Monthly Archives: June 2018

Science Fiction Theatre – Postcard from Barcelona (11/19/55)

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“The Crenshaw Foundation has at its disposal millions dollars to be spent in projects involving the arts, science and the humanities.”  In other words, everything.  Focus, people!  Did we learn nothing from Sears?

Dr. Cole receives a phone-call and sends for Dr. Burton.  He tells Dr. Burton that Dr. Keller has died.  Burton says each age gets only one such genius:  “Aristotle, Darwin, Newton . . . Keller.”  Does he think they came in that order?  Cole wants to be sure none of his work is lost.  He sends Burton to casa de Keller to catalog his papers.

The next day, Burton goes to Keller’s house.  Keller’s “lifelong servant and companion” Thatcher shows Burton to the secret laboratory.  Burton is intrigued by an electronic telescope.  Keller had used it to take pictures of celestial bodies more detailed than any before, especially the blonde in 2G.  Burton figures it is 200x more powerful than any telescope in existence.

A woman storms in and begins nagging Burton immediately.  He asks who she is and she replies, “I’m Nina Keller, daughter of Dr. Charles Keller and everything here belongs to me.”  Burton says Keller didn’t have any children.  When she insists on taking Keller’s papers, Burton physically removes her from the lab.  Even Thatcher was unaware of the daughter.

Burton finds a postcard from Barcelona with the idiotic equation PQ – QP = 1H4 .  Oooh oooh, I got this one!  H = 0!  Thatcher also is clueless on who Keller knew in Barcelona.  Nina comes back the next day with Sheriff Olson who has a warrant for Burton’s arrest.  The next day, Burton returns to the Institute where they determine that Keller really does have a daughter, and she had the legal right, if not upper body strength, to throw Burton out of the house.

Burton says the real find is the pictures Keller took through his prototype telescope.  He has found pictures of an asteroid heading toward earth.  Of more concern to me is that giant spear zooming our way.  Burton shows Cole the postcard.  He recognizes PQ – QP = 1H4  as Keller’s Sub-Quantum Theory of the Universe. [1]  The postcard is suspiciously dated 1 year before Keller announced his KSQ breakthrough to the world.

Keller’s reputation takes another hit, as does the series’, when a 2nd postcard from Barcelona is found with another formula as the only message.  Cole reads the formula, “NA2CC8CC” and Burton translates it as  “Sodio Ethylene Dibroxide, the new miracle drug!”  Or did he say “the numerical drug” because this is more anti-science bullshit. [2]  This postcard is also dated a year before Keller announced a big discovery.  Cole wonders aloud if it could be possible that someone smarter than Keller lives in Barcelona . . . the racist!

The narrator says, “The already strange life of Dr. Keller had became an enigma wrapped in a mystery to Dr. Cole.”  Wow, those are some appropriatin’ MFers over at the Crenshaw Institute — this is 2/3s of Winston Churchill’s description of Russia.  Burton and Cole offer to help Nina sell the life story of her father in exchange for the rights to all discoveries in his house.  Hmmm, let me mull this over:

  • Cole and Burton want to act as negotiators; a skill there is no evidence that they have any experience in or aptitude for.
  • They will be dealing with the publishing industry, having never written anything other than a peer-reviewed article.
  • Cole says a publisher has already offered $300,000 for the rights without their help.  That’s $3M in today’s moolah for the story of an unknown science geek.
  • Burton demonstrates his lack of negotiation prowess by saying that in exchange for doing nothing, risking nothing, and sacrificing nothing, “We retain the rights to any inventions we might discover in your father’s papers.  That includes an electronic telescope which is the finest instrument of its kind!”

I guess Nina accepts their Ludcris offer because they are working for the next 3 days on the electronic telescope to learn more about the asteroid.  They finally locate it, but discover it is not an asteroid.  Cole says it is a “man-made” object; although I think he just means it was fabricated, rather than occurring naturally.  “Man-made” includes aliens; just not alien women.  Suddenly, they lose sight of the object and get a message on the radio:  Say nothing until you hear from Barcelona.

A few days later, a postcard arrives from Barcelona.  The only message is a block of ones and zeroes.  Cole recognizes it as “the language of cybernetics”.  Burton feeds the 1s and 0s into an electronic calculator.  The message is translated as

 Dear friend, this message from Barcelona comes to you through an intermediary from another world system.  We established this space platform 1,500 miles above the earth to observe and study your planet.  Dr. Keller discovered ours secret, but he agreed not to reveal it to the rest of the world.  He realized that this knowledge might throw the world into a panic and a guided missile might be fired upon us.  He tested our goodwill and we have given him information periodically that was vital to your scientific development and helped your world.

This is just absurd.  He read more words than there even were characters on that card.  It’s just not possible, even if — oh Christ, he’s not finished . . .

We make you the same offer.  Do not reveal our existence and in 3 months time you shall receive a staggering new scientific concept that will benefit the population of earth.

Burton says Keller was an even better man than they knew.  Well, he did sign his name to these great discoveries, but I guess the valor was in keeping the real source a secret.  Also, he was doing this work for a charitable foundation rather than pocketing the rewards personally.

Not much here, but at least it did have a story and a mystery.  Sadly, the cast did not help.  Walter Kingsford was fine and credible as Dr. Cole.  Christine Larson was angrier than seemed necessary, but that might have been due to weakness in the screenplay.  The killer was Burton.  His line deliveries were maybe the dullest, flattest, most wooden acting I have seen in years (and I just saw Gabriel Byrne in Hereditary!).  His performance truly must be seen to be appreciated.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] OK, they didn’t have to cover a blackboard like Good Will Hunting, but did no one recognize the absurdity of this formula?  Obviously the Commutative Property reduces the left side of the formula to nothing.  The 1 on the right aide is completely unnecessary.  This is basic stuff.  Maybe I’m wrong, maybe people aren’t getting dumber every generation.  Naaaaaah.
  • [2] Congratulations to the producers on getting NA right for Sodium (close enough to Na) — but why does Burton pronounce it as Sodio?  Ethylene exists, but not with that formula, although Cs and Hs are involved.  Maybe Cole says H instead of 8, but it would still be wrong (but better than C11 being written as CC8CC).  And surely one of those Cs must be Carbon; or the speed of light.  Dibroxide, I got nuthin, but there is an Ethylene Dibromide.
  • The simplicity of E = MC2 always intrigued me.  Can it be true that a concept so huge reduces down to something so simple?  Just seems like a cover-up by Big Physics.
  • PQ – QP = QPQPQ

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Mother, May I Go Out to Swim? (04/10/60)

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At a coroner’s inquest, 29 year old John Crane, is recalling the first time he went away without his mother . . .

Mom, laughing:  You call this packing?  You really are hopeless.

John: Maybe it’s my artistic temperament.  Remember how mad that expression used to make dad?

William Shatner is playing this somewhat effeminately.  Are they trying to say something here?  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

He laments that his sister’s sick kid will prevent his mother from joining him on a vacation to Vermont.  He fixes a cocktail with the ice they have “left out from last night.”  He assures her she is not old as he puts his arms around her, nuzzles and kisses her neck.  Not that there’s . . . OK this is a little creepy. [1]

John puts on his big-boy pants and goes to Vermont where Mom will join him later.  On his 3rd day there, he meets Lottie in the gift shop.  He asks her for “3 or 4 rolls” of film.  This is the flimsiest of nit-picks, but why would it be scripted for him to ask for 3 or 4 rolls of film?  It’s not like asking the butcher for about a pound of turkey.  Rolls of film are clearly discrete, easily countable items.  Also, what is film?

She also shows him some slides of the area. [2]  Shots of a near-by waterfall catch his eye.  Lottie offers to take him to the location so he can take his own pictures.  They take the long hike there and John mentions it was rough on his bad leg which was damaged by polio when he was a child.  Lottie likes the spot because it is so beautiful; not like war-time Germany where she grew up.

John says he can’t wait for Lottie to meet his mother who will be coming soon.  He describes her as “so young and gay and pretty” — his mother, not Lottie.  They are having a great time, but John says he must get back to his room.  His mother calls him every night at 9:00.

The next night, Lottie and John are in the hotel dining room.  It has closed, but she is asking him to dance with her.  He uses the old I-had-polio excuse which that buttinski Jonas Salk ruined for all guys.  She convinces him to try, and it is a pretty nice moment.  He quickly but effortlessly becomes more agile, and they smoothly move closer together as they dance.  Then they even kiss.

They go back out to the waterfall and John begins talking about marriage.  He says he has never been in love like this before.  Things are heating up when suddenly he realizes he missed his mother’s nightly call 2 hours ago.  He panics, “I’ve missed Claire’s call!” He wants to bolt back to his room, but Lottie’s lips convince him to stay.

He does end up returning to his room . . . alone.  He grabs the phone, but is surprised when his mother walks into the room.  He throws his arms around her.  “Claire, darling!  What a wonderful surprise!”

The next morning at breakfast, his mother says, “I’ll have to thank Miss Rank (Lottie) for keeping you amused until I got here.”  While John goes to the train station to get the rest of his mother’s luggage, Mom goes to check out Lottie in the gift shop.  Mom is an undercover shopper and says she is looking for a gift for a man.  She dismisses Lottie’s first suggestion as gaudy.  Then she nails her for not yet being a citizen, and hints she might try to trap a man to fast-track citizenship.  “That’s the way most European girls manage it, isn’t it?”  She comments on the lack of anything tasteful in the shop and leaves. [3]

Left to Right: Lottie, worlds biggest cash register, John

John and his mother are later waiting for Lottie in the dining room.  There is tension when Lottie sees that the crabby old woman from the shop is John’s mother.  Mom gives a non-apology and thanks Lottie for looking after John until she arrived.  Mom says she won’t get in the way of the young couple.  It seems misplayed that this what finally causes Lottie to leave.  Even though it was passive-aggressive bullshit, it was actually the most decent thing Mom said since she arrived.  Naturally, John stays with his mother rather than going after Lottie.

Lottie and John go back to the waterfall that evening.  He accuses her, “You don’t like my mother, do you?”  She neither hems nor haws, “No.”  John is baffled how Lottie could not love his dear mother.  She says, “How little you know about women, John.”  She says she understands the situation now, and starts naming off the issues:

  1. The telephone calls every night.
  2. The number of times her name is used in conversation.
  3. The fact that she joined you here.
  4. That you still live with her.
  5. “When I saw you together, I knew there was no chance for me.”

She doesn’t mention the creepy idea of him calling his mother Claire (or darling).  There is another little misstep when money is introduced in the conversation.  Lottie learns that all the family assets are in Mom’s name.  She says John will never be free until she dies and he inherits the loot.  I get that this is to put the idea of killing Mom on the table, but bringing up money just undermines the the whole Buster Bluth dynamic.

A couple of nice scenes follow.  John is literally sitting at his mother’s feet as she continues passively-aggressively chewing the scenery.  It really is good, cringe-worthy stuff.  She even gets to use Lottie’s same line to John, “How little you know of women!”  He then meets Lottie later in the dining room.  She insists that John tell Mom immediately of their marriage plans.  She even suggests they do it together at the waterfall.  John says in narration that he knew what Lottie had in mind, but it seems like a non-sequitur.

The three of them arrive at the waterfall.  Lottie and Mom go to the edge to look at it.  Seeing the two women leaning over the edge, John limps over and gives one of them a push (really more of a hammy punch in the back).  The shot that follows is so brutally comic that it is surprising it made it onto TV.  We see a lengthy shot of a body falling down the cliff, hitting every rock on the way down like Homer Simpson at Springfield Gorge.  There is an effort at suspense as the two women were dressed in white, similar to each other.  Not, however, similar to the dummy that went over the cliff wearing a darker top.  But c’mon, this is AHP; who do you think it’s going to be?

We return to the coroner’s inquest where the death is ruled an accident.  John seems a little dazed as he asks his mother, “Can we go home now?”  He seems debilitated, and not just in the leg.

Jessie Royce Landis (Mom) was so perfect that you wonder if she was acting.  The script and her delivery were just a feast of attitude and elbows.  With Shatner, as you would expect, it is an affected performance.  But is it due to his youth (6 years pre Star Trek)?  Or playing a momma’s-boy?  Or just his usual Shatnerisms?  It felt a little over-played, especially in the first scene.  Still, it worked for me.

More great stuff from AHP.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] They made sure to maximize the CQ (Creepiness Quotient) by casting an actress who was 35 years older than Shatner.  The usual mother-son spread in Hollywood is about 5-10 years.  In North by Northwest, she played Cary Grant’s mother despite being only 7 years older.
  • [2] I never got the appeal of slides.  You need to buy equipment to view them.  Instead of a small colorful photo, you get a washed-out blown-up version tainted by the color of whatever wall you point it at (unless you buy yet more equipment).  They are a pain to load into the viewer each time (unless you buy much, much more equipment).  Correction, I don’t get the appeal to the customer.  That’s why this guy is the best.
  • [3] John never tells his mother that Lottie works in the gift shop.  But I guess not every conversation is on-screen.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  The Shat — still with us, baby!  Sadly, Gia Scala (Lottie) OD’d at age 38.
  • Title Analysis:  No idea, so as always, I went to bare*bonez e-zine for their great source material and production details.

Twilight Zone – There Was an Old Woman (12/17/88)

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Another There Was an Old Woman?  How come it’s never There Was a Young Hooters Waitress?

This episode was really a slog.  Rather than go through it in detail, I’ll just mention the one scene I will remember.  Author Hallie Parker calls the home of a sick boy she had befriended.  The boy’s mother has to tell Hallie that her little boy has just died.  The line reading is so bad that she might as well have been saying she burnt dinner.

It reminded me of another dead-son scene.  I always thought the line where Saavik tells Kirk his son was killed was just dreadfully delivered.  At least she had 2 excuses: 1) she was playing a Vulcan, and 2) people were going to dislike her anyway for not being Kirstie Alley.

Nothing else worth commenting on.

Other Stuff:

  • Classic TZ Connection:  Maybe a little too reminiscent of Changing of the Guard.  Both had a lead whose days were numbered (by retirement or suicidal thoughts).  Both lamented that they had no impact on the students they taught.  And both end up surrounded by ghost-kids.
  • Dang if I could make those clips start where I wanted.

The Perfect Crime – C.S. Montanye (1920)

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I

Two men just met in an unsavory waterfront saloon.  Rider Lott pulls out a small case and pinches out a bit.  You’re thinking snuff but no, he places it in a nostril and snorts it right up Broadway.  He offers a hit to his new friend, “Walk in a snow storm, brother?”  Martin Klug says, “It’s dope, isn’t it?”  Lott replies, “Happy dust.”

Lott tries to figure Klug’s particular brand of mayhem by looking him over (i.e. judging a crook by his cover).  He quickly reels off colorful guesses such as “gay-cat, blaster, dip, leather snatcher, flash-thief, peterman, derrick swinger, river rat, rattler grab, and freight car crook” although the cocaine might have caused him to mix a few Pornhub categories in there before getting around to an actual crime.

Klug wisely cops to the last one before Lott starts listing off watersports.  Lott says he himself is an author and inventor.  He wants write a book about his invention — the Perfect Crime.  He is currently workshopping Chapter 1:  Get high and reveal your plan to a complete stranger in a bar.  Lott says, “Crime doctors and criminologists say it is impossible to commit a crime without leaving a clue.”  He basically believes the law of averages requires someone will get away clue-free; might as well be him.

A voluptuous blonde joins them.  Lott introduces her as “Beatrice the Beautiful Brakeman’s Daughter” but doesn’t reveal what makes the brakeman so beautiful.  It is pretty humorous when she says, “My name isn’t Beatrice and I never saw you before.”  Lott questions why such a hot babe is in such a dive.  She lost her job as an upstairs maid 3 weeks ago, so apparently can no longer afford the the glamorous, jet-set life of a domestic servant.

Rich old Mrs. Cabbler had entrapped her by leaving a $10 spot on the dresser.  Not-Beatrice had long dreamed of buying fancy elbow-length white gloves.  She couldn’t resist the $10 ($130 today).  Mrs. Cabbler demanded the cash back and fired her without pay.  Not-Beatrice feels the Bern and says, “Mrs. Cabbler has more money than she knows what to do with.  Money isn’t much use to a person 70 years old.  Young people should have the money!” [1] Conveniently, she keeps it in a trunk under the bed.

Lott sees a 70 year old woman literally sleeping on a fortune to be the perfect test of his Perfect Crime theory.  Not-Beatrice still wants to buy fancy gloves, and Martin wants a new pair a shoes . . . these are the least ambitious crooks in history.  Lott would use his cut to publish his perfect crime book which he muses, “Will be of wonderful assistance to young, ambitious crust-floppers, grifters, and heavymen.”  I’m not sure he didn’t lapse in porn-speak again.

They meticulously plan the crime.  Lott says the Perfect Crime should be committed by a single person — yet he plans this heist for two people.  Not-Beatrice, with no experience in crime (other than swiping the $10), must go to lead the other person to the cash.  Her accomplice will be chosen based on his experience, skill-set, and coolness under fire . . . nah, Lott says he and Krug will just draw straws.  Worst criminal mastermind ever!

Lott draws the long straw so will rob Mrs. Crabbler with Not-Beatrice.  Lott instructs them, “Use no violence of any kind.  Take no chances, leave no clues.  Take great pains to cover every step, and don’t be in a hurry.  After you have the money, if you will go back and check over every move you have made in search of suspicious or incriminating clues left behind, and then remove them, you will have accomplished the Perfect Crime.”

II

After the crime, the three meet up at the 10th Avenue apartment of Not-Beatrice’s sister.  Klug assures Lott that they left behind no clues.  Unfortunately, Mrs. Crabbler woke up during the robbery so they had to kill her.  Lott is peeved at this, but his $3,000 cut raises his spirits.  Not-Beatrice is not too choked up over the “old hag” dying.  In addition to her $3,000 cut, she bogarted a fine pair of white gloves from the old woman.

Lott and Klug fight over who will get Not-Beatrice.  Well actually, she chooses Lott and Klug attacks him.  Lott brains him with a whiskey bottle, and kills him.  This must be 2nd Chapter stuff — leave a dead body at the home of the sister of one of the perps.

It finally comes out that when Not-Beatrice stole the nice new gloves, she threw her old gloves away in the old woman’s trash can.  D’oh!  Within seconds, the police traced the laundry marks to this address.

Not much new going on here.  For a story called The Perfect Crime, the actual crime is stunningly mundane.  Still, it is pithy and good-humored.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] On the other hand.  Although, the shocker here is that Newsweek still exists.
  • First published in the July 1920 issue of Black Mask.
  • Cocaine was big business until the Jones-Miller Act of 1922.  In what can only be explained by a collapse in the time/space continuum, the two politicians made cocaine illegal rather than 1) taking campaign contributions from Big Pharma to keep it legal, and 2) then taxing it.
  • This is the 2nd post entitled The Perfect Crime.  See also, The Utterly Perfect Murder.

Outer Limits – Origin of Species (11/27/98)

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Note:  This is Part 2 of Double Helix, an Outer Limits episode that aired 20 months earlier.  So this writer has about the same work ethic as me.

We start with a recap of Part 1.  Professor Martin Nodel recruited a group of college girls for an experiment that required them to get naked.  His effort worked better than mine, maybe because he also recruited some dudes as cover.  The group met at a cave in which a spacecraft had been hidden for millions of years.  The aliens left a message that they wanted humans to pay them a visit to see how we turned out.  Faced with the choice of abandoning Earth or trying to get a job with their “studies” degrees, the students boarded the ship with Nodel.

And now on with the story . . .

The “action” moves to the interior of the ship and it is as narratively underwhelming as it was in Close Encounters.  At least the CE3K ship looked great (if thoroughly inefficient) and had the John Williams score going for it.  Here, it is just transportation with some padded scenes to get us to a couple of twists at the end.

Dr. Nodel jacks in to the ship again and channels its builders, “Four score and seven eons ago, the ancestors of our race foresaw a great danger . . .”  However, before he gets to the good part, and I’m being optimistic there, he begins to glow and disappears.  His son Paul tries to help him and disappears also.  This leaves behind several students and Paul’s girlfriend Hope.  To head off any weirdness, I must point out that Paul and his girlfriend joined the group after the naked examinations.  Although, that does make me question their scientific value.

The walls begin to twist, but ship does not lose structural integrity, like that Star Trek episode that bugged me so much that I can’t remember whether it was TNG or Voyager.  Another passageway opens up, but it leads — literally, figuratively, and narratively — nowhere.  The shifting walls do split the group up, but not much is done with this.

Eventually, they all get back together somehow.  They can feel the ship decelerating.  One of the guys says, “Get back to launch positions, now!” which is probably the same as “landing positions” but why not just say that?  They land, and a hatch opens.

SPOILERS

They exit the ship to a very earth-like environment.  One of them wonders why the aliens were not there to greet them.  This ship is supposed to be 65 million years old.  Would anyone rally remember this ship was out there?

They climb a nearby hill to determine the lay of the land, although it is clearly the girl who looks like Nancy Allen.  It is a pretty nice series of shots that shows their reaction to the unseen sight before them.  Then we see the ruins of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Hope says, “Oh my God, we’re home.” [1]  

They fortuitously find a food wrapper that has an expiration date of May 2267.  So, unless it was a Twinkie, they merely went about 269 years into the future. [2]  There are no people here, though.  They find a massive graveyard with a marker blaming their vanity in “trying to control nature.”  So, trying to stop Global Warming was the cause, I guess.

They conclude they were sent here to repopulate the planet.  Someone says, “There’s only seven of us.  We don’t have enough genetic diversity to repopulate” even though one of them is a brunette.  They go back to the ship and a nursery full of babies is revealed.  The ship somehow tweaked their DNA to provide the diversity needed to safely repopulate.

Dr. Nodel and son reappear as a hologram.  They explain that the aliens were humans million of years in the future that left the ship on Earth to give the planet another chance.  That raises more questions, but that might just be because it is 2:15 am.

The big grave-site and the low disk space message that pops up every 5 goddamn minutes.

There are a few cheats and padding — clearly, there was never supposed to be a Part 2.  The characters are pretty generic.  I can only name Hope and a guy whose name I don’t know; so just Hope, I guess.

Still, I’m a sucker for such derivative, high-concept stories.  Plus, it has the benefit of following Science Fiction Theater and Tales of Tomorrow.  I would never watch it again, but it gets an OK.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Suspiciously close to “Oh my God, I’m back, I’m home” from Planet of the Apes.  However, Hope does not start name-calling and blaspheming.
  • [2] Joe Miller Jokebook, circa 1739.