STRUCK BY LIGHTNING was a fairly amusing premise that was never fully explored before it got yanked by CBS-TV. Jack Elam as Frank, caretaker of a New England inn who was in actually the Frankenstein Monster, was genius casting. Jeffrey Kramer as Ted Stein, a high school science teacher and the last living descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, was actually pretty funny. Stein was trying to discover the secret formula to the elixir that keeps Frank alive & must be administered every 75 years, or the monster starts to disintergrate. "You see my eyes?" Frank asks Ted. "In five more years, I'll look like a catfish!" The inn is actually Castle Frankenstein, brought over from Germany by Ted's late grandfather, who went senile and died before passing along the formula for Frank's elixir. In one episode, Ted leases the castle to a company filming a horror movie. Seeing the actor playing Count Dracula in full costume and make-up, Frank attempts to attack him, telling Ted, "He still owes me $20!" Seeing the green-skinned, flat-headed, neck-bolted Monster, Frank laments, "You have ONE bad hair day ...!" In another episode, a doctor examining an ill Frank is shocked to find stitches completely encircling his neck. "These look like railroad tracks!" the doctor exclaims. Ted tries to pass them off as scars from a tonsilectomy, but the doctor points out that tonsils are removed from the INSIDE, and asks who performed the surgery. "Um, YOU did," Frank says, and the doctor quickly tries to change the subject, alluding to his "drinking days." The show's title refers to the way Frank proves to Ted that he really IS The Monster. Raising his arms in front of a window and growling, a bolt of lighning crashes through and strikes his back. Turning around to show the smoking hole in his coat, Frank comments, "I HATE doing that!" I'm not sure if any more episodes were made besides the three that aired, but a nice DVD collection of whatever aired would be a great novelty! Alas, much like Lon Chaney's LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, I fear this series is lost forever.
