I had been watching a few episodes at a time of the 4th and last season of Sea Hunt. It started airing January 7 1961 and ran through September 23 1961. The 38 episodes are pretty much the same as the ones in the previous seasons. Lloyd Bridges is Mike Nelson, a scuba guy, who has some adventures near, on, and mostly under water. Mostly he works the West coast but he does get around. One episode has him in South America where he helps a guy vacuuming emeralds in a tributary of the Amazon. Next he's working on radar jamming with Ross Elliot as a Police Detective. Ross is a veteran character actor who you might recognize but not know his name. The following episode has Ross return to the show as a completely different character. In the episode with the scuba diving ballerina William Flaherty is the guest star. He's also in one of my favorite movies, The Monolith Monsters, where he plays the Chief of Police. Ross Elliot is back in episode 7 playing a different character. Ross returns one last time in the 35th episode as yet another person. It was probably hard to get people who could swim or dive.
Mike has to plot a path through watch filled with mines so a ship can get to a China Sea port with a cholera epidemic. Ken Curtis, Festus from Gunsmoke, is the guest star in an episode with a killer octopus. Beau Bridges is the guest star, he's a missionary in South America. Mike has to get Beau, his wife and their his sick son down river and the natives are restless. That episode and several others had underwater sequences filmed in Nassau, Bahamas. In episode 30 Victor Buono is the guest star in a story about sunken statues and secret submarine activity. Lloyd plays a guy who looks just like him but is evil. He has no beard. One of my favorite character actors, Kenneth Tobey, appears in episode 33. Bruce Dern guest stars in episode 37 and Jack Nicholson guests in 38. That was the last episode. The show is done. I was still glad to see it up to the end. It might be a while before I get back to it but you never know. You can see a lot of episodes on YouTube and various pay streaming services. It was fun and I learned a lot about scuba diving. Enough to know to stay out of the water.
Comments