Friday, December 23, 2016

1985-Street Hawk


Knight Rider on a motorcycle. There was a rash of these type of shows in the 80s to early 90s.
Airwolf, Automan, Highwayman, Blue Thunder, Viper...
As explained in the intro, Street Hawk was an experimental motorcycle usually driven only at night so it would look cooler.
The bike had a top normal speed of 200 mph, 300 mph if 'Hyperthrust' was engaged! (Which happened in every episode.) It sported a laser cannon, machine guns, a rocket launcher, infrared cameras, and a compressed air vertical lift system, which gave it that 'turbo-boost' capability, and the physics-defying ability to turn on street corners at 200+mph. In keeping with the typical kid-friendly 'no killing' 7PM Central show, Jesse Mach had a personal backup weapon that fired a rubber bullet.
Although there were only 13 episodes, Street Hawk kept changing without explanation. From watching the show, four different models were clearly used. I guess that fits with the logic of the show, it's an experimental vehicle so modifications would be made from time to time as needed.
The legendary, late Ernie Anderson provides the voiceover.
Joe Regalbuto went on to star in Murphy Brown and a young George Clooney appeared in episode two in his second role ever. Rex Smith has been a guest star staple for the last 20 years.
The series is available on DVD.

1 comment:

joe said...

joe regalbutto also appeared in an episode of the highwayman tv series