In Search of... In Search of... title screen Created by Alan Landsburg Productions (original series) Presented by Leonard Nimoy Mitch Pileggi Zachary Quinto Country of origin United States Original language English No. of episodes Syndicated: 144 (+ 4 specials) Revival: 8 History Channel revival: 18 Production Running time 23 minutes Production companies Alan Landsburg Productions (Original) Universal Television Alternative Studios (2nd revival) Distributor Rhodes Productions (original series) Release Original network Syndicated Sci-Fi Channel History Original release April 17, 1977 – March 1, 1982 October 4, 2002 – November 22, 2002 July 20, 2018 - November 29, 2019 Many memories of this TV series. Interesting subjects and an incredible erie soundtrack always made it an entertaining twenty+ minute ride. Leonard Nimoy would be an incredible host and the reason this TV show has stuck with me all these decades later. Share memories, your favorite episodes even parts of the beautiful soundtrack you might like. I even bought the complete dvd set about eleven years ago. Great TV memories from a different time, dated but I love it.
IN SEARCH OF had an episode about earthquakes that totally wigged me out as a kid growing up in Seattle.
Alan Landsburg Productions was a cheap, rotten outfit and not good to work for -- that much I can tell you. He's been dead almost ten years now -- not a nice person.
My wife bought the DVD box set as a Christmas gift for me a few years ago. It's a little cheesy as I watch it now but it does bring back so many great memories of watching it as a kid in the 1970s. It was such an interesting show back then.
I remember being traumatised by, of all things, an episode on John The Baptist. The beheading scene haunted me for years afterwards. I must have been all of 3 or 4 years old, and the show was likely on repeat in the 1980s when I saw it. Note: Watching it again just now on YouTube, the scene is relatively weak sauce - but suggestive enough to traumatise a child waiting for an episode of CHiPs to begin.
I think the great theme song, the Leonard Nimoy narration, and the fact that it was done on film rather than videotape helped distinguish it from most of the weekend syndicated shows in the 70s, and camouflaged the series’ weaknesses.
This is now one of the funniest shows to me because so many of these stories have been debunked and discredited. Back then I really thought these mysteries would be solved. Hell, Mr. Spock told me that the answers to the mystery of Bigfoot were "just around the corner" yet the 55 year old Patterson/Gimlin footage is still the best alleged evidence of Bigfoot! I mean we're now in the futuristic year of 2023 yet people are still rehashing these same old stories.
LOVED this show! I remember catching an episode about KILLER fire ants that were then advancing to the United States border from Mexico. I was all of like 8 years-old and I remember running around the house afterwards shouting, "That's it! We're ALL gonna DIE!" By the time I was in the third grade (1979), we were forced EVERY week to go down to the school's library and sign out a NEW book, every damn week. When our class went down to the library every Monday to do this I ran into TWO problems: 1). I HATED reading/books and 2). the areas of the library that were "popular" (fiction mostly) were swamped - you literally could not even get to the books! So, what this forced me to do was explore the less popular sections of the Dewey Decimal System. In the late 70's, this meant the NONFICTION of the 000's to the 600's, so I found myself browsing amongst those sections, all by myself. Now guess what was contained in those sections? Books on mysteries and unexplained phenomena, tornadoes, witchcraft, astronomy, ghosts, U.F.O.s, monsters, as well as books on disasters like the Hindenburg. So, watching In Search of... on Saturday evenings with my Dad (also a big fan) heavily influenced my library card use come Monday.
Now this episode was a trip. Between the dream sequences and the incredible soundtrack this episode has stayed with me for almost fifty year's.
One of the last shows of the Syndicated "checkerboard" era of television. If you lived in NYC, the NBC affiliate there would offer either In Search Of..., Sha Na Na, or Family Feud (Syndicated version of ABC game show; the last one became twice a week in 1979, and eventually daily in 1980).
I enjoyed watching the DVD set recently. Really captures the pseudoscience zeitgeist that was the 70s. Bigfoot, ancient astronauts, and ESP... oh my. Shot and edited on film which is still cool to watch.
I rewatched a few of these recently and they're pretty awful, and the way things were framed (dishonestly) to give credence to the outlandish ideas was hilariously transparent to me as an adult. Still, the 10 year old in me loves how creaky and campfire story-level the writing is, as much as I can acknowledge that the whole show was ridiculous.
Loved this show too as a kid. It reminds me of going to my grandparent's house as we ended up watching it if it was on. It sure creeped me out but I bought the DVD set a few years back.
So loved this show. It was shown late Sunday afternoons iirc. In search of ...Bermuda Triangle, Anastasia, Emile Earhart, Bigfoot... And yes, I saw an episode or two more recently ... and couldn't believe how tacky and badly b grade it all was lol.
I saw Leonard Nimoy in this before I ever saw a Star Trek episode. The first time I saw Spock I knew him as that In Search Of guy. The same thing happened with Peter Graves. I saw him on Discover: The World of Science on PBS before Mission: Impossible.
There is a fun podcast, In Research Of, where the hosts review each episode and playfully debunk the contents (or praise, in the rare times when the show wasn't being dishonest about a subject). To warn in advance - the episodes run as long as two hours, which of course is longer than any of the episodes they are reviewing. The two hosts are engineers, I think. Each episode of the podcast also features a Leonard Nimoy fashion break, where the hosts discuss what Leonard wore in the episode of the show they are discussing.
If you can find it, the In Search Of... soundtrack LP is a very enjoyable listen. The music is all in the style of 70s library music, with strings, disco beats and fuzz guitar. Nothing from Brian Eno, whose ambient music was (allegedly) used in one episode. The LP is credited to The In Search Of... Orchestra, but I suspect it's just pre-created library music. I don't have a vinyl copy, but I do have a set of mp3s someone ripped from the vinyl and uploaded to the Internet.
Here’s a quirky short story inspired by the series which shares the same title that I heard on audio a decade plus ago and it stuck with me. It’s probably better as an audiobook. In Search Of - Apex Magazine