Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer

S01E09: Lead Ache

Mike is hired to find the murderer of a newspaper reporter. The trail leads to a ballroom whose hostesses, usually small-town girls with no relatives, frequently disappear.

Overview

Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is the title used for two syndicated television series that followed the adventures of fictional private detective Mike Hammer. The gritty, crime fighting detective—created by American crime author Mickey Spillane—has also inspired several feature films and made-for-TV movies.

Episodes

S01E01 The High Cost of Dying

January 7, 1958 30 min
When a man convicted of armed robbery is mortally wounded in a prison knife fight, he calls on Hammer to perform a last service - retrieve the loot he hid before he was arrested and...

S01E02 Just Around the Corner

February 14, 1958 30 min
When an elderly man living in Mike's hotel unexpectedly inherits $7500, Hammer appoints himself the man's guardian to ward off moochers and con artists.

S01E03 Hot Hands, Cold Dice

January 21, 1958 30 min
After discovering his office has been ransacked, Mike receives a threatening phone call ordering him off "the case" and to drop his client, Sharon O'Closkey. Mike refuses, even though he wasn't working on a case...

S01E04 Death Gets a Diploma

January 28, 1958 30 min
At the behest of an old friend, Mike investigates her son's relationship with a beautiful young woman whose sugar daddy, a mobster turning states evidence, was murdered outside a nightclub.

S01E05 So That's Who It Was

February 11, 1958 30 min
Mike responds to a phone call from a small-time junkie requesting protection too late; he finds his friend shot to death in a Chinatown alley. Not satisfied that the police will exert themselves to find...

S01E06 Dead Men Don't Dream

February 18, 1958 30 min
Mike returns to his old neighborhood when gunsels working for a protection racket murder a boyhood friend. Before long, his investigation into the gang's criminal activities results in more fatalities.

S01E07 Letter Edged in Blackmail

February 25, 1958 30 min
While eating in a hotel restaurant, Mike spots a man take a package from a woman's table. Even though the package contains a necklace with a broken clasp as the man claimed, Mike smells foul...

S01E08 Death Takes an Encore

March 7, 1958 30 min
Mike investigates a dishevelled man's wild tale about a man that he killed six months ago dying a second time in a car accident two days ago. When his client turns up dead, Mike follows...

S01E09 Lead Ache

March 14, 1958 30 min
Mike is hired to find the murderer of a newspaper reporter. The trail leads to a ballroom whose hostesses, usually small-town girls with no relatives, frequently disappear.

S01E10 Overdose of Lead

March 21, 1958 30 min
A nightclub singer asks Mike to get her out of a contract that's held by a mobster. The man claims the rising star who she owes him $50,000 "for expenses" plus 30% of her salary...

S01E11 A Grave Undertaking

March 28, 1958 30 min
Mike is hired to retrieve incriminating letters from a blackmailer, but soon learns that the package with $50,000 was really the ransom money to payoff kidnappers. When the woman who collected the ransom from Hammer...

S01E12 A Shot In The Arm

April 4, 1958 30 min
The lawyer for a wealthy couple asks Mike to help their niece kick her heroine habit. Mike works on two fronts: helping the young woman withdraw from the drug and finding the pushers that got...

S01E13 Stay Out of Town

April 11, 1958 30 min
Mike is asked to investigate help a young man who has been arrested for murder in a small Pennsylvania town. He thinks the case against his client is pretty good, but when the local district...

S01E14 Beautiful, Blue and Deadly

April 18, 1958 30 min
While waiting for his car to be repaired at a friend's combination garage/used car lot, Mike gets involved with three unsavoury characters who are very interested in a Jaguar sports car that has bullet holes...

S01E15 Skinned Deep

April 25, 1958 30 min
Taking a ferry ride in New York harbor, Mike sees a young woman crying. She's been victimized by a carnival con artist who charges steep fees to enter a rigged talent contest.

S01E16 Peace Bond

May 2, 1958 30 min
Mike's quest for peace and quiet is interrupted when he intervenes in a lover's quarrel fought in a swanky restaurant. The next day, Mike is hauled into court and forced to post a peace bond...

S01E17 Play Belles' Toll

May 9, 1958 30 min
Mike runs into an old acquaintance, the wife of an embezzler he helped send to prison, who asks for her help. When she turns up dead in her apartment, rather than in his office as...

S01E18 For Sale: Deathbed--Used

May 16, 1958 30 min
A serial killer is carving up women in the neighborhood where Sam Earl, one of Mike's part-time assistants lives. The legman wants to help Mike capture the psychopath before he strikes again, but Hammer insists...

S01E19 Music to Die By

May 23, 1958 30 min
Mike is asked to help a popular disk jockey who's been threatened by a powerful music producer to play her performers' songs or else. While Mike is trying to persuade the producer to back off,...

S01E20 My Fair Deadly

May 30, 1958 30 min
Mike discovers his girlfriend's roommate has been murdered and launches his own investigation. He discovers that she was killed for a diamond she was trying to fence and tracks the murderer to the Brussels World...

S01E21 The New Look

June 7, 1958 30 min
A psychiatrist fears that his patients are being blackmailed. He hires Mike to find out if his fears are founded, how the privileged information is being leaked and who is preying on his clients.

S01E22 The Broken Frame

June 14, 1958 30 min
A death row convict confesses to a murder that another man was executed for three years earlier and threatens to supply proof after his execution.

S01E23 Look at the Old Man Go

June 21, 1958 30 min
Mike is hired by a beautiful heiress to break up her father's romance with a much younger woman. Mike goes to the woman's apartment and, after interviewing her, decides it really is a May-December romance...

S01E24 The Paper Shroud

June 28, 1958 30 min
Working for the insurance company, Mike assists the police investigate an armed robbery of an armored car company. His investigation reveals that the sister of a crippled friend who only helped the hold-up gang because...

S01E25 My Son And Heir

July 5, 1958 30 min
A rich industrialist wants to hire Mike to beat up his son and heir because the young man has become engaged to woman considered beneath the family's standing. Mike turns the job down, but agrees...

S01E26 Final Curtain

July 12, 1958 30 min
Mike's girlfriend, Jackie, a dancer in a chorus line, panics when a sleazy reporter points out the similarities between a pair of chorus line murders and the Jack the Ripper killings 70 years ago -...

S01E27 A Detective Tail

July 19, 1958 30 min
Mike is hired to track down a man's missing girlfriend. The client tells Hammer that he just returned from South America, but his pasty complexion belies his claim of three years in the tropics. Hammer...

S01E28 It's An Art

July 26, 1958 30 min
Mike is hired by an art student's parents who are concerned when she stops writing. The artist's friends and instructor aren't concerned that she's missing, but Mike connects the girl's disappearance with the copies of...

S01E29 Four Blind Mice

August 2, 1958 30 min
A man Mike helped get paroled from prison gets an anonymous letter accusing his wife of infidelity. Mike learns he's bought a gun illegally and tries to convince the ex-con's spouse to quit her glitzy...

S01E30 Scar and Garter

October 12, 1958 30 min
A young, recently married woman hires Mike to find her husband, who disappeared after visiting his estranged mother at her Berkshire Mountains mansion. Mike's efforts to visit the man's mother meet resistance from the woman's...

S01E31 No Pockets In A Shroud

August 9, 1958 30 min
Mike decides to investigate when the darkroom belonging to his girlfriend's brother is destroyed by someone looking for an incriminating photograph. Since the negative and all the copies of the photograph were destroyed Mike doesn't...

S01E32 The Living Dead

August 16, 1958 30 min
Hammer is hired by Susan Barlow but she stands him up. He investigates and runs into her husband Hank Barlow. After a fight, Hank hires Hammer to find his wife who has been missing for...

S01E33 Old Folks At Home Blues

August 23, 1958 30 min
While getting a shoeshine in the Bowery, Mike spots a beautiful, well-dressed blonde who is as out of place as a field of wildflowers growing out of a crack in the concrete. When the woman...

S01E34 No Business like...

August 30, 1958 30 min
Doc Fawcett hires Mike to find the person to whom he's paying protection money. He's received letters that threaten his daughter, a high-wire acrobat, will suffer a serious, if not fatal, accident unless $500 is...

S01E35 Crepe Suzette

September 7, 1958 30 min
Mike is hired to locate a young woman who moved to New York, but suddenly stopped writing home to her parents. Mike quickly learns that she was killed in a hit and run automobile accident,...

S01E36 Letter of the Weak

September 14, 1958 30 min
Mike receives a desperate letter from Harris Stevens who claims that he's being held against his will in a mental hospital. The physician in charge refuses to allow Mike to see the patient, but Mike...

S01E37 That Schoolgirl Complex

September 21, 1958 30 min
Mike is hired to find the culprit behind a series of pranks at an exclusive girls' prep school - students have been poisoned, burned with acid and now shot at. Mike has three suspects: an...

S01E38 To Bury a Friend

September 28, 1958 30 min
A friend from the old neighborhood asks Mike to travel to Chicago to claim the body of her son. While visiting the Windy City, Mike learns that the young man was murdered and the police...

S01E39 Mere Maid

October 5, 1958 30 min
A pretty secretary swims across the lake to the cabin Mike has rented for vacation and invites him to a party at her uncle's estate. The party soon loses its appeal when Mike bumps into...

S01E40 Scar and Garter

October 12, 1958 30 min
Scar and Garter

Cast

Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin
Mike Hammer

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