That’s Incredible! The Most Sadistic Show on TV (and We LOVED It)

0:01 It's September 15th, 1980. A man gets on a motorcycle outside Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. There's a ramp, there's a crowd, and there are cameras because this is being filmed for a prime time television show on ABC. He guns the engine, hits the ramp, clears the fountains, and then he suffers a devastating wipeout that I'm not even sure I can show on YouTube. Suffice it to say, it was bad. He wound up with a ruptured aorta, a fractured pelvis. Ouch. And for a while, doctors weren't sure he was going to make it. Thankfully, this was not a live broadcast. It was recorded ahead of time, and ABC actually considered whether they should air the stunt, Crash

0:46 and All. In the end, they made the smart decision to not broadcast this horrifying motorcycle crash on what was supposed to be a family TV show. But had they gone ahead and shown it to the live studio audience, chances are they still would have shouted incredible, >> holy, I was a kid when that's incredible was on the tube and I watched it religiously with my family. Monday nights, ABC right after dinner and sometimes the show was painfully stupid, but whatever. I was a kid and I didn't care. and sometimes it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. If you were watching TV in the early 80s, I think there's a good chance you

1:31 remember it exactly the same way. That's Incredible ran on ABC from 1980 to 1984. And at its peak, it was the third most watched show on American television. It wasn't third on ABC, it was third in the entire country. That's Incredible was a variety show of sorts, and the variety ran the gamut from real people presenting silly oddities to daring stunts where death was a real possibility. And this show had not one but three hosts. John Davidson was an annoyingly handsome TV personality who was a staple on TV game shows like The Hollywood Squares, and he also had his own daytime talk show at one point. Kathy Lee Crosby was a former pro tennis player who had

2:18 competed at Wimbledon in the 1960s. And a little known fact about her is that she was the original Wonder Woman on TV. She played the superhero in a 1974 television movie and she was actually offered the role in the Wonder Woman TV series that followed, but she turned it down because it wasn't funny enough. The studio said, "Okay, bye." and they called Linda Carter. And as they say, the rest is history. The show also had Fran Tarkington. I was still in grade school when That's Incredible first hit the airwaves. So, I wasn't much of a football scholar, but I already knew all about Fran Tarkington thanks to the Bulmar NFL reading kit, which was this huge box of info cards that my school

3:04 library had. And yes, I finished the set and got the special award. For those who don't follow the NFL, Tarkington was the quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings in the 60s and 70s. And to this day, the man is considered one of the all-time great QBs. And as of the recording of this video, all three hosts are still alive and in their 80s. So, here's the thing about That's Incredible that a lot of us have probably forgotten in the decades since the show aired. We didn't know it at the time, but that's incredible was quietly putting some future stars in front of a national audience for the very first time. In 1980, a fast talker named John Mosida Jr. appeared on the show. It was said that he could speak at over 500 words

3:50 per minute, which is outrageous. And he demonstrated it right there on the set of That's Incredible. Put it away at noon noon time 7 time two. Get the ball in pocket. >> The audience loved him and so did the advertising executives at FedEx, which at the time was called Federal Express. >> Congratulations on your deal in Denver. Dave, I'm putting you down to deal with Dallas. Don is a deal. Do we have a deal? It's a deal. I got to go. >> And that was just the start of a very successful career where Mashida starred in a ton of commercials that included Minute Rice, Micro Machines, and HBO to name a few. And since the 1980s, he's compiled a very impressive resume of TV and movie appearances, including the voice acting role of Blur in Transformers the movie. This man's entire career was launched from one

4:36 appearance on That's Incredible. Also, in 1980, a 5-year-old boy appeared on the show with his father, demonstrating an almost freakish ability to putt a golf ball. The hosts were amazed. The audience thought he was adorable. And this little boy's name was Eldrich Woods, but you probably know him as Tiger. And then there was Alicia Wit. She was also 5 years old when she appeared on That's Incredible, reciting Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet from memory with John Davidson. A filmmaker named David Lynch happened to be watching that night, and he was so impressed by this little girl that he cast her in his 1984 film Dune. Alicia Wit went on to have a pretty busy acting

5:21 career. She's still active to this very day. And it started because David Lynch was watching That's Incredible on a Monday night. One reviewer on IMDb summed up the show as quote, "Entertaining, but also a show that often made your skin crawl or embarrassed you for liking it." It seems that's how a lot of people felt. The critics, however, were much less forgiving. >> A man who really uses his head That's Incredible. >> That's Incredible debuted on March 3rd, 1980 to what you might charitably call hostile reviews. One critic called it a shameless imitation of NBC's Real People. The Associated Press reviewed the premiere and concluded there was nothing incredible or even interesting

6:06 in the entire hour. But much like Grade School Me, the audience didn't care. Within 6 weeks of its debut, That's Incredible was the third highest rated show on television. The critics could say whatever they wanted. Millions upon millions of people were watching. The very first episode featured a stunt where a driver who called himself Spanky jumped his car through the center of what the show called a pyramid of cars. Spanky narrowly avoided getting his head taken off. And while this stunt was incredibly dangerous, it turned out to be pretty tame compared to what came later. The stunts got bigger, the risks got higher, and people started getting seriously hurt. We're talking life-changing injuries.

6:52 Stanley Crumbl was paid to run through a 50-yard tunnel of fire. He made it through, but there were some consequences, and the cameras caught the aftermath. His fingers, in the words of one reporter, were charred to blackened nubs. He lost the use of both hands, at least for quite some time. And of course, John Davidson concluded the segment with >> That's incredible. >> Gary Wells was the motorcycle stuntman at Caesar's Palace that I mentioned at the start of this video. What I didn't mention is that Wells was attempting to replicate a jump that even evil conval had failed. And then there was Steve Lewis. Steve Lewis was a 25-year-old kickboxing champion turned daredevil who had been hired to jump over two cars

7:37 traveling toward him at 100 mph. I couldn't locate video of it, but Lewis was well known for jumping over one car, and the stunt looked something like this. On the morning of the taping, where he was to jump over two cars, Lewis did a successful practice jump, but when it came time for the cameras to roll, he got cold feet, so to speak. He told the director he wasn't feeling it and asked if they could postpone the stunt. The director's response, according to Lewis, was this. I want you to jump now. We have a plane to catch. It's getting dark. Wrap it up. Wrap it up. Jump. Jump. So, Lewis jumped. It was a valiant effort, and I distinctly remember watching this happen on TV. But

8:24 what I didn't fully recall until making this video was the outcome. He didn't quite clear the cars and part of his foot was amputated as a result. Lewis sued the show and he won. $180,000 in damages, the first settlement of its kind in Hollywood stunt history. His lawyer made the point that this wasn't the kind of dramatized violence you see in movies, which seems pretty obvious, but the point was that Lewis went through real pain and suffering because of what he was pushed into doing on a family television show. Critics were disgusted and even Time magazine offered their two cents. In a 1980 article, they declared That's Incredible to be the most sadistic show on television.

9:09 Morally Safer of 60 Minutes called it the worst brew of bad taste yet concocted by the network witches. The show's creator, Alan Lansberg, seemed unfazed. His stated goal was simple. Air whatever story is likely to get one reaction. INCREDIBLE. >> That was his mission. And to him, it seems that little else mattered. And there's one detail that really underscores how messed up this whole thing was. The stunt man who burned the crap out of his hands in the tunnel of fire was paid $8,000 for the stunt. But the costs of staging the stunt, that was all on him. He was the one who paid for the venue, the equipment, the crew, and after expenses, he cleared only $2,000.

9:57 He suffered disfiguring injuries for a pathetic two grand. The Steve Lewis car jumping lawsuit changed things. It didn't end the show immediately, but it forced producer Alan Lansberg to rethink what he was putting on the air. If injured stuntmen could sue and win, then the business model of televising near-death experiences suddenly became a lot less attractive. The show quietly shifted away from dangerous stunts and back toward the milder side of things. Rubik's cube competitions, arcade game competitions, paranormal stories, the stuff that made you go, "Huh?" rather than "Holy." And the audience noticed. Or maybe they just moved on. By its final season, That's Incredible had fallen from its

10:43 peak of third in the entire country to 57th. The show that had once commanded a quarter of the American viewing audience in 1980 was gone by 1984. I'm always going to enjoy my memories of watching this show when I was a kid, but with the benefit of hindsight and being nearly 50 years older, I can see why it drew so much criticism. That's Incredible was great in a lot of ways and it made for some amazing TV. But it's probably best that TV has mostly moved away from Endangering Lives in the name of Neielson ratings.