Friday, 2 January 2015

51 The Perils of Penelope Pitstop




First  watched  : 1970

The  second  Wacky  Races  spin-off  ran  on  alternate  weeks  to  Dastardly  and  Muttley  in  their  Flying  Machines  ( in  the  UK  at  least ).

The  Perils  of  Penelope  Pitstop   was  based  on  a  silent  movie  classic  The  Perils  of  Pauline  which  itself  drew  on  the  best  traditions  of  Victorian  melodrama, women  tied  to  rails, black  coated  villains  etc. As  Penelope  had  often  acted  as  a  damsel-in-distress  in  Wacky  Races  she  was  a  natural  fit  for  the  Pauline  role  but  her  rescuer  was  not  as  you  might  expect  Peter  Perfect  or  even  Pat  Pending  but  the  unlikely  figures  of  the  Anthill  Mob, routine  fugitive  gangsters  in  Wacky  Races  but  now   altruistically  trying  to rescue  Penelope  from  mortal  danger. Originally  the  threat  was  to  come  from  Dick  Dastardly  once  again  but  he  was  dropped  before  it  came  to  the  screen  and  replaced  by  the  more  sinister  Hooded  Claw  (  as  later  referenced  in  Frankie  Goes  To  Hollywood's  The  Power  of  Love  )  with  his   identical  henchmen, the  Bully  Brothers. Penelope  was  generally  afforded  a  few  more  brain  cells  in  the  script  but  never  quite  cottoned on  to  the  fact  that  he  was  actually  her  wicked  uncle  Sylvester  Sneakly   seeking  to  inherit  her  fortune  by  staging  elaborate  if  not  particularly  efficient  means  of  causing  her  death. There  was  always  a  time  delay  involved  allowing  the  Mob  to  intervene.

The  Mob  were  all  re-named  apart  from  their  leader  Clyde  ( a  caricature  of  Edward  G  Robinson  )  and  able  to  develop  some  individual  personality  away  from  Wacky  Races.  Their  car  the  Bulletproof  Bomb was  renamed  Chugga-Bomb  and  had  some  personality  of  its  own  with  eyes  on  the  headlights.

I  actually  preferred  this  to  Dastardly  and  Muttley   perhaps  because  each  episode  was  one  continuous  story  rather  than  two  self-contained  episodes  and  there  was  a  cliffhanger  carrying  on  to  the  next   but  it  didn't  last  any  longer  with  only  17 episodes  being  made.

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