Season 3 – Episode 5
Air Date: October 28th, 1984
Have you ever sat down to watch a “classic” movie or TV show and then realized, “Actually, I have no idea what this is about?” That was me when I watched my first-ever episode of Knight Rider. For some reason, I always thought the show was about a guy and his super-smart car on the run from bad guys. Clearly, I confused it with The Incredible Hulk, which is about a protagonist who moves from town to town encountering various adventures and misadventures.
Knight Rider is about a heroic police officer who, after a near-fatal shot to the face, gets reconstructive surgery and a new identity: Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff). This transformation is courtesy of a self-made billionaire named Wilton Knight (Richard Basehart)—wait, he renamed the guy he saved after himself?
Wilton Knight is the founder of the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG) and saves Michael so that he can become the primary field agent for FLAG. Michael is partnered with the Knight Industries Two Thousand, or “KITT”—a modified Pontiac Firebird Trans Am voiced by Mr. Feeny from Boy Meets World (William Daniels). KITT aids Michael on his missions and also does sweet jumps and makes wisecracks.
What kind of missions do Michael and KITT tackle? Only ones where: “Direct action might provide the only feasible solution.” The keyword here is “ACTION”, and Knight Rider has no shortage of that.
The Season 3 episode “Halloween Knight” aired on October 28, 1984, on NBC at 8 PM (right after Punky Brewster) and seems to be a well-liked episode among fans online. What did I think? Well, let’s get into the plot first.
The episode starts with a Halloween party at Bonnie’s (KITT’s primary technician, played by Patricia McPherson) apartment. During the party, Bonnie sees what appears to be a man in a gorilla costume strangling a woman. She passes out before she can react, but as soon as she wakes up, she contacts FLAG for help.
I’m not sure where we stand as a society on David Hasselhoff—whether he’s considered cool, funny, ironically cool, or if he just sucks—but he’s actually good on this show. Hasselhoff is funny, handsome, and rocks his disco-inspired wardrobe.
Michael and Bonnie visit the missing woman’s apartment only to find both the woman and all her furniture gone. The immediate suspect? The building’s creepy janitor, Norman Baines (Kurt Paul). Yes, that’s really his name—this show is for kids, huh? What follows is a Hitchcock-inspired hunt for clues that leads the team to the woman’s body in a shower (à la Psycho) and, yes, even to the Psycho house itself.
There are also two sweet car chases: one where Michael and KITT turbo-boost through several sheets of glass and another where they crash through a drive-in movie screen showing Creature from the Black Lagoon. I love that the show pulls out all the stops, drawing on anything cool from the Universal Studios catalog.
Who’s the actual strangler? I don’t know—some rich guy with a tennis racket or something? To be honest, I checked out halfway through. Forty-nine minutes is too long for a goofy show like Knight Rider. Trim twenty minutes, and you’d have a camp classic on par with the original Batman series.
I can’t decide if I’m rating this show higher because it’s bookended by impressive car stunts or because it’s a genuinely fun show with punchy writing and clever scenarios. It’s probably somewhere in the middle.
How does “Halloween Knight” fare as a Halloween episode? Perfectly. From the episode’s synthy, Bernard Herrmann-inspired score to the costumes (Is Michael supposed to be Colonel Sanders?) to the hint that one character might actually be a witch and that magic is real, “Halloween Knight” is festive fun.
Will I watch more episodes of Knight Rider? I’m thinking about it! If only the show were available to stream for free anywhere (I had to buy the episode on Amazon). It’s wild to me that Knight Rider is an NBC show, and yet you can’t watch it on Peacock. The modern world of streaming—that’s the true horror we face today.