The Best Hulk Episode (A B-movie Tribute)

[AndyC]

Happened to catch a rerun of the Hulk on TV recently. I don't watch it often, but it's a bit of nostalgic fun when I'm in the mood. This episode was the two-parter entitled "The First." Banner (under the clever alias of David Barr) shows up in a small town and encounters another Hulk (who kind of looks like a big, green Matthew Perry, but never mind that) who terrorized the town in the early 50s.

Now, I thought this episode was pretty cool when I was a kid, but I appreciated it on a whole new level. The script has some big flaws, but it's quite clever in spots, and the performances are good, especially the old guy who becomes the other, slightly less hulking Hulk.

But what really got me was that this episode was a tribute to the classic B-movies. Banner basically walks into the setting of a 50s B-movie 30 years later. Just outside a sleepy little town, a scientist has a laboratory full of cool equipment in his pretty Victorian home. In this laboratory, which really looks the part, he experiments with radiation, with the aim of increasing productivity in the American worker. He experiments on his assistant, who is just some local simpleton with no scientific knowledge. The guy is not only cured of his many health problems, but also turns into a murdering monster. The doctor manages to get an antidote into him, but is accidentally killed when confronted by an angry mob shortly after. His fiancee, who never learned the whole story, has never quite gotten over it.

That is such a B-movie plot, and this episode gives it all to us as the recollections of the various towsfolk 30 years later, which is really cool. It was great to see this episode again after so many years.

[Shadowphile]

I thought I had seen all the Hulk episodes, since I was a huge fan as a kid when the series originally aired.  I don't recall this one at all...