Monthly Archives: June 2018

Science Fiction Theatre – The Water Maker (10/29/55)

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In which Truman Bradley demonstrates an explosive test tube without proper eye-wear. [1]

“This is the setting of our story . . . the blazing inferno of heat-drenched emptiness unfit for the meanest of God’s creatures.”  

Surprisingly, the narrator is not talking about South Florida, but of Death Valley.  Crazy desert rat Charlie is driving David Brooks out to the ol’ Dunlap place.  Charlie says that Dunlap died a week ago, so in this heat, he should be pretty easy to find.  This surprises Brooks who received a telegram from him two days ago.

When they get to the Dunlap ranch, Norman Conway drives up.  He chews Charlie out and says he intended to pick David up at the airport himself, but will make it up by helping him with those gutters.  He nastily tells Charlie to beat it, then explains that he was Dunlap’s closest neighbor and best friend.  They go inside to see Dunlap’s widow, The Widow Dunlap.

They confirm that Mr. Dunlap was killed in an explosion of one of his experiments.  Sheila admits that she sent that telegram to David, but signed John’s name to get him here as soon as possible.  He is not happy at the deception and plans to catch the next flight out. Sheila entices him to stay by offering $25,000 for two weeks work, but he declines.  C’mon, that is $230,000 in 2018 dollars!

He doesn’t care for her because John had told him months ago that she had left him.  Sheila admits she fled to New York when his grant money started running low.  In her defense, she says she came back a week later.  She pawned everything she had to get them $3,000 to further fund his research.  OK, so where is this $25,000 coming from?  What else was she pawning in New York?

To further complicate things, it is revealed that David and Sheila were a couple ten years ago.  She admits that she left David for John because he made more money.  Wait a minute, John was working on his crazy experiments and would have come close to bankruptcy without Sheila’s help.  How was he making more than David?  Al-Qaeda’s money isn’t this hard to follow.

Sheila and Norman convince David to at least stay for dinner and consider their offer.  Norman asks David what the world would be like if water could be created in all the deserts of the world.  That was John Dunlaps’s dream.  He wants David to follow John’s work all the  way to the patent office.  Sheila says she sold Norman a 50% stake for him to further fund the research.  They offer David 10% but he still isn’t interested.

As David prepares to leave, Sheila shows him John’s research.  After glancing at the notes, he agrees to stay a little while.  The next morning, David asks Norman to drive him to the sight where John exploded.  He finds no evidence of an explosion at the site.  David later tells Sheila he thinks John was murdered.

David learns from the sheriff that Norman bought some dynamite shortly before John blew up, and has the ACME receipts to prove it.  BTW, I guess in an atypical effort to give a character a little depth, they have the sheriff 1) have his shirt unbuttoned a little too far, 2) wear his holster and sagging gun-belt while sitting at his desk, 3) chase a fly around the office with a swatter, and 4) have a pre-#MeToo girly calendar in his office.

David accuses Norman of killing John in order to have the money and Sheila for himself.  Although, in my opinion, it was mostly the cash.  Norman pulls a gun on them.  Sheila does some fast thinking and throws acid in Norman’s eyes.  They escape to the desert; and by escape, I mean run to certain death. Norman wipes the acid from his eyes and pursues them.

David flees the house empty-handed, but somehow in the desert he suddenly has a canteen.  It doesn’t help much, though.  Within seconds, they are dehydrated and near death.  They see a mud-hole where apparently John had successfully performed one of his tests.  They use their last strength to run to it and . . . well, not so much drink it as splash it on their face.  Like Dr. Chomsky from last week’s Nightmare, they seem to think water can be absorbed through the cheeks.  Hearing Norman’s jeep, they run for cover.

They are not hidden for long.  Even before Norman spots them, David gives away their position by reflecting the sun off the canteen and into Norman’s eyes.  Blinded, Norman tries to shoot them anyway, but misses.  He then reloads his double-barreled shotgun, which is strange, because he only shot once.  In a fiasco of staging and editing, David rushes Norman from the front, but somehow manages to clock him on the noggin from behind with the canteen.  Wow, that canteen can do everything!  Now if they only had some means of storing water.

Even on the SFT curve, a meh episode.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] He does demonstrate the paradox that water is the only element that expands when it is either heated or cooled.  Who designed this crazy system?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Craig’s Will (03/14/60)

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A dame tells her shrink, “These days, the only way a girl can become a millionaire, if she doesn’t inherit the money, is to marry it.”  Marry the money?  She flashes back to her attempt to get those millions from “rich old coot” Wilbur Craig.

The plan seems off to a rocky start as we see Craig’s lawyer reading his titular will.  He leaves $10,000 ($85k in 2018 dollars) to his housekeeper.  The good news for Judy is that Craig does have a living relative, and he is young and unmarried.  Thomas Craig is all smiles as he awaits the good news.  The lawyer continues, Craig leaves the remaining $800k “to the one who has meant the most to me.  One whose high spirits have heightened these last days, who was always there when I called, my ever faithful . . . Casper.”

Casper the Dog, that is.  Thomas is stunned, but is assured that the will is legit.  After being in denial for a few seconds, he smiles again.  “But he will need a guardian!”  Old man Craig planned for that.  The guardian is to be his butler, Sam Loomis.  What the heck?  Sam Loomis was the guy Janet Leigh was banging in Psycho (released later that year).  Could this be just coincidence?

The attorney assures Thomas that his uncle didn’t forget him.  That’s the problem, Thomas says.  He remembered everything Thomas did, and disapproved of it all.  When Casper dies, the money will go to Thomas.  “That’s nice, but I need it now.”  He does a least get room and board at the mansion.  And a shiny dollar.

Thomas goes to see his girlfriend Judy (the aforementioned dame).  He tells her he inherited $1.00.  He explains that he will get the full estate when the dog dies.  Not only that, but Casper is only 2 years old.  It could be 100 dog years before Thomas sees any money.  Judy sees the solution clearly.

In no time, Thomas, who stands to make $800k from his death, takes Casper on a hunting trip — that butler is not much of a guardian.  Out in the woods, Thomas lines Casper up in his site.  Judy is waiting in the car because she can’t stand to see such cruelty inflicted on one of God’s creatures. But she is wearing a mink, so clearly she’s not a fanatic on the subject.

She hears a gunshot and thinks she’s rich.  Then Casper comes running up to the car.  Thomas shows up right after Casper.  Turns out the shot was another hunter going Dick Cheney on Thomas.  He says, “This place is full of trigger-happy hunters!”

Judy is immediately prepared with alternative plans.  Thomas feels his almost being shot is karma for trying to kill the dog.  He is appalled that Judy still wants to go through with it.  She still has a scheme though, and thinks to herself, “Madame du Barry got what she wanted and not by telling Louie everything.”  She also got her head chopped off, but I have a hunch Judy’s passing grade in history was from burying her face in something other than books.

Judy goes to private detective Vince Noonan.  Even in the Big Book of Pulps, I don’t remember any PIs in the dog-killing business.  He changes his mind when she offers him $1,000 ($8,500 in 2018 dollars).  To get Noonan close to the dog, she introduces him as her cousin Vincent and asks if he could stay at the mansion a few days.

As Noonan is thinking of ways to kill the pooch lying at his feet, Loomis comes in with Casper’s dinner — filet mignon, just like every night.  Noonan is stumped how to kill Casper and have it look like an accident until he spots a bottle of ant poison.  He uses it to baste the filet mignon in the refrigerator.  Unfortunately, Loomis innocently feeds it to him that night.  There are still 5 more minutes to kill, though, so he does not die.

Judy chews Noonan out for being a waste of $1,000 so he agrees to take Casper on a little fishing trip like Fredo Corleone.  Wearing a suit and tie, as you do, Noonan rows Casper out to the middle of the lake.  He tells Casper, it isn’t personal, it is business.  Wow, he is Fredo.  Despite kind of getting to like the pooch, he picks up an oar, and we see his backswing which is really the most important part of an oar-killing.  Both Noonan and Casper go missing.

After Loomis goes out looking for Casper, Vincent comes back to the mansion, followed by Casper.  He says, “That dog saved my life.  Anyone who wants to kill that dog will do it over my dead body!”  Judy says he is fired, that she’ll do it herself.  Thomas overhears this and is shocked.  Judy tries to explain, but he just coldly stares at her.  Thomas, Noonan and Casper all look down on this would-be dog-killing golddigger.

Back in the psychiatrist’s office, she reveals the one plan that could still make her rich.  It is not to marry the psychiatrist, it is “To become a dog and marry Casper.  Arf arf.”  Yes, she actually barks. [1]

A fine little episode that seemed very slightly off.  Even though I saw the mechanics on the screen, I never fully felt the two themes that seemed to be forefront: the two men falling for the dog, and the dog’s knack for escaping execution.  There just seemed to be a lack of suspense and energy.  Maybe it needed one more botched execution to make the pace a little more frantic.  They could have lost the psychiatrist wrap-around which adds nothing to the episode.

The performances were mostly great.  Dick van Dyke (Thomas) is fun in both the dialogue and physical bits.  You kind of expect that from him, so the surprise to me was Paul Stewart (Noonan) who gave me some good laughs playing against his tough-guy persona.  The script was also a winner with genuinely funny lines and situations.  It is no surprise that the writers and director went on to work on many classic comedies such as The Odd Couple, Carol Burnett, and MASH.  But also Diff’rent Strokes, so you never really know.

Other Stuff:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  DvD hanging in there at 93.  Stella Stevens is 80.  Red (Casper) would have been 385 in dog years.
  • Stella Stevens went on to play Ernest Borg9’s ex-hooker wife in The Poseidon Adventure.
  • [1] Yada yada doggie-style.  Not worth a paragraph.

Twilight Zone – The Trance (11/26/88)

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Leonard Randall walks to a comfortable chair in front of a classroom of students.  He requests quiet and soon slumps down in the chair.  He suddenly becomes alert and states in a confident, somehow electronically-enhanced voice, “I am Delos, and I am here.”  He says he was born 10,000 years ago and died 9,500 years ago.  C’mon, I’m down with his perfect English, his being from Atlantis, and his ability to project his consciousness millennia into the future, but he lived to be 500 years old?

He offers his wisdom to the paying customers.  So I guess they aren’t students.  They are people who have paid good money to be fed a line of intellectually bankrupt nonsense by a con-man.  Say, maybe they are students.

The first rube uses her opportunity to access the wisdom accumulated over millennia from all reaches of the cosmos and planes of existence to ask if she should marry her boyfriend.  Delos, admittedly, gives a nice parable about a butterfly that makes her happy, but maybe not so much her boyfriend.

He says, “This vessel grows weary” and can only take one more question.  He calls on “the one this vessel calls Julia.”  She asks why Delos stayed silent for so long, and why he came back now.  That’s a better question, but would be about #300 on my list.  He says, “This vessel called Leonard has been chosen to receive wisdom.  The universe has selected him.”  He comes now because he senses the same decay that caused Atlantis to sink below the ocean.  He further states that they have choices to make, that they will tilt the cosmic balance between good and evil, that there is light in each of them, and that cassettes will be available in the lobby in 30 minutes.

Backstage, Leonard’s manager updates him on retreat bookings, and the sales of crystals, tapes and amulets.  It is clear they regard Delos’ followers as wallets with legs.  Leonard is surprised when a different voice comes out of his pie-hole, even deeper and more electronically enhanced than Delos.

It would be even more tedious than usual to recap what follows.  In this case, however, that is not a sign of the episode’s mediocrity.  Peter Scolari defies expectations of anyone who knows his other work.  He is utterly believable not only as Leonard, but as Delos, and then the legitimate entity who eventually speaks through him.  Even better, and allowing a little of his comedic chops, are the transitions between conciousnesses.  Despite some humor, Scolari commits 100% to the part without the slightest wink or irony.

Kudos too to the writing which was tight throughout.  The transitions are as well written as they are performed, with the real entity being contrasted with the vacuous Leonard.  Even the entity’s platitudes, which we have heard before from a thousand snotty-ass aliens, have an elegance and a gravitas we don’t often see.  Finally, it is an interesting choice to have the real entity be kind and interested in improving humanity.  How often does that happen?

Actually, it is a little ambiguous whether the entity is a threat or will usher in a new era of peace through Leonard.  But he has a soothing voice and looks a little Jesusy, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Tales of Tomorrow – Ghost Writer (03/27/53)

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Leslie Nielsen is hanging out in his apartment wearing a tie, and lets his wife Joan in with groceries, all exactly like he did six weeks ago in Another Chance.  Maybe this is the other chance.  He reminds her that he left the agency — I’m thinking advertising, not CIA — a year ago, and all he has to show for it is one short story published in a small magazine.  For six months, he has been working on a novel.  And I mean working!  With paper, ribbons, and a manual typewriter.

He receives a letter from Lee Morton, a professional writer offering to be his collaborator.  Joan wants him to keep trying on his own, but Leslie thinks this could lead to big money.  I guess he heard about James Patterson and Bill Clinton.  After she goes back to work another shift, he calls Morton to ask about collaborating and any #METOO moments that might embarrassingly derail TV appearances. [1]

He goes to Morton’s office.  Morton says that he’s had a long successful career.  “But I’m getting older.  “Oh, the stories are still there, the ideas still flow, but they don’t come fast enough.”  He tells Leslie, “I’ll pay you $500 for every story you finish for me.” [2]  As a test, he reads Leslie a summary of one of his unfinished stories.  Leslie improvs a tale of a sordid love triangle which ends with two people dead, leaving just a love point, geometrically-speaking.

Joan is working late at the store where she is a clerk.  Her boss leaves just as the morning papers are delivered.  Wait, what?  How bloody late did they work?  It makes no sense, but I think it is just convenient sloppiness in the script.  Leslie stops by the shop very excited.  He finished off two stories for Morton and was paid $1,000 in cash.  Joan is upset because he had promised her he would not use the collaborator.  Leslie, however, is ecstatic that “I finally sold something.”  So I guess Mr. Big Shot forgot his first sale to that small magazine.  Typical.

At the store, Leslie notices one of the newspapers has an article describing a crime just like the one he made up for Morton.  Two days later, Leslie is still unable to reach Morton.  Joan wants him to return the money because it was “too easy” and has seemed to have had a sinister outcome.  Well, not really — this was the first story he pitched to Morton for free, not one of the two he was paid $500 each for.  “Will all the stories you write for him end in some tragedy?” she frets.

He says of course not.  “The second one I wrote was altogether different.  It centers around some hotel out in California.”  Joan tells him about that day’s hotel fire in Palm Springs where 40 people could check out any time they want, but they could never leave!  OMG!  That was in the afternoon paper that arrived at 6 am! [3]  She further tells Leslie that she has checked all the usual writer hang-outs — bookstores, bars, the unemployment office — and no one has heard of Lee Morton.  Joan says if Leslie collaborates with him again, he can forget about collaborating with her ever again.  He grabs the cash and heads out the door to return it to Morton.

He confronts Morton and says he can’t work for him anymore.  “Those two stories I finished for you — the fire and the murder — they came true!”  Morton claims it is a coincidence.  He pleads with Leslie to write just one more story at double the payment.  Leslie just can’t turn down that kind of money, so he takes the gig.  When he forgets to pick Joan up from work, she calls Morton.  She is distraught that Leslie lied to her and is writing another story.

Leslie finishes off the story with a car crash killing a woman.  When he turns it in, Morton tells him that his wife called and is tired of his lies.  She is driving back to live with her parents.  Of course, Joan dies in an auto accident.  He instantly regrets killing the character in his story and makes notes for an epilogue where her husband marries a blonde 10 years younger with big boobs.  What a cad.  Just a real jerk.  Who thinks like that?

Meh.  Another week, another episode.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Not unusually for this series, this line of dialogue is diametrically opposed to the actual problem being shown — the ideas are flowing too fast.
  • [2] I think we can all agree Clinton didn’t write a single word of that book.  The farce here is thinking that the head of the Patterson Industrial Complex did either.
  • [3] How did he not regard his story as tragic?  It obviously included the fire which killed 40 people.
  • Similar premise to TZ’s Printer’s Devil.
  • Title Analysis:  No ghost.

Outer Limits – Nightmare (08/14/98)

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Battle cruiser Tango Bravo 1 — wait, that’s really the name? — has just reached orbit around planet N184.  Did they just run out of names for stuff in the future?  They are there to drop off an undisclosed payload.  As the crew speculates about what it is, they are blasted by laser fire which causes a couple of crew-members to drop their own payloads.  When they return fire, the planet zaps them with a ray which knocks them out.  They awaken in space jail sponging off alien taxpayers, with crystals embedded in their hands.

A voice demands to know who they are.  Captain Kimbro identifies himself and says they are from the Starship Archipelago, so I guess it does have a name.  The others introduce themselves per the Captain’s orders.  Deadeye Dumar — played by the always arrogant and obnoxious Steven Bauer [1] — feels compelled to represent humanity by adding, “Bite me.”  His witty ripost earns him a sizzling shock to the hand which could render him celibate for weeks.

The aliens tell them to take an hour to pick a spokesman, which seems pretty generous “or else you will meet the same fate as the last unfortunate creatures to trespass in this sector.”  The warning picture they show is too confusing to be effective.  There is a stereotypical alien, but what is that other thing?  Is it his entrails being pulled out?  Is it a chestburster?  Is it a baby?  An alien bagpipe?  Is it significant that one tendril is touching the alien’s noggin?  This is an alien, after all — how do we now this isn’t just what they look like?  One crew-member objects and his mouth is fused shut; sadly it is not Steven Bauer.

The aliens are at least punctual and a voice asks the prisoners if they have selected a spokesman.  Sadly, they are too dimwitted to say, “Yeah, we chose Lt. Valentine, but you sealed his mouth shut!”  Maybe they would have unsealed his mouth.  Worth a try.  To Bauer’s credit, he offers to talk to the aliens in case they get rough.  Captain Kimbro pulls rank, though, and exits to the conference/torture room.

The aliens torture Kimbro, accusing him of bringing a bomb to their planet.  He claims it is “a tool of scientific research.”  They say he better “tell us the truth by the time our second sun rises or you will watch your crew die.”  This would be more effective if he knew the local time, when sunset was, and how long a day was here.

He stumbles back into the cell.  He tells them the aliens want to know what the device is.  He says he told them “the truth.  I don’t even know what the damn thing is.”  Well, that’s not exactly true — he told them it was a research tool, not a bomb.  Anyhoo.

The aliens send water bottles to the cell.  Bauer asks what they will do about Valentine who still has no mouth.  Dr. Chomsky says, “We’ll just have to hydrate him through his skin.”  She then begins rubbing water on his cheeks.  What?  A medical doctor thinks you can hydrate through the skin?  Is she confusing it with moisturizing?

They next summon Valentine for questioning.  Being smarter than the crew, the aliens re-open his Tang-hole.  They then make Valentine see his smarter, braver, deader, and more handsome heroic brother who died saving his platoon.  His brother tells him he can save the lives of the crew by talking.

Back in the cell, Major Neguchi finds the alien’s surveillance equipment.  When he touches it, the aliens fuse his eyes shut.  The aliens then send down some food and just to taunt Neguchi, some porn.  Kimbro finally admits the aliens made him see an old friend who might have died from his negligence.

It comes out that Neguchi also guilt-ridden about the deaths of some pilots under his command at an air show.  His cockiness led them to try a dangerous loop that killed two of his pilots . . . and four people were injured on the ground . . . including a six year old girl . . . who was blinded.  We all love a good story about kids being blinded, but the lack of a similar irony for Valentine’s sealed mouth makes this a little clunky.

Out of nowhere, Bauer decides the only civilian in the crew, Kristin O’Keefe is not telling all she knows.  Turns out he is correct, though.  She says the device is indeed a bomb that could blow a hold 5 miles wide through the planet.

The aliens take Dr. Chomski and accuse her of experimenting on children.  She screams, “They were terminally ill!”  They make her see some of the dead kids who say, “Why did you hurt us?” and “We didn’t want to die.”  The voice tells the crew-members in the cell that Dr. Chomski will not be returning because “her body expired.”

Again, this is a little clunky.  It is not clear that Kimbro and Valentine are bad guys.  Neguchi was just misguided (he mis-guided his pilots right into the ground).  But Chomsky really is evil.  I thought maybe she was offering new medicine and procedures that had not been FDA approved to kids with no other hope.  But those kids did not seem grateful at all.  And her reaction to them was horror, not pain at not being able to help them.  Even her death is ambiguous.  The aliens say they tried to revive her.  Did she have a heart attack?  Did they torture her extree-hard because she really was evil?

They next summon Neguchi to the torture chamber.  They restore his eyes just so he can see Dr. Chomski’s dead body floating in some kind of solution.  She seems to have the same damage as the alien in the warning.  Although, the shot is so quick, it is still impossible to see just what that damage is.  And, BTW, the alien in the warning was naked.  Just sayin’, Showtime.

Finally Bauer is called into the chamber.  After being tortured, Mr. tough-guy rats out O’Keefe as having the codes to disarm the device.

I’ll stop there.  In spite of a couple of of good performances, and because of a few terrible ones, this was a bit of a chore to watch.  However, the ending took this episode from a 2.5 to a 4.5, and at such speed I literally got a chill.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] At least based on the episode of Breaking Bad I coincidentally saw him in today.
  • I don’t want to get spoilery with the ending, but does no one care that Chomski was Dr. Mengele?  All is forgiven?
  • The summary on IMDb manages to be both incorrect and a complete spoiler.
  • The aliens were Ebonites.  Not very woke.