Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Throwback (02/28/61)

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Elliot Grey has come to see his sweetie Enid.  We know they did not meet via a personal ad because her name is Enid . . . too risky.  She is ready to go out on the town, but Elliot wants to stay in and they can drink the wine he brought.

He is getting angry that Enid does not want to stay in.  He says, “Come on Enid, for the 2 months we’ve known each other, we’ve rushed around like every show was going to close and every restaurant was going to run out of food.”  So I guess they met in January 2020.  Elliot also confronts her on why he can’t see her on Saturday nights.  Enid confesses that there is another man.  His name is Cyril Hardeen and she describes him as very kind and gentle as if Elliot might want to be pals with the guy himself.  She also reveals that he is 54, which sounds entirely appropriate to me since Enid is 24.

Elliot is understandably angry that Enid has been jerking him around, but not off.  She accuses him, “You’re not even trying to understand!”  Well, I’m trying, and I don’t get it either.  The sap is willing to listen to her side of the story, so he is clearly no Alpha Man.  Maybe not even a Beta Man.  He gets about as much action as Omega Man.  

Enid says she met Cyril 4 years ago.  When she met Elliot, she tried to break it off with Cyril, but just couldn’t.  She says if Elliot could see how Cyril treated her, he would understand.  Elliot finally shows some spine and says, “It’s him or me!”

Enid: Say the magic words.  You know what they are.

Elliot:  Alright, I love you.  Is that what you want to hear?

Enid:  The words are alright, but the tone’s not so hot.

That was pretty good.  He relents and gives her a real I Love You and a kiss.  She says she will dump Cyril.  After the dumping, Cyril invites Elliot to his palatial home.   This episode was so tedious and unbelievable, that I was ready to bail at the half-way mark.

However, it gets interesting again when Cyril describes himself as the titular throwback and says it is necessary for he and Elliot to literally fight it out for Enid.  Because of the age difference, like Louis XIV, Cyril is going to engage another man’s services.  Unlike Louis XIV, it will not be a Pi Man.  He describes how historical dicks like Louis XIV and Napoleon used surrogates to fight their duals the same way rich Medieval Catholics used Indulgences, US Civil War Draftees used the Enrollment Act, and John Kerry uses Carbon Offsets. [1]

Fortuitously, Cyril has a surrogate standing by.  He calls Joseph in to join them.  Holy crap — this guy is the American Oddjob! [2]  

Elliot can read the writing on the wall, or could if there was a big sign on the wall that said, “You’re going to get your ass kicked.”  As he excuses himself to leave, Joseph socks him in the jaw.  Elliot gets in a couple of shots, but Joseph gives him a good beat down.  After Elliot leaves, Cyril and Joseph put on boxing gloves.

At home, as Elliot is tending to his wounds, two cops show up.  They take him to Cyril’s house.  Elliot sees Cyril battered from Joseph’s punches.  Enid is by his side.  She accuses Elliot of using this stunt to prove he was younger and stronger than Cyril.  She refuses to believe he was framed.  

Like every episode of Columbo, this case would have probably unraveled in court.  Cyril’s mistake was wimping out and using boxing gloves for his own beating.  

The twist was fun, but it was a slog getting there.  Scott Marlowe as Elliot had no presence at all.  Joyce Meadows as Enid was barely adequate.  She certainly did not seem likely to inspire men to fight over her.  My beef with Murray Matheson as Cyril is stated below.

So, not a great week, but at least it wasn’t The Throwback.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Could also have mentioned corrupt politicians of both parties sending young people into endless bullshit wars.
  • [2] Yes, of course, an American could be of Korean or other POC heritage, but this was 1950’s TV.  Also, Oddjob was already a Korean character played by a Japanese actor, so let’s not be pedantic.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  Joyce Meadows, who I always think was on the Honeymooners, is still with us.  Among the dead:  Bert Remsen who I confuse with Fred Rumsen from Mad Men, and Murray Matheson who I am always disappointed is not Murray Hamilton.  Maybe 54 is pretty old.
  • Cheers for Elliot pronouncing the word PAY-tronizing instead of PATT-ronizing.  I have never once heard the PATT version in real life, but you never hear the PAY version on TV.  OK, I think I remember once on, ironically, the TV show Cheers.  God, the amount of my brain cells wasted on TV.
  • Jeers for Cyril saying Louis Quatorze rather than Louis the Fourteenth.  
  • As always, a more coherent recap and background can be found at bare*bones e-zine.

One Step Beyond – The Aerialist (04/28/59)

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Host John Newland tells us, “we are about to go beyond the gay grinning face of the circus into the very private world of the Flying Patruzzios.” Had they really wanted to get dramatic, the episode would have been about the clown car which now has only 2 passengers due to COVID social distancing.

Said Patruzzio’s are backstage preparing for their next performance in the Big Top.  Mario is a typical angry hot-head movie Italian like Sonny Corleone when he beat up Carlo, or the toll booth operator when Sonny showed up with a $20 bill.  Mario is pissed at being treated like a child.  Well, he is 34 years old.  However, Mama Patruzzio just wants to be sure her bambino is ready for his death-defying trapeze act (i.e. doesn’t go BAM! BINO!).  Also learned from The Godfather: Italian women over 30 have no names.

His father Gino nags him about his “fantasy wife” Carlotta which is puzzling because she actually is his wife.  I guess it is because she speaks to men outside the family.  Gino rants that people are laughing behind their backs and it could not possibly be because of their stereotypical, loud, hand-waving arguing or glittery skintight unitards.

But they set that aside when it is showtime.  As always, the One Step Beyond production looks great. The Flying Patruzzios are preceded by an elaborate act featuring many horses.  They are enthusiastically received by the ladies, gentlemen, children and flies of all ages.

The Patruzzio’s act fortuitously takes place “80 feet” in the air, presumably to allow some clean-up after the horses.  They begin with the standard trapeze act.  It is simple, but even today is pretty thrilling and beautiful.  There is nothing technology can do to improve (i.e. ruin) the harmony of gravity, timing, and strength needed for the act.  Gino and Mario swing out on their trapezes.  Then Gino flips into Mario’s hands.  Then Mario flips back to his trapeze and swings back to the platform.  Cool.

Then the ringmaster announces that they will continue the act without a net.  Which is a metaphor meaning they are working without . . . oh wait, I guess that’s where that came from.

The Carnies Local 763 (named for the number of fingers the 100 members have) take down the nets and the Patruzzios step out onto the platform.  Mario swings out to grasp Gino’s arms.  They seem to have made a solid connection, but Gino’s arms slide out of Mario’s grip.  Gino falls 80 feet, although I think about 40 of them are shills.  Whether the fumes of the horse shit finally rose to that level, or it was the olive oil sandwich Mario just had is not made clear.

Mario miraculously survives and is taken to the hospital.  Sadly, the doctor says he will live, but be completely paralyzed. Mama Patruzzio says that Mario, as the oldest, should see Gino first.  He is so wracked with guilt that he runs from the hospital.  When he goes home that night, Carlotta is already in bed.

She says it would have been better if Gino had died.  When she describes him as a mummy and as looking creepy, Mario explodes.  She gets in a good zinger, telling her husband, “I saw him — you didn’t.”

Gino is no longer interested in risking his life for a living, so he goes to the unemployment office downtown.  OK, after that, he is no longer interested in risking his life.  Shockingly, he discovers that his life on the trapeze has no more qualified him for a job in the real world than being a senator for 36 years would.

Hey Mannix, lock that down!

He returns to the Big Top, by which I mean Carlotta — heyyooooo! [1]  Sadly, she is leaving him.  This is the final straw.  Mario goes back to the circus and climbs to the trapeze platform.  He swings out on the trapeze and does a flip into the void.  However, a pair of hands miraculously catch him.  Somehow he is back on his trapeze swinging safely to the platform.  The other trapeze is empty.

Mario believes this was the ghost of his father saving his life.  He finally rushes to the hospital to see his father, expecting him to be dead.  The nurse says he is alive and still paralyzed.  However, she says an hour ago he startled her by suddenly stretching out his arms, but she thought he was just going for her ass.

John Newland returns and says this was a case of “bi-location”.  A few weeks ago in The Return of Mitchell Campion, he called the same phenomenon “teleportation”.  I guess when you use basically the same hook every week, you differentiate them however you can.

So, another episode of OSB working in their narrow slice of the genre.  But, as always, they put on such a good show, that I have to give them credit for a win.  Also, bonus points for finally setting another episode in the USA! [2]

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Yvette Vickers (Carlotta) was Miss July 1959 in Playboy.  In 2010, her mummified body was found at home after she had been dead for a year.
  • [2]  This is only the 9th episode out of 15 to be set in this country.
  • Also on TV that night: Wyatt Earp, The Rifleman, Laramie and Bronco.  Bet they didn’t have no episodes set in France.
  • Italian Mario Patruzzio was played by Mike Connors — an Armenian born as Krekor Ohanian in Fresno.  Only in America!

Science Fiction Theatre – Three Minute Mile (11/09/56)

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Host Truman Bradley is trying to prove something again — as usual, I have no idea what.  He drops a mouse 2 feet and the little fellow is not hurt.  He then picks up a fully grown cat by the scruff — not cool, Truman!  — and drops him several feet. His next demonstration is the effect on a human body to being dropped from 35 feet.  To his credit, he does not roust some bum up to the roof.  On the other hand, he does game the results by using a ceramic statue.

This somehow illustrates that “as man evolved, he relied on brains more than brawn.”  However, “man eventually understood the benefits of physical fitness . . . programs of health and body-building are world-wide.  All sorts of gadgets and machines exercise our muscles.”  And that’s just so we can try to break our gym contract.

Truman tells us, “Our story begins on the campus of Haverly College”.  SFT normally gives its institution generic names like “small midwestern college”.  This might be the first time an actual name has been used.  Now, if we could only get One Step Beyond to adopt this standard for their allegedly “true stories”.

Hey, it’s TV’s Martin Milner playing Britt!  Old viewers might remember him from Adam-12 (1968-1975).  Older viewers might remember him from Route 66 (1960-1964).  Much older viewers might think he is their grandson.  Nurse, how did Timmy get on the picture-box?

Britt is getting chewed out by everyone for quitting the football team.  Even his girlfriend Jill doesn’t understand why he quit to go work with Dr. Kendall.  Now the football coach is trying to get him to rejoin the team.  When the coach suggests he is just yellow, Brit grabs his arms so tightly that it leaves huge red marks.

Ace reporter Jim Dale witnesses this and comments that Britt has recently grown 2 inches, put on a lot of muscle, and sure has a purty mouth.  The journalist runs from the Coach’s office determined to learn Britt’s secret and find a way to blame it on 10 year old Donald Trump.

Dale snoops around and catches Britt lifting enormous weights.  Then he watches Britt and Kendall go to the track.  Britt runs a mile in 3:10.  Yeah, I guess that’s impressive, but I was promised a THREE minute mile in the title! [1]  It’s not like Highway Speed Limits where you get a free 10 over.  Then Dale photographs Britt lifting a car.

Dale goes back to Kendall’s lab that night.  He tries to lift the weights, but finds them too heavy.  Jill also stops by the lab.  Dale hides, but accidentally unlocks the very poorly designed weight rack.  When Jill brushes against it, the huge barbell rolls right down the unnecessarily angled rack.  She is knocked down and the bar passes over her like a reverse limbo — over her feet, legs, and stomach, heading for her neck!  She is saved only because Britt is a tit-man.

I really wish this were clearer. Boobs — is there anything they can’t do?

The boiz show up and examine Jill’s predicament and luscious lifesaving breasts.  Dr. Kendall puts on an electronic belt that has enabled Britt’s superhuman feats.  He is able to lift the barbell while the other guys put on some Chubby Checker and slide Jill out.

The college sees the value of Kendall’s work and tells him he can have whatever he needs for his lab.  And that’s why Haverly College has the only lab in the country that looks like a Russ Meyer movie — Safety First!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Roger Bannister just broke the 4 minute mile 18 months before this episode aired.
  • I don’t see Science Fiction Theatre on the TV Schedules for 1956-1957.  Could this all be a cruel hoax?

Tales of the Unexpected – The Landlady (04/21/79)

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Previously on genresnaps:

  • After a promising series premiere, Tales of the Unexpected massacred the classic Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl.
  • Alfred Hitchcock Presents had a very lackluster adaptation of The Landlady, also by Roald Dahl.
  • 2020 got in a, hopefully, last cruel shot and made the next TOTU in rotation be its own adaption of The Landlady.
  • Little Joe was bitten by a rattlesnake while Ben and Hoss whored it up in Virginia City.

In an odd directorial choice, we open with an 8-second exterior shot of some decaying English public housing.  An unseen person closes the curtains in a 3rd floor window.  That’s it.

We cut to Billy Weaver who is “traveling down from London on the slow afternoon train” to the Guinness World Records office to apply for biggest necktie knot.  He jealously eyes the simple white band of the priest across from him — economical, ecumenical, bio-degradable. They chat until reaching Bath.  Before going their separate ways, the priest recommends a local B&B whose amenities include a landlady, kippers, and a nearby playground.

The titular Landlady is just hanging the Bed & Breakfast sign in her window.  Billy walks to the B&B, and rings the bell.  He is startled by her immediately opening the door.  He tells her he is actually on his way to the Bell and Dragon Hotel.  Well, wait — he did hesitate on the street in front of the B&B, but he then went to the door and rang the bell.  So how is he on the way to . . . nevermind.

The Landlady takes him to a room on the 3rd floor.  Somehow, not knowing anyone was coming, she has put a hot water bottle in his bed. [1]    She says, “It is such a comfort, don’t you think, to find a hot water bottle in a strange bed?”  Well, yes, if you happened to have felt a wet spot.  She reminds him to come back down and sign the register.

After she leaves, he writes a letter to his parents.  It is just very poor direction that as we see a close up of his hand signing the letter, there is a cut to a close up of his hand signing the register.  The voiceover of him signing the letter (” . . . Love, Billy”) even extends over the close up of his hand signing the register.  It is just jarring and accomplishes nothing.

Just as in the AHP version yesterday, he recognizes the previous names in the register — Gregory Temple and Christopher Mulholland — and they are a year or two old.  The Landlady comments how handsome they were, invites Billy to “sit right by me” for tea, and puts a hand on his knee.  As they drink, she recalls how Temple was a handsome 17 year old prodigy at Cambridge, and Mulholland “had not a blemish on his body”.  Billy notices the Landlady’s parrot and dog are both stuffed.  He gets drowsy and realizes she Bill Cosby’d him. [3]

I had hoped for the best after the previous TOTU, and The Landlady as presented by AHP, but expected the worst.  TOTU did let me down initially.  Again, that droll first TOTU episode seems to be an aberration.  There was nothing clever here, and a couple of technical glitches.  However, at this point, things got better.  In the AHP version, after drinking the tea, Dean Stockwell just went dizzy and glassy eyed — frankly not that different from his earlier performance, minus the over-enunciation of every word — and that was the end.  But here . . .

The Landlady manages to help Billy back up to the third floor and strip him.  She goes into the room next door and we see the stuffed Temple reading and the stuffed Mulholland asleep in bed.  The Landlady says goodnight, gives them a kiss and turns out the lights.  Back in Billy’s room, she dons a butcher’s apron over her white surgical smock and pulls on some rubber gloves.  There is a tray of shiny surgical instruments ready to work on Billy.

It is a beautiful ending.  Maybe the censors in 1961 wouldn’t allow AHP to air this last scene, but it makes the whole episode.  That is why AHP’s version fell so flat.  The build-up is a little dull in both episodes, but at least there is a pay-off here.  That would also explain that non-sequitur of a scene AHP set in the bar — they needed the padding.  TOTU also gave the Landlady a little more creepy reason to keep these — dare I say — stiffs around.

It even closes nicely, as the camera draws back and we again see the exterior of the apartment.  This is enhanced as TOTU’s carnival-like theme begins playing — just wonderfully nasty.

If I were the type to nitpick, I would point out that the lights in the windows make no sense in the exterior shot.  There are 3 windows with #2 and #3 lit.  But, the Landlady turned off the lights in the room to the right of Billy, which would have been #3. [2]

No matter.  It was a great ending and redeemed some of the perfunctory work before it.  I just wish the nastiness had not all skewed to the last 2 minutes.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  The only other hot water bottle I’ve seen in 20 years happened to also appear this week — in the very entertaining Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
  • [2]  Upon further examination, I’ll bet my subscription to Architectural Digest that the interior does not match the exterior.
  • [3] Or, as Jill Biden would say, Dr. William H. Cosby’d him.
  • Also airing this night in 1979: Fantasy Island which would be made into a terrible movie, CHiPS which would be made into a terrible movie, and Apple Pie — a sitcom so terrible that it was cancelled after 2 episodes.  And these people want to tell me how to run the country.
  • Congratulations to the usually fine actor Michael Peña for surviving 2 of the 3.
  • Actually, by April, the Apple Pie slot was occupied by Welcome Back Kotter.  We never got a terrible WBK movie, but it did foist John Travolta on us for the next 40 years.
  • BTW, Gotti: Not as awful as you would think.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Landlady (02/21/61)

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Ahhhh . . . it’s nice to be back in a safe space after disastrous outings with Tales of the Unexpected and One Step Beyond.   You can always count on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Oh bloody hell!  Can’t we have a nice simple murder in America?  Just to further rub 2020 in my face, the episode stars Dean Stockwell.  He might be interesting in small doses, but he is on the Mount Rushmore of stunningly bad, but successful, actors with Elliott Gould and Bill Paxton.  Here he plays — as always — Dean Stockwell.  Even this is beyond his grasp as he is required to speak with an English accent.

The episode is somewhat redeemed when the first face we see is 77 year old Burt Mustin playing a 100 year old man as he did throughout his entire career.  Those unfamiliar with Burt might appreciate the realistic British makeup; but no, those are his real teeth.  He is given nothing to do here, but it’s always good to see Burt Mustin.[1]

Four chaps in a pub are discussing some local burglaries when Dean Stockwell comes in.  He is just off the train and orders a sandwich and beer.  When the bartender has trouble opening the register, Stockwell is able to open it with his Swiss Army Knife.  The chaps think this incriminates him as the local burglar.

Stockwell then goes to rent a room from the titular landlady.   When he signs the register, the two previous guests’ names sound familiar to him.  

Speaking of familiar names, the credits contain a couple.  The screenplay is by the great Robert Bloch.  The original short story was written by the great Roald Dahl.  The mystery of this episode is how two such esteemed writers came up with such a mediocrity. 

Reviews on multiple sites rave about the episode so, as always, I will assume I’m missing something.  It is so vacuous that I can’t even continue.

Hmm . . . written by Roald Dahl.  I wonder if it will show up on Tales of the Unexpected?  Oh my God, it’s in the house!  The TOTU adaptation of The Landlady is up next in rotation.  Given how TOTU botched the great Lamb to the Slaughter, I am not optimistic about what they will do with this.

See you tomorrow after I watch it.  And by “tomorrow”, I mean 2 weeks.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Just to emphasize how old he is, Wiki says he used to be a salesman for Oakland Motor Cars.  
  • His minute role here is strange given that he was already established as a character actor.  In fact, the same month this aired, he reprised his seminal role as Gus the Fireman on Leave it to Beaver for the 11th time.
  • A more positive review is available at bare*bones.