Monthly Archives: July 2017

The Hitchhiker – Secret Ingredient (05/05/87)

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Chris Taylor is the 1980s:  Yellow polo shirt that might as well have no buttons . . . collar turned up . . . worn under a suit jacket . . . padded shoulders . . . sleeves pushed up his arms.  I guess it is presentism to judge people in the past.  Hey, Shakespeare, what’s up with that air filter around your neck? [1]

Chris is pitching miracle supplement Fit Forever in what appears to be an infomercial, with the exaggerated speech and practiced awful jokes.  When the camera pulls back to reveal he is working this hard in a junky living room for a single uninterested housewife who is ironing, it is a pretty good gag and bodes well for the episode.

Maybe my optimism was premature.  This episode suffers the same lack of coherence as A Whole New You by the same writer.  He meets up with old girlfriend Cheryl in a restaurant.  He got her into the Fit Forever biz.  She has done so well, that she has been promoted, “I am no longer your distributor.  I’m your competitor.”  Wait, Chris doesn’t own the company, he seems to be selling door-to-door — how is that above a distributor?

She says, “I found something inside me that really makes a difference.  I’m stronger now.”  Well, great, you go girl!  The problem is that she mocks him for never having used the product, “not one day in your life”.  This is exactly the opposite of where the scene should go.  Given what comes later, it should have been made clear that Cheryl had never used the product so that we clearly understood later where her new strength really came from.  To  muddy things even more, Chris says “I put you on Fit Forever.”  He clearly means that she used it, but her response is immediately about her financial success so it is not clear whether he put her on it as a user, or put her on it as a career.

The shot so nice they used it twice

When Cheryl goes to answer a phone, Chris takes a look through her sales receipts to poach some customers.  I still don’t understand where they are.  It is clearly a restaurant — there is a cash register, glasses hanging from a rack above, liquor bottles.  It is morning and they are standing behind the bar, so clearly they have some connection to it, but what?  She takes a call — does she work there part-time?  I thought she was doing so well financially.  Why is he there?  In my A Whole New You post, I questioned whether anyone on the set spoke English.  That episode was set in France; I don’t know what the excuse is here.

Chris goes to an old folks homes to talk to one of Cheryl’s leads, wisely making it his first stop because their clocks are ticking.  The old woman says she is no salesman, but Chris says they have a built-in market with the residents.  He says they will all want it for the secret ingredient that makes them feel young again.  All for the low, low price of $5,000 — hey this is starting to sound like Aqua Vita.  While the old woman is writing the check, he sees a beautiful young woman; at least relatively i an old folks home.

She looks even more relatively lovely when she leaves in her hideous orange Volkswagen Thing.  Again, I question the choices.  She is supposed to be an attractive, elegant woman.  Why do they have her driving this German POS (piece of Scheiss)?  He follows her home, as guys do.  When she carries a bundle of neatly-cut store bought wood into her house, he steals mail from her mailbox, as guys do.  He finds a letter addressed to:

Belinda Hascombe

1020 Faygate Lane

Washington

857112

My first though was, they don’t have cities in Washington?  Then I gave them the benefit of the doubt and thought, maybe it is Washington DC (and they forgot the DC, which I could totally believe from this bunch).  I figured the Zip Code would confirm that, but the Zip has a Twilight Zonish 6 digits.  Then I’m thinking, maybe this is supposed to be Canada — who knows what kind of crazy Zip Codes they use up there — but no, there is an American flag on the stamp.  And I wouldn’t say Faygate too quickly, either.  Just amazing.

He does not hesitate to walk right into her house, as guys do.  She is laying wood out by the hot tub, which he coincidentally hopes to do later himself — heyyoooo!  He tries to sell her Fit Forever and its titular special ingredient.  Belinda spots him as a Leo because he such a good salesman.  He tells her she is “an awesome chick” and would make a great Fit Forever distributor.  And believing in astrology, she’s used to peddling horseshit.  Fortuitously, she is having a party that night and can scam all her friends.  Chris opens his briefcase and his sales book is gone.

He panics and drives back to the Sunset Care Home.  He finds Cheryl there holding his book.  She has already copied it and makes a quip about his female distributors that I couldn’t understand even after multiple replays.  I’m sure it was great, though.

I’m not a fan of emojis, LOLs, etc but I did have to LOL at this.  When Chris pulls out of Sunset Care Home, we can see Belinda’s distinctive orange VW Thing ahead of him on the road — remember, Belinda is now back at her house.  They re-used the same piece of film (picture above).  I’m no director, but how long could it have taken to set up a second shot?  Or to edit around the car?  Or to use a more nondescript blue/brown/gray Oldsmobuick [2] that I would not have even noticed?  Or to not compound the problem by having 2 identifiable pedestrians prominently in the shots?  Or to use 2 cameras simultaneously shooting at different angles?  Or to not pan past the orange car, then swing back to actually catch it a second time for a few frames?

Back at casa de Belinda, she comes out of the house and gets into her car which — what the heck? — now has the convertible top down.  Ach du Lieber!  Chris pulls up as she is leaving.  She says she’ll be right back and is fine with the stranger waiting alone in her house with her bank statements, jewelry, and underwear.  I guess she never locks her house since he goes right back in.

Oh, he isn’t alone.  Belinda’s friend Elizabeth is there — her punky, slutty, gothy friend Elizabeth.  Maybe I’m just looking for trouble now, but that is some lame-ass character-naming there.  At least Esther Nairn was played for a joke.  She downs a glass of Fit Forever.  Despite Chris touting the secret ingredient, she says “something is missing” and pours the rest down the drain.

He asks her how many friends are coming to the party.  She says 10 or eleven.  I’ll be charitable and assume she isn’t including herself and Belinda in that count — that would get them the requisite 13 for a coven.  But why would she have even suggested 10, which would only get them to 12 women?  Surely the writer knew a coven needs 13 witches.  Right?  Right?  She says she just hopes there is enough of him to go around which is a pretty good line.  He asks her sign and she says, “Over 1 Billion Served.” What, did some else write the 2nd half of this episode?  Like a writer?

That night at the party, the music is playing, wine is flowing, and Chris is the only man there.  He sees Elizabeth slip into the hot tub naked and joins her.  She grabs a can of Fit Forever and dumps in into the bubbling water.  Belinda and her guests — including Cheryl — now all dressed in white, circle the hot tub.  They chant, “We banish you.”

Belinda says, “Better luck next lifetime” and Cheryl clubs him in the head.  This sequence is pointlessly repeated — literally the same footage — two more times.  The screen goes red and returns to show Chris floating lifelessly in the water surrounded by the witches.

The titular Hitchhiker seems a little more interactive this episode.  A Fit Forever can rolls down the road and he stops it with his foot.  Now just WTF did that can come from?  He closes, “Chris promised a secret ingredient.  He gave up everything to deliver the goods.”  And tosses the can away.  They should call this The Litterer.

I have to constantly compare this to A Whole New You because they are from the same writer and have some of the same problems.  This episode, however, is far superior.  It does not star Elliott Gould, which is a good start to any production.  Dean Paul Martin does a great job as the unctuous salesman.  He is even able to sell some gags appropriated from Steve Martin.  I totally bought it as awkward humor from his character rather than laziness from the writer — and that is almost never successfully done on-screen.  Candy Clark as Cheryl elevates the episode with her 1980s perkiness.

Most of the problems above are just sloppiness [3], not show killers.  They just compounded the problem that this is a pretty straightforward story:

  • Chris was not a great guy, but did he deserve to be killed?
  • Was he just a random dude that they needed for a sacrifice?  I would guess not since Cheryl set him up to meet Belinda at the old folks home.
  • Why didn’t the old woman buy the $5,000 of product from Cheryl?  They seemed very friendly.
  • Was she in on the set-up?  If so, then why didn’t they show her wearing the ankh symbol that the other women wore?
  • What did Elizabeth mean when she said something was missing from the drink?  It feels like that was meant to be significant.
  • Why did Elizabeth pour the Fit Forever into the hot tub?  Actually, bathing in one of these miracle cures rather than drinking it seems seems like a concept that could have set up a much better episode.
  • And what is this freakin’ special ingredient that is so special that they mention it repeatedly and named the episode after it?  Nothing is done with it.  Nothing.  It does not even rise to the level of a McGuffin.  It is a goose-egg.  It is an egg McGuffin.
  • Maybe if the coven had started selling New & Improved Fit Forever with a special ingredient, they would have had something.  Oh yeah, spoiler alert for the 1973 Soylent Green.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] I originally made a note about George Washington’s wig, but turns out it wasn’t a wig.  What a yankee doodle dandy.
  • [2] A shout-out to Fletch which co-starred Dana Wheeler-Nicholson (Belinda).
  • [3] The sloppiness is surprising since the director went on to great shows like Fargo and Breaking Bad.
  • The episode did not air as scheduled due to Dean Paul Martin’s recent death in a jet crash.  An HBO spokesman said “on review, some of the lines were in poor taste” so it was replaced by The Legendary Billy B.  You know, the episode about the dead 1960s rock star . . . which Martin was in the 1960s.  It’s not logic, it’s HBO.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Anniversary Gift (11/01/59)

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Hermie Jenkins tells a caged toucan, “Shut your stupid beak.  A dog gets house-broken in 3 months.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”  Well, what could the bird have possibly done wrong?  He sits on a perch in a cage and shits.  There’s not a lot of room for error.

Hermie takes care of his wife Myra’s menagerie.  She has cages of birds, monkeys, raccoons, etc and bowls of fish around the house.  Hermie is also kept on a pretty short leash as Myra gives him a shopping list for the animals’ food along with his $10 allowance.

Hermie’s neighbor George envies his “family” and 15 years of marriage.  His wife died 9 years earlier.  The homophobic transphobic fascist patriarchal h8er George says “a home ain’t a home without a woman.”  And speaking of transphoboic, WordPress better get their ass in gear and update their spellcheck dictionary unless they want trouble.

Given his own unhappy situation, Hermie comically just assumes George killed his wife (i.e. death by natural causes on AHP).  Turns out she died from pneumonia.  Strange this had never come up before — they live in Florida where “How did your [husband / wife] die?” is second only to “Hot enough for you?” in conversation starters.  George spent two years trying to get over his wife’s death.  He traveled to “Hawaii, Acapulco, Las Vegas, Monte Carlo” which sounds pretty good to Hermie. George laments, “Since she’s gone, my life is nothing but beer and fishing.”  Which also sounds pretty good.

After going to the store to buy brine shrimp, Hermie picks up Myra’s copy of Pet News.  He sees an ad for Hansel Eidelpfeiffer selling snakes by the seashore.  He drops the hint to Myra that “Snakes are the most affectionate pets in the world.  Everybody knows that.”  He tells her that snakes are great, just misunderstood.  He reminds her of “that act in Tampa you wouldn’t go see — the snake dance striptease?  That dame had ’em twining all around her.”  He convinces her she should get a little one and she says she could carry it around with her.

The next day, Hermie goes to see Hansel Eidelpfeiffer.  And if you’re going to have a Hansel Eidelpfeiffer, he should probably be played by Michael J. Pollard.  Hermie tells Hansel he is a professor working for “that Cape Canaveral thing”.  He says they need a poisonous snake for an experiment.  Hansel suggests a Coral Snake, very handsome with bands of black, red and yellow which might have been diversity overload for 1960s NASA.

He gives the snake to Myra as the titular anniversary gift.  From a safe distance, he tells her the snake loves to be used as a garter or a necklace.  Garter snake — ha, I just got that!  After unsuccessfully trying to make friends with the cold-blooded snake, she tosses it back to Hermie.  The snake bites him and he drops dead — literally just drops right of frame — in a classic death scene.

After the coroner arrives to collect Hermie’s body, now also cold-blooded, George finds the snake.  He and the coroner both identify it as a non-poisonous King Snake.

George assures the grieving Myra, “Hermie would never slip you a hot snake.”  No wonder she was such a shrew.  Heyoooooo!

Turns out Hermie had merely died of a heart attack, thinking Myra had just handed him a poison snake.

There is a lot to like here — several live animals, a real snake.  Barbara Baxley is entirely adequate as the controlling, emasculating, oblivious Myra.  I really did despise her, but I think it was more from the writing than the performance.  Hmmmm, maybe that means she played it just right.  She was childlike and pleasant, yet evoked those negative reactions. On second thought “well done!”

Harry Morgan, like The Wizard of Oz, is both great and terrible.  He wasn’t much of a nuanced actor. His stiffness worked for him in roles from Dragnet to MASH.  When he loosens up, it seems so against type, that it is pretty funny.  He milked a lot of good laughs out of this one.  On second thought, he was great too.

20 year old Michael J. Pollard was just magnificently odd as Eidelpfeiffer.  My only minor complaint is the handling of his character.  Both the coroner and George identified the snake as harmless, so I’m taking their word for it.  I just don’t see Eidelpfeiffer making that mistake. [1]

Great stuff.

More, More, More:

  • [1] For more background on the story and production, head over to bare*bonez e-zine.  Jack says Eidelpfeiffer took advantage of Hermie.  So I was wrong about that too.  Man, I suck at this.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  Michael J. Pollard is the sole surviving performer.  However, director Norman Lloyd will be 103 in November.  Or maybe I should say, he is currently 102.
  • The 35th wedding anniversary is Coral, but I guess Hermie couldn’t wait that long.
  • On two occasions, Hermie calls Hansel “Assenpfeffer.”  What the hell?  [UPDATE] After some research (mostly of the theme to Laverne & Shirley), I guess he was mocking Eidelpfeiffer’s moniker by calling him “hasenfeffer.”
  • It has stuck with me for years that Harry Morgan on MASH once referred to snakes as a poison ropes.  That’s pretty good.

Twilight Zone – The After Hours (10/18/86)

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Terry Farrell knocks on a door and a man won’t let her in.  That might be the single most unbelievable scene in this episode.

Marsha Cole begs the security guard to allow her into the Galleria Mall which is closing . . . just for the night, not permanently like most malls.  She begs him, and he lets her in because she looks like Terry Ferrell. A couple of creepy guys watch her walk to the elevator; also because she looks like Terry Farrell.  She goes to the toy store across from Athlete’s Foot.  The store is dark but suddenly lights up like every room she enters, because she looks like Terry Farrell.

A clerk appears and she asks for a Cornfield Kid doll.  While the clerk goes to get one, a boy scares Marsha with a toy spider.  She asks his mother how the boy knew her name.  Weird thing is, the boy never said her name.  I can’t see any story-related reason for her mistake, so I guess it is just an editing artifact.  The boy begs her, “Take me with you when you go!  Please!”  This also makes no sense if you know what’s coming.[1]

The clerk returns with the doll.  Marsha wants it as a gift for her landlord’s daughter.  When she moved in a month ago, the landlord waived the first month’s rent because she had no money and looked like Terry Farrell.  She says the girl’s birthday is Saturday, and the clerk asks why it was so important for her to get to the mall on Wednesday night.  She says she was at home reading and felt a sudden urge to go to the mall.  The clerk then asks her all kinds of questions about her past and her family, but Marsha has no answers.  As the clerk gets more persistent, Marsha freaks out and runs from the store.

She passes numerous closed stores, just like in any mall, except they will open again in the morning.  She goes back to the store she entered through, calm enough to remember where she parked.  She is able to muscle through the store’s mall doors, setting off an alarm.  She bumps into the security guard who let her in.  He falls to the ground and his mannequin head shatters.

Followed by the creepy guy, she runs through the store.  She finds her way to the offices.  There are some great scenes of disembodied mannequin heads and limbs that come to life.  Marsha is terrified as the heads begin chanting her name and the arms grab at her.  She runs away, knocking over a couple of naked mannequins in the hall. Unfortunately, they are the only ones who do not come to life.

Creepy guy is not very subtle when he yells, “We’re all mannequins!”  Marsha doesn’t believe him, but then one leg turns to plastic.  Creepy Guy and the clerk follow her as she limps away.  Creepy Guy tells her that she had her month to go out and experience the world like Rumspringa, now it is someone else’s turn.  Unfortunately, he does not explain this down by the Victoria’s Secret.  Piece by piece, she becomes more and more plastic just like a real actress mannequin.

This was, of course, previously a classic episode of the original series.  As with Shadow Play, neither is clearly superior, and both are good.  One nit-picky thing that bugs me about both versions is the treatment of the main character by the other mannequins.

  • Why did the security guard only grudgingly allow her into the mall?  She was expected, even required to return.  Sure, she later bashed his head in, but he had no way of knowing that would happen.
  • Why did the clerk spend so much time going through the motions of selling her the doll?
  • Why were they so menacing to Marsha instead of calmly explaining what was happening to her?  Margaret White was more sympathetic to Carrie’s body issues than this group.

Of course, all that is for dramatic effect.  When it works, all is forgiven, and it works here.  Good stuff.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] She is on the way back from her time in the real world, not just heading out. You could say he’s just a dumb kid, but he seems to know the routine.  Also, given the twist, he might be just as old as all the grown-ups.
  • Classic TZ Legacy:  Duh.
  • Skipped Segment 1:  Lost and Found.  Time-traveling tourists steal a girl’s pencil cup.
  • Skipped Segment 2:  The World Next Door.  George Wendt brings Norm Peterson’s energy and work ethic to a TZ episode.

The Cat-Woman – Erle Stanley Gardner (1927)

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Big Bill Ryan knows Ed Jenkins is flat broke. Ed is a crook.  Once his bankers found out, they quietly stole his money assuming he wouldn’t call the cops.  If it’s any consolation to him, they will be jumping out of windows in a couple of years.  I guess Ed wasn’t much of a crook; I don’t remember Don Corleone getting rolled like that.  Bill has a job for Ed and hands him a note.

Two hours after you get this message, meet me at apartment 624, Reedar Arms Apartments.  The door will be open — HMH.

Ed shows up at the address and finds a woman in a negligee despite the fact she knew a man would be there in 2 hours.  Oh, right — I get it.  The woman pulls out a $500 bill and hands it to the guy which is not the transaction I’m used to.  She follows it with 19 others as payment for the guy to do a simple job.  She wants him to steal a necklace, and to kidnap her niece.  She says, “Mr. Jenkins, once you have my niece, you can do anything with her that you want.  You must keep her for 2 days.  After that, you may let her go or keep her.”

He declines.  She counters that the necklace he would be stealing actually belongs to her.  Also, she is the legal guardian of the niece and gives him permission to kidnap her.  Not only that, she will let him meet the niece and she will agree to be kidnapped.  It is just a ruse to get the insurance money for the necklace.  I don’t get the role of the niece . . . although I could be talked into just about anything for $10,000 and a young woman to be named later.[1]  Somehow, Ed has the supernatural reputation of being able to get away with crimes even when caught, so the police aren’t an issue.  Ed agrees to take the gig.

She arose, slipped out of the negligee, and approached the suitcase.  From the suitcase, she took a tailored suit and slipped into it.

That’s it?  These stories might have a better pedigree than the ones in the Spicy Adventure Megapack, but they are a lot less fun.  This is especially maddening from Erle Stanley Gardner.  His books often had really c*ckteasing titles and covers, but the insides never delivered.

The woman drives them to a large house where she introduces Ed to her niece Ellery Queen Jean Ellery.  Jean has inherited the family subtlety and asks, “I understand you are going to kidnap me.  Are you a caveman or do you kidnap ’em gently?”  She says, “Life here is the bunk.”  She is happy to be kidnapped.

The woman explains this is the house of Arthur Holton and she is his personal secretary.  Tomorrow night, he is going to announce their engagement and give her the necklace.  At 9:30, she will pocket the original, let her niece test-drive a fake, and an assistant will grab Jean, tie her up and stow her in the trunk of a car that will be left for Ed.  To convince the insurance company this was a legit robbery, she suggests Ed arrive at the party, announce he was shafted by Holton in a business deal, and wave his gun around at the guests.  He will then escape to a seaside house the woman has rented for him where he and Jean will pose as a married couple.  And, oh yeah, he must not open the trunk until he reaches the cottage.  What the hell is this mysterious Clintonesque Get Out of Jail Free Card he possesses?

He worries about her double-crossing him and calling the cops although showing his face at the party, waiving a gun around, and kidnapping Jean might be enough to get their interest . . . you know, if not for the GOOJFC.  She agrees to write an affidavit explaining everything, have it notarized, and filed with a trust company.  We finally get her name — Hattie M. Hare.[2]  At the lawyer’s office, he catches the lawyer pocketing the signed confessions and handing the trust company an envelope of blank paper.  And here we go.

Of course, “the niece” was not the niece.  The real Jean never trusted her aunt and turns out to be cute, resourceful, and a graduate of stunt driving school.  Hattie grabs Jean and Ed goes Brian Mills on her.  He thinks back to “years I had been a lone wolf, had earned the name The Phantom Crook, one who could slip through the fingers of the police.  There had been a welcome vacation while I enjoyed immunity in California, but now all that had passed.”

Hattie gets away, but Ed saves Jean just as the police show up.  They are ready to haul him in, but everything is explained, showing him to be innocent.  Jean’s rich father vows to see Ed’s “name is cleared of every charge against you in every state, that you are a free man, that you are restored to citizenship.”  Well, it’s all well and good that her fat-cat father will bribe the judiciary in several states, but what had been keeping Ed out of jail all this time?

A pretty good one.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] The niece is 20, so that’s not as creepy as it seems.
  • [2] So much attention is devoted to cats — the title, Hattie’s cat-like eyes and movement, a leopard skin Davenport, a tiger rug, a painting of a cat — and Gardner names her after a rabbit?
  • First published in the February 1927 issue of Black Mask.
  • Also that month:  Buster Keaton’s The General is released.
  • The Kindle version repeatedly misspells Erle as Erie.

Ray Bradbury Theater – Marionettes, Inc. (05/21/85)

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Annoying preface:  

I started this blog because I spent $9 on a box set of this series, and bailed after one season. Determined to get my money’s worth, I needed something to force me to watch every remaining episode.  I started with the first episode I had not seen, Season 2’s The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl.  With the unexpected deletion of Science Fiction Theatre from You Tube for copyright and presumably humanitarian reasons, I have opted to complete the coverage of RBT. [1]

Annoying commentary:

John Braling (the insufferable James Coco) is trying to eat breakfast, but his pestering wife won’t shut the hell up.  Like one of those Alfred Hitchcock Presents wives, she just goes on and on (i.e. asks for it).  To be fair, all of her yapping is about making him a nice breakfast and getting him out the door dressed warmly for work.  Also like AHP, she tempts fate by asking, “What would you do without me?”

Surely you can’t be serious.

When Braling starts up his computer at work, it seems to have been hijacked by Marionettes, Inc.  Misc personal information scrolls up the screen.  He later picks up a newspaper [2] at the newsstand and there is a Marionettes, Inc business card attached.  At lunch, the waiter brings his bill and there is a Marionettes, Inc. card attached.  He demonstrates a 1985 laptop at a client’s office and the Marionettes Inc. logo comes up again with his personal information.  Most embarrassing: it states his favorite show is Wheel of Fortune.

He goes to a bar where he sees a friend and demonstrates the computer’s strange behavior.  He decides to pay a visit to Marionettes, Inc.  I’m not sure how he found the building since there was no address on the cards.  After wandering down numerous dark hallways, he enters a dark office that is sparsely decorated with only a desk, a couch and Leslie Nielsen.  What?  This is some major star-power compared to the later RBT episodes.

Nielsen asks Braling if he is happy.  He tells Braling he is “a sad man rushing to the edge of the cliff, toward his own destruction.”  He offers Baling a chance to be happy.  In another office, he shows Braling an exact duplicate of himself, amazingly even wearing the same tie.  Neilsen suggests the robot could stay home with Mrs. Braling while he did whatever he wanted to do.  And all this for the low, low price of every penny in his bank account.  Braling calls it madness and leaves.

However, in the next scene, he drags his friend Crane to his house where Braling also appears to be sitting on the couch with his wife.  Braling explains he is ecstatic with his new freedom.  He keeps the Marionette in the basement and switches places with it as needed.  He is having a grand old time “going to movies, bowling, all the things I’ve wanted to do.”

Crane suggests “wine, women and song”.  Braling admits he hadn’t thought about girls.  How exactly would the Marionette help him?  He’s still James Coco; and also now has no money.  Maybe he would have been better off investing in the 1985 Kelly LeBrock Marionette.

Crane is so impressed he decides to get a Marionette of himself.  Crane goes home and grabs his bank book — his balance is $0.00.  He puts his ear to his wife’s chest and hears a clanking robot heart.  When the B-plot is better than the main story, there is a problem.

Still watching through his living room window, Braling sees his Marionette give his wife a gift of some lingerie.  He sneaks into the basement, opens the Marionette’s box, and presses the remote which causes his double to come to the basement.  He asks, “What am I supposed to do now that you’ve got her all riled up?”  The Marionette goes on at length about what an ingrate Braling his.  His wife only wanted to make him happy.  So he stuffs Braling in the Marionette box and goes back upstairs to take Braling’s place.

This story was previously filmed as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. [3]  This episode is light years better than the later seasons of RBT.  It has more than one recognizable face, and shows some skill in the direction.  This is from the first season, before RBT fled the country like a celebrity on November 9th (oh, you’re still here?). It was directed by the ubiquitous Paul Lynch (Prom Night, Ray Bradbury Theater, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits).  Also, yesterday’s TZ.

However, it still is not as good as the AHP version.  Both versions suffer from having too much story for a 30 minute episode.  This version also suffers from having too much James Coco for a 30 minute episode.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] I will probably also circle around on Alfred Hitchcock Presents once I’m staring down the barrel of those hour-long episodes.
  • [1] Also, still haven’t gotten my $9 worth.
  • [2] The newspaper also blows the whistle on this being a Canadian production — the headline references the CBC.
  • [3] The character there had an extra I in his name — Brailing.  However, there was a non-I Braling in RBT’s The Coffin.