Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Man with Two Faces (12/13/60)

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Alice and Mildred are walking out of a theater.  Mildred says it is amazing what they can do with the bible, and Alice mentions how long the movie was.  I figured it was The 10 Commandments, but we see part of a sign advertising The Wives of Solomon.  That does not seem to be a real movie.  The IMDb auto-complete returns The Real Wives of South Boston.  If 10 commandments take 3.5 hours, how long would Solomon’s 1,000 wives take?  Give the answer in square cubits.

The ladies go their separate ways.  About a block away, Alice gets mugged.  As she is crossing the street a mugger jumps out from behind a crate.  I mean, to the viewer, he is behind the crate.  Oddly, to Alice, he would have been in full view, crouching in front of the crate.  But that is just a split second; the robbery itself feels real.  The elderly woman does not give up the purse easily, so they wrestle a bit and she gets a nasty bruise.

The next morning, Alice gets dolled up to go to the police station.  We also meet her daughter and son-in-law who are living with her, having just moved back from California.  Leo seems to be a layabout who should be out looking for a job.  Mabel is . . . well, I don’t know what she is, but she insanely hot.  Way too good for Leo or the name Mabel.

She meets with Lt. Meade who is wearing a tie so thin it makes a bolo tie look like a lobster bib.  Alice says she got a good look at the man’s face.  Meade gives her a stack of mugshot books to look through.  Alice methodically reviews the hundreds of photos before she finds one that looks familiar.  One of the men looks just like Leo, but the name on the mugshot is William Draves.

Back at the house, Leo is nagging Mildred to give him $20.  When she refuses, he tells her she spends more than that on a permanent even though she appears to have never had a permanent unless it was a temporary.  She tells him she knows he will just take the $20 and waste it at the track.  Leo is lazy and a mooch, but is wearing a tie; and, unlike Lt. Meade, one with two dimensions.  He claims to have been a stockbroker in California, so tries to get Alice to give him $20 to “invest”.  Mabel tells him to beat it.

Alice asks what Leo did for a living in California.  Mabel says she has told her mother several times that Leo was a successful stockbroker.  That’s how she got her furs and jewelry.  In a way-too-long scene, Mabel assures her mother that Leo is a good man.  He just needs time to get established in the east.  Alice is still worried about that mugshot, though.

Blah blah blah.  There is a lot to like in the episode.  The actors, especially Alice and Meade, do great jobs.  The twist is excellent, and atypical of what we usually get with AHP.  Unfortunately, it just feels bloated in more than one scene.  Still, despite dragging a little, it is worth watching for the ending.  Rather than reading this, you should watch the episode; or do just about anything else, really.

SPOILER:

In a  nutshell, Alice returns to the police station to get more info on Draves.  Meade figures out that Draves is Leo.  Meade comes to Alice’s apartment that night to arrest Leo/Draves.  The twist is that Mabel is also one of America’s Most Wanted, and not just by me.  In being a good citizen, Alice randomly stumbled across a photo that busted Leo.  No big loss there, but she also has sent her daughter to the big house.

Far be it from me to suggest a legitimate weakness with the consistently excellent AHP, but a couple of things did seem problematic.  Meade makes the point that if Alice had been searching the mugshots for a woman, she would have seen her daughter’s photo.  This is emphasized as if it were the real stinger, but it is anti-climatic.  By that point, we have already seen Alice’s reaction to the news that her daughter is a criminal.

Inexplicably, the final shot zooms in on Mabel alone as she approaches a door frame and pounds it, looking completely beaten.  She’s a crook, no better than Leo.  She does not deserve the focus of the last shot.  We should have ended up on Alice’s face.  She is the center of this scene.  Not only has she learned her daughter — who she clearly loves — is a criminal, but she is responsible for sending her own daughter to prison.  Ya got tragedy, anguish, guilt, helplessness, and just plain old bad luck.  There’s your last shot.

I would have been totally OK with running shots of Mabel under the credits, though.

Other Stuff:

  • Title Analysis:  Alice at first thought it was just the opposite — two men with one face.  However, the title actually refers to the face Leo shows to Alice versus the face he shows as a criminal.  Cool.
  • Mabel’s real name is Bethel, which might actually be worse.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.  BTW, Spring Byington (Alice) was born just 21 years after The Civil War.

 

One Step Beyond – Epilogue (02/24/59)

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The screaming!  My God, the screaming!

The very first words of the episode are screams from Carl Archer in his hotel room.  “SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!  IT WAS NO HALLUCINATION!”  Another man tries to reason with him, but Carl continues shouting, “YOU WANT TO HEAR IT AGAIN?  I’LL TELL IT  THOUSAND TIMES!” It comes as no shock when we learn the other man is a psychiatrist, Dr. Sanders.  Or that Carl just got out of rehab six weeks ago.  Flashback . . .

Carl goes to Nevada to find his wife who has filed for divorce.  He enters the hotel lobby and sees his 10 year old son Steve.  The boy seems a little hesitant, so Carl says, “I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re wondering.”  Does that ring true?  I have little intimate experience with alcoholics, and no intimate experience with 10 year old boys.  Would a father say that?  Even more incredibly, Steve says that his mother sent him down to the lobby to find out if his dad was drunk.  I’m pretty confident I can say that would never happen.

The latest in spelunking gear

Carl tells his young son he will never have to worry about his ol’ Dad being drunk again.  Before he can discuss his financial issues or the time he went to a prostitute during the war with the boy, they go to Helen Archer’s hotel room.  She avoids Carl’s hug, then sends Stevie out to put something in the car, and pick up a carton of Luckys while she and Carl talk.

Carl sees that she got the flowers he sent but that she didn’t read the note.  She tells him he was always sweet and thoughtful.  He adds, “except when I was drunk and looking for somebody to punch?”  Whoa, is that the titular one step beyond?  This is getting pretty heavy for a 1950s TV show about ghosts.  She asks why he came all the way out here.  She says, “The answer is no.”  She always used to think he could change, but has given up.  She recalls “the last time you were drunk, shouting and fighting, and the way those two policemen looked at me!  I’ve forgiven and forgotten so many times that it’s just all gone out of me!”

Carl says, “We both need to remember how horrible it was.  That’s what will stop it from happening again” which simultaneously sounds like the best and worst advice ever.  She starts crying and says, “I can’t go through this again!  I can’t!”  He tells her he was angry at her for having him committed to that awful place, but is now grateful because it made him want to sober up. Anyhoo, he asks to be taken back, she says she’ll think about it, then she takes Stevie to see an abandoned mineshaft.

What’s that, girl? Trouble at the old mine?

They go into the old silver mine which fortunately is one of them mines with natural lighting and no rats or methane.  Helen has chosen to explore this mineshaft in a white dress that comes down to her mid-calfs, so maybe she’s hitting the sauce too.  I must say, though, she looks pretty hot in that slim little dress.  As the Germans say, “She can explore mein shaft anytime” although I’m not clear on why they say half of it in English.

After Stevie talks about his father several times, Helen decides to give Carl another chance.  Steve runs ahead and crawls up onto one of the support trusses and starts hammering away at it.  There is a cave-in on both of them.

Carl is passed out drunk on the sofa in Helen’s hotel room; no wait, he’s just sleeping, but it was a reasonable mistake.  Helen bursts in, her white dress filthy, and begins screaming, “HE’S TRAPPED!  HE’S TRAPPED!  HE’S TRAPPED IN THE MINE!”  They speed back to the mine.

Inside the mine, Carl sends Helen to find more help and begins digging through the rubble to find Stevie.  He struggles with the large rocks and beams.  Luckily 2 guys heard Helen’s screams and come to help.  They finally find Stevie and he is OK.  Then he starts shrieking, “MOM!  MOM!  MOM!  MOMMY!” and runs back into cave-in area.  He starts digging in the rubble, far more effectively than his father had BTW.  He uncovers Helen’s lifeless hand sticking out from under a heavy beam.  Stevie starts shrieking, “DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!”  Seriously, 16 consecutive times in the same ear-splitting, high-pitched shriek.  This could have been a very effective moment if the kid had been better directed, or gagged.  While Stevie is screaming, Carl begins digging Helen out.

When he clears enough rubble to confirm that it Helen’s cold smokin’ hot body, he screams, “OH GOD!” and runs from the area; leaving Stevie in the cave-in site, BTW.  When he gets past the other men, he just wails incoherently and belts out the most deranged screams I’ve ever heard from a human who was not governor of Vermont.  He runs through the mine screaming, his arms flailing about.  This is a brutal situation for a man to be in, but it was hard not to laugh at his hysterics.

He stands silently outside the adit [1] for a moment, appearing to be dazed.  Then he suddenly starts shrieking again.  I see where Stevie gets it.  One of the good samaritans holds him back from returning to the mine.

We end up in the hotel room where we started.  Carl is telling the story to Dr. Sanders.  The doctor explains that Helen was killed instantly in the cave-in.  She appeared at the hotel, but her car never left the mine.  He says Carl was fatigued from a long drive, and under great emotional distress.  When Helen and Stevie were gone longer than expected, maybe he feared they would never come back.  Ergo:  Hallucination.

Carl screams, “I SAW HER!  SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!”  Sanders reminds him that as a chronic alcoholic, he has had hallucinations before.  Actually there is some serious dialogue here, deeper than I would have expected from William Schallert.  One of the men who helped dig out Stevie comes by the room and says it was a woman’s scream that brought them to the cave.  Carl feels vindicated and walks Stevie out of the hotel.

This episode was a little like yesterday’s TFTC in that it seemed to jump genres.  We learn in the beginning that something strange happened.  Then we get pure Lost Weekend melodrama for almost 10 minutes. Then we get the action portion of the tonight’s broadcast, followed by another extended melodramatic scene.

It is all well-done.  Charles Aidman (Carl) was more unhinged than I have ever seen him.  I usually think of him playing calm, rational characters.  He could have used some of this anger to give his 1980s Twilight Zone narration some edge.  William Schallert also surprised me.  I think of him as a comedic actor, but he was spectacular as the psychiatrist.  The mine set was nice, and the cave-in was believable.

But that screaming!  Charles Aidman gets us off to a bad start with his loud shouts.  Stevie is just unbearable as he screams continuously in the mine.  I know his mother was just killed, but his performance is just brutal.  Aidman’s screams as he runs out of the mine are nothing short of histerical and hylarious.  We even get a replay of the opening scream in the closing scene. [2]  So, a good episode, undermined by some over-emoting.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Throwing a bone to crossword puzzlers.
  • [2] Like Pulp Fiction, the wrap around scene is a little different in the beginning than the end.  I understand screwing up a word, but a bellhop delivered an envelope in the opening, but was never seen in the closing.  That’s a pretty hig miss.
  • And that’s 1,000.

Tales from the Crypt – Cold War (05/31/96)

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You might want to consider whether your production needs a little tightening up when the first 2.5 minutes of your episode is three people silently riding in  car. [1]  There is no car chase, it is not going anywhere exotic, and no one is Jack & Rosing in the backseat.  The novelty of the steering wheel being on the wrong side wears off pretty quickly.

This episode is the definition of being less than the sum of its parts.  The scene described above is the first example.  Really, nothing happens, but it does get you interested in Ford, Cammy and Cutter.  They arrive at the bank they were going to rob and find it has become a laundry.  OK, that’s fun.  They then go to Plan B which is to rob a convenience store; although, I would have thought Plan B would be a different bank.

Cammy has a bad feeling, but Ford reminds her that in England only the bad guys have guns.  Wow, can’t see that line getting aired in the USA today or in USA Today.  There is also a bizarre bit where Ford doesn’t know the word wanker.  But that makes sense later.  Maybe.

They walk in to rob the store and find that there is a gang already robbing it.  For no reason at all it is an Asian gang, and for no reason, they are wearing motorcycle helmets.  Well, I guess the reason is that they rode motorcycles.  But it still adds a little pizzazz.

So we started out with a jaunty opening, then had a little comedy, then this scene turned out to be a pretty serious gunfight.  All good stuff, but what does the episode want to be when it grows up?  They go back to their apartment where Cammy digs a slug out of Ford’s leg.  Could be worse — Cutter was killed.

Next thing we see is Cammy picking up a dude in a bar.  Hunh?  That’s out of nowhere.   Ford catches them together the next morning, and shoots the guy.  But the guy is not what he appeared to be.  And Ford and Cammy are also not what they appeared to be.  But they are not the same as the guy, if that’s vague enough for you.  This introduces yet another genre to the episode; maybe two.

All three of them end up crashing through the window.  The guy is not seen again, for good reason.  Ford and Cammy are seen having a drink.  Some of their past dialogue suddenly makes sense, maybe even him not knowing what a wanker is.

During the viewing, they seemed to be making this up as they went along.  However, afterword, remembering the episode, and assisted by the warm glow of a new scotch (Shackleton’s) [2] the pieces began to coalesce into a good episode.  But not good enough to make me sit through the Cryptkeeper’s closing remarks.

Trigger warning:  There is some seemingly racist language that, if you are patient, is not racist.  On the other hand, calling the black guy “Count Chocula” gets no such redemption.  Just to balance things out, there are also female and Asian slurs.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] To be fair, a couple of lines are exchanged at the 1:30 mark.  To be fairer, it was not boring.  The car was sweet, and there was a fantastic jazzy score (described as “really annoying” in the sole IMDb review).
  • [2] What better way to capitalize on the adventurous spirit and soul-crushing adversity of the Shackleton crew who were 100X the man you are — booze!  God bless America; even if it is British.
  • Title Analysis:  I can kind of make it work as the characters represent two factions.  But they are not normally thought of as enemies, so it’s really a stretch.
  • Stars a young Ewen McGregor and young Colin Salmon (you know him even if you think you don’t know him).  Not for nothing, McGregor also starred in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.
  • No, I think that was for nothing.

Outer Limits – Fathers & Sons (08/06/99)

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Tara is visiting her grandmother in Silver Sunset nursing home.  Sadly, this week Grandma no longer remembers her.  Dr. Adler tells her that Alzheimer’s is cruel that way.  After Tara leaves, Grandma goes down a long tunnel towards a bright light.  She’s not dying; orderlies are just pushing her on a gurney down a long hall to a well-lit lab.  She is put into one of hundreds of coffin-like berths, and gas knocks her out.  In the mean time, Grandma’s room is quickly stripped and a different patient’s pictures are hung on the wall.

At the very beginning, I expected the worst because I don’t think I’ll remember Tara in a week either; she’s just not very good. [1]  However, she is not a major character.  The combination of a great location that extended into a huge matte shot was awesome.  The efficient modular switching out of the geezers was intriguing.  It would have been a good scene in an X-Files episode; it would have been the best scene in an X-Files movie.  I haven’t been roped into an OL episode this quickly in quite a while.

The Dell family is gathered ’round for Grampa Joe’s — uh-oh, I see where this is going — birthday.  He is a pretty spry old cat who is jamming on some blues guitar with his grandson Ronnie.  Ronnie’s father Hank is not pleased that he is more interested in following in Joe’s footsteps than doing well in school.

He might be right.  Ronnie spends the next day busking, then playing outside for a crowd.  He inexplicably returns home during school hours and finds Hank helping Joe pack up his possessions.  He is moving to Silver Sunset.  They get Joe moved into the home.  All seems well, but Dr. Adler ominously tells Ronnie that he must call before he visits.

The next week when Ronnie visits Joe, he isn’t quite right.   He is flashing back to dreams he’s having, and can’t remember a song he sang at his birthday party.  Ronnie meets Tara there and she is seeing the same behavior from her grandma.

The next day, as Ronnie is playing on the street again, he sees a dude singing the song his grandfather wrote for his birthday party.  Kudos to OL for having this be a dweeby white guy in a suit and tie.  As he gyrates around and scowls trying to be an authentic blues singer, it is immediately clear what is going on at Silver Sunset.

Ronnie also sees a change in his father.  He has quit his job and says he wants to go into business for himself.  To this end, he has bought a computer which prompts a couple of bizarre responses.  Ronnie and his mother both question whether Hank can use it.  This seems like a sober, responsible guy who has provided a fine home for his family.  Why do they suddenly think he’s an idiot?  Then his wife reacts like it was a crazy purchase, like she has no idea what one costs, or if it will put someone’s eye out.  This is made even stranger by the fact that we saw a computer in Ronnie’s bedroom earlier.  This isn’t Gilligan buying a UNIVAC.

On the other hand, he did quit his job to “go into business.”  That’s not much of a business plan.  It’s like majoring in college.

But that is just a little hiccup.  The episode lived up to its early promise with some good ideas and great performances.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Sadly, the actress died at age 32.  I am clearly wrong about her as she packed a huge career into that brief life.
  • Dang, I watched some Outer Limitseses early because Hulu said they were expiring.  Yet they are still here. Damn you, Hulu!

Science Fiction Theatre – Jupitron (08/17/56)

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SFT continues championing our unsung institutes of higher education.  Today we are in “Science Hall” at “State University” home of the fighting Home.  We’re not here long though, so I don’t even know why I bought up.  Or why SFT did.  Flashback . . .

John and Nina Barlow are walking along the beach.  They find a nice spot and spread a blanket.  John, who is a doctor and probably never lets you forget it, begins mansplaining that the Moon does not shine, it merely reflects light from the sun.  Nina begins kissing him just to stop his lips from moving.

A minute later a fog begins rolling in which is just like The Fog — not scary.  John and Nina find themselves forced onto their backs, and they can’t move.  They awaken in a lab in a couple of La-Z-Boys.  They still can’t get up, but only because they are so darn comfortable.  Finally John crawls out of his chair, puzzled by how they got here, and if there might be snacks.

They discover they are locked in a windowless lab,  There are strange sounds and smells.  John really loses his shit when he repeatedly tries to break an Erlenmeyer Flask and it just won’t shatter.  When John starts fiddling with some equipment, a voice tells him to knock it off.  It asks if he is Dr. John Barlow, and if he is an instructor at the university where Dr. August Wykoff disappeared 10 years ago.  The voice tells him Wykoff is not dead. It is he who asked that John be brought here.

Wykoff courteously waits for the commercial to end before entering the room.  The Barlows quite reasonably ask where they are, why they were brought here, and if the La-Z-Boys are for sale or just display.  Wykoff turns on a screen which shows a photo in space.  He says, I doubt you’ll be able to see the university, but it is in this general direction.”  Since the photo shows both the earth and moon, John, the doctor, deduces that it was taken from space.  The next shot shows 5 moons, so John deduces they are on a moon of Jupiter.[1]

Wykoff criticizes their human-privilege in thinking they are the only intelligent species in the universe.  John asks what the inhabitants of this moon are like.  Wykoff says, “The beings of this moon are not animals, parasites, or plants like the people of the earth.”  While I agree humans can be all of those things, I’m shocked at the boldness of SFT in saying so.  The alternative is that this line was written by a moron, and I just can’t accept that. [2]

The inhabitants of this moon brought Wykoff here because because their natural resources of methane were dwindling.  They thought a great human scientist could devise a means to harvest more methane from underground or at least do PSAs on J-TV to convince their population to eat more beans.

In exchange for Wykoff’s help, now 10 years later, the moonies (would it have killed them to name the moon?) have a gift for humanity.  They are giving us the titular Jupitron.  John believes the biggest problem facing humanity is food supply.  Jupitron accelerates the maturation process from 30 days to 30 seconds, a 60,000X improvement.[3]  This could solve the world’s problems when used in produce, cattle, fish, millennials, and antifa members.

Oddy, he does a demonstration using a sweet potato.  Is anyone really in a hurry for sweet potatoes?  Ya kinda have 12 months warning when you’re going to need the next one.  But your family’s mileage may vary, I guess.

John wants to ask more questions about Jupitron, but makes the mistake of sitting back in the La-Z-Boy.  Before he can finish his sentence, the darn thing puts him to sleep.  He wakes up on the beach with Carol.  They both think it is a dream, but one of those dreams that 2 people can both have, I guess.

So, all of this was a flashback and now we see that John has used Jupitron to save the world!  Yea!  No, not really.  We just see the college dean suggesting that maybe electrons floating between their heads as they slept account for the shared dream.  No wonder they don’t want to name this college.  John discovers he has argon in his blood, so deduces it was not just a dream.  So he gets to work on Jupitron.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Jupiter has 79 moons, but only 12 had been discovered as of this airing.  I’m not saying this is an error, I just thought it was interesting.
  • [2] The writer was actually very successful, so this is really baffling.
  • [3] I can’t make out exactly what he says, but he does say 60,000.  However, this increase would be 2 x 60 x 24 x 30 = 86,400 times.
  • Filmed in 10 hours according to the book.  What did they do the other 9.5 hours?