Code of Vengeance 1985 TV movie

So Knight Rider is quite the franchise the orignal series ran from 1982-1986 for four seasons. In 1991, we got the TV movie and failed pilot Knight Rider 2000, this was followed by the in name only Knight Rider 2010 in 1994. 1997 saw the one season Team Knight Rider and the 2008 season of Knight Rider with Justin Bruening as Michael's son driving a new KITT. But what tends to be forgotten is the short lived spinoff Code of Vengeance - In season 2 episode 21 "Mouth of the Snake" (a two part episode) had Michael and KITT meet and team up with David Dalton (Charles Taylor), martial artist and government agent. I do wonder if Glen Larson or anyone in the Knight Rider team read the Destroyer series? The intent was to spin Dalton off onto a series called "All that Glitters" where he would be paired with Joanna St John (Joanna Pettet) All that Glitters was the title given to the fourth Knight Rider novelisation, and David and Joanna are mentioned to be married in the 5th book. Reportly the netwrk felt the concept felt too close to another Larsen series "Cover Up' so the decision was made to retool the series with a pilot called "Code of Vengeance" I'll talk about the new premise when I talk about the movie. It was followed by a second TV movie Dalton: Code of Vengeance II. The show then went to series called Code of Vengeance (although I have seen it referenced as Dalton's Code of Vengeance) and it ran for a whole 2 episodes. "Rustler's Moon" and "The Last Hold Out" Recently the Youtube channel Knight Rider Historians posted first Code of Vengeance TV Movie.

So Dalton is no longer a martial artist who works for the Department of Justice, here he is a Vietnam veteran who is wandering the country in his campervan. In this movie he's in a border town in Arizona where he is gets work building a room for a single mother - the only person in town who will talk to Dalton. Dalton discovers that the woman's brother is missing and he finds the body and that there is smuggling of guns across the border. In many ways Dalton reminded me of Billy Jack, a peaceful man who can kick much ass and has intervene when there is injustice. I'm also sure that Shane was an influnce as the woman's young son becomes attached to Dalton and follows him during the final fight (I was yelling at the kid to run AWAY from the gunfire) It almost feels like a prequel to the Knight Rider episode where we see how Dalton came to the attention of DoJ but the show never got that far. Interestingly in a meta moment, one of the characters is watching Knight Rider in the movie. It's an enjoyable enough 90 min TV movie (and I don't why but the original video that Knight Historians have loaded is a studio original and has several points where it says "Insert ads here" which made me smile - even though youtube just ignored them and put ads whereever.