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A Fan's View of "The Fiction Makes"

I can’t remember when I first saw “The Fiction Makers.” I was born in 1961, so was a teen during the 70s when British shows like The Saint, Danger Man, and The Avengers were being shown on American TV.

Whenever I did see this episode, it was the complete version - complete with references to Amos Klein’s other books such as Sunburst Five and Earthquake Four.

I always remembered this episode with fondness, not only because of the cool names of the books, especially Volcano Seven, but because of the characterization of Amos Klein. That’s the nom de plume of the female author who created such brilliant crimes in her books that the criminal mastermind, Warlock, attempt to kidnap her so that she will write him a few brilliant crimes.

I always wanted to have that kind of brilliant mind, myself.

I think my family got its first video tape machine in 1980...( 27 years ago…wow…how time flies). It was probably not until the mid-80s that “The Fiction Makers” was shown by a movie channel…I didn’t have cable at this time so a friend taped it for me.

I was puzzled, on viewing it afterwards, for the first time in probably ten years, that those references to her other books were missing. Surely I couldn‘t have imagined them! (I was rather naïve, at this point in my life, and didn’t realize TV stations cut out pieces of movies and TV shows in order to make room for more commercials.)

So last month, I broke down and bought a used copy of The Saint mega set - all the color Saint episodes - solely because “The Fiction Makers” was included, and I wanted to have it on DVD so that I could create this website.

It had now been over twenty years since I’d seen the original “The Fiction Makers,” and so got quite a surprise to see what I’d been missing.

In my version, taped off the TV so long ago, the action starts with Simon and publisher Finlay Hugoson entering Hugoson’s apartment building, preparatory to going up to his flat, where the crooks Frug and Monk are already breaking in to Amos Klein’s file.

In the original version, the show opens with Simon attending the premiere of the film Sunburst Five, based on an Amos Klein novel. There’s a bit more of an explanation of what’s going on, although not much, because Hugoson never tells Simon who - or - what - Amos Klein really is, allowing Simon [and the viewer] to find out only when he gets down to Klein’s cottage.

Simon hears shots and bursts into Amos Klein’s cottage, to find out that Klein is actually a woman (whose real name we never learn.) In one of the few flaws in the film, she admits right away that she is Klein, which is pretty silly, but I assume that the authors of the film were afraid the audience wouldn’t “get it” if they tried to be subtle about it.

The only major flaw in the teleplay, to my mind, is the behavior of Amos Klein during their escape scenes. This is the 1960s, yes, but it’s the era of brave women such as Cathy Gale and Emma Peel, yet Klein goes to pieces in the swamp while they’re trying to escape, and throws a fit in the local’s cottage when they’re trying to persuade the married couple there that they’ve been kidnapped. (And that scene, while funny, is also silly, as again, they wouldn’t go into all that unbelievable detail, but rather just say they’d had an accident with their car and needed help. But by trying to explain, they leave themselves open for the men from the “nuthouse” to come and take them away without arousing suspicion.)

Another scene missing from my TV-taped version is the first time Warlock and Frug visit Hermetico. It is only a brief scene, and doesn’t really contribute anything to the plot, except at the end where Warlock tells Frug - who is driving him back to SWORD headquarerters: Einstein spent years developing the theory of relativity, so we can give Mr. Klein… a couple of days.

Another thing that vaguely irritates me about the episode is that on the first two occasions when The Saint actually asks Amos Klein for ideas on how to escape, she says, in essence, “I don’t know.” Here’s a guy who is actually ready to defer to her, to hear her ideas which he expects will be better than his own, and the scriptwriters do not give her the opportunity to do so!

However, the scriptwriters were doubtless just pointing out that any author usually makes thing easy for the criminals (for example, writing in a helicopter at the optimum moment), whereas Simon and Amos Klein inhabit the “real” world.

When the time comes for Amos and Simon to work together, however, in order to figure out a way to rob Hermetico, the scriptwriters do give the impression that they work as equal partners.

There is one ambiguous point in the script, in this vein.

After an entire day spent working on the story of how to rob Hermetico, they take a break. They still have to figure out how to get past the “Neutral Strip” with its invisible, infrared beams. Simon has Amos put on her glasses, and then she sits on his lap and they kiss. At this point she raises her eyes to heaven as she realizes… special glasses will enable them to see the infrared beams.

But when she says this, Simon says only, “Mm hm,” as if he’d already thought of it - perhaps when he told her to put on the glasses to begin with. Well, of course, the Saint can’t be seen to be less clever than a woman!

However, in the finale Amos Klein does prove herself to be worthy of all the accolades bestowed on her genius by Warlock. She manages to escape from her bonds -- indeed if she hadn’t she would have died, as Simon arrives too late to save her! -- using the woman’s eternal weapon, the hair pin. Also, she’d had the presence of mind to grab a few anasthetic darts before being taken down to …. The Cellar… and uses them, via her cigarette holder, to knock her captors unconscious.

The final scene is a disappointing one, however, as Warlock, portrayed brilliantly by Kenneth J. Warren, is rather needlessly killed by his own laser device.

Kenneth J. Warren’s Warlock really makes the episode, frankly. An intelligent man himself, just unscrupulous, with a vast admiration for the works of Amos Klein. He plays his role with intelligence as well as gusto.

All in all, therefore, an excellent episode.

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