Monthly Archives: April 2015

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Martian (S5E8)

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rbtmartian02Phobos and Deimos — so far so good.  Bradbury might give Mars earth-like gravity, blue skies, and breathable air, but he did at least keep the 2nd moon.  I suspect they would never be in that configuration in the sky, but why quibble.

Down on the Martian surface, LaFarge and his wife Anna are having a restless night, both dreaming about their dead son.

Anna says, “We should have brought him with us.”  Her husband quite reasonably says, “Anna, he’s been dead 5 years.  What would be the use?”  Hers sounds like a crazy comment, but she misses driving to his grave on Sunday and talking to him.  Although I think he is just as likely to hear her on Mars as on Earth no matter what your belief system.

A strange ball of light appears the next night and a disembodied voices says, “Let me go. You caught me.  Let me go.”  LaFarge opens the door and it is his dead son Tom.  He beelines for his mother’s bedroom quicker than Buster Bluth.

rbtmartian04The next morning, LaFarge awakes to hear his wife and dead son having breakfast.  Anna is treating Tom as her real son, but LaFarge is suspicious.  He has heard that the few remaining indigenous Martians can read minds and imitate relatives, which is why we killed the Indians.

The three of them go to an outdoor bazaar that night.  Tom gets separated from his parents.  When LaFarge looks for him, he sees a girl reuniting with her parents — clearly Tom has taken a new form.  All over the Martian town, people are seeing their dead relatives.

LaFarge finds the girl and convinces her to turn back into Tom.  There are so many people around with so many memories of dead friends that he can’t maintain his form as Tom. He turns into several different people, and is finally seen in the act of changing.  Finally he is overwhelmed by the crowds and vanishes completely.

rbtmartian05Not a great ending to the season.  Although it is great that the season had only 8 episodes.

Post-Post:

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Motive (S3E17)

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ahpmotive11Richard and Sandra are lounging around Tommy Greer’s hotel room (?), already extremely drunk.

Sandra discovers Tommy’s hobby — a poster board where he tracks every murder for the year, whether it was solved and whether there was a motive.  He points out to Sandra how the line for motiveless murders runs parallel to the line for unsolved murders.  Yeah, well, all of the lines are parallel, dumb-ass.  Did no one on the set understand basic geometry?

And not to get too nit-picky, but this is equally basic — it appears that ~240 solved murders + ~280 unsolved murders  = ~475 total murders.

Sandra says it’s ten to seven, so she’s got to go.  For the viewer, Sandra is there only for exposition; of the chart and her gams.  But why is she there for Richard and Tommy? Is it 7 AM or PM?  It’s a little early for being that drunk and still drinking at either hour. When she leaves, she kisses both men on the lips, and calls Tommy “Mr. Greer.”

Several reviewers compare this to Hitchcock’s Rope, but it is really more related to Strangers on a Train.  Tommy expounds his theory that a motiveless crime has a 100 to 1 shot of being solved.  Not to turn this into Mathterpiece Theater, but if that is true, the solved line should be much shorter.  Richard says he only got Tommy started on this hobby to take his mind off of his ex-wife Marion.

ahpmotive12Turns out Marion was Richard’s girl, then dumped him for Tommy.  Now she has divorced Tommy, and Richard wants him to get over it. Richard challenges Tommy to commit a motiveless murder and see if he can get away with it.

Shortly thereafter, the two men take an elevator to the lobby which confirms that this is a hotel, not an apartment, and that it is 7 PM. Tommy’s place really looked more like an apartment, but there is a newstand and bar in the lobby.  So are they on a business trip?  And why are they so drunk at 7 PM?

Richard pulls out a Chicago phone book, closes his eyes and — I can’t stress this enough — opens it randomly, and blindly lands his finger on one Jerome Stanton of Chicago as the proposed victim.  Tommy tears the page out of the phonebook — which is not what you want in your possession when trying to commit the perfect crime.

ahpmotive14

Well, he is going to take a poll! Heyoooooo!

Tommy flies to Chicago and calls the Stanton home, but only the maid is home.  She says Mr. Stanton will be home the next evening for the fights, as were all men in the 1950s. The next night, he goes to see Stanton under the guise of taking a poll. Tommy goes through an extensive ruse rather than just killing him outright.

Eventually, however, Tommy talks Stanton into a vulnerable position and pounds him in the head with a hammer.

Back in New York (or, I believe it was an unspecified city 1,000 miles from Chicago), he is eating breakfast and reading the paper.  He sees that Jerome Stanton of Chicago was murdered — because local papers cover every murder in the nation.  C’mon, today it wouldn’t even be covered in Chicago.  He is shocked as he reads it was Jerome Stanton that his ex-wife Marion had left him for, and married. Richard, who had also been jilted by Marion, set Tommy up to kill Stanton and clear his path back to Marion.  Asked by the police for any possible suspects, Marion had named Tommy.

Tommy attacks Richard just as the cops show up.

ahpmotive16

World’s worst proctologist.

This is such a good episode that I’m willing to accept that Richard had somehow bent or marked the page in the phone book to open up to, and had memorized the spot so that he could literally finger Stanton’s name with his eyes covered.

Also that it was just pure luck that Marion didn’t answer the phone when Tommy called, and that she was not home when he went to see Stanton, and that Stanton never mentioned her name, and that there were no wedding pictures around.

I better stop before I talk myself out of the fact that this was a great episode.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Skip Homeier is still alive, but retired from acting at 50.  Tharon Crigler is also hanging on.  Strange career — 6 roles in 1958, nothing before or after.  Gary Clarke is still alive and working despite a 16-year gap 1996-2012 per IMDb.
  • Did Richard smack Sandra on the ass at about 2:15?  Pretty racy stuff for 1958.
  • Not that this was a classic, but Googling Mathterpiece Theater further confirms my theory that it is almost impossible to come up with anything that is original.  It’s like trying to get Joe as a Google login ID.

Night Gallery – Rare Objects (S3E4)

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August Kolodney (Mickey Rooney) is shoveling it back as the only customer in an Italian restaurant. He’s the kind of guy who snaps his fingers at the waiter.  Later, he verbally snaps at the waiter, sensing that the waiter has set him up for a hit.

Sure enough, two of the worst hit-men in the world come storming through the doors.  Rooney takes one in the shoulder, but manages to get away out the front door as the goons do not chase him.

He goes to see his moll, the appropriately named Molly Mitchell. She had declined Augie’s invitation that night, assuring he would be alone at the restaurant.  He tells her to beat it, and throws her out of the house he puts her up in.

The mob dngrareobjects13octor is able to stitch him up, but tells him he was lucky the bullet that wasn’t an inch to the left or right.  He also proscribes that Augie retire to help his blood pressure, “stop drinking like a fish and eating like a hippo.”  Augie does want out. His big plan is to “someday get a razor and they’ll need a bucket brigade to clean up the mess.” C’mon, it’s Mickey Rooney, 5 or 6 Solo Cups will do. The doctor gives him an address of Dr. Glendon who can keep him alive, but at a steep price.

Rooney arrives at one of Night Gallery’s frequently used sets, and meets Dr. Glendon. Rooney lets him know he doesn’t like the doctor’s rules, not being able to tell anyone he was coming here, and having to come alone.  He calls Augie a racketeer just to be clear.  He promises Augie a long comfortable life, “free of fear, devoid of worry, absolutely without fear or tension of any kind.”  All he has to do is give Glendon everything he owns.

ngrareobjects14Rooney protests that he is just a lowly hood, but Glendon knows better and tells him that he is the best in his field.  He reads off a list of the times that Rooney has almost been hit.  Rooney says he doesn’t “want to hear a list of how many times I’ve been fingered” for which I can’t blame him.  Once a year at my annual check-up is plenty for me.

Glendon drugs his wine and promises to give him the fountain youth.  He leads Augie down a short hall and shows his collection.  First is Anastasia, missing daughter of Czar Nicholas (71).  She is behind bars but seems content in a living room setting doing needlepoint.  In the next cell is Judge Crater (83),  Beside him is Adolph Hitler (83), paging restlessly around his office setting.  And Amelia Airhart (75) who seems to be charting a route at her desk.  None of the group acknowledges Rooney or their captor.  It is also interesting how young, or at least plausibly alive, these historic figures were at the time.

ngrareobjects15The last cell is, of course open and reserved for Rooney.  As he is locked in, Glendon assures him he will live a very long time.

So what’s the point?  At first I assumed the orange hallway of cells was going to represent Hell, and Glendon the Devil — I’m a sucker for a good Devil or purgatory story.  But Hitler seems to be the only resident that would belong there.

Frankly, I’m not much of a Mickey Rooney fan and he seems terrible here.  That and the ambiguity of the captivity make this a fairly dull outing.  OK, it isn’t Hell.  But why aren’t any of the prisoners acknowledging them?  Why do most seem content?  Is Airhart really thinking she is going to take another flight?  Do they remain drugged forever? Only Crater and Hitler seem perturbed at their captivity.

ngrareobjects16Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Mickey Rooney had a good, if talky, role in The Last Night of a Jockey.  David Fresco had a slightly lesser role as “Man” in The Gift.
  • Roald Amundson is also a captive. At 100, he would have been the oldest. It still amazes me that Hitler could have easily been alive when this aired.

Tales From the Crypt – Beauty Rest (S4E5)

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tftcbeautyrest01Mimi Rogers is auditioning for a commercial. The camera starts on the nape of her neck, and she says, “What’s your favorite part of a woman, the nape of the neck?”  The camera pans across her back and she says, “The line of her back?”  Then she says, “or the shape of her breasts?”  I though we had established a rhythm here; the cameraman really lets us down on that last one.

She is advertising a perfume called Ballbuster.  It’s not for just any woman, it’s for the woman who means business.

The director is effusive in his praise.  As far as he is concerned, she has a job — tftcbeautyrest02cut to Mimi saying, “What do you mean I didn’t get the job?” to her agent.  Mimi is worried that she has been at this for 10 years and hasn’t gotten a break.  Worse, she finds out that her young beautiful roommate (Kathy Ireland) got the part.

Really, the rest is kind of a snooze.

Some reviews say the episode is saved by a twist ending, but it is really tftcbeautyrest03kind of stupid.  The Pageant for Miss Autopsy is asinine — you have to have some basis in reality to be effective.  And the special effects on Mimi Rogers are ludicrous, not remotely resembling an autopsy incision.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  Non-Sequitur.
  • Even the cover art is terrible — no one is hanged in this episode.
  • Complete waste of Mimi Rogers, Buck Henry and Kathy Ireland.

Outer Limits – The Sentence (S2E22)

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olsentence16It’s 19 days left on this blog, I need 3 episodes of Outer Limits, there’s 1 episode left on the DVD, it’s dark and I’m wearing sunglasses.  God, I hope I can squeeze them out of the free Hulu trial period.

Niles Crane has invented a device which will be “the future of our penal system.”  Fittingly, he tests it out on a Senator in the pre-credit scene.

He also has a real criminal, well a 2nd real criminal, who has been hooked up to the new machine for only a few hours, but in his mind, he has experienced the passage of 25 years of his life sentence.  Soon, the prisoner is awakened and is disoriented.  As usual, an “emotive outburst” occurs after waking when the crook discovers he has a second chance at life.  He is still young and vigorous enough to continue raping and murdering innocent people.

They bring in another prisoner, Cory.  Because he was truly innocent, the machine induces seizures in him.  Niles goes into the virtual prison to rescue him.  Despite his effort, Cory dies.  Niles is sentenced to manslaughter.

olsentence17At his trial, a previous test subject claims that he now has trouble at work and can’t sleep.  Niles’ lawyer asks if it isn’t true that without Niles’ procedure, he would be in jail!  He says he would rather be dead.  So Niles really did Cory favor; you know, except for the part about being innocent.

The senators can’t wait to call a press conference to denounce this new invention.  After all, while it might save billions of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of lives, it would also eliminate the opportunity for millions in graft, bribes, union jobs, earmarks, and no-bid contracts for relatives in the military-industrial-incarceration complex.

Niles is hustled off to a real jail, the kind Harry Reid or Hillary Clinton will never see the inside of.  He enters cell 14653 and is immediately set upon by his cellmate.  “I hear you like to torture cons,” he screams in between kicks.

Dana finally comes to see Niles in prison, and tells him his appeal has been rejected. Not only that, she married one of the scumbag Senators.  He attempts an escape, but is stymied by an electrified floor that is far too efficient and amusing to use in real prisons.  He serves out his full sentence.

olsentence18Then wakes up in his lab, having only been in the chair a few hours.

Once in the virtual prison, he rescued Cory, but was unable to get out in time so his trial and incarceration were not real.  Hearing that his device will be rolled out nationally, he flips out and has to be hauled away screaming.

Post-Post:

  • Canadian DVD Title: La Condamnation, which I like better than the English version.
  • Niles is directed to cell 16453, and that is the number on his shirt.   He is identified later as prisoner 63994 which I would expect to be on his shirt.
  • Why would season 2 cost $17 and season 3 cost $35?  The 3rd season even had 4 fewer episodes.  Might have to hold my breath and get Hulu.
  • Hulu sucks.