Monthly Archives: October 2014

Outer Limits – I, Robot (S1E18)

Posted on by
Reply

olrobot03Dr. Link is working on his robot Adam.  Alone . . . at night . . . in a dark lab . . . all the standard markers for an Outer Limits cutting-edge research facility lab.  Whatever the doctor is doing, the robot suddenly takes offense and throws him against the wall, killing him.

Adam flees the scene of the crime — he thinks he’s people!  And is found by a uniform cop who pulls a gun on him, demonstrating that he might not be detective material.  The cop might be wearing Kevlar, but Adam is Kevlar.  As Adam approaches, the cop begins firing, managing to nail himself with a ricochet.  This is pretty stupid, but on the other hand, it is nice to see a TV show acknowledge that ricochets are dangerous for a change.

olrobot02

Cynthia Preston — The picture is actually from her appearance in The X-Files where she was so cute that I remembered her 20 years later.

Dr. Link’s hot daughter Mina comes to visit Adam in jail.  She grew up with him as a brother and wants to see him tried as a sentient being. To assist, her she recruits civil rights attorney Leonard Nimoy who is retired, playing mere 2-D chess in the park.

Nimoy reluctantly accepts.  The irony is that if he can convince the court that Adam is sentient, and therefore should not be dismantled, it also follows that he must then stand trial for Dr. Link’s murder.

The rest of the episode is an extended courtroom scene.  But given the subject and Nimoy’s excellent performance, it is all riveting.  Barbara Tyson is also very good as the prosecutor.  Unfortunately, Cynthia Preston as Mina is not not quite up to it.  Especially when she is testifying, it is not a joke to say she sounds . . . robotic.  I defy anyone to close their eyes and listen to her and not think “robot.”  Just re-watching, it is so unlike the rest of her performance that I think it must have been a choice by her or the director. Overall, another very good episode.

Post-Post:

  • Dr. Link’s lab was in Rossom Hall Robotics. That sounded familiar — it was the Rossum Corporation behind the titular Dollhouse.  Both are presumably references to R.U.R., Rossum’s Universal Robots, a company in the 1920 play by that name which introduced the word “robot” into the English language.  Or “robe-it” as Rod Serling used to say on TZ.
  • The episode is based on a 1939 short story by Otto Bender.  Asimov’s better known re-use of the title was forced on him by a publisher.  But he can’t avoid blame for the muttonchops.
  • Similar story to Star Trek TNG’s The Measure of a Man.
  • In a stunning coincidence, this episode was directed by Leonard Nimoy’s son.
  • Hulu sucks.

Fiancés for the Devil’s Daughter – Russell Gray

Posted on by
Reply

pulpfiances0225 stories for $.99; they must be good.  Part III of XXV.  Sweet Jeebus, this is what I paid my $.99 for!

I was almost immediately derailed by this sentence which I had to read several times in order to make sense of it and the 1st-Person narrative that followed:

Helen, my wife, and I, Roland Cuyler, the author, and his wife Clara were standing near a window . . .

I was already intimidated that Kindle X-Ray said I had 18 characters to keep track of in this story.  It all worked out, though, and was a great read.

Literary agent Lester Marlin, and his wife are at a party where they spot an exotic woman enter who no one seems to know.  She manages to corner Marlin when his wife is chatting with an author.

Tala Mag — which would have been a great name on Barsoom — makes advances on him.  He blows her off thinking she just wants to use him to get published, and because he truly loves his wife.  The next day, he receives a note from his best client Portia asking him for a favor — to meet with Tala at Tala’s penthouse apartment.

She meets him wearing a blue negligee and nothing else; but also has a manuscript in her hand, so it is a business meeting.  He begins reading and finds it to be unspeakably vile and an offense to even his hard-boiled soul.  He tells her it is not publishable and prepares to leave when Tala calls her enormous servant Emil.

In no time, Emil has Marlin stripped and in chains.  Even in this position he will not submit to Tala.  In spite of the whip and the diaphanous negligee that is hanging open, he resists and fights back.  She tells him she has other plans for him, and he wakes up in the Warehouse District.

Some time later, having not learned his lesson, Marlin accepts an invitation from Roland Cuyler to spend a few days at his country home.  Marlin and his wife join four other couples from his literary circle.  Unfortunately, the invitation was a ruse by Tala Mag who is at the house with her goons Emil, Clops, Wick and Ringo (OK, I’m not sure the 4th was named).

What follows is both horrific and spoilerific, so be warned.  It really should be read to be appreciated.

I had no idea the WWII-era pulps got this brutal.  There is no hard-core sex, but there is a decent amount of torture and newdity.  As an example to the group, one woman is tortured to death with branding irons, and the effects on her body are maybe not graphic in words, but suggest some disturbing images in one’s mind — which is worse.  And by worse, I mean better.

This is only a prelude to the final act in which the women stripped naked and their husbands are forced to hunt each other’s wives for sport.  The men are issued guns that fire acid pellets.  In addition to the pain of being shot, the woman with the most hits / scars will be killed.

It is all pretty goofy, but would have made a good Russ Meyer movie.  You’ve got whips, chains, torture, and nude babes.  Really the only things missing are ape-men and Nazis to cover every trope.  Even if the other 22 stories are crap, I’ve gotten my $.99 worth.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Marvel Tales, May 1940.
  • Also that month: The first McDonald’s opened in San Bernardino.
  • How was this not the cover story?  That “Test Tube Monsters” must be incredible.
  • Everywhere else, this story is know as “Fresh Fiancés for the Devil’s Daughter.”

Ray Bradbury Theater – A Sound of Thunder (S3E6)

Posted on by
9

The arrogant Mr. Eckels steps off the elevator into the lobby of Time Safari Inc.  Maybe part of his superior attitude is that he sees the lunkheads at RBT have pluralized safari with an apostrophe — SAFARI’S.

He hands over his ticket and is introduced to safari guide Travis, the poor man’s Muldoon.  Eckels hands him a data card which provides Travis with biographical info.  He is a big game hunter who has “shot everything.”  His quickness to hand over payment tells us maybe he is a bored rich-boy content to let his guides do the heavy lifting until he can get out of the air-conditioned Jeep and plug the animals.

Once they are suited up and armed, they march through a needlessly smokey corridor to the time machine.  As they go, Eckels quotes extensively and grandiloquently from the company’s brochure.  Bradbury did not have Serling’s weakness for padding out scenes with extended monologues, but he never quite mastered the difference between writing for the page versus the screen.

Out of chars and ashes, like golden salamanders, the old years, the green years, will leap.  Roses sweeten the air, white hair turns black, wrinkles vanish.  All, everything flies back to seed.  Flee death.

That’s great on the page, but not so much on screen; and also probably not so much in a company brochure.  Travis, appropriately, snorts in Eckels’ general direction.

rbtsound02They materialize 60 millions years in the past.  A silver anti-gravity walkway extends from the ship, into the jungle.  The group is warned to stay on the path.  The death of even a single roach or flower or blade of grass could have catastrophic effects millions of years in the future.

Eckels does turn out to be a panicky Pete.  When the T-Rex comes into view, he is clearly terrified — bug-eyed and quivering.    As it draws closer, we get another classic Bradbury better-on-the-page exclamation from Eckels, “My God, it could reach up and grab the moon!”

rbtsound04In awe of the creature’s size, Eckels fearfully says, “No one can kill that.  It can’t be killed.”  Travis orders him back to the ship, but he is frozen in fear.  He begins backing away and steps off the pathway.  Travis and the rest of the group shoot the dinosaur.  Eckels joins the fun by firing wildly at the animal.  As punishment, Eckels is made to dig the bullets out of the carcass — pack it in, pack it out.

They return to the future, but find differences ranging from subtle to horrific.  Travis examines Eckels’ boots and sees that when he fell from the platform, he killed a butterfly, setting in motion a series of changes which millions of years later would catastrophically result in an Ashton Kutcher movie.

Given the budget and the chowderheads producing this series, they did about as good a job as could have been expected.  I’m on the fence about Kiel Martin as Eckels — either he perfectly personifies Eckels’ fear-cloaked-in-arrogance, or he is just a complete ham.  John Bach is great as the guide.  Yeah, the effects are not Jurassic Park, but you work with what ya got, and they seemed to make the most out of what they had.

The last frame of the episode contains a shock even if you know it is coming.  Congrats to RBT for getting surprisingly dark.  In the context of the series, I’d have to say this was a success, one of the best.

rbtsound08Post-Post:

  • This is arguably Bradbury’s most famous story.  At one time, it was the most frequently reprinted story in history.  Naturally, it is not in the “100 Most Celebrated Tales” collection that I have.
  • First published in Collier’s Magazine in 1952.
  • NZ-LOTR Connection:  John Bach played Madril in 2 movies.  Director Costa Botes (who also directed The Dwarf) was a cameraman on the 1st one.
  • The story pre-dates the Chaos Theory concept of the Butterfly Effect, and I don’t see any evidence that it was named after the story; but that’s a pretty big coincidence.

Mistress of Snarling Death – Paul Chadwick

Posted on by
Reply

25 stories for $.99; they must be good.  Part II of XXV.

For the 2nd story in a row, a car is stuck in the mud.  I’ll say this for Global Warming, cars don’t get mired down in a drought.  Well, unless there used to be a lake there.  The unfortunate motorist this time is Stephen Demerest.

He has wandered lost among fields and deserted farms seeking help.  Finally he sees a young girl in a cloak.  He asks her the way to the Halliday house.  When she doesn’t respond, he approaches her, prompting six large black dogs to defend her by forming a circle.  Silently, she begins walking away and Demerest follows her; so the dogs are cool with stalking.

He finds himself at the door of the Halliday house and recalls the letter that Halliday sent to him.  It says their fathers were friends, and Halliday has no one else to turn to for help.  Demerest is to come to his house in the guise of a radio repairman, and be prepared to act when Halliday gives the signal.  For this task, Demerest has received $500.

All he recalls about Halliday is that he married well, but his wife took off, leaving him to raise their infant daughter.  The door is opened by a butler with hideous facial deformities —  a twisted mouth, one empty eye socket, broken teeth.

He is handed off to another equally grotesque servant, a squat gnome-like dwarf who takes him to Halliday’s bedroom.  There he formally meets Halliday and the couple attending to him, Eric and Nana.

Demerest soon learns that the couple is blackmailing Halliday.  They are dealt with through much shooting, running, fighting, flaying by dogs, tearing of night-clothes, and exposing of alabaster shoulders.

Halliday is afraid that in trying to shelter his beautiful daughter from attractive men who might lure her away, he has made her vulnerable to con-men like Nick.  Or Nana, if you get my drift.

He promises Demerest a princely sum if he will take care of his beautiful, virginal young daughter with the smoking body, and see that she meets some good man for love and marriage.  I think this will have the same outcome as putting Dick Cheney in charge of the 2000 VP search committee.

Another fun one.  Lots of grotesque figures, as they were called then — now, challenged or otherly-abled.  Plenty of action, and the occasional flashes of skin.  Sadly, no one was stripped naked and hung from a rafter like in Blood for the Vampire Dead.  But I guess that can’t be part of every story or it would get boring after 20 or so.

 Post-Post:

  • Published in Ace Mystery, July 1936
  • Also that month:  Lucky Luciano sentenced to 30-50 in the big house.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Three Dreams of Mr. Findlater (S2E30)

Posted on by
2

The ubiquitous John Williams just appeared in I Killed the Count three episodes ago.  That  story was told over the span of 3 weeks and still seemed shorter than tonight’s offering.

Williams is a hen-pecked man of 54 whose nagging wife won’t even let him play solitaire in peace, nagging him about talking to younger women, and taunting him about his thinning hair.  AHP really stacks the deck by casting a woman 12 years older than him as his wife.  Didn’t they know that by Hollywood law, after a 5 year difference, you’re supposed to cast the woman as the mother?

Finally, he has had enough and goes upstairs to his man-cave, decorated with posters of Tahiti, Mexico and Hawaii (still 2 years away from statehood, ergo still officially exotic).  His eyes land on the poster beckoning him to “Come to the South Seas . . . Land of Enchantment” (later bogarted by New Mexico for its license plates).  It also features a woman in a sarong with an orchid behind her ear.  He has named her Lalage.

His imagination sweeps him away to titular Dream # 1 in the South Seas where Lalage welcomes him with a drink served in a pineapple.  She knows how to make him relax even tells him his thinning hair makes him look important and distinguished.  Wow, she’s turning me on!

He confesses that there is a titular Dream # 2 without Lalage where he comes home to find the maid in tears.  Their doctor comes down the stairs and tells him his wife has died of a stroke.

The next day, out for a very British walk in his suit, flat cap, and umbrella in hand, he imagines Lalage in the woods.  She joins him and they fortuitously find an abandoned car with a pistol laying on the seat.  Now that he is packing untraceable heat, he is starting to have a titular Dream # 3 . . . about Minnie.

He and Lalage come up with a plan to murder Minnie involving a goofy disguise and the unlikely act of Williams climbing down a rope from a 3rd story window and back up.  After months of working on an alibi, and his upper body strength, Williams decides it is time to do the deed.

In disguise, he goes to his own house.  The maid meets him in tears just as in Dream # 2.  The doctor comes down the stairs just as in Dream # 2.  And Minnie has had a stroke just as in Dream # 2.

ahpfindlater06So what?  This is AHP — where is the murder?  Where is the post-game comeuppance?  Minnie died just as Williams desired, and he is completely in the clear as he did nothing to cause her death.  Hitchcock does not even have his standard epilogue in this episode — he is shown asleep and snoring.

He’s not the only one.

OK, it was actually pretty good and Williams is always a pro.  It’s just not what I’m looking for from AHP.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
  • The name Lalage shows up in several places, but nothing seems relevant to her character — a yacht, an asteroid, a few animals.  The name shows up in a Roman Legion marching song by Kipling.  It would have been a nice allusion if Williams had been working on a history of the Roman Legion rather than Exminster.
  • Story by A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh.  Is that why there is no killing?  Although that Eeyore was really asking for it.