Author Archives: don

Suspense – The Doors on the Thirteenth Floor (05/31/49)

Posted on by
1

We open on two dead women having lunch.  Well they’re dead now, not in the scene below.  Although the one on the left is iffy. [1]

Agatha asks Sally [5] (pop quiz, hotshot: which is which?) how work is going.  Sally says the hours are long, but it keeps her in New York.  She also mentions seeing a lot of George who lives in her building.

Well, hey, George drops by the table and greets his Aunt Agatha.  He says he is surprised Sally isn’t working.  She says, “The typewriter’s under the table” although I’ve never heard it called that.  George has brought a taxi to pick up his elderly aunt.  She has not finished her tea so tells him to have the taxi wait.  Sadly, he does not have enough cash.  Agatha gives Sally that knowing look.  They hear thunder, so Agatha decides to leave after all.  She gives Sally cash to pay the bill and asks her to drop by her apartment that night.

This is some swell apartment building with a doorman, a mailman, a bellhop, and an elevator operator.  Unfortunately, they are all one creepy guy named Andy.  He takes George, Agatha, and her neighbor Harry Crane [2] up to the 13th floor.  On the way, Harry complains that Agatha is playing her radio next door too loudly at night.  Although, because the show is Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, it is actually coming from across the alley. [6]   They get out on 13, but George asks Andy to wait because the elevator doesn’t have a meter like the taxi.  Agatha asks him to stay, but he says he has things to do.

After he leaves, she notices that a jade Buddha and some other items (a pyrite Joseph Smith and a rare Reese’s Jesus made out of chocolate and peanut butter) are missing.  The window is open.  She calls the cops, but a beefy hand covers her mouth.

Sally comes home.  She knocks on Agatha’s door, but gets no answer.  Harry comes out into the hall and tells her 1) it is too late to be knocking on doors, 2) her smelly cat sneaks into his window at night and wakes him up, and 3) he believes FDR is still alive and we never landed on Guam.

After she puts away the groceries, she decides to try Agatha’s door again.  She discovers her own door will not open.  She does not see what we see — an eye staring in through her peephole!  She tries to make a call, but the phone is dead.  Yikes!

She writes a note for the milkman that I-am-trapped-by-a-killer-please-for-the-love-of-God-let-me-out!, and also no more cheese because it makes the cat fart.  She slides it halfway under the door, but seconds later notices the paper has already been taken.  Through the peephole, she sees Andy leaving Agatha’s apartment.  Well wait, was he doing wind-sprints from Agatha’s door, to Sally’s door to grab the note, back to Agatha’s door, then fleeing Agatha’s door again?  She tries to get the attention of the Peeping Tom across the alley, but his wife busts him before she can get her blouse off.

Next, she ties a note to her cat’s collar and sends it out on the ledge to Harry’s window. [3]  A little later Harry knocks on her door, and she opens it right up. Hunh?  OK, maybe someone unlocked it from the outside, but she did not know that and she did not hesitate for a second to open it.  Anyhoo, he chews her out for letting the cat go in his window again.  She tries to explain about her door and seeing Andy, but he doesn’t care.

She tries the fire door to go drag George into this, but it won’t open.  She sees a paper on the floor.  But wait, this note is folded up like the one she attached to her cat, not flat like the one she shoved under the door.  How the heck would that have gotten there?  I guess Crane could have dropped it when he returned the cat, but why should this be worth dwelling on?  Even if it was the milkman note, so what?  She goes to Agatha’s apartment, but does not see her.  There is a single shoe beside the refrigerator. She opens the refrigerator door and screams in revulsion at some old cottage cheese, and the old woman’s body.  Oh, wait, that’s not cottage cheese.  Sally staggers to the phone and calls the police.

At the same time, Andy and George are dragging a large wicker basket from the elevator to Agatha’s door.  Andy says he killed Agatha because she came home early and caught him in her apartment, and that he fortuitously just got a great deal  on the basket at at Pier 1.  They open the door and drag the basket in — wait, if  Andy has a master key, why did he come in through the window for the heist?  And, hey, where is Sally?

Andy and George argue over how Agatha’s leg came to be sticking out of the door, and whether she might still be alive.  As they argue, there is a shockingly well-composed shot of Sally hiding in the living room.

The men begin pulling Agatha out of the refrigerator and the credits begin.  Well that didn’t resolve much.  The abrupt conclusion on Tubi is noted by reviewers at IMDb.  It just seemed egregious even for this series, so I searched for another copy of the episode at YouTube after finding nothing at Pornhub.  Sure enough, the last 2 minutes had the climax.  At YouTube, I mean, not Pornhub.

Sally tries to flee the apartment, but George catches her.  She distracts him, runs out into the hallway and locks Agatha’s door.  What kind of crazy apartment building is this where tenants can be locked in?  Where does this take place, Wuhan?  No wonder the cat is always trying to escape.  Naturally Harry comes out to complain about the noise and fluoride in the water.  He threatens to call the police, and Sally begs him to.

Of course, the episode is dreadful by today’s standards.  But is that really an excuse?  They had made some pretty good movies by this time.  Hitchcock had several suspense classics under his belt, but who could ever see them there? [4] All the pieces were there, but the low budget, live TV, poor picture quality, and intrusive organ music undermine the whole production.

Maybe it is better to judge these episodes on what they were attempting.  There were a couple of set pieces designed for the titular suspense here, so they did make an effort.  I guess what I’m trying to say is, what the hell happened to this country where we can’t count all the votes in 2 freakin’ weeks?

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Nell Harrison (Agatha) was born in 1880.  She might be the earliest-born actor I’ve encountered here yet.  18 years after this episode, in a stretch, she played “Old Woman” in The Producers.  Paging Oscar!
  • [2]  Harry is played by Russell Collins who I previously anointed as the greatest actor in history.  To be honest, he isn’t very good here, but it is one of his first roles.
  • [3]  In a quaint sign of live TV, she can’t make the note stay attached.  Luckily she releases the cat just outside her window so we can’t see her hands as she drops it.  Bravo!  However, she also releases it in the opposite direction of Harry’s apartment.
  • And how crazy do you have to be to use a cat for anything on live TV?
  • [4]  Blatant fat-shaming.  And isn’t the phrase fat-shaming just more fat-shaming?
  • [5]  Where are all the Sallys today?  Seems like a fine name, with attractive connotations.  Sally Ride was cool, Sally Field is still cute at 95.
  • [6]  If this doesn’t make sense, have a séance and ask your grandparents; or a dead nerd.

Tales of the Unexpected – Poison (03/29/80)

Posted on by
1

Roald Dahl’s intros don’t usually do much for me or the story.  However, this time it casts a spell over the whole episode.  He tells of the time as a young man that he looked out the window and saw a 6-foot black mamba snake behind the gardener — or as we call them today, the Mexican. er, landscaper.  He shouted to the man to turn around, but the hombre is bitten and DIES!  Hitchcock can deliver his droll intros about murder 1,000 times, but this short first-person anecdote stays with you throughout the episode.  Kudos!

And if that intro did not sufficiently make your skin crawl, the sitar music should do the trick.  I think that’s why George Harrison was perpetually haggard [1] — nausea at all that sitar music.

Harry Pope is a little haggard himself as he has been on the wagon for three weeks.  He is also feeling pressure from his boss.  Harry works in India training citizens there to speak English.  His boss in London orders him to hand over the training classes to Bengali teachers because of reports that some Indian immigrant’s kid in Podunk, KY came in 2nd in the Spelling Bee.

Harry sees this as an opportunity to get back to England so he can enjoy that delicious English cuisine.  And if you’re living in a place where the cuisine makes English food seem tasty by comparison, by God, I doff my chapeau to you sir.

He climbs into his bed which is enclosed in mosquito netting.  Sadly, it does nothing to keep out snakes.  As he is reading [3], we see a krait [2] slither into his bedroom.  He feels a warmth down below and sees the sheets begin to rise, and it’s not because his bedtime reading material is like mine.  He lifts the sheet and sees the snake sitting on his chest.  He is immobile and sweating profusely.  Harry, not the snake.

Hours later, for some reason, his British pal Timber brings a blonde dame back to Harry’s house.  In a low voice, Harry calls him into the bedroom.  He tells Timber and the girl that there is a krait on his stomach, under the sheet.  He implores his friend to call for help, and maybe another girl.  Timber calls Doctor Kunzru — hey there’s an actual Indian in India — that the woman knows.

The doctor has an antidote that might work, but they want a fallback position.  They decide to sprinkle some chloroform on the sheets to put the snake to sleep which sounds ridiculous, but I’m no Indian.  All the while, Harry is motionless and glistening.

The woman is afraid the doctor will recognize her even without her feet in stirrups and blab that she is cheating on her husband.  She sneaks out and takes the doctor’s car, which I guess was her only purpose in the episode.  BTW, what better way to not draw attention to yourself than to steal a dude’s car.

Timber and the doctor slowly pull back the sheets and they all see the snake is gone.  Timber somehow knows where the woman is going so he drives the doctor to get his car.

Harry goes to the kitchen, rather than Europe, which would have been my move.  He takes a bottle of Stoly out of the well-stocked liquor cabinet which all recovering alkies keep close by.  He reaches for a glass and the snake strikes, biting him and coiling around his arm.  He dies on the spot — the spot made by his own pool of urine, I imagine.

So we have a great synergistic intro and a great premise, but no real value is added beyond the suspense that is fundamentally baked into the premise.  There is no revenge, no come-uppance, no karma, no irony . . . he just gets bit in the kitchen instead of the bedroom.  Harry was not a bad guy, so what is the point?  The woman was cheating on her husband, maybe something could have been done with that.  Of course, it would be sexist not to point out that Timber was also guilty of adultery.  The doctor says to Timber in the car that he is not a “failed MD”.  What is that about?

Still, the premise was so great that I have to give it a thumbs-up!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  As observed by Norm McDonald.
  • [2]  Pronounced CRITE.  Who knew?
  • [3]  Late Call by Angus Wilson is displayed so prominently that it must be meaningful, but dang if I can figure out why.
  • I see that this is not the first adaptation.  Like Post Mortem few weeks ago, I somehow skipped the AHP version.  Cripes, it’s starting to look like I put no thought at all into this thing.  So that will be the next AHP entry.
  • Proximity Alert:  Anthony Steel appeared in Galloping Foxley just 2 episodes ago.  Give someone else a chance!
  • Kudos to Andrew Ray (Harry) who appeared to do some real snake-handling at the end.  Again, not like me with my bedtime reading material.

Science Fiction Theatre – The Magic Suitcase (01/25/57)

Posted on by
1

Ahh, Science Fiction Theater.  I haven’t heard that overwrought theme in months.  And with only 2 episodes left after tonight, soon it will just be a distant memory, like the time I had Shingles. [1]

Terry and his grandfather are heading up to the family cabin in the mountains.  13 year old Terry wants to take his electric train, but his mother reminds him there is no electricity at the cabin and that he’s not six.  Terry obnoxiously — and this kid is awful — insists that he take the train.  He counters that Grandpa is taking his fishing gear, but there are no fish in the creek.  That’s valid — why is Grandpa taking his fishing gear and rowing to the middle of the creek alone? [2]

They pass a man wearing a jacket & tie walking along the road carrying a suitcase.  Back in 1959, this guy looks demonic with his beard.  In fact, he looks like a young me heading to the local motel, except he’s carrying a suitcase.  Turns out, the man is on the wrong road.  Grandpa offers him a ride and offers to let him stay overnight at the cabin.  Then he will drive him to his destination in the morning.  

Terry sets up the train and plugs it in, knowing there is no juice. He just wants to pretend.  Wait, if there is no electricity, why are there electrical outlets?  Oh, grandpa explains that he built the cabin and wired it in anticipation of getting on the grid for a couple of years before electric car mandates account for every kilowatt.

The next morning, the man is gone, but his suitcase is still there.  Grandpa goes to fetch some water from the creek.  Terry, rather than getting the water for the elderly man, snoops around the case and sees it has an electrical outlet.  He plugs in his train, and it takes off.  Like a European train, I mean, not an American one.

Grandpa is amazed that the train is running.  He looks in the suitcase hoping to find the mysterious source of this power, and maybe some Fig Newtons.  Inside, he finds that miracle of 1950’s computing:  a board with lights on it.  

Grandpa puts the suitcase in the car and drives back home.  To be fair, he leaves a note in case the man comes back, telling him to just hang out until they get back and that there are some nudie magazines in the rowboat. 

He shows the device to his son-in-law John who is an electrical engineer.  He says it looks like a board with lights on it.  Grandpa rigs up a test to show the suitcase can power several appliances and, for some reason, a band saw.  John’s wife screams like this is the devil’s work.  A better reaction would be rapture because this suitcase is worth more than all the $1,000,000 bills that could fit in it (at the beginning of the Biden administration).

John takes it to the lab to show his boss and soon the Feds are sniffing around too.  Scientists attempt to see what is inside, but the board is as impenetrable as the mustard packets I got at Culver’s today. [3]  The old man, though born before electricity, has the great idea to use the awesome power of the board to penetrate the board.  They are successful and determine that the board is made of metallic hydrogen (which is a real thing).

They conjecture that the man is an alien.  He left the enigmatic rectangular object to inspire humanity like we were the apes in 2001, which seems about right.  

Not much story here.  The take-away from the episode is the performances. Charles Winninger as Grandpa is dreadful.  His hamminess might be due to being born 45 years before talkies.  Freddy Ridgeway as Terry has no such excuse, being born 15 years after talkies began.  His shouting of lines, whining voice, and misplaced inflections are excruciating. 

I  would like to see this series take an unexpected turn to quality in its last gasp like Halloween Ends, but confidence is not high.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Yikes, I need a new series.  At the rate I’m going, I’ll be done with SFT in 2026.
  • [2]  I just got into Virtual Realty Porn Gaming.  I was shocked to see VR Fishing is a real thing.  Or did it say Fisting?  Either way, I can’t imagine.
  • [3]  Seriously, WTF?  My guess is that some dicks from McKinsey told them if only 20% can be opened, people will grab five times as many as they need.