Governor Mynheer van Stent tells Jim Darrell that his plane cannot cross the mountains. Two other such aircraft had tried and the pilot’s heads were delivered to the governor by Dyak tribes. They are responsible for killing men, women and children just for the fun of it. As usual, their leader is a golden-haired white woman.[1]
Her husband and daughter were killed, but somehow she became queen of the tribe. She then ordered all other women in the tribe to be killed leaving her alone with 300 men.
Dr. Beyers met her when he was once captured and forced to do a minor medical procedure on her; and prescribe 2,000 cases of K-Y Jelly.[2] The compassionate doctor says, “they should all be wiped out like wild beasts.”
Darrell doesn’t mention that he found a message scrawled on a leaf in blood: I am an English woman, come and save me. There was even a diagram of the mountain range and a crude representation of the path which continued on leaf D-8.
Darrell takes off in his plane with a bearer[3] to find the woman. The Governor was correct and the plane stalls over the mountains. Darrell does a controlled crash. Despite the fact that his assistant[3] has been standing on the goddamn wing holding a strut the whole time, both walk away without a scratch!
The two men are met by the tribe led by a woman “with a crown of the brightest hair which hung down to her waist. A woman, nude but for a loin cloth. Two breasts superbly moulded.” The tribe brought spears to a gunfight, but still manage to take Darrell and his side-kick[3] hostage.
Back at the tribe’s HQ, the woman gets Darrell alone and tells him her name is Marian Curtis. She says only two other white men have found her and she killed them both. So after giving Darrell a “glorious gift”, she must kill him too. Darrell has a little trouble getting in the mood since he is facing death afterwards. Marian leaves him, but her daughter Mary Alice secretly brings him some water. It was she who wrote the loose-leaf note.
That night, the men will drink a love potion and Marian will choose which ones to “favor”. Although with one woman and three hundred men, I doubt a potion is really necessary. As part of the ritual, Darrell will also be “favored.” And then ripped apart. Luckily Mary Alice has a plan for them both to escape.
The plan works and they run, chased by Marian and fifty Dylaks. Just as all is lost, as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, they run into European forces which mow the brown people down with rifles.[4]
Meh, more of the same. I’ll say this — the quality is pretty consistent.
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- [1] I’m not sure whether it is racist or anti-racist that the villains in so many of the stories set in South America, Africa, Indonesia or the Middle East turn out to be blue-eyed, blonde white people. 1936, so I’ll assume racist.
- [2] No Rx required, but it sounds better that way.
- [3] Slave.
- [4] Reviewing the clip, I see they were Indian, not European. Well, under British rule, anyway.
- First published in September 1936.
The second half of the debut episode benefits from a Thora Birch Bounce [1] Also, despite not really being one of the Twilight Zone’s dreaded “humorous ” episodes, it has some good laughs in it. Some are intentional, some are not, but all are good fun.
It is funny enough when her young son brings a snake into the kitchen. It is awesome when his sisters react with a yawn — a major 180 from what you expect. To top it off, he sneaks the snake onto the grill to fry with the bacon. Just great stuff. Bacon, I mean; but the snake bit was great too.
The efficiency comes in the editing of several quick bits by Penny to determine what caused this miracle, how to turn the world back on, the location of the necklace, etc. The episode surprised me by having her husband actually notice that she changed positions as she switched them on and off.
That afternoon, she is visited by two attractive, earnest young people wishing to impart the wisdom of their 2 years since high school to her. They invite her to a debate about ridding the world of nuclear weapons. All three agree that nukes are icky, but that isn’t enough for the two kids. If Penny doesn’t go their debate, well she’s just a poopy-head. She kindly and non-violently gets rid of them in a scene well-performed by her (the guy is awful, though).
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It is a given that Bruce Willis is a movie star. That star was pretty slow to rise, though. Breaking out in Moonlighting (1985) [1], it took quite a few tries for Willis to make it in the movies.
All this is to say, this episode is a great concept largely sunk by Willis’s performance. Maybe he was still learning his craft. He was still the wise-guy, fun-loving party-boy on Moonlighting, but this was a pretty somber role. Maybe it was the 80’s style or lousy DVD transfer. Maybe it was the thick hair — Willis didn’t really seem to take off until the hair started to go, which is an inspiration to me.
Barfly threatens to go home and throw homeboy out into the street. Homeboy remains calm and tells him that they can’t occupy the same space because physics. So now homeboy somehow knows the “rules?” Barfly suggests that they can both separately go about their lives, but homeboy berates barfly as not being able to live on his own. Barfly leaves the phone-booth to look for a telegraph.
Barfly further devolves in the hotel room until he is visited by homeboy. Yada yada, barfly becomes trans — as in lucent until he fades completely, leaving behind his new and improved self to star in The Return of Bruno.[4]
On a nice little farm located somewhere in the fabulous matte paintings of the American west, Derek Edlund is saddling his horse to search for his missing father. His uncle 
As a Native American presented by Hollywood, Eddie Bear is of course the first to leap to a mystical explanation for Grady’s condition. He believes that Grady was possessed by a 
Rowdy gets Elena and the kids out to Eddie Bear’s trailer and leaves a gun with Derek to protect them. As Rowdy leaves to confront Grady, he tells Elena, “If I don’t make it back, tell the kids the truth.” Because after their father kills their uncle, finding out their uncle actually just killed their father will pep them right up as they cower in fear with their tramp mother, distraught in the fugue of their new-found bastardhood.
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