Blast from the Past: The Incredible Hulk

Watching The Incredible Hulk now, with his ridiculous Wurzel Gummidge hair-do (a deep conditioning treatment wouldn’t go amiss) and green greasepaint, just makes me laugh, but as a child in the 1970s I was petrified of the green muscle-bound goliath.

Every Saturday, kids like me, quivered into our Quavers as we followed the adventures of handsome young scientist, Dr David Banner (played by the late Bill Bixby), who would ominously warn some hapless bad guy: “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

Of course, we were happy when the baddie ignored the advice, because then Banner would turn into the real star of the show: the Incredible Hulk, who was played by Lou Ferrigno, the world’s biggest body builder at the time. As a child I honestly didn’t know it was two different actors.

The show, based on the Marvel Comics’ character Hulk, saw Banner wandering the country searing for a cure to the terrible condition that plagues him, the result of scientific experiment gone wrong. so that when he gets angry, he turns into a massive green humanoid, who has incredible powers.

I watched petrified as the mild-mannered Banner got angrier and angrier, his eyes turning white, the seams on his shirt (but never his trousers) bursting, until the climatic moment when he turned into a green monster with Denis Healy bushy eyebrows, a beefcake physique and subhuman growls and roars. Essential viewing!