A look back at this somewhat forgotten pilot, from a script written by Henri Simoun and Lionel E. Siegel and based on a story by Martin Caidin, whose Cyborg series of sci-fi novels — the full series comprises Cyborg (1972), Operation Nuke (1973), High Crystal (1974) and Cyborg IV (1975) — had inspired a popular drama for ABC, “The Six Million Dollar Man,” which starred Lee Majors as Steve Austin, as well as it’s spin-off series, “The Bionic Woman,” starring Lindsay Wagner.
Cast
- David Ackroyd as Dr. Nicholas Conrad, aka Exo-Man
- Anne Schedeen as Emily Frost
- A Martinez as Raphael Torres
- José Ferrer as Kermit Haas
- Jack Colvin as Martin
- Harry Morgan as Arthur Travis
- Kevin McCarthy as D.A. Kamenski
- Donald Moffat as Wallace Rogers
Actor David Ackroyd starred in the film as Dr. Nicholas Conrad, a brilliant university physics professor who just happens to be in his bank when a hold-up starts to go down, showing bravery by chasing one of the robbers across the street and holding him for police.
Turns out, the bank robber is in the mob, who, of course, then announce plans to take him out, which, of course, this being a low-budget TV movie, meant that probably didn’t have a lot of money for things like bullets, so he’s whacked on the back with a lead pipe while doing his laundry.
José Ferrer plays the head mobster, Kermit Haas (don’t you love it when mobsters have names like “Kermit”?). That same year, 1977, Ferrer would appear as the Priest of the Brotherhood in the excellent horror flick The Sentinel. Conrad — now paralyzed below the waist and confined to a wheelchair — is told that if he testifies against the robber in court, the mob’s going to murder his wife (Anne Schedeen).
Being crippled up and unable to do his work his just makes him mad, and his fear and anger over the mob’s retaliation leads him down the path towards becoming a superhero by completing — with the help of a couple of colleagues — his armored red exoskeleton suit. The suit appears to be made a of some sort of hard impenetrable upper-body shell topped by a comically oversized headpiece, which kinda looks like a diver’s helmet. He seems to be wearing this over a blue leather body suit of some kind, and the whole thing looks like it probably weighed 200 lbs. and it was probably hellaciously hot inside the suit too, that’s our guess.
When the professor tries it on for size, we see him becoming the Exo-Man of the title.
Alas, he’s not able to walk too fast — forget running — and appears only able to wobble forward at such a slow speed, like a Sleestak, that it seems he could simply tip over at any point.
In addition to providing him with greatly enhanced strength, by the way, the suit requires a semi-portable power-source hauled behind a small truck. Yes, a truck.
Caidin wrote the first draft for the pilot movie, which was later re-written by another writer before the producer, Lionel E. Siegel, stepped in and cranked out three more drafts, each of them honing in on how the professor dealt with his injury and not being able to walk, which he thought was important to establish early on (we only get to set the actual exo suit a few times). Caidin, we’re told, took one look at the costume that the exo suit that apparently took ten weeks to develop and cost $100,000 to make, and complained to the people responsible, but was told that the suit was designed by Universal TV’s marketing department with an eye towards mass producing into toy figures, should the series get picked up.
That series pick-up, of course, never happened, despite relatively good ratings for the movie and adequate promotion by the network when it aired as an installment of “NBC Saturday Night at the Movies” from 8-10pm (both ABC and CBS were airing re-runs that night).
We particularly loved the voice-over in the trailer above telling us that “Exo Man’s main crimefighting tactic was psychological terror. He never actually touched a hair on his enemies heads. All he had to do was show up.”
