Now I liked this one, almost as much as Dead On Course. Shareholders in gun-manufacturing firm Andersons are being killed off, so Steed provides Cathy Gale with a sizeable block of shares to get her onto the board and onto the case. Vulgar investor Cade (Ronald 'the Rook' Radd) is very much in the frame, as he's trying to acquire shares for a takeover bid.
Excellent pivotal meeting between Cade and Cathy where he throws her moralising back at her by reminding her exactly how the dead men made their living. This brings the alternative explanation for the murders right into the foreground, and Cathy has another rather good confrontation with the real killer.
CG is the real discovery of this marathon for me so far - I have to say again that she is quite unlike any other 60s female TV character that I'm familiar with. This isn't a woman who giggles or twists her ankle, and she has a steely amoral quality that makes her a bit frightening. Perhaps Barbara Wright would give her a run for her money, though.
Rather more typical 60s is the scene where dodgy director Young (not Commander Radnor or Gebek, though I was convinced he was one of the two) gets secretary Jean onto his boat for a spot of late working and sexual harrassment. I wasn't shocked by that so much as the way she, having carried out her threat to scream the place down, then calmly accompanies him back to the works as if nothing unusual has happened. So much for the good old days.
I managed to identify Cade as the Rook before the final credits, but smuggler Carl's name tantalisingly eluded me though I knew I'd seen him before. I thought perhaps he was the bloke from Tales of Sherwood Forest, but that was Pete Postlethwaite. He was of course Bernard 'Tyler/Caldwell' Kay.
Very little Steed in this, perhaps to balance CG's absence in the last story. Just a few phone calls and one or two appearances to help the story along.
While watching Cathy in this I thought 'She's got the exact same hairstyle as Professor Lasky in Terror of the Vervoids.' It's odd that I can know that Honor Blackman was in TotV and that Honor Blackman was in The Avengers, and yet fail to make the mental link between HB '62 and HB '86.
(earlier versions of this post contained completely wrong ramblings where I mixed up two actresses and then forgot that I was supposed to be talking about HB rather than either of them)
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