MISSION IMPOSSIBLE Season Four

Casting coup: Leonard Nimoy as Paris

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE Season Four. 1969.

Martin Landau and Barbara Bain went off in a huff and a puff and were replaced by -- in a casting coup -- Leonard Nimoy and a host of rotating females. Nimoy played master of disguise Paris, and the leading ladies included Lee Meriwether (the most frequent), Anne Francis, Sally Ann Howes, Jessica Walter, Antoinette Bower, and others. This was a solid season with many memorable episodes; among the best were: "Double Circle," in which a fake room is employed in order to get at a secret formula; "The Falcon," in which a royal family is in danger from a would-be usurper, and everything that could possibly go wrong does; and "Chico" in which a dog helps steal a stamp which conceals an important microdot. As for notable guest-stars, Luther Adler is outstanding in "Phantoms," about a purge of young artists; John Willians scores in "Lover's Knot," which features a Mata Hari-type lady spy; Pernell Roberts and Cicely Tyson are great in "Death Squad," in which a vacationing Barney (Greg Morris) is accused of murder; and a mustache-less Torin Thatcher almost steals the show in "Numbers Game," about attempts to get at a Swiss bank account. Nimoy probably does his best work in "Commandante" and "The Choice." Jason Evers and John Vernon make an impression in, respectively, the aforementioned "Double Circle" and "Falcon."

Verdict: No Cinnamon, but still lots of spice. ***.

4D MAN

4D MAN (1959). Director: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.,

Scientist brothers Scott (Robert Lansing) and Tony (James Congdon) Nelson are in the middle of an awkward triangle situation involving Scott's alleged fiancee, Linda (Lee Meriwether). All of this romantic stuff seems negligible, however, when through experimentation Scott develops the ability to walk through walls. If he touches anyone, he absorbs that person's life energy and they wither and die. Lansing is typically blase and unemotional at first but gets better as his predicament gets worse. Lee Meriwether and James Congdon are both quite attractive and memorable. [Patty Duke is supposed to be in the cast, but either her scenes were edited out of the print I saw -- or her scenes were dropped altogether -- or she's on so quickly that you blink and miss her. As she's a fairly distinctive actress I suspect it's the former.] The picture is reasonably absorbing but it isn't well-served by the terrible and inappropriate jazz scoring. The best scene is an early one in which Scott tries to push his hand into a block of stone and it gets caught ... Congdon appeared with Bette Davis in the interesting ":Out There -- Darkness" episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Yeaworth is best-known as the director of The Blob (1959).

Verdict: Good idea with mediocre execution. **1/2.