Now this is more like it.  No one will ever call this “one of the best” yet I can imagine this would have very effectively creeped me out as a child.

This is the city, as Jack Webb used to say.  Gridlock on the freeways, wrecking balls demolishing buildings, jackhammers jacking off — just a nightmare of noise.  Even in elderly Frank Standish’s Thrift Shop there is no reprieve.  An electric eye announces visitors with a loud bell, a dog barks constantly for no reason, his partner Mrs. Moore (Zsa Zsa Gabor) plays obnoxious stock-and-roll music.  This could drive a man to murder.

Elderly Ellen Chase enters the shop with a mirror she hopes to hock.  Strangely, the mirror has been painted over with gray paint.  Standish (Arthur O’Connell, the other priest in The Poseidon Adventure) begins slowly chiseling away the gray paint.  Even through the small area he has cleared, he can see this is no ordinary mirror.

Mrs. Chase comes back the next day to the displeasure of Zsa Zsa who doesn’t approve of her socializing with Standish.  The old man continues scraping away the paint.

Finally, the last bits are removed and they are amazed at the lifelike other-worldly landscape. They are even more amazed when Zsa Zsa’s cat runs through the frame and down the path in the painting.  Seconds later, it comes screeching back out, scared to death.

Zsa Zsa decides to buy out Standish’s share of the partnership, and apparently he can’t refuse.  This is especially disconcerting to him as Chase and Standish seem to have used the back room for some hanky-panky.  And I mean really disconcerting as Zsa Zsa, at about 60, is the youngster in this group.

Tired of Zsa Zsa’s dog constantly yapping, and none too crazy about Zsa Zsa’s yapping either, Chase hurls the dog’s ball into the painting, sending him running to fetch it. Even better, Zsa Zsa follows to fetch her dog.

She seems strangely oblivious to the fact she just stepped through a portal into dimension filled with bright colors, pointy volcanoes, strange plants.  She continues further into the strange land calling for her dog.

What she succeeds in attracting, however, are dinosaurs.  As they begin closing in on her, Chase and Standish begin repainting the mirror, sealing her in.  And her little dog, too.

The story lacks focus — much is made in establishing the loud, hectic atmosphere of the city and the shop — but that is disregarded and it is really the thought of losing their “bachelor’s boudoir” that motivates the geezers to condemn Zsa Zsa to death.

But the double mind-intercourses of 1) the mirror as a portal to another dimension, and 2) Zsa Zsa being sealed in this hostile world by the mere strokes of a brush make this a winner.  It is especially fun to know that she is seeing them painting in the last bit of the mirror like Fortunato seeing Montresor placing the last brick in The Cask of Amontillado.

As frequently happens, the victim here is getting much worse than she deserves.  But that doesn’t stop this from being fun stuff.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  None.  Although there is a definite Little Girl Lost vibe.
• Yikes — this from Vanity Fair:  While Gabor was still married to Conrad Hilton, she admitted to having once had sex with her stepson.

We begin with William Sharsted (Rene Auberjonois) exiting a carriage and daintily paying the driver.  After having a chamber-pot unceremoniously dumped at his feet — and really, what kind of ceremony would that call for? — he goes up a flight to see Mr. Gingold (Ross Martin).

Despite the treasures in Gingold’s home, Sharsted has come to collect on an outstanding 300 pound loan which has been accruing at the usurious rate of 13%.  This episode aired a few years before Jimmy Carter’s policies made 13% look like free money. Gingold deflects him and proudly shows him his camera obscura.

Through a series of mirrors and prisms, Gingold is able to project an image of the town onto a flat surface, to Sharsted’s amazement.  He zooms in on the residence of Norton Thwaite.  Gingold accuses Sharpsted of destroying Thwaite by foreclosing on his mortgage.

Sharpsted points out that Gingold should probably worry more about his own situation.  Perhaps, he suggests, Gingold could sell off some of his objets d’art to pay his debt.  It is worth noting that he massacred the pronunciation as “objects dart”, but it is particularly bizarre coming from a guy named Rene Auberjonois.

Gingold wants to show Sharpsted another camera obscura that he has in the basement.  This one is able to zoom in on the Corn Exchange — a building that burned down when Sharpsted was a boy.  It is even able to zoom in on his father’s shop, long since closed.

When Sharpsted leaves, he finds himself in the past where there are no taxis and the streetlights run on gas.  Surely the greenish / sepia tones should have clued him in that he was on the past.

He encounters several people, all deceased, who he had wronged. Through the camera obscura, Gingold watches Sharsted being consumed by the angry mob.

As frequently happens on NG, the punishment is a little extreme for the “crime”, and I’m a law & order guy (although I’ve never seen the TV show).  What was Sharsted supposed to do, let his customers just stop paying?  It’s not like he had a Bush or Obama to bail him out.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  Milton Parsons was in three episodes of TZ, Ross Martin was in two.
• Skipped Segment:  Quoth the Raven.  Nevermore, indeed.

The episode opens at a seance being conducted by Radha Ramadi aka Mark Bennett aka Steve Lawrence aka Sidney Liebowitz.  Bennett is summoning his spirit guide Running Deer.  He seems to be a little confused — although he is technically wearing authentic Indian garb, it is a Nehru Jacket.

Running Deer makes himself known by playing the traditional Indian instrument, the tambourine.  Bennett tells Running Deer they are trying to reach the spirit of Dorie Harcourt whose mother is at the table.  Dorie appears in the form of a porcelain head that seems to have toilet paper flowing from her shoulders.  She drops a stuffed elephant onto the table which convinces her mother that this truly is her dead daughter’s toilet paper shedding, disembodied, immobile mannequin head.

Dorie’s mother offers Bennett a little something extra for contacting her daughter.  He makes a good show of refusing it, but it does end up in the pocket of that Nehru jacket.  After she leaves, he is joined by his partners Angela and Joe Casey, with whom he will split the $500 windfall.

Joe thinks he is not cut out for this life.  He believes himself to be too coarse and low-class to work with Bennett, too unsophisticated.  Bennett is brilliant in giving credit to Joe for their success at hustling the rubes.  He says Joe is an artist, and tells Angela that she should be nicer to him.  On the other hand, it is revealed that Angela and Bennett are having an affair behind Joe’s hairy back.

At dinner, they try to ditch Joe so they can have the sex, but Joe and Bennett are both just too nice.  Bennett agrees that the three of them will go out to a movie.  Joe runs out to get Angela something for a headache and is run down by a car.

The next day, Bennett is forced to prepare all the special effects that Joe used to handle for the seances.  Without Joe, Running Deer is a less adept at the tribal tambourine than Davy Jones.  When Bennett pretends to summon a woman’s dead husband, we get another lifeless disembodied head.  This time, without Joe’s steady hand, it is bouncing around and the voice is is crazy.

When he tries again to summon the man, Joe appears instead — not as a doll’s head, but as a true translucent ghost.  He says that they are going to “stay a team — forever!”

The ending fails completely because there is no sense of danger attached to Joe’s appearance, even at the threat of forever.  Now, Delbert Grady’s daughters really knew how to really work that word.

Steve Lawrence never got his due because he was mostly a lounge singer.  But he was a good actor, and really sells this role.

Post-Post:

• Twilight Zone Legacy:  None.
• Skipped Segment:  An Act of Chivalry — another short sketch not worth the words already typed.