Death Trip

A cult of paramilitary psychos has taken it upon themselves to murder an affluent former gangster Paterno (Richman) in the interests of purifying America. The first attempt merely paralyses Paterno. His wounded attacker takes time to recover but vows to finish him off. Hooker attempts to get Paterno's daughter to help identify the gunman whom she saw close up. She refuses after discovering her father lied to her about being an organized crime boss.

Hooker then tries to get victims of similar attacks to correlate some of the known details and a disturbing picture emerges. But you'd think, that when presented with the notion of a bunch of wackos murdering organized crime figures, a lot of cops in Hooker's situation might pick that day to ticket jaywalkers or help an old lady get her cat out of a tree.

A number of TV shows picked up on the news story of wacko white supremacists murdering radio talk show host Alan Berg in 1984. The bizarre story was fodder for multiple episodes of different TV series as well a few feature films. Hunter shot a 2 part episode around the real life group that committed the crime.

A cliché which became so noticeable in the series (beyond Hooker jumping on the hood of a moving vehicle or jumping out of the way of one) is how everything that happens in an episode seems to tie in to whatever case Hooker is investigating that week. The manner in which it happens was utterly absurd.

In this one it starts at the beginning as Hooker and his friends are playing baseball and he hits a home run. Hooker's colleague Jim Corrigan (James Darren) asks a jogger to toss the ball back over the fence. The jogger complies then runs off to attempt murder just yards away.

This goes beyond being a remarkable coincidence particularly given how often it happened in the series. After it happens and the shooter attempts to drive off Hooker jumps on the hood of the moving car. If you're gonna hit one cliché you may as well segue into another.

Shatner's weight noticeably fluctuated during the series but in the later episodes like this one viewers saw a chunkier version. Camera angles and Wardrobe tricks could only go so far in hiding it. Co-star James Darren - but five years younger than Shatner remained svelte during the series. When he stood beside Shatner they sometimes looked like the number '10'.