The Hitchhiker – Perfect Order (02/17/87)

Posted on by
Reply

The episode begins with an art exhibit so uninteresting and devoid of talent that it could be real.  Three models are caked with mud and hanging from ropes.  One of them complains when she begins to bleed.  The photographer, Simon, tells his assistant Nishi to give them some money to get rid of them.  Or, as we say in the real world, pay them.

He later arrives at a showing of his dreck.  The vacuous, trend-sucking ignorati wildly applaud him as he walks into the party like he was walking onto a yacht.  A sad little critic in a please-notice-me suit and please-please-notice-me over-sized glasses ridiculous even for the 1980’s lavishes praise on the smug artiste.  He responds, “I don’t care what you critics think.  You’re just policemen.”  I applaud his refusal to be swayed by critics, but he speaks as if he is saying something profound and is profoundly not.

The great Simon pulls an automatic weapon from beneath his Jedi robe; yeah, he is dressed in a robe.  He says, “Would you like to see a suicide?” and places the barrel in his mouth.”  Before I can say yes, he swings the rifle around and shouts, “How about a mass killing?”  He then blasts automatic weapon fire over the heads of his cowering sycophants.  As he leaves, blonde model Christina gushes, “You’re incredible.”

The sheeple naturally give him a standing ovation — now that standing up will not get their heads blown off.  Christina runs after him to his car.  She begs him to let her pose for him.  He says, “To model for me you have to be a victim, a slave.”  Who could pass up that opportunity?  She gets in his car.

That’s it for me.  The big city art elite are laughable and ripe for derision and satire, but this comes off as one of their own products.  The only emotion it evokes is tedium.  We have the thoroughly unlikable anti-hero because decency is for the rubes.  We have the empty headed poser desperate to be part of this hollow world.  Compound that with the usual terrible 1980s light shows and synths and this is unwatchable.

Go read The Painted Word instead.  It won’t take much longer than the episode and, unless you’re reading in a dim light, will be easier on the eyes.

Post-Post:

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Invitation to an Accident (06/21/59)

Posted on by
2

Just a quick aside.  Or since this is the beginning, maybe it is an atop. Rather than being here, you should be watching Fargo.

It took me a while to find it, but holy crap!  Season 2 is merely great so far.  Season 1 was an absolute freakin’ masterpiece.  They’ve been making TV & movies for a hundred years.  Why can they only crack the code about .5% of the time?  Is there no learning curve in Hollywood?  Anyhoo . . .

Tuxedoed buttinsky Albert Martin tells Mrs. Bedsole that her niece-in-law Virgilia [1] is out in the garden among the vidalias, azaleas, and bougainvilleas with a man who is not her husband.  Even worse, it is Virgilia’s ex-husband Cam. She asks Albert to check on them.  He finds them fooling around in the bushes.

On the way home, Virgilia’s husband Joseph asks her where she disappeared to.  She says she was just visiting with old friends.  He says that is fine and even insists they have one of them over for dinner.  She says she will invite “a very old admirer.”  Once again, we have an AHP marriage which makes no sense.  While Virgilia is beautiful and vivacious, Joseph comes off as a sad sack.  He knows his wife is cheating on him, but is so needy he wants to be friends with the other man.  The scene in the car is shot so that, not only is Virgilia driving, she towers above her husband.  Why would she have left Cam, inventor of the Condo Fee, to marry Joseph?  Maybe Joseph invented the Assessment.

She invites Albert over for dinner. There seems to be some point to Albert asking for a sherry, but I’m not sure what it is.  Joseph McFlys away to find a bottle.  After dinner, Virgilia takes Albert out to see some metal chairs Joseph made.  She says she thinks Albert prefers to have a woman on his arm rather than in his arms.  Hmmmm, I think I see where they were going with that Sherry thing.

As they are going back inside, some scaffolding falls on Virgilia.  If this were a play, the audience would applaud.  Albert examines the frayed rope.  Joseph conjectures the wind must have cause the pulley to wear away the fibers.

The next day, Albert is finishing 20 push-ups.  He says to himself, “I’m out of condition. I got no wind.”  If he is doing push-ups so fast that he can get winded, I’d say he’s in extraordinary shape.  That reminds him — there was no wind when the scaffold fell. Why would Joseph cite the wind as the cause of the frayed rope?  Well, it might not have been windy at the second it fell, but it was heard clanging against the house earlier in the evening.

Pajamaed buttinsky Albert calls Virgilia to check on her.  She is OK, but bedridden.  He asks if she has had any other “accidents”.  No.  End of brutally expository scene.

One evening, Albert goes back to their house.  Joseph is napping and Virgilia has been delayed, so he goes to Joseph’s workshop to look for evidence that Joseph is trying to kill his wife.  He finds rope like that used on the scaffolding.  After only a few strokes with a metal rod, he manages to cut into the rope.  The demonstration actually makes Joseph’s story more credible; although he is buying some cheap-ass rope.

Then he notices a can of arsenic is missing from the spot he saw it on the night of the accident.  Necktied buttinsky Albert goes to Mrs. Bedsole and tells her Joseph is going to murder Virgilia.  They agree he can’t go to the police, but he will let Joseph know he is watching him.
He returns to Joseph & Virgilia’s house.  Joseph is just getting over a case of ptomaine.  His doctor prescribed fresh air, so he invites Albert to go fishing with him in Mexico.

They grill up some fish and make some coffee over a camp fire on the beach.  They begin discussing murder.  Fishinghatted buttinsky Albert begins a story about “a man I knew who intended to commit a murder”.

He continues that the murder did not occur because “a third person who was a friend of both the intended murderer and his victim intervened.”  This third person caused the murderer to weigh the consequences against the small satisfaction of killing his wife.

Joseph says it is very similar to a situation he knows of.  The husband knew his wife was cheating on him.  He says the man was kind of a slob but did love his wife.  “The fellow set out to protect his property.”  Wait, his what?  “The way he did it was simple.  He encouraged his wife to bring friends to the house.”  Then he saw them fooling around in the garden.

Albert is increasingly uncomfortable at the story which is clearly about him and Virgilia.  He realizes the scaffolding was meant for him.  Joseph says the man had another plan — to take the wife’s friend camping.  In a lonely spot, they made coffee in a tin can because the man had forgotten the coffee pot.  Both men got arsenic poisoning, but the man had built up a tolerance.  The other man died, but he got well.

Albert blurts out, “”But it wasn’t me!  It was Cam!”

“Cam!” Joseph cries in horror.

All the pieces are here.  It is a well-constructed piece with nice misdirection and great twist.  Joseph’s apparent tolerance of his wife’s fooling around just irritates me.

I was also distracted by the resemblances of both male leads to other actors.  Gary Merrill (Joseph) reminded me very much of Humphrey Bogart.  Sometimes it was the PTSD’d Capt. Queeg, sometimes it was Fred C. Dobbs, and sometimes it was his hot decades-younger blonde wife, [2] but the specter was always there.  Alan Hewitt (Albert) was a dead ringer for James Gregory in both looks and voice.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Cam was present in the episode more in spirit than he was in person.  Now as the only survivor, he is the only one who is a person and not a spirit.
  • AHP Proximity Alert:  Lillian O’Malley (Flora the Maid) was just in an episode two weeks ago — give someone else a chance!  There she played “Housekeeper”.  In the very first AHP episode, she played “Hotel Maid.”  Whatever happened to Pat Hitchcock?  This used to be her beat.
  • [1] Virgilia was the wife of Coriolanus in Shakespeare’s play.  Heh, heh . . . anus. Virgilia was like June Cleaver, though, so the name doesn’t really carry any meaning here.
  • [2] Lauren Bacall has the honor of being ID # nm0000002 at IMDb.  Fred Astaire is # nm0000001.
  • For a more in-depth look at the episode and its source material, head over to bare*bonez ezine.  Where the heck do they find this stuff?

Twilight Zone – The Library (03/28/86)

Posted on by
Reply

Beware any TZ segment that begins with that little pixie-dust musical flourish.  It does not bode well for your next 20 minutes.

Aspiring writer Ellie Pendleton is excited about her first day on her new job at the library.  The head librarian Gloria cautions her that this is a private library and “the books are not for reading by you, me or anyone.  The owners are very strict about that.”

They enter the library which contains endless shelves of books, down to the vanishing point and that’s just the James Patterson section.  Gloria says, to save space, they are going to be converting the books to holograms — which makes no sense. Understand-ably in 1986, the producers didn’t know what a Kindle was; but they did know what a hologram was.

Seeing that the books are titled with people’s names and birth dates, she leaps to the conclusion that they contain people’s lives rather than that she might just be in the ##0.#09 section.  Gloria admits there is a book there for everyone alive.  “Each is an up to the minute record of the person’s life, changing with each moment.”  When a person dies, her employer uses the book to determine their final destination, although Zeno’s Paradox would suggest the book will never get that far.

As is frequently the case with this TZ series, the insipid score undermines any suspense that this scene promised.  Ellie finds herself in the P section.  After she zips up [1], she pulls out the volume titled Ellen Pendleton.  It gives an account of her life including pulling the book off the shelf and opening it.

Back at the apartment she shares with her sister the nurse, she says her day was enormously unbelievable.  After dinner, she tries to work on her novel, but noise from the adjoining apartment is disturbing her.  She confronts her neighbor Mr. Kelleher who is laughing it up with his gal Carla . . . . . I don’t know if I can go on.

Ellie has had a mind-blowing experience at work, she is stood up by her sister, she has writer’s block, she is frustrated at the “cheapest drywall in the world”, she is angry at her inconsiderate neighbor, she confronts him and he is an obnoxious jerk.  So naturally the score sounds like public domain music that would play under two young lovers having a picnic lunch at a lake watching the sailboats.  It is inconceivable to me that this selection wasn’t drawn out of a hat.  OK, looking again, I guess this is the music on the neighbor’s stereo, but it is still a poor choice.

The next day, Ellie uses White-Out and a pen to edit Kelleher’s volume so he is a eunuch priest.  The segment regains its footing with Ellie’s entrance into her apartment after work.  The butterfly effect has changed the past, present and furniture which she trips over; and her sister is now a waitress — it is a good moment.  Note to Hollywood: Played with no score.

Ellie’s sister is consoling her crying friend Carla who was Kelleher’s gal in the original timeline.  She whines, “I’m 37 years old. [2]  I have no kids, no husband, not even a boyfriend.  My life is a complete and utter waste.” [3] The next day, Ellie writes her into “a relationship with that nice Mr. DeWitt in 304.”

After work, Carla is sporting a full length fur coat.  When Ellie enters her apartment, it is much more homey for one thing.  Her sister is now a lawyer helping Mr. DeWitt who, in this timeline, has been bankrupted by Carla’s spending.  Wow, nurse to waitress to lawyer — what a decline!

Ellie edits his volume so he is a successful real estate developer.  She sees de wealthy DeWitts as she is coming home from work. Mr. DeWitt tells her not to be late with the rent, and “and whatever your sister is trying to pull in that tea party upstairs, it’s not gonna work.”  Her sister is organizing the tenants in a rent strike against the over-bearing, do-nothing criminal landlord.  Heh, Tea Party indeed.

Ellie has had it with apartment living, so edits her volume for a nice beach house and bigger boobs, although I might have imagined that last part.  She gets home and finds her sister has died while rescuing a little boy from drowning.  D’oh!

She immediately returns to the library to erase the beach house.  And, by the way, probably condemns the little boy to die in the new timeline.

She tells them to keep CPRing while she runs back to the library, but her sister’s book has already been pulled.  Gloria finally realizes Ellie has been editing the books, so throws her out of the library like a 50 year old dude browsing in the Young Adult section.  She finds her sister in her nursing uniform waiting by the car, so all is as it was.

There is so much to like here.  The structure is pretty well-worn, but that’s OK — there is a reason why classics are classics.  This basically is the same genie/devil wish-and-consequence seen since The Monkey’s Paw.  In fact, a month ago we just had the same concept on TZ with a Leprechaun.  The 15 minute segment was well-constructed to work in minor changes in the timelines and interweave the characters.

I guess my only complaint is the score.  It is not unusual for the overly-syruppy scores the undermine TZ segments.  I am just baffled by how this was allowed.  I know they were going for a kindler, gentler, not-your-father’s TZ — misguidedly, in my opinion — but at least the sappy music often accompanies a sappy scene.  Here, it just made no sense.  I’m not going back to check, but it seems to me the most effective scenes in this segment were the ones played with no score.  The occasional heavenly choir bit worked, so I am not advocating silence.  Just don’t have the score at odds with the tone of the scene.

Just the slightest dark edge could have made this great.

Post-Post:

  • [1] She wasn’t wearing pants, but I couldn’t think of another way to say it.  See, like she was urinating in the P section.  Just urinating and urinating and urinating. Cuz it’s the P section.  Where Pendleton would be.
  • [2] The actress is 41.  F’in actors, man.
  • [3] C’mon this was already being mocked in 1980.
  • Classic TZ Legacy:  Take yer pick of genie and time-travel episodes.
  • Written by Anne Collins who also wrote the dreadful Ye Gods.  I’m willing to bet that one also had the pixie dust flourish.  She has a huge resume; maybe she is just not getting a fair shake on TZ.
  • Skipped Segment:  Take My Life . . . Please.  I like the premise, but it was just about unwatchable.  Many others seem to like it, so maybe I will get up on the wrong side of the bed in a couple of hours.
  • Skipped Segment:  Devil’s Alphabet.  No one seems to like this one.  The whole time, I kept thinking it seemed like a segment that could have easily fit in on Night Gallery.

Wise Guy – Frederick Nebel (1930)

Posted on by
Reply

I.

The first paragraph of this story might be the most brutal thing in this collection so far.

Alderman Tony Maratelli walked up and down the living room of his house in Riddle Street.  Riddle was the name of the one-time tax commissioner. Maratelli was a fat man with dark eyes and two generous chins.  His fingers were fat, too, and the fingers of one hand were splayed around a glass of Chianti from which at frequent intervals he took quick sibilant draughts.  Now an Italian does not drink Chianti that way.  But Maratelli looked worried.  He was.

Up and down the living room, not just around it?  Is it shaped like a lap-pool?  He lives in the street?  I assure you, the tax commissioner has absolutely no role in this story, and there is no irony later in the story concerning his occupation or the name [1].  The paragraph veers towards coherence in describing his weight problem, but just as quickly goes back off the rails.  What’s with the conversational Now all of a sudden?  Beginning a sentence with But is OK to punctuate an idea, but the incredible shrinking sentences at the end would normally convey an anxiety that does not exist here.  Not sure about the use of draught, but I’m willing to call it colloquialism.

He has invited Police Captain MacBride over to talk about his son Dominick.  Maratelli’s son, I mean; but was anyone really thinking MacBride was the one with a son named Dominick?  Maratelli assures MacBride, “Look, Cap, I’m a good guy.  I’m a good wop. I’ve got a wife and kids and a business and I was elected Alderman.”  He is concerned that his son is hanging around with Sam Chibarro whom he also calls a wop.  But not a good one, I guess, as he is mixed up with the mob.  Maratelli wants MacBride to make sure his son his safe.

II.

Did this story opt for the Roman Numeral chapter headings because of the many Italian characters?  There were no Arabs in the other stories, so who knows?

MacBride heads down to the Club Naples where Chibarro hangs out with his entourage. He spots Chibarro and Dominick immediately.  The two tuxedoed gangsters are hanging out with another thug, Kid Barjo and some floozies, although hot women hanging out with bad boys who play by their own rules flashing cash is a little hard to buy.

MacBride has barely had a chance to enjoy the Canadian whiskey and cigars offered by the manager Al Vassilakos when the group disappears into a back room.  When MacBride goes to check them out, he finds Kid Barjo dead with a “two stab wounds in the front of the neck” or what we non-professionals call “the throat.”

III.

Dominick and Chibarro got away, but the cops haul in the manager and the dames.  The girls are Bunny Dahl who sounds like a doll, Flossie who sounds like a floozy, and Frieda Hoegh who sounds like a ho [2].  We are also introduced to MacBride’s sidekick from a number of short stories, a drunken reporter named Kennedy.  Well, I’m assuming he’s drunken because he’s a 1930’s reporter.  And a Kennedy.  But mostly the Kennedy thing.  Hanging out at the police station, they get news that Tony Maratelli’s house was blown up.

IV.

V.

MacBride and Maratelli look at the smoldering ruins.  It had been more than a home to Maratelli, it was a symbol of his success as a building contractor.  The good news is, like Trump, he will build new walls and other people will pay for them . . . by diverting materials bought for other people’s homes on cost-plus contracts, I mean.  Because he’s contractor.  Moving on . . .

Maratelli confesses that Dominick had been hiding at the house when it was fire-bombed.  He says Dominick did not kill Barjo, but he just couldn’t tell MacBride he was there because he was his son.  MacBride tells him, “I know you’re a good guy — the best wop I’ve ever known.  But you’ve got to come clean.”

VI.

Back at the police station, the detectives are looking for a pattern.  Like a straight or a flush, for example, as they seem to just be hanging around playing cards.  The detectives and Kennedy workshop a few theories about who actually committed the murder.  MacBride manages to call Maratelli a wop two more times, then he breaks out a bottle of Dewar’s.  I think I can profile him already.

VII.

MacBride beefs up the task force with Moriarty, Cohen, some plainclothesmen, some flashyclothesmen, and some uniformed cops.  MacBride returns to Club Naples to talk to Al Vassilakos.  He isn’t there, or maybe is just trying to hide as he is apparently going by the alias Al Vasilakos now [3]. Having been fooled by this impenetrable ruse, MacBride leaves.  He does see Dominick and Vasilakos in the alley though.  Maybe he should have changed his appearance by wearing different cuff-links.  Both are hauled downtown.

VIII.

At the station, MacBride chews Dominick out for causing Moriarty’s house to burn down, Moriarty losing his position as Alderman, not revealing who killed Barjo, and for hitting on 16 with the dealer showing a 5.  Dominick denies everything.  Just as MacBride is about to get out the rubber hose, they get a new lead.

IX.

Bunny Dahl is discovered passed out from a gas leak.  She regains consciousness just long enough to say Chibarro did this to her.  MacBride, Moriarty, Hogan and Kennedy pile into the police car, but wisely do not let Kennedy drive.

X. – XII.

Back at the station, Vassilakos is also refusing to talk.  Unlike Dominick, he is not saved by the bell.  Moriarty roughs him up until he spills the address where Chibarro is hiding. They go to the address.  There is chasing, fighting, gunplay and finally Chibarro is hauled in.  New evidence actually proves him to be innocent of killing Barjo.  Bunny Dahl snapped out of her coma to write a confession longer than my high school valedictorian speech — the one I had to sit through, I mean — then croaked.  She admits she killed Barjo, clearing Chibarro.  But then she busts Chibarro for attempting to murder her.  D’oh!  He was afraid she would spill the beans about some of his other shenanigans.

Despite the rocky start, this one turned out to be pretty good.

Post-Post:

  • [1] OK, I suppose the mystery genre suggests a riddle, but are you going to have a Riddle Street in every entry of the genre?
  • [2] or phlegm.
  • [3] Upon closer examination, just a typo.
  • First published in Black Mask in April 1930.  Also that month:  Yeoman Rand from Star Trek is born.

Science Fiction Theatre – The Stones Began to Move (08/09/55)

Posted on by
Reply

Truman Bradley points out a coil of rope and a pyramid, saying “both are unsolved mysteries of the ages.” He demonstrates how a fakir does the ol’ Indian Rope Trick.  Well, he does the rope trick, but disgracefully leaves it open whether it is science or magic. In suggesting the Rope Trick is a legitimate scientific mystery, he says this kind of anti-gravity trick is nothing new — that may be how the pyramids were built.  I love Ancient Aliens and love young perky aliens even more, but this is just wrong.

In New York City, scientist Paul Kincaid leaves his lab late one night.  Wandering down a deserted street near the waterfront, he ducks into a phone-booth.  He tells the operator to connect him with Dr. Berensen at the United States Scientific Research Commission in DC.  Expecting the government employee to be there after 5 pm, he is clearly not a rocket scientist.

Getting no answer, he goes across the street to an arcade.  For $.25, enters a booth to make a record for Dr. Berensen, telling him he is being followed.  He recently returned from Egypt where he opened the tomb of Ahmed III without knocking.  He stumbled onto a miraculous “property entirely unknown to modern science.”  As he begins to describe the “staggering concept” he is shot and killed.  Maybe the miracle is a bullet that can kill a man in a glass booth and not break the glass, because that’s what happens.

The police take the record to Dr. Berensen.  He says Kincaid had a “very impressive bee in his bonnet” about the pyramids.  While Detective Crenshaw is grilling Berensen, he gets a phone call — Kincaid’s lab has been ransacked like Ahmed III’s tomb.  They go to question Kincaid’s boss.  It must be getting close to 5 pm as Crenshaw bails after getting no info, leaving Berensen to further question the man.[1]

They find a photo from inside the tomb.  A sword appears to be hovering in the air over III’s sarcophagus.  Notes on the back suggest a force field and mention Seja Dih who Kincaid saw perform the Indian Rope Trick in Benares and make a lady disappear at The Sands.[2]

Berensen goes to see Kincaid’s wife Virginia who was also his partner.  He is greeted at the door by a maid who might be the worst actress I’ve ever seen.  She says Ms. Kincaid’s bed hasn’t been slept in, so Berensen immediately calls the police.

Berensen’s secretary calls to tell him that Seja Dih is dead but that his granddaughter lives in New York, working as a chemist.  I have to give SFT credit — they did feature a lot of female scientists when that was probably a rarity.  Diversity has its limits though — the Indian guru’s granddaughter is played by an Irish actress in a cute little pixie hair-do, and she doesn’t even get a name.  Oh well, baby steps.

She says Kincaid had contacted her to buy some emerald rings which had belonged to her grandfather.  He believed them to possess the power of anti-gravity.  One of the artifacts recovered looted from Ahmed’s tomb has the same mineral.  Well, would have had it, but the minerals were removed from the artifact before it was shipped to New York.

When Berensen gets home, he finds Virginia Kincaid there.  Before saying a word, he offers her a cigarette.  She says she ran away because after her husband’s death, the house was scary.  She says the minerals weren’t stolen, they were given to her husband by the Egyptian government for research.

Yada yada, there is a boring confrontation.  Then Berensen demonstrates the power of the stones to the government.  The government seizes them under the PATRIOT Act and gives some senator’s brother a $10 million contract to research them.  Although that is just speculation on my part — the $10 million figure, I mean.  The rest sounds about right.

Post-Post:

  • [1] He is played by Basil Rathbone, the most iconic and the 2nd most humorously-monikered portrayer of Sherlock Holmes.
  • [2] Coincidentally, this episode aired the same year Moe Greene got whacked.  On second thought, there’s nothing coincidental about it.  There is no connection.