Monthly Archives: September 2014

Ray Bradbury Theater – A Miracle of Rare Device (S3E2)

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It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! — Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Well that clears that up.

Robert (Pat Harrington) and Willy (other guy) are driving a well-worn GMC pickup through Utah.  OK, I have no idea where it is, but it looks like the scenery in In the Dead of Winter, so I’m calling it Utah.  They seem to be on the run from a lone motorcyclist who is a dorky version of Leonard Smalls.  They pull off behind a billboard and the biker cruises on past.

Apparently this biker is constantly following them and horning in on their good luck.  It is not immediately clear what good luck they might have had, 2 scuzzy drifters with no chicks, ratty clothes, and a beat-up truck with their belongings heaped in the back.  Or what the biker is doing with his “harvest” as he appears to shop at the same dumpster.

But apparently Robert has an instinct for finding opportunity.  His spidey-sense leads him down a dirt road.  At the end of the road, looking out over the vista, in the distance they see a domed city of skyscrapers.  Sometimes it is New York, and sometimes it isn’t.  Robert points out there are many tire tracks leading to this point.  It is the only place this miracle can be seen.

Despite being public land, Robert and Willy put themselves a sign out on the highway and charge people a buck to look at the miracle.  An old couple pulls up and is euphoric seeing exactly what they want to see.  Soon people are flocking down this dirt road to see the miracle.  They are seeing city skylines from New York to Rome to Paris to London.  A dweeb shows up, sees Xanadu, and thankfully begins quoting Taylor’s Kubla Khan rather than the John Travolta movie.

Robert has a reverence for the site and how the city is different for each person.  Willy is all about the Washingtons, excited at the prospect of “steak dinners and new shoes!”  Then the biker shows up.  Having observed the traffic all day, he went to the gummint and put in a claim to homestead the area.  But the biker can’t see the miracle.

From a hill, Robert and Willy watch the biker collecting the money from the gawkers.  Robert is glad they are out of it.  It was wrong to set up rules and charge people to watch.  They should have just put the money on the first church poor box they came to.  Soon, they see the people are demanding refunds and the biker bailing on the site.

The go back to the site, but the miracle has disappeared for them too.  However, a family drives up and takes in the site with great joy and reverence.  Soon Robert and Willy are re-redeemed and see it again also.

Not much going on here, but I kind of liked it — for RBT, that is a miracle of rare device.  I appreciated that the highway scenes were actually filmed on location.  Even Pat Harrington, who I usually find annoying, did a great job.

Post-Post:

  • This was inspired by a mirage Ray Bradbury saw as a child in the Southwest US, possibly a Fata Morgana.  He seems tight with details, just calling it a “miracle” as far as I can find.
  • Correction: Willy says they are 90 miles from Phoenix, so they are in Arizona.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Cream of the Jest (S2E24)

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Broadway actor Claude Rains stops by his favorite watering hole and orders a scotch.  He has been cut off due to his bar tab, and it literally becomes a watering hole as that is all they will serve him.  What he wants is an alcohole.

Being the kind of bar that has caricatures of actors on the wall, there just happens to be a copy of Variety on the floor.  Enjoying his water on the rocks, he sees that Wayne Campbell has a new play.  He goes to Campbell’s office, but Campbell is on the way to a cocktail party.  His secretary talks him into seeing Rains.  Being pre-ADA, Campbell tells him he is a drunk and he won’t hire him.

Rains says he feels that he is only his characters, there is nothing underneath and that’s why he drinks.  Rains says he will blackmail Campbell about the 3 years he spent in prison.  They were both from a bad area of Philly, and had made up more glamorous stories of their background when they got to the big city.  Campbell had stolen $5,000 as a bank teller long ago, but now is married to a high class society dame from a rich family that has probably stolen millions exploiting the working man; so Campbell’s small-time larceny would be humiliating to them.

Campbell gives Rains $20, and leaves him crying in his office.  Rains takes the $20 back to the bar and begins performing Macbeth for the bartender.  It should have been worth another sawbuck to get him to knock it off.  “Nobody writes like that anymore, Jerry,” he says.  Well that is understandable, it has been 350 years.  He laments the modern playwrights as Campbell enters the bar and overhears him.

They speak briefly and Rains passes out, this being back in the good old days when $20 could get it done.  Campbell takes him back to his office and puts him to sleep on his sofa.  Campbell is remorseful about how he treated Rains earlier that day and says it would be an honor to have Rains in his play.

The next morning, Campbell tells Rains there is big role open in the play, but Campbell says he is too soft, which is ironic since the role is of a blackmailer.  Rains tells him he can perform the role through make-up and acting.  He even does a cold-read to convince Campbell of his skills.

ahpcream02Campbell stops him mid-monologue and tells him he is great!  Campbell still needs to convince the backer, so he sends Rains over to see Nick Roper, a gangsta who has decided to dabble in culture.  Rains goes out to get a clean shirt and a shave, or maybe it was a clean shave and a shirt.  Back at Campbell’s office, the secretary is called away, so Rains types up the monologue himself to carry with him to the audition for the backer.

Going all method, Rains barges into Roper’s office and without proper introduction, begins the monologue which in which he identifies himself as Charlie Richtor.  He continues the monologue describing a crime with which Roper is obviously familiar.  Roper pulls a gun and kills Rains.

Roper’s goons hear the shot and rush in.  He tells them somehow “Richtor” knew “all about the Donovan job.”  Searching for how Rains knew of the crime, he finds the script in Rains’ pocket with Campbell’s name on the letterhead.  The episode ends abruptly with Roper saying, “Wayne Campbell.”  It is a strange place to end the story as you don’t know what the crime was, how Campbell was involved or what Roper will do next.

None of this really matters.  It is a good tale with a good — if ludicrous —  twist, and Claude Rains is always great.  I rate it a “Party on Wayne, party on Claude.”

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch: No survivors.  A couple of the actors have no expiration date on IMDb, but they have no birth date either.  A third actor has a birth date in 1892. He has no date of death, but it doesn’t look good.
  • AHP Proximity Alert:  Paul Picerni was in Number Twenty-Two just 2 episodes earlier.
  • The phrase “Cream of the Jest” is from a 1917 novel of that name by James Branch Cabell.  It was also used as the title of a 1962 episode of Have Gun Will Travel.
  • Story by Frederic Brown, who wrote the classic Arena on which the Gorn episode of Star Trek was extremely loosely based.

Night Gallery – Certain Shadows on the Wall (S1E3)

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nightgallery01It is impossible to see that title without thinking of the Statler Brothers song from Pulp Fiction.

Agnes Moorehead’s brother is reading to her from Charles Dicken’s Bleak House.  He and their two sisters all live in this house under the thumb of Agnes as she alone inherited their father’s fortune.  His patience is clearly running out as he has been at her beck and call for 25 years — most of it probably spent reading the 1,000 page Bleak House.

He gives her some pain pills.  She asks him to start reading Great Expectations to her.  At this point, no jury in the world would convict him.

Agnes’ brother is a doctor who has abandoned his failing practice.  After giving her the pills he goes downstairs for some standard Rod Serling padding-out-the-run-time dialogue.  He eventually gets to the point, which is that Agnes “has only a matter of days left.”  Demonstrating the diagnostic acumen that sent his practice into a tailspin, she croaks within 5 minutes.

Hearing a noise upstairs, her brother goes up to check on her and finds her dead.  He calls to make arrangements for the funeral as his sisters, or one of them anyway, get weepy.  They are startled to find that Agnes’ shadow has suddenly appeared on the wall.

ngcertain03The doctor is troubled by the shadow, and calls it a trick of refraction, maybe due to the way the furniture is positioned.

The funeral home calls and the doctor tells then the cause of death was acute dyspepsia — that’s the ticket — and uh, no need any verification on that, no siree Bob.

Wracked with guilt, he tries painting over the shadow, but to no avail — although the paint also does not even cover up the pattern on the wallpaper, so maybe it just isn’t very good paint.  And wouldn’t the solution be to strip the wallpaper, not to paint over it?

Sister #2 believes a cover-up is impossible, and she plainly states that she means covering up the murder also.

Sister #1 puts some of Agnes’s “meds” in the doctor’s tea to calm him down.  He dies just as he killed Agnes.  This whole process is a little too cutesy as far as who knows what.

The sisters don’t seem too upset at his death.  His shadow has joined Agnes’ so he will be reading Dickens to her for eternity.  Or until they redecorate.  “It is just like having them here,” says one sister.  Yeah, if there were silent, grey and two-dimensional before they died — well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

The shadow of Agnes really is very well done.  The silhouette painted on the wallpaper is great and the coloration is perfect for a shadow.  When they reveal the brother’s shadow, it is obviously a real shadow; clearly they did not want to pay the artist to come back a second day.  There was no attempt to match the colors, and as they pan to show the two shadows, the brother’s shadow is even moving for the first few frames.  Very cheesy.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Agnes Moorehead was in the classic The Invaders.
  • Directed by Jeff Corey who was in The Dead Man.
  • Whereas the other tale in this episode, The House, reused the interior from Roddy McDowell’s house in The Cemetery, this episode reuses the exterior of that same house.
  • And minor point, but is it too much to ask that shows be in the same order as they aired or appear on the cover?  20 Horror Movies for $5, Night Gallery and Ray Bradbury Theater all fail on this most fundamental level.
  • RBT is especially a challenge as the episodes are in somewhat random order, and not listed on the box or the disks.  When I say watching that show is a chore, I mean it literally.

Night Gallery – The House (S1E3)

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Another non-original from shirkoholic Rod Serling.  Purposely ambiguous, but maybe a little too squishy for its own good.

Elaine Latimer is describing a recurring dream where she is driving, and with a sense of calm, arrives at the titular house.  She gets out of her car in slo-mo, clothes billowing dreamily behind her and knocks on the door.  She has no idea what she would say if anyone answers.  No one comes to the door, so she returns to her car and drives away.  Only then does the doorknob turn and the door open.  Which is a little strange because this is her dream, but she is not in it at this point.

It is revealed that she is telling this to a psychiatrist.  She will be leaving the sanitarium tomorrow, having been cured, or her insurance having run out.

As she is driving away from the sanitarium, apparently aimlessly, she finds herself recognizing sights from her dream — the road, a pond, and finally the house.  The house is for sale and the realtor happens to be standing in the yard.  They go inside and shockingly do not have sex (note to self, ease up on the porn).  She does not require  a tour; she knows the layout and the contents of the house from her dream.

Turns out the house is a steal because it is haunted.  Maybe it is haunted by the ghosts of Roddy McDowell and Ozzie Davis as this is the house where they died in The Cemetery:

This is where it gets weird.  She has moved into the house, and is taking a nap during the day.  We cut to her recurring dream as she pulls up to the house in her billowy orange outfit.  In the dream, she again knocks on the door.  But the knock wakes her up and she goes downstairs only in time to hear a car pulling away.  OK, like it, very TZ.

She calls her psychiatrist.  While on the phone, she again hears a knock.  Apparently the phone is tethered to the wall with some sort of cord.  What is this the 70’s?  Oh yeah.  She tells the doc to hang on and runs downstairs.  She opens the door and gasps, but we don’t see at what.

She goes back to the doc on the phone and says she just saw the ghost.  “I am the ghost, doctor,” she says as the camera cuts to her in orange in the driveway again.  We hear the car pulling away as she says goodby to him.

nghouse06She naps again — maybe she was in the sanitarium for narcolepsy — and we see the woman in orange approach then house again.  She gets out of the car, and gives the standard single knock on the door.  Elaine awakens at the knock, laments not having a bedroom on the first floor, and runs downstairs again. She is just in time to see the car pulling away and runs after it in full billow.

This would be fine, but she was face-to-face with her doppelganger earlier during the interrupted phone call, so there is no mystery who/what is doing the knocking.  That would have been the time for confrontation.  So, are we to believe this cycle will go on forever?  There is really no torment now that she knows the identity — other than lost sleep, and this only seems to happen during daytime naps to correspond to the sunny day in the dream.  Will the ghost never allow a face-to-face meeting again?  Then why that one time?  Even ambiguity needs to be bottled to make sense.  It just felt like a piece was missing.

Or maybe there was an extra piece, as it would have made more sense if she had never seen the “ghost” (or maybe just from a window, seeing the car pull away).

There are a few other actors, but the episode is really carried by Joanna Pettet. Strangely, I didn’t find her all that attractive even though I see a lot of praise for her online.  But I will say this: she wears the hell out of those 70’s billowy clothes.  Just the scenes of her walking and running in slow-mo in those outfits are worth the price of admission.

Good stuff.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  None.
  • Directed by Gomez Addams.
  • The episode was devoid of humor, and didn’t need it.  But I wonder if this was an intentional joke they slipped in or a faux pas:

nghouse04