Outer Limits – Caught in the Act (S1E16)

olcaught02aAlyssa Milano, majoring in Virgin Studies at college, is fooling around with her boyfriend Jay.  Naturally, he wants to go further, but she is committed to remaining chaste until marriage.  She should dump him when he says, “I think this whole abstinence thing could be a good thing,” because he is clearly psychotic.

After he leaves, a space dildo bursts through the roof of her apartment and embeds itself in the floor.  As Alyssa takes a closer look, an entity bursts from the space dildo and gives her an alien facial.

Jay’s friend Karl approaches him in the library and grills him about Hannah’s virginity. She has tracked Jay down in the library and begins climbing all over him.  He is still trying to be supportive of her crazy ideas, so she abandons him, finds Karl in the stacks, and starts making out with him.

That night, Alyssa goes to his room and strips for him.  Soon he is inside her.  I mean, really inside — like his entire body is absorbed into her.  Well, that actually is a football player, but the death of Karl and intro of the Quarterback are so blurred, they might as well have been the same character.  In fact, the QB does not even rate a name in the credits.

olcaughte01Jay rides to Alyssa’s apartment on his scooter, possibly explaining why she never put out for him.  He sees the QB’s car outside and demands to know where he is.  The part of Alyssa that is still human fears for his safety tells Jay to beat it.  Well, she actually tells him, “go away,” but I think there is a lot of “beating it” in his future.

Jay waits for Alyssa to leave and goes into her apartment.  He finds the space dildo still embedded in the floor and takes it to his professor, the frequently annoying Saul Rubinek.  Despite the sexual theme of the episode, Rubinek is thankfully not involved in those shenanigans, sparing us the squirm-inducing awkwardness in Gotcha!.

olcaught04Meanwhile, Alyssa is now picking up dudes on the street and banging them to death. She even finds the time to seduce Karl’s girlfriend.  Sadly, that does not get past the kiss because Karl’s girlfriend is not much interested; at least, not as much as me.

Rubinek miraculously finds other instances of space dildos crashing to earth.  Their appearances seem to always be linked to the disappearances of horny young men.  So apparently the previous space dildos were homophobic haters.

Alyssa continues absorbing dudes until she is shot by a cop in an alley in absorption interruptus.  As the shots ventilate her, light streams out and the dude being absorbed is cut off at the waist and left in agonizing pain before dying.  Thank God, as she is absorbing all these guys, it is not effecting her hot size 2 body.

She is taken to the hospital where her wounds spontaneously heal before the operation.  The surgical team flees the room, and Alyssa tries to seduce the surgeon, but he is more scared than turned on.  Possibly because they have managed to outfit Alyssa in the only hospital gown ever made that actually closes in the back.

Jay cracks the code of why Alyssa did not kill him, Karl’s girlfriend or the surgeon — the alien possessing her requires pheromones only given off during arousal to absorb the victim’s energy.  He enters the Operating Room and locks the door.

Somehow, the purity of the two virgins having the sex drives the alien from her body rather than energizing it like a double shot of espresso.  With the alien gone, she is free to bask in the after-glow of world-saving sex, and dream about her life with Jay.  At least until police charge her with multiple homicides.

That encounter with Karl’s girlfriend might have been good preparation for her next 20 years to life.

Post:

  • Mark Sobel also directed The Choice.
  • Alyssa’s character’s name Hannah Valesic left me craving pickles.
  • Hulu sucks.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Wind (S3E4)

bradbury02The wind is a perfect subject for this series.  Many of the episodes just have some movement, some rustling around, but there is nothing solid at the heart of them.

For some reason Michael Sarrazin just makes me think of the 70’s.  Not sure if it is his face, or just because that was really his heyday (1969-1975), and he never really seemed to live up to his promising start.

Here he is playing a weather nerd, which in the days before the internet or even the Weather Channel must have been a pretty frustrating hobby.  He is flipping through a book of maps with page headings like Cloudiness, Visibility, Gale Persistence when suddenly a persistent mini-gale blows through his living room and flips the pages.

Image 001He recognizes the wind as a presence immediately and greets it.  I’m trying to outline the episode, but it gives me nothing.  What can I say?  He calls his friend Herb, but Herb is busy.  He opens his front door.  He lights a cigarette which the wind blows out the first try. The wind blows his door shut.  He looks for batteries for his flashlight.

He says to himself, “My God, it’s like a great big shuffling hound, it’s trying to smell me out.”  He begins making a tape for Herb.  He describes climbing a mountain in Tibet to see what he should never have seen — hundreds of winds.  OK, so the wind has come after him.  I can totally buy into that — we’ve seen all kinds of voodoo follow people back to “civilization” for revenge.  Crikey, TZ even put a lion in a dude’s Park Avenue bedroom.  I can imagine this story being the basis for a great episode, but this ain’t it.

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“Note to self: I’ll do one more episode in 3 years, but that’s it!”

In the limited “killer wind” genre, this makes The Happening look like Citizen Hurrikane.

I give it an F1 on the Fujita Scale (F5, of course, being Finger of God).  And that’s being generous, because the Fujita Scale actually starts at F0.

The short story is actually pretty good and if I had read it before seeing the episode, I would have looked forward to an adaptation — on Outer Limits or TZ, maybe.

Strangely, the short story centers on his friend Herb.  Sarrazin’s character Allin (renamed the manlier John Colt for TV) literally phones it in, never physically appearing in the scenes.   I’m not sure what is the benefit of this choice, but it worked for me.

Naturally, the short story form has the advantage of being able to deliver more pure exposition.  We are given a lot more information about the wind, how it has absorbed the souls of those killed in hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons; how it has pursued Allin across the globe.

Another wasted opportunity.

Post-Post:

  • Sarrazin’s character mentions that they are in New Zealand, so my hunch about The Lake was correct.  This episode was all shot indoors, so the NZ location was not exploited at all.
  • Like everything filmed in New Zealand in the last 50 years, The Wind has an actor that appeared in one of the Lord of The Ring movies.  OK, The Lake didn’t; well, that theory didn’t last long.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – One More Mile to Go (S2E28)

This one is hard to get much hold on, and I mean that in the best possible way.  Hitchcock did not necessarily save the best scripts for himself to direct, but he did direct this one which was perfect for “The Master of Suspense.”  This one is very simple, and it plays out just about perfectly (it could have used Bernard Herrmann in a couple of spots).

David Wayne is Sam Jacoby.  We see scenes from a marriage through the window of the house he shares with his wife.  Poor guy is just trying to read the paper and his wife just won’t shut the hell up.  She throws his paper in the fire, and goes on and on, finally slapping him in the face.  Eventually, Jacoby has had enough and nails her with a fireplace poker.

The first several minutes of the episode are silent, which is perfect for the story.  Well, silent of dialogue other than their muffled voices through the window.  Many saw this as something of a trial run for Psycho which also had long silent stretches and depended on suspense above action.

Jacoby stuffs the old bag in his trunk . . . I mean the old bag he stuffed his wife into.  He shrewdly tosses in some chains and random hunks of metal, so I’m  expecting a water landing. He heads south on Route 99 to dispose of the body.  Along the way, he is pulled over by a cop for having a broken tail-light.  It is easy to see Hitchcock’s fear of police in this episode, and also to see it a predecessor to the cop who wakes up Janet Leigh in Psycho.  In both cases, our empathy is with the criminal, and the cops sticking their beefy face in the car window is an intrusion and a threat.

Image 001It is the cop who finally breaks the silence of the episode almost 11 minutes in.  In several encounters, the cop alternates between being the most helpful and least helpful officer imaginable.  All the while, though, he is a threat to our guy — you, know, the killer.

It is a great exercise in suspense, almost devoid of plot or twists.  To say any more would spoil the fun.  This is one of the best.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch: No survivors.
  • F.J. Smith wrote 2 AHP’s, and that’s it.
  • Cop from Psycho:

ahponemore02

 

Night Gallery – The Doll (S1E5)

ngdoll03Night Gallery has a thing about Colonels lately.  First in Clean Kills, and now in The Doll where Col. Masters has arrived home from his assignment in India.  He is greeted by his homely niece and her comely nanny, Mrs. Danton.

He notices that his niece is holding a really unattractive doll; and next to this homely girl, that is saying something. The nanny assumed Masters had sent it to his niece due to the India return address; and smell of curry.  He did not, and is concerned over the source.  He promises to get her a replacement, but she likes this one.

Masters gets his niece a new doll, but his niece refuses it saying that the other doll hates it and that it has to go back.  Masters says she must take the doll, and assures his niece that the other one can’t really speak.

That night, he hears crying in his niece’s room.  He enters with Miss Danton and sees that the new doll has been torn to pieces.  The first doll now has a toothy evil smile.

Masters is having a drink when a man wearing a turban enters.  Just as in Make Me Laugh, the ethnicity does not seem to fit the turban.  His brother was executed in India by British soldiers after leading raids against the outposts.  He sent the doll to avenge his brother’s execution.

ngdoll07Masters goes upstairs to destroy the doll and sees it sitting at the top of the stairs.  Off-screen, he takes a fall down the stairs and gets a nasty gash on his arm.  I suppose we are to believe it is a bite.  He has the nanny bring the the doll into the study and  he tosses it in the fire.  It had been indestructible up to this point, but now its mission has been fulfilled.

Massaging his wound, Masters says the doll has done its job and he will be dead soon.  Although since he is about 1,000 years old and just fell down a flight of stairs, this doesn’t make him Nostradamus.

He is prepared, though, and tells the nanny of a package in his bedroom.  It must be sent to the Indian man it is addressed to.

ngdoll08The turbaned man receives the box which contains a doll that looks like the Colonel.

This was a highly regarded episode — maybe because it was a few years before the modern standard was set in evil jagged-toothed dolls.

Sadly, this episode did not age well.  John Williams is always reliable, but the attack occurring off-screen is just unforgivable.  And the ending lacks a certain symmetry — it’s great that the doll resembles the Colonel, but the first doll did not resemble the Indian so the edge is taken off the punchline.

Bottom Line: Talky Tina was more menacing.

Post-Post:

Night Gallery – Lone Survivor (S1E5)

The bridge crew of this White Star Line ship sees a small boat in the middle of the ocean with a single passenger.  I don’t know if the White Line caps were just an error, or if Serling was trying to lead viewers to believe this was the Titanic.

As they move closer, the Captain spots the name Titanic on the bow of the small boat, so the cap ruse wouldn’t have lasted long anyway.  The survivor, who the Captain thought to be a woman, is brought on board and taken to the infirmary.  It actually turns out to be a man who put on women’s clothing to escape the sinking ship.

Or . . . maybe it was a dude who thought, “Gee, I don’t know anyone on the ship, we’re 1,000 miles from land, my parents are dead, I’m alone in my cabin, and I like to wear women’s clothes.  So dammit, I’m putting on this dress and parading around my stateroom singing showtunes.”  Then, BAM!  They hit the iceberg and he is stuck in the dress until he is rescued.  Curse the luck!

Another officer comments that the boat was all barnacled up to the waterline as if it had been in the water for 3 years — the time since the Titanic sank.  The Captain’s theory is that this is some sort of wartime deception.  It’s only then that we learn this ship is the Lusitania.  Of course, if this were remade today, no one would have any idea what the Lusitania was, or what her fate was.

The survivor describes how he put on the dress, put a muffler over his face and knocked people aside to board a lifeboat with the women and children; completely foregoing the less embarrassing scenario I conjectured.  John Calicos chews the bulkheads describing the sound of the collision, the sinking, the tilted decks, the water rushing in, the screams.  In a nice touch, he is in the dress for the whole episode — however, to be fair, it is a simple, understated number.

He describes himself as a Flying Dutchman fated to be picked up by doomed ships.  He tells the doctor the Lusitania will be hit by a torpedo and sink in 18 minutes.

The doctor therefore concludes that the crew must all be phantoms just playing roles in the survivor’s never-ending damnation.  The Captain protests that he is not a ghost, but the Doctor and the rest of the crew disappear. Fittingly, the Captain disappears last; even fate adheres to maritime tradition.  The survivor runs on deck and sees a periscope.  Then a torpedo.

Image 002Another ship spots the survivor in a small boat with Lusitania painted on the bow.  A crewman helpfully turns to the camera sporting a cap that says Andrea Doria.  Again meaning nothing to most people today.

All of the casualties on the Andrea Doria were killed upon impact, and it took 11 hours to sink.  Passengers were soon rescued by lifeboat and helicopter.  If the survivor was in women’s clothing for that one, he’s got some explaining to do.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Judgment Night, where a U-boat commander is doomed to experience the fate of his victims.
  • The survivor is played by John Colicos, the Baltar of the 1970’s Battlestar Gallactica.  However, he was known as Count Baltar, and did not have the ironic name Gaius.
  • Andrea Doria was a man, man!  The Italian Navy has commissioned 2 ships named Andrea Doria after the passenger liner sank in 1956.  Typical government thinking — I doubt you will see the Carnival Cruise Line christening a new Titanic.
  • There actually was one non-impact death, but it is too sad to mention in a cesspool like this.
  • The Andrea Doria sank off the coast of Nantucket.  Shockingly, no Kennedys were at fault.
  • That permanent cigarette holder in Serling’s teeth is getting on my nerves:

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