Category Archives: TV

Tales of the Unexpected – The Hitch-Hiker (03/22/80)

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Writer Paul Duveen is driving through England. He passes a sign that the Cambridge By-Pass is opening in Autumn 1979.  The funny thing is, this aired in 1980.  That’s it, the only funny thing.

He cruises past the world’s oldest and best dressed hitchhiker.  Then he has a second thought and slows down.  The old gentleman trots up to the car and asks if Paul is going to London.  As they drive off together, Paul is seen to be one of those lunatics that actually likes meeting people, enjoys talking to them, and is genuinely interested in what they have to say.  Wait, I have a feeling I’m rooting for the wrong guy here.

Paul is actually a very affable guy.  He talks to the man about Epsom (the town, not the salts) and the Derby (the race, not the hat).  Then he somehow surmises the man might be a busker.  The man takes offense at that and demands to be let out.  Paul pulls over and the man gets out.  Paul sincerely apologizes and asks the man to reconsider.

They continue on.  Paul gets the car up to a smooth 70 MPH, which seems strange since it is a German car with the wheel on the wrong side being driven in England by an Australian.  Shouldn’t it be in Gobsmacks per Fahrvergnügen or whatever the hell they use over there?   The hitchhiker asks how fast the car will go.  Paul, proud of his new toy with only 2,503 miles on it, claims it will go 129 MPH.  He is offended when the HH suggests the dealer was lying. Whoever heard of such a thing!

Paul tells the HH to fasten his seatbelt, and he puts his on too.  I guess going a mere 70 without them had been OK. They are thrown back in their seats as Paul  accelerates.  He gets the speed up to 125 MPH, then sees a motorcycle cop in the mirror.  The HH urges him to just outrun the cop.

Paul pulls over.  The HH says that model of motorbike maxes out at 112 MPH, so they should have outrun him.  Well then, how did the cop catch up to them?

This is one of those episodes that would just be tedious to recount step-by-step.  The good news is that is because there is character development, ideas, red herrings, foreshadowing, and twists.  Great for the show, not so great to transcribe or read.  With the cop entering the stage for an extended scene, we now have all the characters on deck.  This might be the most uniformly excellent ensemble I have come across since Dan Hedaya’s one-man performance of The Vagina Monologues at The Winter Garden. [2]

Rod Taylor (The Birds) plays Paul Duveen as a cheerful, inquisitive sort befitting his job as a writer (the inquisitive part, not the cheerful part). [4]  He occasionally gets ticked at the hitchhiker, but shakes it off.  He just seems like a great guy.

Cyril Cusak plays the hitchhiker as a seemingly harmless old chap.  His charming Irish accent is empathy-bait for Americans.  He even survived an episode of Ray Bradbury Theater.  Best of all, he seems to be no relation to former actor John Cusack.

I’ve never heard of John Forgeham who plays the cop.  However, he absolutely nails it as the humorless, laconic authority figure who has your future in his hands and knows it.  Alfred Hitchcock would have loved him.

Watching all three of them work is a delight pleasure.  The fact that their performances are also in support of a good story makes this the best episode of TOTU so far.  Bravo!

SPOILER:

I started with the ending when writing this post, so this does give away a plot point . . .

Hey, wait a minute.  That twist of stealing the cop’s notepad is right out of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents Episode.  Just one story beat you say?  Well in both cases it came after an upstanding citizen was goaded into speeding by a sticky-fingered hitchhiker and was pulled over by a motorcycle cop.  Not feeling it yet?  The AHP episode was entitled Hitch Hike — pretty close.  OK, we’ve had a few Tales of the Unexpected episodes based on stories that were originally used on AHP:  The Landlady, Man from the South, and Lamb to the Slaughter (all by Roald Dahl).  The difference is, Roald Dahl was given no credit on the AHP version of this one. [1]

Finally, thanks to the producers for actually filming a scene where the actors get wet in the rain.  Usually it is an effect or a screen of drizzle between them and the camera.  The reality this adds is worth a million Fahrvergnügens. 

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  As nearly as I can tell after 30 seconds of research, Roald Dahl was the 3rd greatest source of stories for AHP.
  • [1]  Odd that I immediately assumed Dahl was ripped off by AHP.  It was days later that I saw Dahl’s story was published 17 years after the AHP episode.   
  • [2]  Though lacking the range of Russell Collins — cited recently by me as the greatest actor in history — Dan Hedaya never fails to amuse or interest me.
  • [2]  Blatant rip-off of JFK’s gag about his Nobel Prize winning guests being the greatest collection of talent since Thomas Jefferson dined alone in the White House.  He had tried it in the clubs as “the greatest collection of drunken a**holes since Ted Kennedy dined alone because he killed his date.”  Luckily Ted Sorenson bailed him out again, crafting the crude jibe into the witty bon mot we remember today. [3]
  • [3]  Details from this era are sketchy at best.
  • [4]  Actually, it makes more sense the other way.  Today’s newspeeps are preening, self-important idiots who are not at all inquisitive.

 

Science Fiction Theatre – Gravity Zero (01/11/57)

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Host Truman Bradley tells us we are at Mattering Institute of Technology.  It is usually a good sign when SFT gives its setting an actual name rather than a generic moniker like “small midwestern college”.  Unless this is the real MIT using an alias out of shame.

Dr. John Hustead has been experimenting with a magnetic field “that will not only make objects weightless, but actually reverse the effects of the earth’s gravitational pull”  so that dropped toast will finally land jelly-side up, but on the ceiling.  Elizabeth Wickes enters and tells him she just filled in at a lecture that he absent-mindedly forgot.  Later, from 4:00 – 4:10 she will cover his weekly office hours.

Kudos to SFT for again being progressive in showing a female scientist.  If I knew how to insert a flowchart, I would follow that up with: IF the woman is not his wife, THEN she must be dating his protégé.  Hustead shows her how he is able to float a block of wood in a magnetic field.  He worries that the Dean will not be sufficiently impressed by this miraculous feat that will forever change construction, transportation, aviation, and whole economies; especially after the Dean sees Hustead’s I Like Ike bumper sticker.

Ken Waring drops by to tell Dr. Hustead the Dean wants to see him.  After Hustead leaves, Waring hoists some wood of his own as he gets handsy with Elizabeth.  Aha!  As predicted, it is revealed that he and Elizabeth are engaged.

Wow!  I do not see this engagement working out.

Sure enough, the Dean tells Dr. Hustead he has to show more progress to the Board of Regents, and can start by getting rid of that f***ing bumper sticker.  Also, his funding has just about run out and all he has to show for it is the second greatest achievement in physics of all time [1].  Hustead promises to have something by Friday.  As I always tell my boss, that means 5 pm — don’t start asking at 9 am.

Back in the lab, Elizabeth and Ken tell Dr. Hustead that during the thunderstorm that just blew up, the wooden disc shot to the ceiling.  They try to reproduce the phenomenon but succeed only in blowing up the transformer.  Hustead theorizes that something gave the disc negative mass.  He says if the disc were left in space, it would rise. [2] I think I know what he means, but the Board of Regents will not be thrilled by the incoherent ramblings of a confused old man; they aren’t MSNBC, after all.

At 3 am, Dr. Hustead stealthily enters the girl’s dormitory to find Elizabeth.  He drags her away from the pillow-fight with her lingerie-clad roommates [SCENE MISSING], back to the lab to show her he has succeeded in floating the disk to the ceiling.  The next morning, he calls the Dean in to witness this breakthrough.  Unfortunately the demonstration fails and they blow another transformer coil.

After way too much talking, Hustead figures out the device needs fresh air . . . or cool air . . . or micro-changes in air density . . . or something.  Frankly, I need this device to make my eyelids elevate.

He calls the Dean and Ken back to the lab.  After opening a window, the experiment is a success.  To further prove the device works (i.e. to show off), he points it at an air conditioning unit.  Amazingly, Elizabeth is then able to easily lift the 1-ton unit.  Even more amazing, she does it by lifting one side and it does not tip over.  Hmmm, the unit is not up to code and is apparently not connected to any conduit or ductwork.  No wonder they had to open the window.  Hey, wait a minute, this thing had negative mass — it was supposed to float by itself!  Shades of Theranos! [4]

Anyhoo, the Dean finally realizes he can exploit Dr. Hustead’s research and ability to sneak into the girl’s dormitory.  Elizabeth’s fiancée Ken Waring is strangely absent for most of the episode.  There is a barely mentioned sub-plot wherein the Dean is going to evict Hustead and give his lab space to Ken for his ground-breaking Blender research.  Elizabeth and Hustead don’t seem bothered by this.  Then, when Dr. Hustead earns the right to stay, Ken does not seem upset by the cancellation of Operation Purée.

Dr. Hustead jokes that after the wedding, Ken can use the device to carry Elizabeth’s fat ass across the threshold, which seems gratuitous and out of character.  Although, to be fair the audio was a little garbled. [3]

I rate it 2500 BTUs.  I mean ATUs — we buy American in this house!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  I’m not even sure what the first would be.  I guess this is a good set-up for a funny joke, but this is neither the time nor the place.
  • [2]  The narrator tells us, “They were not able to make the disc float as high as it went before.”  C’mon SFT, that’s not how negative gravity works.  If it floats even a little, it will keep going until out of the grasp/push of the Earth’s gravity.
  • [2]  He also says, “It remained slightly tipped with respect to the vertical.”  Well, it is wobbling, but flat like the Jupiter II, not like the spaceships in Arrival.  So wouldn’t it be “with respect to the horizontal?”  Or why not just say it wobbled, Dr. Fancypants?
  • [3]  OK, he did make the threshold joke, but her derrière was admirably proportional.
  • [4]  Pop Quiz, Hotshot:  Is this a) an Elizabeth Holmes reference, b) a Marvel movie reference, or c) an exclamation by Perry White?
  • Title Analysis:  The 2nd consecutive Fail.  It is not zero gravity, it is negative gravity.  Or gravity negative, to follow the pretentious, Yoda-esque template of the  title.
  •   Available online, but why would ya?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Deathmate (04/18/61)

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Handsome young Ben Conan is playing cards with Peter Talbot who puts the old into cuckold.  Ben wins again, as usual.  Peter’s wife Lisa reminds him that Ben has beaten him at cards, billiards, and golf — and that Peter still owes him $50.  Ben says Peter can pay off the debt by watching as Ben plows Lisa like the North 40.  No, wait, that’s a short film I saw earlier tonight two and a half times.  Peter chugs some booze — inexplicably a penalty for losing — and passes out.

Lisa asks Ben how a man could change so much in just 2 years, “He seemed so strong, so capable.”  To be fair, Peter is now 23 years older than his wife.  When they married he was . . . oh yeah.

Lisa tells Ben, “You are kind, steady, dependable.  Just the way a man should be.”  Then they kiss.  In some of the most boring exposition in this series, Ben tells Lisa that he never married because managing his silver mine keeps him busy, and Lisa tells him she inherited a business from her father which Peter is running into the ground (which might be OK if it were a mine).  

In the building’s lobby, Ben is stopped by a man who knows him as Ben Conan aka Fred Sheldon aka Terry Lord.  Let me pause here for a shout-out, and not just to wake myself up.  The man is Private Investigator Alvin Moss, played by Russell Collins.  

Collins might be the greatest actor of all time.  When I see Jack Nicholson in a movie, come on, he’s never not Jack Nicholson.[2] De Niro is such a drooling imbecile, it is impossible to take him seriously.  But every time I see Russell Collins, I never know what to expect.  We’ve seen him play a prisoner, a bum, a used car lot owner, a bitter old geezer, a nice old guy, and now a confident — and for a change — well-groomed, energetic, smiling PI.  The only constant is that his characters are old; but he was born in 1897 and didn’t start showing up on TV until he was 50.   Whaddaya gonna do?  Only 5 people had more appearances on AHP and two of them were named Hitchcock.  

Moss says Fred Sheldon is wanted for bigamy in Miami.  He “bleeds widows, blackmails married dames.”   Moss says some of them take sleeping pills, or watch this episode.  He tells “Ben” his client is paying him a cool $40/day to keep an eye on him.  So I guess the emphasis is on Investigator, not Private.

Despite being adults, they take the car out for a make-out session which seems to be on the planet Vulcan.  Ben breaks the mood when he says he needs $10,000 to meet the payroll at his silver mine which is no gold mine.  They decide to fly to Phoenix together.  Ben says he is going to pay Peter a visit tomorrow.  

Peter is drunk when Ben shows up.  Ben suggests that Peter just married Lisa for her money.  Peter says he must be joking (when actually he is foreshadowing).  He accuses Ben of being a conman.  Ben knocks him out with a single punch to the kisser.  He then undresses Peter and drags him into the bathtub.  He turns on the water and drowns the limp Peter unconscious Peter.  There is a little episode-padding as he dawdles around and spends more time in that bathroom than I would if it were Charlize Theron in the tub.

Finally he emerges, but leaves the water running.  Why?  There was already enough water to drown Peter.  Ah, you say, if Peter had a heart attack as Ben wants the police to believe, then the tub would have to be full because Peter could not turn off the faucet after his heart attack — so Ben is just allowing the tub to fill.  But wait, why then does Ben close the bathroom doors and bedroom doors if he is just going to go back in and turn off the water?  Ah, you say, he is going to leave the water running until it overflows and his downstairs neighbor calls the cops.  Really?  Unnecessarily ruining the carpet, causing thousands of dollars of structural damage, and pissing off his neighbors?  Ah, you say . . . shut up, I say.  I’ve had enough of you.  And BTW, what sumptuous Taj Mahal spotlighted in Architectural Architectual Architectural Digest has giant double doors like these on the shitter?

Seriously, these are the bathroom doors.

Blah blah blog . . . Moss drops by.  Ben says Peter is not here.  Moss asks how he got in . . . 3 seconds after he himself just entered the same unlocked door.  Then he asks about the running water.  He accuses Ben of killing Peter.  Ben says it was a heart attack — after all, Lisa said he had a bum ticker.  Moss says Peter was perfectly healthy and also very wealthy aside from Lisa’s dough.  

Ben takes a swing at Moss, but Moss conks him on the noggin with his pistol.  Moss says he is going to call his client — Lisa.  This is supposed to be the zinger.  Yes it is a twist, but I’m not sure why it matters.  Ben is already busted and will go to jail.  Ah, you say — starting your “Ah” shit again — but he just learned Lisa betrayed him!  Hello, McFly, Ben was a con-man!  He was just using her! [4]

This was a rare AHP exercise in tedium.  The leads were not very interesting, the story was very simple, the backgrounds of the ocean and desert were laughable, and the twist was underwhelming.  But, hey, that Russell Collins was great! [1]

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Great, but maybe not good enough for a picture.  This is the guy.  He shows up one more time in season 7, which I should get to in about 2035.
  • [2]  I just inexplicably watched him in Something’s Got to Give.  OK, it was not in his peak-Jack heyday, and the picture didn’t sweep the Oscars (although, who would know?). [3] But, wow, what an embarrassing performance.
  • [3]  Tomorrow I will include a link that the Oscars tonight achieved another record low viewership.
  • [4]  There’s an out here, but I’m in a bitchy mood.
  • Title Analysis:  Fail.  I assume this is a play on checkmate.  The coined word does not have a good ring to it.  Besides, this was a simple — to the point of tedium — story.  It did not require a lot of strategery.
  • Sadly, Gia Scala (Lisa) died at 38 years old.
  • As always, thorough coverage of the episode and source material can be found at bare*bones e-zine.  

One Step Beyond – The Riddle (06/16/59)

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Yet another OSB episode set outside the US.  However, they have taken away one of my usual jibes by finally going to Asia.  Americans Leonard and Betty Barrett are taking a train through India.  And one of the fancy ones, where you ride on the inside.  They have just come from the Taj Mahal and after a few days in India, the attraction they most want to see next is a McDonald’s.  

Leonard is a typical ugly American, although for paranormal reasons that will be explained later.  His wife is an atypical beautiful American played by Bethel Leslie [1] who made such an impression in AHP’s The Man with Two Faces.  Leonard is ranting about the heat, passports, cholera shots, and customs.  He would rather have gone to Paris or London, but Betty insisted on India.

As he is jabbering, an old Indian man holding a chicken opens the door of their private compartment.  Leonard becomes enraged because he ordered the fish.  He screams at the man to get out or at least bring some gulab jamum.  He even breaks a bottle and charges at the old man.  Luckily, the conductor happens by and hustles the old man out to safety.

Even after the conductor leaves, Leonard is still hostile.  He says he did not like the old man’s face — it had a murderous expression!  And that if they had been asleep, he would have cut their throats!  Finally, he calms down.  When he becomes lucid enough to see the bottle in his hand, he does not know how it got there.  I feel your pain, pal.

The train stops in a small town.  He sees the old man has gotten off the train.  Seeing the old man on the platform enrages him again.  He says, “If he tries anything, I’ll kill him!”  Their eyes meet, and Leonard takes off after him.  Betty then chases Leonard through the streets of Narainpur.  She catches up to him, which is easy, because he is collapsed on the ground, surrounded by Indians.  Betty pleads to the crowd, “Is anyone a doctor?”  None of them are, so I guess this was not filmed in America.

An American steps  forward and says he is a medical missionary (?).  They go back to the man’s home which looks pretty doctory.  Leonard is baffled by his own behavior.  He says he doesn’t even really dislike anyone, but he hated this man. He felt like,  “If I didn’t kill him, he was going to kill me!”  The Constable knows the old man as Kumar. He tries to get Leonard on the next train out, but he opts to get some rest first.

The rest consists of a few minutes of sleep, then an escape out the window to find Kumar. I have no idea how, but Leonard tracks down the old man at his home in this small Indian village of 200 million people.  He breaks a window and jumps in.  In keeping with 1950’s TV standards, Kumar and his wife sleep on separate straw mats. [2] In keeping with my standards, Kumar jumps up, grabs a rifle, and points it at Leonard.

Leonard is not cowed — er, poor choice  of words — is not intimidated by the rifle.  He advances on the old man with his hands out to strangle him.  WTF!  Kumar shoots him!  I did not see that coming.  The constable shows up immediately.  The old man is arrested, and Leonard is taken back to the missionary’s home to be treated.  WTF again!  Leonard dies!

The constable explains that many years ago Kumar and another man named Ranjit were in love with the same woman.  She chose Kumar.  Ranjit tried to kill Kumar, but Kumar shot him.  The constable noticed that Leonard’s birth date on his passport was the exact date Ranjit died, so obviously his soul migrated at that moment.  I  guess Ranjit guided Leonard to Kumar’s home tonight.  Luckily, he had not moved in 40 years.

Two things you can count on with OSB:  They don’t deviate much from their narrow slice of the genre pie, and the episode will look awesome.  One unfortunate new theme has arisen, though.  This reminded me of Echo two weeks ago.  In that episode, an innocent man was killed because of a paranormal event that had nothing to do with him.  The same thing happens here.  Leonard was possessed by Ranjit.  He had no free will when he attacked Kumar and was shot.  I miss the more standard template where the victim is getting a cosmic come-uppance, i.e. had it coming

It is also miraculous that Leonard ever had the opportunity to confront Ranjit’s killer.  It’s not like he had this mysterious desire to visit India all his life, as if it were calling to him.  He wanted to go to France or Italy, but Betty dragged him here.  What were the odds he would end up in India?  It’s not like Ranjit just possessed some random dude to get at Kumar.  He has been in Leonard since birth, linked by their death and birth dates.  It had to be him.

I guess I can’t complain about sameness when they try to mix things up.  At least they still have those great production values.  Sometimes, as in this episode, the scoring is very effective.  I also enjoyed seeing Bethel Leslie again.  Sadly, I don’t feel like I captured her beauty in these shots.  So, as usual, OSB wins me over through sheer professionalism.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Bethel really is an awful name for such a beauty.  I hope she at least pronounced it Beth-EL or Heather.
  • [2]  Upon further examination, it appears Kumar is sleeping on a cot and his wife is sleeping on the floor (see below).  Maybe she should have married Ranjit.
  • Title Analysis: No idea.  Yes, there is a question about what is happening, but that’s every episode. 
  • Still no paranormal activity in Africa.

Suspense – Dead Ernest (05/03/49)

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The titular Ernest takes his gal Margaret to the movies.  And I mean takes her and leaves her — to see “a news-reel, a sports-short, a travelogue, Bugs Bunny, and a double-feature.” [1]  They figure that will time out about the same as the double-header he is going to see at Ebbets Field.  Unless both movies are The Ten Commandments, I think she should count on him being late. [2]

She makes sure that Ernest is wearing his medical alert bracelet and has his please-for-the-love-of-God-DO-resuscitate letter.  She puts it in the pocket of his Joe Mannix sports-coat and tells him not to take it off at the ball-game.

Skipping ahead to the Fran portion of the program.

As she enters the theater, he crosses the street and is almost clipped by a car.  This triggers his catalepsy — an affliction that makes it appear that he is dead.  It even imitates the early stages of rigor-mortis.  If this had happened after sitting in the sun in his jacket & tie for a double-header at Ebbets, he probably would have smelled dead, too.  Officer Chauncy Lindell takes off the jacket and makes a pillow for Ernest’s head.  His medical bracelet is kicked down a sewer grate.

An opportunistic haberdasher sees the coat just sitting there after the ambulance carts Ernest away.  So he takes it back to his shop and puts a price tag on it.  Writer Fran and her actor husband Henry enter looking for a sports jacket.  Inexplicably, the proprietor tells them to try Abercrombie & Fitch.  Fran says they are too expensive.  She sees Ernest’s jacket on the counter and says, “Hey, is that a Joe Mannix?”  Because of, or despite, some blood stains, they are able to buy the jacket for $5.

While Fran is scrubbing out the stains, she finds the letter.  She reads it aloud:

I carry this wherever I go.  It is to advise responsible parties that I am a cataleptic.  My body must not be molested for a period of 72 hours, neither by autopsy nor embalming.  The maximum period of my attacks rarely exceed 4 hours.  Please call my wife or doctor.  This is of vital importance.  It may mean my life.

Fran asks Henry what a cataleptic is.  He says, “Don’t ask me.  I went to a drama school, not Johns Hopkins.”  Wait, an actor not presenting himself as an expert in medicine, science, and politics?  This guy will never get hired!  They look it up in a dictionary — the old kind that can’t be instantly changed online to suit some 23 year old’s fascist political whims.

Credit where due:  Fran and Henry have a good, logical conversation deducing how the bloody jacket came to be at the shop, the timing of the event, and the condition the owner might be in.

We cut to a couple of yahoos in the morgue listening to a ballgame on the radio.  The announcer says Jackie Robinson has just stolen a base, “That boy can really run.”  Okaaaaay.  There is a refreshing flash of creativity as Ernest is wheeled into the morgue, toe-tag first.  He appears dead except, unseen by the attendants, one hand is opening and closing.

Henry, and especially Fran, prove to be pretty good detectives as they try to piece together what happened.  There is even a nice attempt at the titular suspense as they need to use a payphone and some woman is hogging it.  Fran tries to call Mrs. Bowers, but she is still at the theater on about Commandment #7.

So they go back to the clothing shop.  The owner is reluctant to admit he picked up the jacket off the street after being used to prop up a dead guy’s noggin.  He finally fesses up.  His description of the event convinces Fran and Henry that the jacket’s owner is in danger of being embalmed at the morgue.  They try to call, but the two yahoos don’t answer the phone.

As the two morgue monkeys assemble their needles and scalpels, the organ really starts in.  One of them has a problem with his glasses fogging up when he leans over the corpse’s face.  There is a nice fuzzy POV shot of Ernest through the steamy glasses — unfortunately, it is from the camera’s POV, on the other side of the body from the coroner.

Finally, they answer the phone.  In the 2nd of back-to-back errors, he answers the phone without it ringing — which is the opposite of what I do.  He says, “It is some dame babbling about a guy with no coat that may not be dead.”  His blurry-eyed partner comes to the same conclusion. [4]

Finally Ernest opens his eyes.

There was some good stuff here.  The title is awesomely grim for 1949.  The scenario has suspense baked in.  There was some intelligent dialogue as Fran and Henry pursued the mystery.  They manufactured suspense with the phone calls and Ernest’s imminent embalming.  Margaret Phillips was delightful as Fran.  She was smart, sexy, and had an awesome Mid-Atlantic accent that sounded like Katherine Hepburn, but less like a car-starting. [3]

On the down side . . . well, you have to just accept that it was made in 1949 for no budget.  I guess Auto-Lite did not cough up the big bucks like Alcoa on One Step Beyond.  They played the telephone card too much here, but again, you are dealing with those limitations, plus a short running time.  The main criticism, as in previous episodes, is the obnoxious organ music.  You could say that’s just how things were done at the time, but it doesn’t make it right.  Just ask Jackie Robinson.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  All for the low, low price of 35 cents.
  • [2]  When Googling Ten Commandments, the first suggestion is the movie not the, ya know, actual Ten Commandments.  Just sayin’.
  • [3]  I would give attribution for that great analogy, but I can’t remember where I heard it.  Actually Margaret was born in the UK, so I’m sure some of that is in there too.  She was last seen as a naughty, naughty girl in ToT’s The Evil Within.
  • [4] There was another goof in the lab earlier.  One of the guys commented on Ernest being brought in with no clothes, then corrects himself to say no jacket.
  • Suspiciously similar to Breakdown on AHP.  Catalepsy and a Get Out of Morgue Free Card also play roles in another AHP episode, One Grave Too Many.
  • The first writing credit for Seeleg Lester.  That might mean nothing to you, but it means nothing to anyone else either.  He did have a yuge career, though.
  • Not that anyone else cares, but it really bugs me that the top photo is not the Joe Mannix jacket.  He wouldn’t have been caught dead in that thing.  I think that was a Herb Tarlek.  It was just too tough to find any other shots of Margaret smiling.