They almost got me on this one. Each week host Truman Bradley performs a scientific experiment relevant to the story. Usually they are so dull and the music so overwrought that I power right through them. This time, however, he brings out a tuning fork which always intrigued me.
He holds up “a glass of liquid” which looks suspiciously like water or vodka, then gets the fork a-vibrating and holds it against the glass. After an edit, the glass appears to contain a few ice cubes; then an umbrella and a cherry on a tiny sword. After another edit, it seems to have completely solidified. In a shocking breach of lab safety regulations, he breaks the glass with no protective eye-wear. The liquid now looks like a wax candle, but is described as “a crystal, synthetically produced by man.” [1] I was ready to buy a tuning fork and try this myself. After my standard 30 seconds of research, though, it appears to be baloney.
Late one night, A gent Agent Masters from Washington drops in on Dr. Otis — director of a scientific project in New Mexico (wink, wink) — and his daughter at his desert home. Last week Dr. Otis had a top secret meeting in his living room with the Secretary of Defense about converting aircraft to atomic power. Despite the Fort Knox-like security of a screen-door with a hook, a microfilm transcript of that meeting was found on a Russki spy. Even the respected Dr. Otis is a suspect in how the info got leaked.
Dr. Otis’s’s’s’ daughter Linda says this is ridiculous. Nevertheless, Masters says he is going to live in the house with them until this security breach is resolved or until someone remembers the Third and Forth Amendments.
The three of them begin tearing the house apart looking for some eavesdropping device; which is like the police asking murder suspect to help find some bloody fingerprints. Furniture is x-rayed, the walls are sonically probed. Searching for anything anomalous, Masters find three bottles of ant poison, but one doesn’t seem to be murdering any ants.
Otis breaks the bottle and finds a waxy glob inside. Beneath the wax is a synthetic crystal. Otis says, “crystal under compression generates electrical energy that is capable of picking up sound wave frequencies — like the old crystal radio receivers.” Masters conjectures that a jelly-like substance absorbed the sounds from the meeting and hardened in the crystal.
To demonstrate, Masters grabs an LP (Long Playing 33 1/3 vinyl disc containing recorded music or rap). He smashes it, holds up a shard and asks, “Would you say that was a recording of sound?” Otis says the grooves are still there, which is not true — most of them are on the ground. Masters says, “Nothing has actually changed except the method of reproducing that sound.” This proves nothing — the issue is whether it is possible for the the crystal to record, not if it is possible to play it back. Anyhoo . . .
They need an expert on MASERs to prove this theory, so decide to enlist Dr. Gordine from Northwest Engineering to help. Dr. Otis says Gordine could be there in 48 hours. Otis is apparently so excited that Gordine is coming that he doesn’t change his green shirt for 2 days. [2]
Gordine sets up his equipment and they inexplicably decide to test it on a rock Otis uses as a paperweight. The device is able to read impressions on the rock and broadcasts sounds of hysterical panic and mayhem like someone is exercising free speech on a college campus. Otis says the rock is from Pompeii, and the noises are people being killed by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD.[3] The cooling lava recorded the sounds and 2,000 years later ignominiously and igneously wound up keeping papers on Dr. Otis’s desk from flying around the room.
Next they test the crystal that was found in the ant poison. Sure enough, it is a recording of every-thing said in the room that day. Masters reasons that the ant poison must replaced every day. That night, he catches the handyman switching the bottles. Despite dressing like The Scarecrow, he is not the brains of the operation.
I have to give SFT credit for actually throwing in a twist, and then even adding a justification for it. It’s not much, but it’s a start.
In the epilogue, Dr. Otis is excited about the historical events that can now be researched by listening to sounds recorded at the time. However, since the recording process seems to require cooling lava, I think the playlist is going to be shorter than the Big Bopper’s Greatest Hits. Linda, staring into Masters’ dreamy eyes says she is only thinking of the future. Dr. Otis must sense wedding bells too, because he finally changed his shirt.
The science seems ludacris to me, but I ain’t no MASER expert. It seems like a take-off on the Lazarus Bowl concept. A potter was spinning a bowl while Jesus was raising Lazarus from the dead, and the bowl supposedly recorded the vibrations of his speech.
“Hey, Brittany, the son of God is raising that Lazarus kid from the dead!”
“Let me finish this clay bowl.”
The performances were as bad as usual. Marshall Thompson (Masters) was nearly somnolent. He had a huge career, though, so maybe I just don’t get him. Marilyn Erskine (Linda) is attractive, but delivers most of her lines like she’s yelling at an umpire. Everything is an exclamation — the defense of her father, general exposition, skepticism . . .
I give it about 10 decibels.
Post-Post:
- [1] In fact, it looks so much like a candle that you can see a blackened wick faintly showing on one end.
- [2] Or maybe he has an Albert Einstein / Seth Brundle thing going.
- [3] Most frequently heard phrase: “Sancta excremento!”
- Elizabeth Patterson plays a maid. I can’t say for sure, but being born in 1875, she might the earliest born of any actor I’ve watched so far. It would not surprise me if someone in AHP aces her out, though. IMDb says her father was in the Confederate Army. I wonder if he lived long enough to see Civil War reenactors? “Hey idiot, I lost 55 cousins and my left leg so you could live free from oppression! . . . uh no, the white guy beside you. Yeah, you!”
College student Devon Taylor is listening to space. He thinks he can detect a pattern coming from 
Joyce and the other teenagers are taken to the hospital. All of them are getting the same metallic plating on their skin even though soap and water would take care of most of it. Devon looks in Joyce’s eye with one of those lighted doctor doohickeys and says, “Her iris is changing.” No, Mr. Know-It-All, her pupil is changing, not her iris. Seriously, does anyone in TV finish the sixth grade?
The CDC agrees and the government starts broadcasting the signal, finally using that goofy 
play a similar brainiac on 
Wise Man and Fool follow Rat to her, by definition, Rat-infested home. They peek in the window and see that within seconds she has already thinned the herd by overdosing on the coke.
Wise Man goes to see The Chemist (played perfectly by Joe Flaherty). Whether it was intentional or not, his ditsy blonde assistant Orchid gets a laugh from me by calling him Wiseman [2] as if it were his name. While Chemist and Wise Man are weighing the cocaine, Orchid pours some champagne — hey, there’s a brick of coke right there! [3] We are tipped off that Orchid has slipped poison into one of the glasses. Son-of-a-bitch if I wasn’t fooled again! She killed The Chemist and she and Wise Man end up in the sack.
A reel-to-reel tape tells us, “The following is a true and full account and hereby sworn by me, Paul Brett, Attorney at Law.” Dang, you had me right up til that last part. The tape continues on, leading into a flashback . . .
Once back from the honeymoon, she feels Mr. Hughes has become “distant, hard to reach”, perhaps fearing another room needs painting. He refuses to let her see her old friends.
One night after they are married, his wife is having a nightmare. She says, “Drink this, Mrs. Hughes. Have another dose. Mrs. Hughes, I know you took some earlier, but you have to have another dose. Drink it.”
This segment begins by setting up a story that never arrives. Norma Lewis (Mare Winningham) is such an insufferable shrew that you have to think that characteristic must be of some great importance to the plot.
The next night, Mr. Stewart comes to the apartment and explains to Norma how the device works. If the button is pushed, someone she does not know will die, and she will receive $200,000. When Arthur gets home from work, she gives him the 4-1-1 through a constant sneer and cigarette smoke.
Of course Norma is going to push the button. She is low-life trash and her husband is too whipped to stop her. They take a long time to get there, but there is never any doubt. Imagine if this had been a classy couple; maybe moderately well off but just suffered some big financial loss. Or a preacher who sees only the immediate good the money could do for people around him. Or a parolee who is struggling to be a better person. Or a dying man who wants to provide for his family. There would have been some tension then.