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A few accidents have happened of late on a movie set overseen by Karen
Bennett (Lenore Kasdorf), and while everybody thinks they were just being
the result of the effects guy (Richard X. Slattery) being careless, the
effects guy himself blames everything on the Phantom of Stage 28.
Karen of course doesn't believe in the phantom, but things sure feel
suspicious enough to call in the Knight Foundation - and soon enough,
Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) and his talking car KITT (voiced by
William Daniels) show up on set to investigate - and before you know it,
Michael has a run-in with the phantom that almost kills him. He also saves
the leading lady (Leann Hunley) from being killed by a falling spotlight.
Ultimately the trail leads to the film's producer Gavin (Michael Callan),
but then he turns up dead. Now the only way to lure the phantom (or
whoever it is) out into the open is for Michael to perform the stunt in
the film's finale, also the final shot of the movie. And of course the
phantom strikes during that shot, but also thanks to KITT, Michael
survives unscathed, and after a car chase and a fistfight he unmasks the
phantom to be no other than Karen's own secretary (Robert Englund). Ok,
the Phantom
of the Opera-vibe of this episode was fun, and casting Robert
Englund, then only a rising horror star (the original A
Nightmare on Elm Street has only been released two years earlier),
sure was inspired. Plus the studio set nature of the film's plot allowed
for quite a few cool setpieces. But all that said, in all this just proves
to be another cookie-cutter episode of Knight Rider, where
little care is taken to actually develop the story or backstory,
everything's just tailored to showing its lead as the unerring hero and
his supercar in the best light possible, with little in terms of depth or
grey areas even allowed in - and the phantom-aspect of the story would
actually lend itself to death. That said, as far as the story goes,
actually a pretty good episode - just absolutely nothing to write home
about.
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