Twilight Zone – Gramma (02/14/86)

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There is just not a lot to grab on to here, but that is a reflection on my deficiencies, not the segment’s.  For almost all of the run time, the only character is 11 year old George and he is very good.

The story taps into some shared but seldom discussed fears:  Fear of the otherness of really old people, fear of responsibility, and fear of helplessness.  And all are handled well.  There is some witchery involved, but the human elements are the scariest.

George is left alone with his Gramma while his mother goes to see his brother in the hospital.  The ancient, morbidly obese, intermittently senile old woman is terrifying to George under the best of circumstances.  When he is the temporary man of the house, his anxiety escalates.

I watched it, then watched it two more times with different commentaries, then read the short story.  Both the segment and the story are very good.  The short story really didn’t need to be 28 pages, but that’s typical Stephen King.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

Post-Post:

  • Based on Stephen King’s short story in Skeleton Crew.  I have the hard-back with a cover price of $18.95.  That would be $42 in today’s dollars so I must have bought it hugely discounted at CostCo.  I’m not sure I ever actually read this story since it was the 3rd to last story and I have a habit of bailing before I finish anthologies.
  • There is a toy monkey on the kitchen counter that looks suspiciously like the one on the cover of Skeleton Crew.

Double Check – Thomas Walsh (1933)

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1,154 pages and 2.8 pounds — interesting in concept, but nearly impossible to read.

Devine was a small, slender man, thin-featured and quick of manner.  So it’s not Andy.  Or Divine.

He is a banker who is telling Detective Flaherty about blackmail letters he has been receiving. Unfortunately he lacked the foresight to save the letters for the police.  After getting a phone-call from the extortionists, he called the cops. The only clue is that he heard one of the men use the name Jigger.

Flaherty’s partner Mike Martin knows a Jigger Burns and says, “Jigger is a peter man.” I don’t even want to Google that.  Luckily, we are soon told that means he is a nitro expert.  The only blowing he does is -up safes.  Because Jigger was recently seen talking to Johnny Grecco, they somehow make the leap to question Grecco.  They head to the Esplanade to pick him up.

Grecco is not at the club, but one of his lackeys points out his girlfriend charmingly referred to as “the Polack.”  She is giving dime dances for $.25 so Flaherty hires her for a song.  Martin heads over to Flaherty’s house after he gets another threat about him calling the police.  While Flaherty is waiting for Grecco to show up, Martin calls in to say, “Someone laid a pineapple in Devine’s car.  Him and the chauffeur was blown to hell.”  Maybe it was that peter man.  Because of the nitro, I mean.

Flaherty returns to the club and looks around.  He asks, “Where’s that tall blonde, the Polack girl?”  She called in sick, tired of being the butt of two series of jokes impugning her intelligence [1].  He plays the cop-card, gets her name — Anna Brinski — and her address.  He busts into her apartment and finds her holding a pair tickets to Los Angeles, packing a whistle and a clipboard because the tickets said coach class.  That is enough for Flaherty to haul her downtown, although I’m still not seeing the connection.  A man comes to the door.  After a struggle, Flaherty shoots him.  As he is searching the body, Anna conks him on the head with a brass vase.

Flaherty wakes up half an hour later, but Anna is gone.  He identifies the dead man as Devine’s assistant, but can’t figure out his involvement.  He finds a piece of paper with “1934” written on it.  He staggers down the stairs of her apartment.  In front of Anna’s building, a man tries to shoot him from a passing car.  It would have been much easier to kill Flaherty in Anna’s apartment but the car could never have taken that tight corner at the base of the stairs.

After seeing an explosion in Devine’s bank, Flaherty goes to the only hotel in town tall enough to have a 19th floor.  Oh, and he calls the house dick.  Hehe.  Maybe to catch the peter man.  In room 1934, he finds Anna, Grecco, and the very much alive Devine. Flaherty puts all the pieces together.  The man killed in the explosion was a decoy for the similarly built Jigger. [2]  His pieces were not put together.

“Anna screamed suddenly, seeing the sudden bulge in the banker’s pocket.”

Since it is neither the house dick nor the peter man, it is just a pistol.  Yada yada, a bunch of cash and two honest cops.

Post-Post:

  • [1] How does she find her way to work in the morning?  Wakes up, goes home . . .
  • [2] Hey, the plot to Fletch!
  • First published in Black Mask in July 1933.
  • Born that month:  Joan Rivers & Gene Wilder.
  • The 2nd story in the collection to mention a flivver.

Science Fiction Theatre – Hour of Nightmare (06/25/55)

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Note: The video quality is so poor, it is not worth grabbing any pictures.

Editor Ed Tratnor assigns his two best photographers Mel & Verda Wingate to get pictures of a UFO.  The married couple is exploring mysteries just like Ed & Lorraine Warren only less fictional.  There have been reports of strange lights from airline pilots in southwestern New Mexico.  Mel shows he has no future in paranormal research by asking a perfectly reasonable question, “How far are the sightings from the White Sands Testing Facility?”  Ed says the military assured him there was no testing in that area; but they said the same thing about the ocean off New York on July 17, 1996 so who knows.

Editor Ed is willing to finance this trip because up to now “most pictures of UFOs have been taken by amateurs and other handicaps.”  What?  Ed Ed hopes they can get some professional shots that experts can actually analyze.  I hope he didn’t book their return flight because we’ve been waiting 60 years for these pictures.  While there, they are also supposed to look into the disappearance of some people from a Mexican village near the US border.  Yeah, there’s a mystery; where ever could they have gone?

Ed Ed suggests they look into reports of a spacecraft in the mountains and turn that into a “picture story” about the “birth of a rumor”.  Mel understands, “I get it — optical illusions, a little superstition, and jumping to conclusions.”  I’m all for skepticism, but why even take the trip if the story is already written?  The Dewey Beats Truman headline was only 7 years earlier; did journalists learn nothing?  Clearly not.

The Wingates take a plane to Los Cruces, then rent a car to go south of the border. They visit the Commandancia de la Policia and ask the about the reported disappearance of several villages, but the chief replies that the stories are exaggerations.  Only one man has disappeared, and that was probably due to a flash-flood. They ask if the chief can recommend a guide, and he sends them to Ramon Sanchez.

They arrive at Sanchez’s desert shack which is the same shack from Stranger in the Desert.  Despite being dissed by Mel calling him “Raymond”, Ramon Sanchez agrees to lead them into the mountains for $5 per day.  While stopped to photograph a mountain lion, they see a flying saucer, but it quickly disappears.  That night they actually do get some pictures of lights in the sky.

The next day, Sanchez finds a rifle with his brother’s initials on it.  He was the man who went missing.  Sanchez believes the lights in the sky killed his brother.  Later the horses refuse to go on.  Looking for what might have spooked them . . . a snake, a cougar, an Elmer’s Glue factory, Mel spots a bleeping dead alien.  Where to start?

  • For the first time, Mel pulls out the video camera.  So to recap: It is still pictures for moving spacecraft and motion picture film for a dead alien.
  • Mel refuses to allow Verda to see the alien.  He twice warns her to stay back.
  • The viewers also never see the alien as it is hidden behind a boulder.
  • It might have died from a shot that idiot Mel blindly fired into the brush that day. Did they learn nothing from Trial by Fire?

Sanchez suggests maybe it is time to head back home.  Mel agrees, but says they are taking the alien with them.  Sanchez is worried the aliens (which he calls caballeros [1]) might come back looking for their amigo.  He is so scared that he pulls a gun on the Wingates and begins unloading the alien from the horse.  The aliens shoot a laser frying him like a . . . hmmm, any food I mention will be deemed racist.  Let’s just go with juevo — I mean egg.  A fried egg.

The Wingates make it back to their hotel.  While Mel develops the pictures, Verda calls Ed.  Mel discovers every one of the pictures is ruined, destroyed by radiation.  The Commandante shows up looking for Sanchez and Mel tells him that, like his brother, Ramon was killed in a flash-flood.  When they finally reach Ed, Mel tells him it was all rumors.

  • So Mel killed an alien, possibly triggering a galactic war resulting in the destruction of Earth and the enslavement of humanity.
  • He doesn’t bust the Commandante for not telling him Ramon was the dead man’s brother.
  • Mel lies to his editor for no good reason when the destruction of the film is still a better story than the rumor-angle.[2]  Not to mention, who could question two eyewitness accounts bearing the credibility of the journalistic profession?
  • The Wingates will soon be dead from radiation poisoning.

More junk.

Post-Post:

  • [1] My high school Spanish was German, but Google tells me this means a Mexican gentleman or a horseman, neither of which make sense.  I could understand a basic Hombre, but why elevate the aliens to gentlemen?
  • [2] The alternate interpretation is that they made up the flash-flood story to satisfy the Commandante who was overhearing the call.  It would even be a nice winking non-admission to the Commandante.  Sadly, I don’t think SFT has the level of sophistication necessary for that to be likely.
  • Title Analysis:  No idea what they were going for.  The time period of one hour was not significant.  The only thing nightmarish was Ramon and the horse getting blown up, but that’s not really the main thrust of the story.
  • Unless the horse was a Pinto.

Outer Limits – New Lease (03/21/97)

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Oscar Reynolds collapsed on the tennis court committing not only a foot fault but an asphalt.  I guess he had picked up a few bucks when still alive by selling his body to medical science.  Ergo, 12 hours later his frozen corpse is being delivered to a lab.  The doctors run him through the microwave and are able to bring him back to life.

He is understandably skeptical, but finally accepts that he is back from the dead.  Unfortunately, the doctors tell him that he will die again in a couple of days.  They just haven’t worked out all the bugs yet.  In an unusual departure for Outer Limits, this miraculous scientific breakthrough is made by two guys working in a dark lab rather than one guy working alone in a dark lab.

After 13 hours, Dr. McCamber is ready to pull the plug.  Dr. Houghton correctly points out there is no plug — the guy is alive.  McCamber counters out that the life he has was forced on him.  Well, welcome to the club, pal!

Oscar just wants to die.  When Houghton points out that Oscar will go down in history, Oscar busts him for being more concerned about his own reputation.  When Oscar has a seizure, McCamber implores him to just let the guy go.  Oscar does indeed die despite Houghton’s efforts.

Houghton is mugged in the parking lot.  After a struggle, he is shot. McCamber wastes no time dragging his dead ass back into the lab where he can be resurrected. When he awakens, his first thought is that he will soon re-die like Oscar did. McCamber drives him home where he hopes he can make up for years of neglect.  The next day, instead of buying millions of dollars of life insurance, he takes his wife and daughter to the park.  They then go out for a nice lunch.  Out the window, Houghton sees the man that killed him.

That night he tracks the man down and kills him although I never understood that sort of brutal vengeance.  Kneecaps . . . shoot him in the kneecaps!  Because everyone dies thinking they didn’t spend enough time at the office, he goes back to the lab that night. McCamber tells him the previous revivals all failed because they were working on frozen stiffs.  Houghton was fresh dead so he is actually recovering.  So, good call on skipping the insurance premiums; not so much on murdering a man in front of witnesses.

He has a loving reunion with his wife for about two minutes.  In an ending more like the 1960s Twilight Zone, the police show up and haul Houghton away.  They tell him he could spend the rest of his life in jail.

It was a good story with a great premise mostly supported by the usual Outer Limits quality production.  It felt like a little bit of a slog at times, though.  The most interesting thing was seeing Stephen Lang much younger than he was in Avatar and much, much younger than he was in Don’t Breathe.

Post-Post:

The Hitchhiker – Homebodies (03/17/87)

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The episode begins with a bit of German Expressionism; and I believe that expression is ausgezeichnet! [1]  It was an unexpected bit of black & white artistry in a frequently dreary series with rain, fog, shadows, odd angles, Kafkaesque police, and big-ass clocks just scary in their size and starkness.  I guess a whole episode in this style would have been too much, but what an awesome opening!  Alas, it was just a Traum.

Brainiacs Jimmy and Ron have just busted out of jail, but they aren’t exactly besties.  The older, tougher Ron is only tolerating Jimmy so he can help him find a house with a safe containing payroll cash.  They have stopped to hold up a gas station.  Since they are already on their way to a big payday, I assume they’re going to shake it down for some cheese nachos and Red Bull.

Jimmy keeps the elderly clerk occupied with some mindless small-talk while Ron cases the joint.  When he brings some beer to the register, the clerk asks him for ID despite him being 34 years old.  Panicky Jimmy pulls out a pistol, and the old guy awesomely pulls out one of his own.  Ron awesomely pulls the clerk over the counter and throws him into a display.  He takes the pistol from Jimmy and points it at the clerk.  The old man says, “Please, I got a wife and kid!”  I’m on your side, dude, but your kid must be in his fifties by now.

Left to Right: Ron, phallic symbol, Jimmy

The old clerk is again awesome as he turns over some shelves and makes a run for it.  Of course, circling the aisle in a 400 square foot gas station convenience store isn’t much of an escape plan, but he had guts.  Ron pumps him full of leaded.  Apparently his thorough casing of the joint overlooked the two monitors sitting prominently on the counter.  They flee, with Jimmy taking an awesome tumble out the door.

Jimmy leads them to a model home which they break into.  There is supposed to be a safe in the basement.  While Ron goes treasure-hunting, Jimmy checks out the house.  When he spots a creepy kid sitting on the stairs, he panics and tries to get Ron to leave.  In a struggle, they fall over the railing and a gunshot rings out — and you better remember it or nothing else will make any sense at all.  They are busted by the whole family — little Billy, his attractive parents and their hot 20 year old blonde daughter Denise.

Ron demands to know where the safe is, but they deny there is a safe.  Ron takes the daughter upstairs looking for a big score and also the loot, while Jimmy holds the gun on Mom, Dad and Billy.  When Mom & Dad hear Denise’s screams from upstairs, they beg Jimmy to go up and stop Ron or at least close the door.  Seeing the nice family, Jimmy feels a part of him is missing.  More than anything in the world, he longs to be part of a family like this.

Denise gets away from Ron and runs downstairs.  Wanting to help the family, Jimmy points the gun at Ron. That goes about as you expect — Ron takes the gun from him and murders the entire family.  Again, this is awesomely — sorry — executed.

The next morning, a car pulls up outside the model home.  A realtor shows the house to a woman. Inside, we see that Billy, Denise, Mom and Dad are actually mannequins being used as HomeFill to make the home seem more homely.  One is more homely than the others, though.  Among the beautiful, well-dressed family sits sleazy Ron, clearly a real human.

A happy, less-crazy, neatly-dressed Jimmy comes down stairs and speaks to the mannequins before leaving.  The realtor tells the woman Jimmy is on the construction crew.  The crew is around the mannequins so much, they treat them like people.  Especially Denise, I suspect.

The house-shopper sees that Ron has bloody shirt and runs screaming from the house like she has seen black mold.

The episode is just full of interesting compositions, cuts and tracking shots.

The craftsmanship on this episode blows away every other episode so far. The opening black & white scene, a lot of creative camera-work, and some good perform-ances make this one something special.  The ending seemed like a complete non-sequitur until I did a rewind.  I deduct points from myself for that, not from the episode.

Yeah, you could raise a lot of questions about the logic of the denouement, but why would ya?  Just enjoy it — nobody likes a nit-picking dumb-ass giving his . . . dopey . . . unsolicited . . . opinions . . . . or something.

Great stuff.

Post-Post:

  • [1] I originally wrote Scheiss, gratuitously showing off a dirty German word I learned in the gymnasium; no, not das Gymnasium, an actual gymnasium.  But the episode deserved better, even in jest. And also deserved a better jest.
  • What Morgan Reeves (Denise) did in the 1990s:  One Stormy Night . . . interesting; Night Sins . . . steamy; Winter Heat . . . yeah, baby; Half a Dozen Babies — d’oh!
  • This might be the first episode not available on YouTube.  And why does the DVD stick it the 8th track behind vastly inferior episodes (they are not chronological)? Why are they keeping this hidden, man?
  • Title Analysis:  Good job.  Simple, but relates to the mannequins in the house as well as Jimmy’s longing for a home and family.