In which Truman Bradley demonstrates an explosive test tube without proper eye-wear. ^[1]

“This is the setting of our story . . . the blazing inferno of heat-drenched emptiness unfit for the meanest of God’s creatures.”  

Surprisingly, the narrator is not talking about South Florida, but of Death Valley.  Crazy desert rat Charlie is driving David Brooks out to the ol’ Dunlap place.  Charlie says that Dunlap died a week ago, so in this heat, he should be pretty easy to find.  This surprises Brooks who received a telegram from him two days ago.

When they get to the Dunlap ranch, Norman Conway drives up.  He chews Charlie out and says he intended to pick David up at the airport himself, but will make it up by helping him with those gutters.  He nastily tells Charlie to beat it, then explains that he was Dunlap’s closest neighbor and best friend.  They go inside to see Dunlap’s widow, The Widow Dunlap.

They confirm that Mr. Dunlap was killed in an explosion of one of his experiments.  Sheila admits that she sent that telegram to David, but signed John’s name to get him here as soon as possible.  He is not happy at the deception and plans to catch the next flight out. Sheila entices him to stay by offering $25,000 for two weeks work, but he declines.  C’mon, that is $230,000 in 2018 dollars!

He doesn’t care for her because John had told him months ago that she had left him.  Sheila admits she fled to New York when his grant money started running low.  In her defense, she says she came back a week later.  She pawned everything she had to get them $3,000 to further fund his research.  OK, so where is this $25,000 coming from?  What else was she pawning in New York?

To further complicate things, it is revealed that David and Sheila were a couple ten years ago.  She admits that she left David for John because he made more money.  Wait a minute, John was working on his crazy experiments and would have come close to bankruptcy without Sheila’s help.  How was he making more than David?  Al-Qaeda’s money isn’t this hard to follow.

Sheila and Norman convince David to at least stay for dinner and consider their offer.  Norman asks David what the world would be like if water could be created in all the deserts of the world.  That was John Dunlaps’s dream.  He wants David to follow John’s work all the  way to the patent office.  Sheila says she sold Norman a 50% stake for him to further fund the research.  They offer David 10% but he still isn’t interested.

As David prepares to leave, Sheila shows him John’s research.  After glancing at the notes, he agrees to stay a little while.  The next morning, David asks Norman to drive him to the sight where John exploded.  He finds no evidence of an explosion at the site.  David later tells Sheila he thinks John was murdered.

David learns from the sheriff that Norman bought some dynamite shortly before John blew up, and has the ACME receipts to prove it.  BTW, I guess in an atypical effort to give a character a little depth, they have the sheriff 1) have his shirt unbuttoned a little too far, 2) wear his holster and sagging gun-belt while sitting at his desk, 3) chase a fly around the office with a swatter, and 4) have a pre-#MeToo girly calendar in his office.

David accuses Norman of killing John in order to have the money and Sheila for himself.  Although, in my opinion, it was mostly the cash.  Norman pulls a gun on them.  Sheila does some fast thinking and throws acid in Norman’s eyes.  They escape to the desert; and by escape, I mean run to certain death. Norman wipes the acid from his eyes and pursues them.

David flees the house empty-handed, but somehow in the desert he suddenly has a canteen.  It doesn’t help much, though.  Within seconds, they are dehydrated and near death.  They see a mud-hole where apparently John had successfully performed one of his tests.  They use their last strength to run to it and . . . well, not so much drink it as splash it on their face.  Like Dr. Chomsky from last week’s Nightmare, they seem to think water can be absorbed through the cheeks.  Hearing Norman’s jeep, they run for cover.

They are not hidden for long.  Even before Norman spots them, David gives away their position by reflecting the sun off the canteen and into Norman’s eyes.  Blinded, Norman tries to shoot them anyway, but misses.  He then reloads his double-barreled shotgun, which is strange, because he only shot once.  In a fiasco of staging and editing, David rushes Norman from the front, but somehow manages to clock him on the noggin from behind with the canteen.  Wow, that canteen can do everything!  Now if they only had some means of storing water.

Even on the SFT curve, a meh episode.

Other Stuff:

• ^[1] He does demonstrate the paradox that water is the only element that expands when it is either heated or cooled.  Who designed this crazy system?