Monthly Archives: May 2019

Outer Limits – Ripper (05/07/99)

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It does not bode well that the story is set in history’s dullest era, Elizabethan England.  The opening shot is a dull matte painting which dissolves into a dull soiree with formally dressed, jaded stiffs lounging about, just the kind of lethargic gathering that — hey boobies!

I guess this is more of a ho house.  Dr. Jack — in an episode called “Ripper” — York seems particularly uncomfortable.  He is reading a Jules Verne novel in the lobby rather than taking a girl upstairs.  He is apparently a regular so is not bounced out for his impudence.  No, I said impudence.  One girl does catch his eye.  When she leaves, Jack follows.  He finds her nearby making out with another women, so naturally he watches them; as one does.  Improbably, this is not the highpoint of his evening.  A ghostly green snake-like entity bursts from the chest of the girl, and zooms down the throat of her lover.  Jack runs.

Back at his house, his fiancee demands, “You must promise me that you will never go back to that place again.”  But when he begins kissing her neck, she says, “Not until after we’re married!”  Well, which is it, baby?  If that is not bad enough, Jack is in a deep depression over a grievous error he made with a patient who died before her insurance had run out.  Like Oscar Wilde, he has become addicted to Absinthe, and is getting no action from the ladies; but for different reasons.

The next day, he does take a girl upstairs.  However, he notices a green slime around her mouth like the monster he saw earlier.  Jack recoils even though he had not previously coiled.  Wait, they were kissing, how did that slime suddenly appear on her mouth?  They begin fighting, then Jack grabs his cane in which a knife is hidden.  The woman tries to seduce him saying, “I’m old, Jack.  Older than you.  Older than London.”  She might be an ancient spirit, but boy has she not learned what to say to a man.  He stabs her in the gut just as the madam and some of her girls come in and witness the bloody attack.  The girl runs outside to the alley where she snakes into another woman.  So at least somebody’s getting some action.

Jack escapes and runs home.  As he his polishing his shillelagh, his fiancee catches him.  Awkward.  She is furious that he missed a scheduled lunch with her mother.  So his afternoon could have been even worse.  It does go downhill, though, as Police Detective Langford shows up and arrests him.

The next day, his fiancee humiliates herself by saying Jack could not have killed the woman because they were fornicating at the time of the murder.  I guess the eyewitness testimony of the five professional fornicators who saw the murder was less believable.

Well, then things get personal for Jack, then personal for his fiancee.

The production design was excellent.  The settings and costumes seemed very authentic.  The Britishness was further enhanced by Cary Elwes as Jack looking very much like Malcolm McDowell in Time after Time, and David Warner from the same film playing the Detective.  Although, thank God the cast’s teeth were not era-appropriate. [1]

Maybe it was those darn British accents, but the performances in this episode were just incredible.  Cary Elwes had to convey everything from ennui to insanity, and pulled it off magnificently.  Clare Sims as his fiancee was equally excellent.  Frances Fisher and David Warner are old hands and are as solid as ever.  The alien was a little hammy at times, borderline Dr. Frankenfurteresque, but not a dealbreaker.

Overall, excellent.

Notes

  • [1]  Seriously, check out the trailer for They Shall Not Grow Old.
  • It is goddam impossible to verbally ask Google to spell fiancee without getting a bio of Beyonce (if you just say the word, don’t phrase it as a question).

Science Fiction Theatre – The Green Bomb (04/27/56)

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Truman Bradley reminds us that animals are smarter we think.  He shows us a chimp named Terry operating a kind of typewriter.  The li’l fella plunks keys that bring up cards stating [TERRY] [LIKE] [BANANAS].  Fortuitously, the machine does not include cards for [RIP OFF] or [FACE].  We also see a smart snake and brainy bugs.

Then he brings out a dog that “has been exposed to large doses of radiation in an experiment to see how much radiation a living body can safely carry.”  Awwww.  Don’t worry, they have “shielded the animal’s spleen”.  He is “given constant care, daily baths, regular blood transfusions, attendance by a staff of veterinarians, feeding from a special kitchen, and certain new drugs.”  Thus, Truman tells us, dogs like this “can live a normal life.”  Yeah, normal except for the spleen shielding, constant care, daily baths, regular blood transfusions, attendance by a staff of veterinarians, feeding from a special kitchen, and certain new drugs.

At the atomic research facility, security chief Davis thinks Dr. Maxwell Carnaven might be stealing secrets.  Director Scott wisely points out that he would be stealing secrets that only he knows.  On the other hand, Carnaven was probably a Nazi 10 years ago, so who knows.  Davis also complains that Carnaven and his secretary go in through “the back gate” but I don’t feel that is any of our business.  The director says allowances must be made for a genius like Carnaven.

Still, Davis is concerned that Carnaven has been irritable lately and has access to the nuclear button and the Kuerig machine.  He brings in psychiatrist Dr. Frake.  Scott asks if Davis has a point about Carnaven’s irritability.  Frake wisely says, “Diagnosis by hearsay is impossible.”  He and Scott might be the smartest guys ever on SFT.  Frake does say that tension and overwork can lead to a breakdown.

Frake is introduced to Carnaven, but seconds later, there is a crisis at the nuclear facility — one of the radioactive dogs has escaped.  Davis’s team jumps into action, bringing on another shift, and arming the men with scintillometers, although I think geiger counters would have made more sense.  This plan aggravates Carnaven so much that he declares this to be the dark ages and storms out.

Now that Dr. Frake has had a full 20 seconds to observe Carnaven, he feels qualified to make a diagnosis.  He says Carnaven is overwhelmed by guilt and seems to be hiding something.  While the search is on for the dog, another scientist alerts Davis that four pounds of fissionable material is missing.

The dog is found, coincidentally, near Carnaven’s house.  The whole area is showing signs of radioactivity.  Dull story short, Carnaven has been atoning for his atomic research by building a “benevolent bomb”.  Combining radioactivity with choroplasm, and exploding it over the desert should turn the sand fertile.

Sadly, Carnaven has been exposed to lethal doses of radiation.  He surrenders peacefully to the authorities, shrewdly putting Uncle Sam on the hook for his long, painful, and expensive death from radiation poisoning.

Other Stuff:

  • C’mon, according to SFT: A History of the Television Program, a big star like Whit Bissell was only paid $200 for this episode?  But then, this was before his groundbreaking work in I Was a Teenage Werewolf.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat (09/27/60)

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Director Alfred Hitchcock gets things off to a frightful start as we get a close-up on the face of some uncredited sap in the dentist chair.  There are instruments and swabs stuffed in her mouth, and the whir of the old-fashioned drill is spine-tingling.  The real revulsion, however, comes in realizing this isn’t a real dentist.  This is just a jerk actor cramming his mitts into some poor struggling actress’ mouth.  My God, those fingers could have been anywhere!

Dr. Bixby’s wife comes to the office with his lunch and bad news.  The bad news is that she brought leftover salmon, the fishiest of fishes and avoided by four out of five dentists at lunch.  Also the washing machine needs fixing, and they have just gotten a bill from the IRS.  Despite being a doctor, they always seem to be in debt.

He also isn’t happy that his wife is going again on an overnight trip to visit her aunt.  She tells him he can live without her for 2 days each month.  She says if she were home, he would probably just go bowling anyway.  She gets off the train and is chauffeured to the stately home of the titular Colonel with whom she shares a long kiss.

Hmmm . . . this is starting to make sense now.  Mrs. Bixby is played by Audrey Meadows from The Honeymooners.  Clearly this episode is an hallucination of Alice Kramden.  Alice is in the dentist’s chair, knocked out by Nitrous Oxide or perhaps her dentist had leftover salmon for lunch.  She dreams of being married to her dentist, rather than a fat, surly bus driver.  She is so immersed in this fantasy that “Alice” no longer exists.  She has no first name credited, she is just Mrs. Bixby. Yet, there are still inescapable traces of her dull life and abusive husband as the dentist has money problems and ignores her for bowling.

Seeking to further remove herself from her miserable reality, she fantasizes that she is also desired by a second man.  The titular Colonel has a spacious horse farm and is retired from a successful military career.  Once again, however, years of insults and verbal threats of violence have so deflated Mrs. Bixby’s self-esteem that she cannot fully escape her husband’s grasp.  This second fantasy man, like her brutish husband, wears a uniform; just not one with a bus on the back.  He is also investing in a string of polo ponies which she recalls once inexplicably set her husband off in a rage.  However, she is in love with the Colonel and he gives her expensive gifts.

As she waking up from the dentist’s sedation, her fantasy world begins to unravel.  The Colonel ends their relationship.  She discovers Dr. Bixby is drilling his hygienist, and not in the mouth.  Well, not only in the mouth.  Alice returns to the cold reality of a Bensonhurst dental office warmed only by the puzzling realization that her fantasy-lover’s name of Bixby was so close to that of her best friend Trixie.

Another excellent episode.

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Twilight Zone – Rendezvous in a Dark Place (03/11/89)

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This is like Harold and Maude.  Except there is no Harold, and Maude is the one with the death obsession.  So, really not like it at all.  However, it is like Nothing in the Dark from the original Twilight Zone.  But reversed; so, also not a good match.

Barbara LeMay loves going to funerals.  She has just gone to one and even slid her hand along the coffin as it passed.  She complements the preacher, but admits she doesn’t know anyone there, horizontal or vertical.  At home, she lovingly describes every detail to her son Jason.  He says her obsession “is not good, is not healthy, it is morbid.”

That night, after her son has left, a man breaks into her house.  When Barbara sees him, he pulls a gun on her and says, “Don’t move, don’t call the cops!  I’ll kill you, I swear!”  Then he collapses from pre-existing condition, namely a gunshot wound.  Barbara makes him comfortable, but tells him it looks bad for him.  She promises to wait with him.  They don’t have to wait long, as Mr. Death appears immediately.

Barbara is fairly calm seeing Mr. Death, but she seems surprised that he is not surprised that he can see her.  Wouldn’t she expect him to know the rules better than her?  In all the funerals she has attended, and with all the people she has seen die in the hospital, she has never seen Mr. Death.  She attributes his visibility this night to her frequent proximity to him.  Wake up and smell the coffee, baby!  Even the dying crook can’t see him because “it isn’t his time.”

When death approaches the dying man, Barbara offers her soul in place of his.  Death asks why.  She says because, “I can see the beauty in you.  I can.  I see it in so many ways.  The peace, the freedom, the tranquility,the poignant fragile beauty of their one final exhalation, the gathering of the soul, the ceremony.”  Correction, this is becoming more like TZ’s One for the Angels where an old guy runs his yap all night so Death misses an appointment.

Death says he can’t take her.  But he says he has seen her many times and noticed she “does not run from his touch, but seeks to embrace it.”  He says, “I could no more take you than take your end-table because neither one lives” or matches his sofa.

He leans over the crook as he struggles to breathe.  Death says, even now, the man is more alive than Barbara.  Death takes the man’s soul and becomes invisible to Barbara.  She says he “can’t just leave, we’ve been together through so much.”  She says she has no one.  Her son doesn’t need her, and Death has taken all her other friends and family.  “They’re all with you now!”

The next night — after having the dead body taken away that morning — Barbara gets dolled up in a nice evening gown.  Death shows up and asks, “Have I hurt you?”  There are only two sappy ways the story could end — either Barbara lives or Barbara dies.  Amazingly, neither of these options are used.

The story took an unexpected turn and ended up like TZ’s A Game of Pool except the motivations and the response of the main character are different.  So forget I mentioned it.  It was a little talky and the sappy score was dreadful.  I liked the curveball at the end, and Janet Leigh did a nice job.  Stephen McHattie was a great Mr. Death, but isn’t he always?

Tales from the Crypt – Surprise Party (12/28/94)

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On a dark and stormy night Ray Wells pulls into a run-down hotel.  He tells the owner his late father owned the ol’ Wells Place farm outside of town.  She says, “Some folks out there gonna be surprised to see you.”  He replies, “The place burned down 20 years ago. How could there be anyone in it?”  She whispers words of wisdom, “Let it be.”  She has seen lights and heard sounds, but never went near the place, fearing she might also smell smells.

Inexplicably, he decides to go to the property that night.  Or maybe he ate room service and watched an Ancient Aliens marathon all day like no one I know, and went the next night.  Anyhoo, it is the same or second consecutive dark and stormy night.  As he drives, he flashes back to the last time he saw his father.  Dangerously, the flashback is shown in a heads-up display on the windshield where visibility is already limited by rain and wipers.

A hot nurse tells his old father his son is there to see him.  The old man tells him he is leaving the farm to charity.  He says he is doing Ray a favor because the land is cursed.  So, f*** whatever charity he gave it to, I guess.[3]  Ray is not happy to hear that.  He gets angry, but incredibly, it is not even clear whether he kills his father or gets him so riled up that he has a heart attack.  It is clear that he burns the will, though, so will inherit the farm bought by his father before his father bought the farm.

All this is projected on the windshield through the wipers and rain.  To be fair, it is a very nice composition, but it goes on for almost 4 freakin’ minutes.

Ray arrives at the farm and the house is intact.  He goes inside and finds the world’s dullest party.  There are balloons, but it is very dark.  The people are festively dressed, but morose.  This is the first party I have ever witnessed where I didn’t think the music was too loud.  Ray tells them all to get out.  He says his name is Ray Wells and this seems to wake them up.  The lights come on, the music starts, and people begin dancing.

A hot blonde, who chose not to go into nursing, offers Ray a drink.  While Josie is flirting with with him, Jake Busey asks her to dance.  He is sporting a blonde Rachel hairdo [1], which on the Busey family scale of weirdness, barely registers.  They duck away into a dark room and begin making out.  She says she has been waiting a long time for him to inherit this house.  They go upstairs, and we finally see she is dressed as a cheerleader.

They start stripping down.  Rachel Busey gets so worked up thinking about Ray and Josie that he runs upstairs and bursts into the room.  They start fighting, and Ray shoots him.  Josie won’t stop screaming so he suffocates her with a pillow.  He says, “You should have stopped screaming!” which I think even she would agree with if she weren’t dead.

Ray pours kerosyrup kerosene from a lantern over their bodies and down the stairs.  As he pulls out a lighter, Josie and Rachel reappear looking pre-burned.  They tell him about a party his father threw.  He had a similar fight with Rachel Busey and did burn the house down, killing 15 people.  The other guests parade by him, showing their scarred faces.

The crowd begins moaning.  As their volume increases, they menacingly advance on Ray. [2]  Finally they set him on fire.  Fine, but it was his father that killed them.  What did Ray do to deserve this?  Kill his father?  Inconclusive, plus they should love that.  Burned the will?  Hardly a hellable offense.  Anyway, they have been waiting for him, so the fire set by his father had to be the reason.  I like a good vengeance tale, but I can’t recall another episode where the sins of the father are avenged on the son.

Despite this glitch, the episode had some fun flourishes that kept it interesting.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] BTW, there are worse ways to spend 5 minutes than Googling women’s hairstyles.  Ha-cha-cha!
  • [2] This exact same moaning motif was used effectively in the 1960’s Twilight Zone episode The Obsolete Man.  Holy crap, by the same director 33 years earlier!
  • [3] I’m kinda hoping it was 1-877-Kars4Kids because that jingle is eating my brain.
  • This is the rare episode of any series covered here to have not a single Critic or User review posted on IMDb.
  • This is the 3rd consecutive episode by the same writer.  C’mon, give someone else a chance!