Monthly Archives: March 2015

Outer Limits – Falling Star (S2E19)

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olfallingstar02Sheena Easton is a once popular singer who has experienced a major decline in her career.  Ditto for her character in this episode.

After playing to an appreciative crowd in a small club, she refuses to come back for an encore.  In her dressing room, she dumps a pile of pills in her hand.  Before she can gulp them down, a strange blob charges through the wall and convulses her.

After she wakes up, she sees someone else in the mirror.  It only lasts a second, though. She is inspired to start writing some new songs, but is brought down again when she sees her manager / husband banging a roadie.  She breaks a glass and is thinking about slashing her wrists when the other person appears in the mirror again.

This is Rachel, from the future.  She claims that in her timeline Sheena had died from an overdose that night at the small club.  Rachel’s appearance has prevented that from happening again.

olfallingstar05Her husband is once again banging the roadie when two blobs from the future possess their bodies.  The one possessing the girl is understandably intrigued, feeling himself up.  The one possessing the man is bafflingly uninterested in the hot naked blonde. Yeah, it’s a dude on the inside, but that candy coating is pretty sweet.

They go to see Sheena and tell her they are from the same future as Rachel.  They plan to kill Sheena to restore the timeline.  Inexplicably, they don’t just kill her then.

They go back to the room where the husband was banging the roadie and get back in the same exact position so the couple won’t notice that their bodies had been possessed.  This is should be kinda awkward since the time travelers were both men.  Fortunately, this was not shown — kind of like how in Ghost, when Patrick Swayze was kissing Dinty Moore, they wisely did not show her actually swapping spit with the psychic Whoopi Goldberg as she channeled Swayze.

Actually, I find this couple of scenes more interesting than the main story, and not just because of the swell newdity.  The possession of the bodies at such an intimate time, a man inhabiting the woman’s body, the two dudes getting back into the same intimate position to cover their actions, the husband thinking he had lasted a record time.  The opportunity to explore this for laughs, homophobia, gratuitous nudity, anything was HUGELY squandered.

olfallingstar11Kudos for them at least taking a second to have the dude look at his watch and think they had been going at it for 30 minutes.  Good brief gag as it acknowledged the lost time and was funny.  Poorly executed, but excellent idea.

Another couple of goons from the future come to her room, but Sheena manages to fight them off.  Her friend Janet ends up accidentally getting killed.  Yada yada, Sheena’s life force is transferred into Janet’s dead body.  Sheena-in-Janet becomes a star again.

Sheena Easton is no great thespian, but she isn’t really the problem here.  The tone is so leaden that it is sleep-inducing; it literally induced me to sleep.  There are a couple of fun moments, but they are mostly squandered.  And you’re always on thin ice using mediocre stock music for a band on TV, especially if it is supposed to be world-changing.

Post-Post:

  • Canadian DVD Title: Letoile Filante.
  • Surprisingly, for such a slog, the director went on to helm 2 episodes of 24.  He was also the director of a better, earlier episode of Outer Limits.
  • I’m cool with the goons from the future seeing their real selves in the mirror rather than the people they possessed.  But WTH would they be seeing their future clothes?

Ray Bradbury Theater – Colonel Stonesteel and the Desperate Empties (S5E4)

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bradbury02Young Charlie is bored.  Soon, he will not be the only one.

For reasons unknown, he runs to Colonel Stonesteel’s house.  Charlie complains that nothing ever happens in their town. Stonesteel reminds him that Labor Day is coming up — four cars, floats, fireworks, the mayor.  Charlie is right, this is a dull town. At least in the short story there were seven cars.

Stonesteel takes Charlie into his house in search of excitement, and asks him if he is interested in the Graveyard (the basement) or the junkyard (the attic).  Charlie opts for the attic.  The old man constructs a mummy out of wire and old newspapers.  They then hide it in a farmer’s field.

The farmer finds it and brings it into town, interrupting the Labor Day parade with some real excitement.

And it goes on and on.  Harold Gould can pull off Bradbury’s words like few others, but the boy is as boring as the Labor Day parade; even the one with four cars.

The episode wraps up like the end of Stand By Me.  Charlie has become a famous author, and we see him finishing off a book about his childhood.  Now an adult, he sees one of the neighborhood boys out the window and invites him in.

I can’t even work up the enthusiasm to point out how strange it is that these men like to hang out with 13 year old boys.

Kind of a snoozer, unworthy of the polysyllabic title.

Post-Post:

  • Original short story title: Colonel Stonesteel’s Genuine Home-Made Truly Egyptian Mummy.
  • Just a whole lotta nothing.  I thought maybe there was an historical figure named Stonesteel, but I found nothing.  Thought maybe “desperate empties” was a pre-existing phrase, but found nothing again.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Night of the Execution (S3E13)

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ahpnightexecution01Prosecuting Attorney Warren Selvy is being chewed out by his boss as he throws file after file on his desk of cases in which Selvy has failed to get a conviction.  Whether any of these defendants were actually innocent seems to be irrelevant.  To make matters worse, his boss is also his father-in-law.

Selvy would like to be District Attorney, but his father thinks that this losing streak is going to be a problem.  Not only that, his father-in-law says he believes his daughter Doreen is getting impatient with Selvy’s slow rise to the middle.  He tells Selvy that the jury doesn’t just want logic.  In the current Rodman case, he needs to show some passion, put on a show.  So the old man is a visionary, foreseeing the OJ trial 30 years down the road where evidence doesn’t mean shit.

His father-in-law tells him that if he can send Rector — er Rodman — to the chair, his political future will be secure.  Unfortunately he has an adversary in the courtroom named Vance who is a master of self-promotion.

ahpnightexecution02All charged up, he returns to the courtroom and demands a guilty verdict from the jury, and also that they send Rodman to the electric chair.

Selvy calls his wife — who is way out of his league, by the way — down to a local bar to await the announce-ment of the verdict.  In a surprisingly quick decision, Selvy finally wins a big one.

That night, he receives a visit from an old man who says that he is actually guilty of the murder that Rodman was convicted of.  Selvy is torn — he doesn’t want an innocent man to be electrocuted, but he also wants to win the trial and not have to marry some other woman who is in his league.  When the old man realizes that he will get the chair for committing the murder, he recants his confession.

The old man comes back later, a few minutes before the scheduled execution, and threatens to go public with his guilt, Selvy is worried about the effect on his marriage and political career so clocks him with . . . . er, a clock, killing him.

ahpnightexecution03His wife and father-in-law return home just in time to see the dead man on the floor.  The father-in-law recognizes the old man as a crank who confesses to crimes all the time. As Selvy stands there in shock at having killed an innocent man, the clock he used to kill the old man rings for midnight and the execution of Rodman.

KInd of a strange episode. Normally, the clock striking midnight in Selvy’s hands, signifying the death of Rodman would have been a gut-punch.  Here it is just a reminder that the real criminal was put to death.  Big deal — as Ernie Banks said, “Let’s fry two!”

On the other hand, I expected that Rodman was going to ultimately die and be found innocent, so the episode faked me out.  Which is a good thing.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Georgann Johnson, last seen in One for the Road, still hanging in there.
  • Selvy (Pat Hingle) was Commissioner Gordon in the 1980s Batmans.
  • Edward Schaff gets only a few seconds on screen, and I’m not sure he had any dialogue.  He got more exposure as Hitler in Russ Myer’s Up!.  But not as much as Kitten Natividad.  Or Raven De La Croix.  Or Candy Samples.  Etc.

Night Gallery – The Sins of the Fathers (S2E21)

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ngsinsof04God help us, another segment described by Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-hours Tour as “considered by many the show’s finest hour.”  There’s the first clue — it is 30 minutes long, but feels like an hour.

Michael Dunn, the 20th century’s Peter Dinklage, returns to his master’s house on horseback and tells them that everyone they are looking for is busy or dead or both.  They suggest Dylan Evans, so the diminutive Dunn continues his ride.

Sadly, Evans is about to croak himself.  First he was sick with the plague, now he is sick with the famine.  The family has not eaten in a week.  Dunn tempts Evans’ wife with talk of lamb, eggs, onions, bacon, bread, cake, cheese . . . but there is no way Evan can make the trip.

The deal is that Evans is a sin-eater.  Upon the death of a villager, the corpse is surrounded by a smorgasbord.  By eating the food laid out near the corpse, the sin-eater absolves the deceased of his sins.  Sounds a little too convenient during a famine, like God telling Joseph Smith that multiple teen wives were the way to salvation.

ngsinsof09Unfortunately, Dylan is too sick to make the journey, so his wife comes up with a plan. She will send their son Ian to be the sin-eater.  He is to send the mourners out of the room and stuff the food into his cloak, bringing it back home for their family.  He protests that he doesn’t know the routine, but his mother assure him it is just a lot of wailing and moaning.

So Ian and Dunn go back to the Craighill house.  Ian is spotted right away as a phony, just a boy, not a real sin-eater.  He salivates looking at the food laid out beside the body featuring colors unseen elsewhere in the segment.  He sends the others out and stuffs the food into his clothing.  He is doing the requisite wailing and moaning as he is so frustrated at not being able to eat this feast yet.  The mourners outside take this as a sign that the sin-eating has succeeded.

Despite having not eaten in a week and having a cloak full of food, he runs the 12 miles home without taking a bite.  His mother neatly puts the food in bowls, but will not let Ian eat.  She places the food around his now-dead father, and expects Ian to do some real sin-eating.  He is to be the sin-eater of the sin-eater.  At the thought of his exponential sin-eating, being damned forever, and being damned hungry at the moment, he begins wailing and thrashing about.

ngsinsof16I really don’t understand the whole concept.  At one point, it is said that the food must be eaten off the body like Sushi Girl, but that never happens.

And unless I complete misread what was happening on the screen, Ian’s mother was sopping up the sweat on his chest with a piece of bread.

Frankly, a little disappointing.  After reading about how great this was supposed to be, and how controversial, I really expected some cannibalism.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Cyril Delevanti was in four episodes, but must have been small parts.  Alan Napier was in one episode, but is better known as Alfred in the 1960’s Batman.
  • Michael Dunn was everywhere and always great — Star Trek, Wild Wild West,etc.  Richard Thomas does a little too much screaming for my taste here, but he carries it off believably.
  • Unfortunately, someone had the bright idea of taking horror babe Barbara Steele and dressing her in a burka like Heather Graham in Outer Limits.
  • Skipped Segment:  You Can’t Get Help Like That Anymore.