--who is in solitary confinement for life. Steve is hopeful and leaves. Waiting for a not-so-ready Fitzhugh to emerge from the spaceship, Mark and Steve leave camp with tools. Val tells them their idea is crazy--to call Warden Barmac (or Balmer) from Kobick's own office so that when the cold hearted warden calls back to verify it is Kobick..they will be there. Fitzhugh stands guard near an ash tray stall. Mark poses as Kobick on the phone line; Steve as a Dr. Zale--and gives clues to Brule about, an operation Brule helped him with..."on a boy...a very small boy."  The warden listens in and does check--his call comes through just as Kobick leaves the office; the Inspector having returned between calls (Kobick's phone number here--837-415). Mark said, "If it doesn't work..we haven't lost anything."   "Except Dan,"  Steve reminds him. Steve and Mark call Nurse Helg, admitting they are from Earth. Steve meets her, going to a wall behind a bench the woman is sitting on. They plan for her to visit Brule and bring a walkie talkie. After Steve leaves, Kobick arrives, alerted by Helg, who says she doesn't want to go to jail.

 

ACT FOUR

Dan is very jumpy when the other discuss his operation. Steve tells him it will be in a sewer drain close to the prison. Val already has all the supplies ready. Fitzhugh will dig up the inella and the others will spread the inella all over the city. Val will help with the operation (in the script and promotional material Betty helped do the operation--which makes sense). Fitz tells them he was just about to come up the idea to spread the inella himself; Steve laughs--it was his idea; Betty and Barry react negatively. Helg meets Steve, Dan, and Val at the drain in the street floor at night--telling them she will do the operation. She told Kobick and the warden, who were going to stop the operation midway through. She responds to their not believing her with telling them phones could be tapped and the authorities could have been listening in when they called her (but since they did it on Kobick's phone, wouldn't the authorities have grabbed then them? Maybe not). She goes on, "I had to. Under our form of government, walls have ears. Now they think I'm a loyal citizen."   Brule would never betray them and she tells them they must not betray him. They must go through with the plan as Brule prescribed---a fake radio to radio operation. In reality, Dan goes with Helg for her to do the operation in the hospital, just before dawn. Steve made him make the decision on his own. Val joins the others, each separately spreading the inella. Steve fakes the radio operation call--Brule being listened to by the crummy Warden. Very near morning or early morning: Val throws inella into a garbage can which is then picked up by a giant sanitation truck. Karf reports jewelry on a second story building, a key chain high in a tree, and a slingshot made of inella. Kobick laughs at some of that (one of his only laughs of his appearances, if not the only). Karf drives him to Jablo Park. Warden Barmac steps on the radio Brule has, stopping the operation mid way, not realizing it was a fake. Kobick and SID find a box of pigeons high on the park brick wall---with inella in it. Then, they pick up one inella reading--toward the hospital. They rush toward it.

 

TAG

Helg puts the pin in front of SID Headquarters and Dan in the woods. Dan asks where the others are and Steve tells him, "Waiting for their co-pilot."  Mark and Steve help carry him, as he cannot walk on the one leg, between them, to the spaceship.

 

NOTE: During this epilogue, before Steve and Mark show up to Dan, we can clearly see the feet of Gary Conway, who is just standing there, waiting for his cue to run out of the forest to Dan.