As the third and final of the Six Million Dollar Man pilot films (before it become a weekly series in 1974), Solid Gold Kidnapping is definitely the lesser of the selection. And if you're unfortunate enough to watch the re-edited version that was created to turn an already overlong 90-minute movie into two full hours, you might wonder why they even bothered making a series!
That said, as a longtime fan of the show, I found it interesting to see the show in its early stages of development. At this point they still weren't sure whether they wanted to make Steve Austin a superpowered James Bond or not, and in this film you see him going through quite a bit of 007's playbook, from sleeping with an enemy (and turning her to the side of right) to chasing down a villain on board a giant cargo ship, you can see the experimentation going on. (Fortunately, this time around the writers kept a lid on some of the Bond-like puns and quips that made the script of Wine, Women and War worthy of more than a few groans!)
There's also very little by way of bionic action. Aside from a cool sequence where Austin throws himself bionic arm-first through the windshield of a car trying to run him down, and a pointless use of the bionic eye (pointless because he uses its night-vision in a fully lit bedroom!), there's not a lot of workout for the $6 million in evidence.
There are some good points. Luciana Paluzzi -- herself a veteran of the Bond films -- is attractive if underused as the Contessa (whose role in the whole kidnapping affair never is really explained), and Elizabeth Ashley gives the show's best performance as a scientist who resurrects the memories of a dead man by implanting his brain cells into her head! This is actually classic sci-fi stuff, but it's not really handled in the best way, especially when the film introduces the jeopardy that she might go mad from the implantation, but never follows up on this.
You can tell that, just as Wine, Women and War test-drove a few potential co-stars for Steve Austin, so too does Solid Gold Kidnapping clearly give Ashley's character a tryout, along with Terry Carter (later of Battlestar Galactica) who plays Oscar Goldman's rather hapless right-hand man. Neither actor or character returned for the subsequent series, but you can tell either could have continued.
There's also some revision in Oscar and Steve's relationship in this film, Richard Anderson plays Oscar more warmly than he did in the previous film, in the process setting the template for the character and the Steve-Oscar friendship for the rest of the series. On the other hand, he and Rudy Wells are surprisingly combative towards each other -- something we'd rarely see in the series.
But as I say, try to see the unedited movie version of this if you possibly can. The re-edited version is comical in an almost Ed Wood fashion, especially when the first 10 minutes of Part 1 are basically cobbled together using stock footage from other episodes, with overdubbed dialogue that doesn't come close to matching the lip movements of the actors ... it's horrible, though Part 2 is nowhere near as awkward, which saves this from getting all-around condemnation.
Solid Gold Kidnapping, in either its original or edited form, isn't one of the best Six Million Dollar Man outings, and certainly isn't recommended for newcomers, but if you're an experienced bionic fan interested in the development of this show, it's worth seeing at least once.
7 out of 9 found this helpful