Monthly Archives: January 2015

The Brain of Many Bodies – E.A. Grosser

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Wrane Randall is slumped in a chair at the manly-named saloon, Limpy’s.  The barkeep says, “Ill bet that’s why they call him Rainy — there’s always a storm when he’s around.”  Although being named Wrane might have had something to do with it also.

The Air Cops come in to haul Randall away.  It is stated that the Air Cops were the “private army of the Air Chief, outranking all local, state and national officers”.  So basically slightly less powerful than Barack Obama.

Randall is locked in a steel cage at the back of the prison-rocket.  Truly possessing the Right Stuff, Randall is more impressed with the power and technology of the craft than in his own predicament.  They land in the forbidden city of Yss.

Looking him over, doctors decide they can change his eyes from brown to blue, raise his hairline, reshape his face, and tweak his nose.  He learns that his body is being remade in the image of the Air Chief whose mind will be transferred into it.  Oh yeah, Randall’s brain and consciousness will be destroyed in the process.

He wakes up after the cosmetic surgery to find the strategy has changed slightly. Whereas Randall was going to be brain-murdered so the Air Chief’s brain could be inserted into his body . . . new plan: Air Chief will be killed and Rainy will become the most powerful man on earth.  Better.

After disarming Nurse Patty, Randell escapes.  When the first guard he encounters mistakes him for the Air Chief, he seems home free.  When the next person he meets recognizes him as the Air Chief, it is a problem as that person is the Air Chief.  Soon, Plan A is back in effect.

Luckily after a bit of commotion, the Air Chief drops dead with a heart attack.  Randall seizes control of the situation.  He makes it clear that he will assume the Air Chief’s position — there is a new sheriff in town; but with the same face as the old sheriff.

He’s a little bit Libertarian, a little bit Operation Wall Street.  It is encouraging, however, that he takes George Washington approach that he will someday hand over power to another. “Maybe we can make it elective,” he says.  Maybe.

Yeah, that’s why we put that stuff in writing, sport.

Not that it seems to matter any more.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Science Fiction Magazine, October 1940.
  • Also that month:  Abbott & Costello’s first movie released.

Outer Limits – Straight and Narrow (S2E8)

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Wow, ironical considering the frame is slightly off-vertical (with more Dutch Angles to come).

Rusty Dobson’s mother is dropping him off at a boy’s school to build character; and wrist muscles.  They meet with headmaster Peter Donat (Mulder’s father in The X-Files).  He assures Ms. Dobson that Milgram Academy can straighten his ass out. Many of their graduates “have gone on to great careers in the Fortune 500”.  And there is no cheating or deception going on there.

Rusty complains that no one cares what he thinks, and tells his mother that she can’t just “buy a good son like she buys everything else”.  Frankly, kids resenting parents who try to buy their love has always baffled me.

After his mother leaves, he is given a shot which knocks him out.  He awakens in his room with roommate Harrison Taylor.  He tells his roomie that he is going to go over the wall as soon as possible.  Coincidentally, at just that second, there is a commotion down the hall as another student has also decided to go over the wall — in this case, it is a wall surrounding the 3rd floor balcony.  He says his goodbyes to Donat and falls backwards from the roof.  No one makes a move to stop him.

olstraightand17In his first class, Rusty is surprised that the lesson being taught is that it is OK to murder in the support of big business.  After offering a dissenting opinion, he is hauled off to Donat’s office.  He makes a break for it, but finds the doors and windows locked. He makes it to the balcony of death, but opts for the more subdued sliding down drain-pipe as opposed to leaping to his death.  Sadly, only to be stopped by an electronic tether device in his head that inflicts agonizing pain as he tries to break the perimeter of the campus.

In gym class, he meets another student, Charlie Walters, who also isn’t “with The Program.”  Walters instructs Rusty to mimic the others, to pretend to be “with The Program.”  That Charlie is the only one talking in class and is speaking freely in front of 2 dozen other students is not exactly clandestine, but no one seems to notice.

Donat is meeting with a group of Faculty?  Donors?  The Consortium from the X-Files? — that’s sure what they look like.  Donat is assuring them that the current “crop” of boys is awesome.

olstraightand23Rusty figures out that someone from “The Program” is going to assassinate an executive at a local firm.  Sadly, by this time, as in all stories like this, Charlie has gone over to the dark side.  Still, Rusty is able to break out using key-cards stolen from Donat’s office. That plays out about as you would expect.

Was there anything particularly original here?  Nope.  Any surprising twists?  Nope.  Any stunning performances?  Well, Ryan Phillipe was very good as Rusty.  Robert Donat is just death-warmed-over in both this and The X-Files, though.

I am at a loss to say exactly why, but I found this episode to be very enjoyable.  A girl’s school would have been better, but you work with what ya get.

Post-Post:

  • Look out!  Dutch Angles!
  • I was surprised that the executive being assassinated did not work at Ms. Dobson’s company.  I guess they wouldn’t risk disrupting that revenue stream until Rusty’s tuition check cleared.

olstraightand37

The Yellow Curse – Lars Anderson

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pulpyellowcurse01Given some of the recent stories, I really expected this title to be along the lines of the Yellow Peril.  It wasn’t nearly that politically incorrect, however. “Yellow” refers to many elements in the story, all of them about as Asian as Auric Goldfinger.  But less Asian than Odd Job.

First off, we have Arn Flannery driving through a “clammy fog [that] swirled and twisted like a monstrous yellow shroud” . . . . . . . I tried my best but could come up with nothing better than Yellow Fog by I.P. Gaseously (having to invent a new word to even get that).  Clearly, I failed.

Flannery hears a scream, stops the car and goes to investigate.  “The hellish saffron billows clung to him like a material pall”  Never heard of yellow fog, and never heard of fog that clings to you.  He finds a girl “scantily clad in filmy underthings” laying on the ground.  Her hair is “butter-hued” and her skin is the same color as her golden undergarments.  She manages to say cryptically, “The yellow curse — go for help — get key” before she croaks.

Seeing a house in the distance, Flannery comes up with the brilliant plan of running his car into a deep ditch where it rolls over on its side, so he has an excuse to go to the house to ask for help.  This illustrates the extent to which a man will go to avoid saying he is lost, even if it is a lie.

He steps onto the yellow — naturally — porch and bangs the big knockers (heh, heh).  A gaunt man, also yellow-hued, answers. He has no servants to help with the car and no telephone, but does offer Flannery a place to stay for the night.

Finally we learn that Flannery is a reporter investigating the disappearance of Elena Vaughn.  She had been working on the story of mysterious disappearances and became a statistic herself.  Flannery had the hots for her, so tracked to this house.

Hearing a scream, Flannery goes to the basement.  There is a lit room at the end of the hall, so he peeks through the keyhole.  There is yet another yellow room, and he sees yellow flowers in a bronze bowl — couldn’t afford gold, sport?  He also sees 2 nude  yellow babes strapped to tables.  There is a 3rd girl — Elena!  Good news: She has not undergone to procedure so is still her normal color.  Bad news:  Not naked.

It is not clear how he knew the room was lit if the door was closed . . . I guess there was a golden ray of light shooting through the keyhole.  While he is checking out the girls, Flannery is jumped from behind.  The fiend cruelly straps him to a table next to the clothed one who can talk.

He tells Flannery he will be able to witness Evelyn’s transformation from “the ugly whiteness she is now cursed with.”  In three days, she will be a “gleaming, glorious, golden-skinned queen.”  Unless she croaks like the other three.

They figure out “the key” that the first dead girl spoke of was actually Hugo Keithly, the archaeologist.  He was bitten by a Tsetse Fly in Egypt and contracted — wait for it — yellow fever.  Somehow this induced a mad lust for gold in him.  He brings out the pills — surprisingly not yellow — which will cure Evelyn of her “ghastly whiteness.”  Ironically, of the three warm bodies in the room, the fiend is more likely to someday be recruited by MSNBC than the two news-people.

Luckily, Flannery is able to break his leather restraints and subdue Keithly.  He tells Evelyn, “we must get into our clothes, and hunt up Keithly’s car — mine’s in the ditch.” Nice work, Ace — you’re leaving the best part out of that car story.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Thrilling Mystery, April 1936.
  • Also that month:  Meh.  Slow news month.

Ray Bradbury Theater – Touch of Petulance (S4E6)

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rbttouchofpetulance06We hear gunshots and an extremely old Eddie Albert stumbles out of his house.

The next scene is a bright morning at the same house.  Birds are chirping, the paperboy is delivering the 24-hour old news, and Johnathan & Alice Hughes are getting ready for work.

Alice drives Jonathan to his train, and the happy couple kiss goodbye.  On the train, he sees Eddie Albert reading a newspaper from 2025.  This would be 35 years in the future, but Eddie is 55 years older than Jonathan (going by their real birth dates), so the math does not even come close to working out.  No one would ever notice this, except Eddie Albert is looking old.  Real old.

Looking closer, Jonathan sees an article on the front page that is about Jonathan Hughes shooting his wife.  He accuses Albert of some sick joke and runs away, but Albert implores him to listen.  He begins reeling off facts and dates about their lives.  Staying out of New York on 09/11/01 might have been a good tip.

Some of the future stuff is not so great.  His business will go downhill, he will have a child die, he will take a mistress — woohoo! — and lose her — doh!  He will grow to hate his wife.  Jonathan thinks this is impossible, and Albert understands.

rbttouchofpetulance12Albert admits that he killed their wife in 2025.  He wants Jonathan to avoid the same mistakes.  He says that he “somehow” got here in order to save their soul.  That “somehow” is the standard pass that only Bradbury gets among Sci-Fi writers.

Jonathan’s wife comes to the train to pick him up.  She invites Albert home to dinner. The episode really gets deadly at this point.  Maybe it is Albert’s age — he is kind of like Spencer Tracy in Mad, Mad World — I’m no age-ist, but at some point, you have to let go.

Or maybe it is the god-awful synth music.  Of course, that is in every episode, but it seems to be even more trying here.

The concept of time-travel to reshape your former self is so intriguing that it is hard to screw it up.  This is just so melodramatic and miscast — especially Albert and Alice, but Jonathan is no prize either — that it is hard to care about anything.

After dinner, Albert has a very intriguing thought.  Rather than futilely trying to save the marriage, maybe he should just shoot Alice now rather than in the future.  Ancient Albert can take the rap, die soon in prison, and his younger self can begin a life that will not end in tragedy.  Now that is a twist!  Jonathan is understandably not crazy about that idea.  Neither was Bradbury, I guess.

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How to drive a mailman crazy.

Albert leaves the house, and assures Jonathan that he will get back to his time “somehow”.  Sadly, Jonathan’s response is not, “Next time bring some lottery numbers, Future Me.”

Jonathan goes back in and his wife immediately starts nagging him to close the door. Albert has given him a pistol. This is not enough to make him start shooting, but you see the first tiny crack in the young marriage.

I was hopeful there for a few brief seconds, but this was really a chore to sit through.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  I must admit, petulance doesn’t mean precisely what I thought it meant.  Showing sudden, impatient irritation, especially over some trifling annoyance.  I am at a complete loss to connect that definition to the episode.
  • So they lived in the same house for 35 years?  Maybe for an older couple, but I’m not sure newlyweds stay in their first house that long.  Especially painted that sickly green.  For 35 years.
  • John Laing also directed Mars is Heaven.
  • Can a city do product placement?  Plandome NY certainly got a lot of plugs in. Road signs, train station signs, they even lived on Plandome Drive.

When Super Apes Plot – Anthony Wilder

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pulpfiction01We open in a seaplane that has set down in a lake in Borneo.  Similar to Servant of the Beast, there is an elderly professor, his hot niece, and a black guide, Batu.  In this story, the 4th wheel is the girl’s husband — so I’m confident there will be no love triangle, this being 1919.

They have brought presents to pacify the Bamangani natives which should “keep them jabbering with delight for years.”  Er, at this point, it seems that the titular Ape-Men are the natives.  Awkward.

Dr. Dumont has come to Borneo to study the natives — he wants to see if any of them have . . . uh, tails.  He does at least concede that they “used to be” headhunters and cannibals — so that’s progress.  The young couple, Tom & Irene, are given no motivation other than “Borneo brought back memories of the days when they first met.”

After breakfast, Tom & Batu arm up and take a boat to the shore.  As they explore the jungle, Batu spots the footprints of many feet and determines that they are moving toward the plane.  They hear two shots ring out — the universal distress call of hot babes being attacked by natives.  Although two shots in the noggins of their attackers might have been more effective.  Making their way back to the plane, they see Dumont and Irene being perp-walked through the jungle.

Tom & Batu confront the group.  Batu, speaking their language demands that his friends be released.   The natives are taking them back for trial in the death of a man shot while boarding the plane.  Surely this would be a kangaroo court — literally — so Tom & Batu let their “talking-sticks” speak for them and the four explorers make their escape.

After Dumont is hit by a spear, they hole up in a cave for a while.  Under cover of darkness, they make their way back to the plane.  Having learned nothing, Mike & Batu swim out to the plane, leaving Irene and her injured uncle behind.  Naturally, they are again abducted.  Tom dives into the water and storms the beach but is taken down by 10 of the tribe.

The three of them are taken to a hut near the volcano which has been rumbling.  So I’m thinking sacrifice.

Fortunately, Batu saves the day.

Meh, pretty standard stuff.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Top-Notch Magazine, December 1919.
  • Also that month:  Not much of interest . . . dullest month ever.
  • WTH?  This story features the Bamangani; Tarzan fought the fictional Bolmangani, also a race of “gorilla men.”.