End title images for The Night of the Murderous Spring
April 15 is the 50th anniversary of what may be the best episode of The Wild Wild West, The Night of the Murderous Spring. If not the series’ best outing, it’s in the conversation.
It was the next-to-last episode of West’s first season and the fourth to feature Michael Dunn as Dr. Loveless.
The episode, written by John Kneubuhl (creator of Dr. Loveless) and directed by Richard Donner, removed all of the limits from the villain’s initial encounters with U.S. Secret Service agents James West (Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin).
Loveless is determined to kill humanity to restore Earth’s ecological balance. The villain has come up with a chemical, when mixed with water, will spur men to hallucinate and go into a murderous rage.
Loveless’ first test subject is James West himself. The Secret Service agent imagines he kills his partner.
That’s just the start. Loveless conducts another test where his lackeys kill each other. Loveless does so simply to demonstrate to West and Gordon he means business.
As an aside, one of Loveless’ thugs is played by Leonard Falk, the real life father of Robert Conrad.
This was not Loveless’ final appearance on the show. But it was arguably the most memorable. The only significance weakness was the episode didn’t have an original score, forcing music supervisor Morton Stevens to dip into the music library of CBS. Among the music used is the original Dr. Loveless theme, composed by Robert Drasnin, who scored the first Loveless episode of the series.
Filed under: The Other Spies | Tagged: CBS, John Kneubuhl, Leonard Falk, Michael Dunn, Morton Stevens, Richard Donner, Robert Conrad, Robert Drasnin, Ross Martin, The Wild Wild West |
The Spy Command 
I remember this episode and thought it was excessively violent. This was one of the reasons CBS canceled the show. Ratings were good but there was a campaign to remove violent shows.