Twilight Zone – A Little Peace and Quiet (09/27/85)

tzpeaceandquiet06The second half of the debut episode benefits from a Thora Birch Bounce [1]   Also, despite not really being one of the Twilight Zone’s dreaded “humorous ” episodes, it has some good laughs in it.  Some are intentional, some are not, but all are good fun.

The problem with episodes that feature despicable characters or skin-crawling scenarios is that you are stuck with them.  Maybe the situations evolve; or, better yet, the characters experience agonizing deaths, but you still have to suffer through 30 minutes of them.  The chaos and shouting and shrill noises here could have been as unbearable as a Hillary Clinton stump speech.[2]  Luckily the goodwill of the humor and the lovely Melinda Dillon (Penny) save the episode from being the excruciating nightmare that it could have been.

The episode opens with everyone’s nemesis, the alarm clock blasting at the oddly specific time of 6:31.  One of their kids has turned it up to concert hall pitch.  Breakfast isn’t much better.  Although the bacon frying and coffee percolating aren’t too irritating, the blaring radio, phone, stove timer, an imbalanced washing machine, four kids, a husband and a dog ratchet up the anxiety.

tzpeaceandquiet32It is funny enough when her young son brings a snake into the kitchen.  It is awesome when his sisters react with a yawn — a major 180 from what you expect.  To top it off, he sneaks the snake onto the grill to fry with the bacon.  Just great stuff.  Bacon, I mean; but the snake bit was great too.

While doing a little gardening (to the tune of her neighbor’s chainsaw), Penny digs up a necklace with a watch on it.  That afternoon after a hectic trip to the grocery store, spilled milk, and an idiot husband, she clasps the watch and screams, “SHUT UP!”  To her shock and awe, there is immediate silence as everyone freezes.

This scene, which could have been a big nothing, manages to be charming and efficient.  Unlike The New Exhibit where still photos were used for some static shots, here the performers were just told to stay still — or in the dog’s case, just stay.  And yes, they actually used a live shot of the dog.  He moves slightly, but pulls it off better than the kids.  Their slight movements can’t help but make you smile, though.  They must have had a ball doing this.

tzpeaceandquiet35The efficiency comes in the editing of several quick bits by Penny to determine what caused this miracle, how to turn the world back on, the location of the necklace, etc.  The episode surprised me by having her husband actually notice that she changed positions as she switched them on and off.

The next morning, Penny uses the miraculous device to save lives and rob big evil banks to help the homeless.  No, wait, she uses it to have a quiet breakfast and bogart the last box of Choco-Poppers at the grocery store.  To be fair, as she is leaving the store, she puts a few filthy bills in the manager’s mouth.

In the parking lot, she sees a man who looks like he just came from the tennis court; or douche convention.  Penny hems and haws before girlishly touching his butt (which would be sexual assault if a guy did it).  But the real thing that caught my eye was this twerp as a one-man band of 1980’s horrors:  the men’s shorty-tennis-shorts, the sweater draped over the shoulders, the sunglasses on a rope around his neck.  If they had panned down, I predict a 50% chance of leg-warmers.

tzpeaceandquiet63That afternoon, she is visited by two attractive, earnest young people wishing to impart the wisdom of their 2 years since high school to her. They invite her to a debate about ridding the world of nuclear weapons.  All three agree that nukes are icky, but that isn’t enough for the two kids.  If Penny doesn’t go their debate, well she’s just a poopy-head. She kindly and non-violently gets rid of them in a scene well-performed by her (the guy is awful, though).

That night as Penny is luxuriating in a bubble bath, she hears a new annoying sound — an air raid siren.  Her husband calls her in to hear the news that Soviet missiles have just entered US air space.  She stops time and for some reason decides to take a stroll downtown in her robe.  It is an eerie site as she weaves her way around frozen people and stopped vehicles.  She sees several people who are looking at the sky.  Looking up, she sees a nuclear missile just a few hundred feet from vaporizing her town.

That is the last shot of the episode, but it is a great ending as it leaves you wondering what happens next.  What could happen next?

tzpeaceandquiet88Post-Post:

  • [1] Any movie or TV episode with Thora Birch starts out a winner with me.  Thora is not in this episode, but the same principle applies to Melinda Dillon.  Thora got there first so the phenomenon is named after her.
  • [2] For equal time, the next time I need a comparison for something childish or dumb as a post, I’ll reference Donald Trump.
  • Classic TZ Homage: A Kind of Stopwatch also had the ability to freeze the universe.  I knew this tag was going to get a workout.
  • At age 10, Judith Barsi (Bertie) and her mother were murdered by her father.  The previous year in Fatal Vision she had portrayed Kimberly MacDonald who was murdered along with her mother and sister by her father Jeffrey MacDonald.  Maybe.
  • The missile is framed over a theater showing the underrated Fail Safe and the overrated Dr. Strangelove — both based on the same book. [UPDATE] Correction in Comments.
  • Of course, the science is ludicrous.  The entire universe can’t just stop, the sun burns, atoms bounce around.  That’s fine — Stephen Hawking didn’t write the script.  He could have acted in half of it, though.
  • Melinda Dillon was born in Hope, Arkansas 7 years before Bill Clinton.
  • So, probably not.

Twilight Zone – Shatterday (09/27/85)

tzshatterday1It is a given that Bruce Willis is a movie star.  That star was pretty slow to rise, though. Breaking out in Moonlighting (1985) [1], it took quite a few tries for Willis to make it in the movies.

It took six years for him to finally make a movie (The Last Boy Scout) that both 1) I can remember seeing and 2) was not completely awful [2]. In fact, in the first nine years of his career, he starred in at least three movies that are still widely mocked as being among the biggest fiascoes of all time (Bonfire of the Vanities, Hudson Hawk, North).  If there had not been a couple of Die Hards in that time span, he would probably would never have been heard from again — America’s Paul Hogan.

His batting average improved beginning with Pulp Fiction (1994), but there was still notorious awfulness to come (Breakfast of Champions, Die Hard V and I will go out on a limb and predict VI also).

tzshatterday2All this is to say, this episode is a great concept largely sunk by Willis’s performance. Maybe he was still learning his craft.  He was still the wise-guy, fun-loving party-boy on Moonlighting, but this was a pretty somber role.  Maybe it was the 80’s style or lousy DVD transfer.  Maybe it was the thick hair — Willis didn’t really seem to take off until the hair started to go, which is an inspiration to me.

Peter Novins is sitting in a bar.  In pre-cellphone days, he asks the bartender to use the old black Ma-Bell-issue telephone.  He laughs at himself as he accidentally calls his own home number — to his shock, someone answers.  The man on the other end of the phone says that he is Peter Novins.  Willis simply is not believable as the Novins in the bar, but the Novins at home is a bigger mystery.  Homeboy is also mystified, but not as much as barfly.  He also seems more sedate.  Are we to infer these are his yin and yang like Kirk when he was split in half by the transporter, then evil-Kirk tried to split Yeoman Rand in half?

Novins leaves the bar and in this continuing salute to extinct communications technology, he goes into a phone booth. He again calls home and homeboy.  Barfly is beginning to unconvincingly panic while homeboy remains cool (and by cool, I mean emotionless and dull); he is still fairly non-plussed — minussed even — by this miraculous occurrence.  The duality is further illustrated by barfly’s shivering in the rain versus homeboy warm at home in front of a roaring fire and snuggling in his fabulous sweater.

tzshatterday5Barfly threatens to go home and throw homeboy out into the street. Homeboy remains calm and tells him that they can’t occupy the same space because physics.  So now homeboy somehow knows the “rules?”  Barfly suggests that they can both separately go about their lives, but homeboy berates barfly as not being able to live on his own. Barfly leaves the phone-booth to look for a telegraph.

Barfly warns homeboy that the first time he tries to leave his apartment, he will zip in and call dibs, reclaiming his life under the revered “possession is 9/10ths of the law” clause of the Constitution. [3]  Barfly goes to his bank to close out his account before homeboy spends it all on snazzy sweaters.

Barfly gets a hotel room and methodically burns bridges with the milk man, cleaners, The New York Times, and the grocery store to isolate his other self.  He scratches each off of a list he has prepared; although cancelling the Times might just be because he has his own alternate reality now and no longer needs theirs.  He calls homeboy.  Not only is he one of the first preppers, having laid in a supply of rations, he has exercised the nuclear option and invited their elderly mother to live with him.  Barfly gets increasingly manic.

tzshatterday4Barfly further devolves in the hotel room until he is visited by homeboy. Yada yada, barfly becomes trans — as in lucent until he fades completely, leaving behind his new and improved self to star in The Return of Bruno.[4]

Post-Post:

  • [1] One of the first will-they-or-won’t-they-consummate-their-relationship series.  It soon became a tired trope through series such as Cheers (Sam & Diane), Buffy (Buffy & Angel) and Bates Motel (Norman & uh, well, you know . . .).
  • [2] Although it was somewhat awful.  It’s one of those movies where you want to take a shower after watching it.
  • [3] Apparently that is about the only bloody thing people can’t now find in the Constitution.  But I digress.
  • [4] Return of Bruno actually seems to be fondly remembered by many reviewers, so maybe I was too quick to mock it.  Seriously, this is cringe-worthy, though.
  • Classic TZ Homage:  Similar to Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room where a twitchy loser argues with his more confident mirror image before the reflection becomes the real guy.  I have a feeling the Classic TZ Homage tag is going to be used a lot.

Queen of the Flaming Arrows – Frank E. Marks (1936)

sascoverLooking through his surveying scope, sinewy Bush Wyman spots a girl on a horse riding bareback — she is bareback, not the horse.

Something warm shoots past his ear.  This is not a Something About Mary moment; a flaming arrow has just missed his head, killed a nearby burro, and the streets ran red with salsa.[1] There is a message attached warning him to come neither further nor farther.  Strangely enough, the message is actually typewritten; apparently on asbestos.

Bush suspects a rival oil company is using this strategery to scare them off.  He grabs a machete and goes past the point where the new road has been cleared.  The machete has cut through the brush and also through the skull of a man who attacks him.  Bush identifies the man as one of them white Venezuelan Indians you always hear about.  Or am I supposed to call them Native South Americans?

Bush draws his revolver as the rest of his tribe appears.  He gets off a couple of shots but is captured.  He is taken to the largest bamboo shack in the village.  As he stands outside, a girl comes out onto the veranda “nude except for a girdle of dried twisted flowers and a necklace of fresher blossoms that sheltered her breasts.”  It is the same girl he saw on the horse.  “Her whole body was a symphony of breath-taking loveliness.

She invites Bush up and says, “So Mr. Wyman, you didn’t heed my message.”  This Indian with the blonde hair and blue eyes says her name is Marjorie Packard.  She was educated in America but came to live here because she was sick of the greed in civilization.  Now the oil companies are trying to destroy her new home here too.  When Bush lays a kiss on her, she has him locked up.[2]

Bush escapes, but turns back when he hears a scream. The tribal chief is telling Marjorie that Bush will be killed unless she becomes his wife.  Bush hears this and busts down the door.  The Chief mis-underestimates Bush and gets his behind handed to him.

As Bush prepares to inflict some shock and awe on the Chief, Marjorie implores him to let the Chief live and rule her people even though he didn’t win the popular vote — she wants to go back to the USA.  “Her breasts throbbed provocatively” as she asks Bush to take her back home.

Bush clasped her quivering body, pressed her tightly, felt her warm against him.  Her firm breasts mashed on his chest . . . She turned up her moist lips.  Bush Wyman’s mouth closed over hers.

Mission Accomplished, baby!

Post-Post:

  • [1] I could have sworn I’ve heard burro as a synonym for burrito.  Seems to be rare to non-existent, though.
  • [2] Yep, she went to an American university alright.
  • First published in September 1936.
  • Also that month:  Buddy Holly born.

Fear Itself – Skin and Bones (07/31/08)

On a nice little farm located somewhere in the fabulous matte paintings of the American west, Derek Edlund is saddling his horse to search for his missing father.  His uncle Rowdy tells him it is too dangerous what with the coming storm.  Before his uncle can take his place, Grady Edlund comes stag-gering onto the farm.

Rowdy calls an Indian they keep stored in an Airstream trailer for such occasions — the unfortunately-named Eddie Bear.[1]  The two men are able to get the skeletal Grady up to bed.  After ten days in the mountains, Grady is extremely emaciated, with not an ounce of fat or moisture in his body.  He has basically turned into Iggy Pop.

There are a lot a weird dynamics going on here.  Derek says his father bought the farm to give Rowdy a place to live.  The farm is operating at a loss every year.  And apparently Rowdy is having a life-long fling with his sister-in-law Elena.

As a Native American presented by Hollywood, Eddie Bear is of course the first to leap to a mystical explanation for Grady’s condition. He believes that Grady was possessed by a windigo.[2]

Grady tells Elena that his group got lost on the mountain.  They holed up in a cave.  Chuck And Billy went for help.  Grady and Jasper were so weak they stayed behind.  Yada yada, cannibalism.  Jasper wasn’t the only thing to enter Grady’s body, though — the windigo also occupied his cadaverous carcass.  As he seems about ready to chow down on Elena, Rowdy points a rifle at him. Grady begins howling and zipping about.  I must say it is pretty unnerving.

Eddie Bear approaches him with . . . what do you think?  A gun?  A knife?  A baseball bat?  No, he’s an Indian, so Hollywood has to put a tomahawk in his hands.  Oh, maybe the script calls it a hatchet, but we know what they were going for.  I’m surprised his mobile home is not a teepee in the back of a pick-up.  Anyhoo, Grady swats him down like a fly.

Rowdy gets Elena and the kids out to Eddie Bear’s trailer and leaves a gun with Derek to protect them.  As Rowdy leaves to confront Grady, he tells Elena, “If I don’t make it back, tell the kids the truth.”  Because after their father kills their uncle, finding out their uncle actually just killed their father will pep them right up as they cower in fear with their tramp mother, distraught in the fugue of their new-found bastardhood.

There’s not much plot here to get traction on, but it is an enjoyable ride.  The final act plays out about as grizzly and suspenseful as you can expect from network TV. Sadly, if this series did not survive, that just tells me there is no place for horror on broadcast television.

Another good outing.  But let’s raise a glass for poor Grady Edlund:  “well-appointed city-dweller”, his brother’s keeper, 15-year cuckold, possessed by a windigo 1,000 miles out of its jurisdiction, killed by his wife.

fiskinandbones2Post-Post:

  • [1] Mockable in two ways: the corporate Eddie Bauer, and the emasculating (T)eddie Bear.
  • [2] Of course, a Hollywood Indian is not expected to actually know any facts.  Like, say, that the windigo legend is local to the Great Lakes Region.
  • [3] Eddie Bear is always referred to as Eddie Bear which strikes me as a little racist.  It’s not like his name is Running Bear where the words go together.  Why not just call him Eddie, or Mr. Bear or Chief?  Well, I guess that last one isn’t better.
  • Larry Fessenden also wrote & directed Windigo in 2001.  This not where Eddie Bear got his information, as it takes place in upstate New York.
  • IMDb and YouTube.

 

Tales of Tomorrow – Time to Go (04/18/52)

tttimetogo03It’s 11:30, do you know where your sofa, chair and bookcase are?  If you are Natalie, they are piled up in front of the door.  She next goes for the phone.  It is connected to the wall by some sort of cord, though, so she instead uses it to make a call looking for her husband Michael.  Even without Caller ID, he is able to avoid her call.  Shortly thereafter, Natalie does get a call from Michael.  He got a room at a hotel after they had a fight.

Natalie seems crazy as she says that someone is coming to get her.  And that he said he was going to “close her account” which seems a little too metaphorical even if she is being threatened by a rogue CPA.

Michael foolishly asks her what happened, when did it start, triggering a flashback. Seems like just 2 weeks ago . . .

Natalie gets a letter from a new bank in the neighborhood seeking “prompt, reliable depositors.”  They have no cash to spare, but apparently in the 1950’s people personally followed up on every piece of junk-mail, so she visits the bank.[1]

tttimetogo05She meets the temporally-named Mr. Tickton, the bank president, who assures her there has been no mistake.  This is a different kind of bank.  Besides actually being solvent, it takes deposits of time rather than money. For example, one customer found a new route to work so was able to bank a few extra minutes every day.  Many other male depositors cut their foreplay time in half.  Kudos to Tickton for being honest with Natalie, telling her that the bank staff is not of this world.

Their world is a million light years away with a civilization much like our own . . . except they are able to travel a million light years.  Their society has begun to crumble and decay; so I am starting to see the resemblance.  Their society needs this extra time to rebuild.  After depositing a minute here and an hour there over the years, Natalie would receive back her saved time plus interest at the end of her life in order to be a more prolonged burden on her children. It could be years!

tttimetogo09Natalie gets fanatic about saving time — doing her housework more quickly, skipping lunch, avoiding friends, getting rid of Michael’s dog. Natalie’s efficiency and dog-napping are too much for Michael — he walks out on Natalie.  After Michael drives off, Mr. Tickton makes a house-call.

He has come with bad news.  The transference of time back to his people is not going fast enough. Cosmic pressure and nebula gasses have made drastic action necessary.  Natalie’s account is being closed, and the fine print of the agreement allows them to “borrow” all the time remaining in her life.  She will die at midnight, but get to keep the toaster for opening her account.

Tickton shows up punctually that night to collect Natalie’s time.  There is some ambiguity in the way she is killed, but it was appropriately set-up . . . just not worth detailing.

tttimetogo18Kind of a goofy premise, but the kind of high-concept nonsense I like in my 1950’s sci-fi.  Tickton was suitably creepy and the bank was pretty surreal. For a change, the lack of budget was perfect for the stark set design.

I rate it 20 out of 24 hour.

Post-Post:

  • [1] To be fair, junk mail in the 1950’s would not have required a trip to Nigeria to meet the Prince.
  • Natalie (Sylvia Sidney) played Mama Carlson on WKRP.
  • Mr. Tickton was portrayed by Robert H. Harris, last seen in The Safe Place.
  • IMDb
  • YouTube