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Suspense – Suspicion (03/15/49)

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Tubi’s thumbnail synopsis which made me laugh

 

Enough of the funny stuff. On with the review . . .

Suspense continues its love of giant fonts, opening with a yuge newspaper headline: FOURTH MURDER VICTIM FOUND, ARSENIC POISONER STILL LOOSE.

We cut to George and Ethel eating breakfast.  There is not much to this scene other than to establish George is married to a much younger, pretty blonde.  She was an actress, but had a nervous breakdown when she saw the Dewey Defeats Truman headline 4 months ago.  Oh, and their housekeeper is Eleanor Roosevelt.  Well it is an easy mistake — she is very tall, er . . . stout, and not a looker. [1]

George takes the morning train work.  There are women talking on the train, but I can barely understand a word they’re saying. I expect that today, but this is 1949 and they are speaking English.  Actually the audio is rough in several sections.

One of them is reading the back of George’s newspaper.   I hear something about Brazilians.  George is irritated and refolds his paper.  The woman sees a picture of a woman named Anderson.  As best I can tell, she was a victim of the Arsenic Killer.

Eleanor is reading the paper when George comes home that night.  He has brought flowers for Ethel who is not feeling well.   Ethel says Eleanor is doing a great job.  George had been worried because she had no references.  Ethel says that is because she had been taking care of a widow’s mother “and couldn’t very well have references”. [4]  If the mother croaked, I don’t see how that prevents the widow from giving a reference.  Unless in 1949, you had to be a man.  Eleanor announces dinner is ready.

That night, Ethel calls 9-1-1, which got off to a slow start on rotary phones. [3]  Eleanor enters and Ethel tells her George is having a severe upset stomach.  A doctor comes, but is unable to find anything wrong with George that would cause the stomach pain or their separate twin beds.

The next morning he is well enough to do some gardening.  While looking for a trowel, he sees a can of Arsenic Weed Killer in the kitchen cabinet.  He has a full day, including going to a bachelor party that night.  He warns Eleanor he won’t be back until midnight. 

When he returns home, kinda tipsy, he finds a thermos of hot cocoa that Eleanor left for him.  He takes a sip, but it must not taste right because he spits it out.  He finds the arsenic can in the cabinet and sees the top has been removed after he replaced it that morning.  Thinking he has caught the Arsenic Killer, he pours a sample into a small jar.  

At breakfast the next morning, he makes excuses to Eleanor about why he is not eating.  He goes to a pharmacy to have the cocoa analyzed.  Busted!  That deranged monster Eleanor gave him instant ! Also, it is laced with arsenic.

He rushes home to make sure Ethel is OK.  Why didn’t he just call her cell?  Oh, yeah.    He is relieved to find her in good health.  Just as he is about to tell her that Eleanor is the killer, Eleanor enters and says the Arsenic Killer has been caught.  Maybe not the most reliable source for that bit of information. [5]

Oh God! I knew marrying an actress I was getting an out-of-touch, brain-dead, arrogant zombie diva who lectures me on things she knows nothing about, but murder?

George realizes it was Ethel who tried to kill him.  He asks why, and she says, “Can’t you eat one piece of toast, can’t you eat one meal without me having to hear you digest it?”  Seriously.  

Ethel seems to have another nervous breakdown [2] as she maniacally confesses to murdering her rival for an acting part.  We hear the police that George had called on Eleanor.  Ethel says, “George, how could you?”  Yeah, how could he?  He obviously had access to a phone to call the police.  Why didn’t he use the phone to warn Ethel?

The “early days of TV” excuse is wearing thin.  Citizen Kane was made 10 years earlier.  The suspense in this one was a little more formulaic than last week, but it did have a twist.  Not very good, but I grant the series another week to get on its feet.  

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Eleanor Roosevelt, Michell Obama, and Melania Trump are tied for tallest First Lady at 5’11”.  Eleanor just looked taller because she often stood next to a guy in a wheelchair.
  • [2]  You never hear about nervous breakdowns anymore.  I think it was replaced by “exhaustion”.  Although just for actors, never for farmers, coal miners, or ditch-diggers.
  • [3]  Even worse, England used 9-9-9.  
  • [4]  That makes so little sense I admit I must have heard it wrong.  But dang if I can make it sound like anything else.
  • [5]  Wait a minute.  Eleanor announces that the killer was caught, which proves to George that she isn’t the killer.  But wouldn’t that same logic also exonerate Ethel?  To be fair, Ethel then gives herself away when George says he had the cocoa analyzed, and she says, “How dare you!”
  • Ernest Truex was in 2 memorable Twilight Zones: Kick the Can and What You Need.  Sylvia Field played Dennis the Menace’s mother.
  • I say again, whoever invented the block system for WordPress should be in Hell

Tales of the Unexpected – Royal Jelly (03/01/80)

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We join apiarist [1] Albert Taylor as he is inspecting his bee-condos.  He takes the roof off of one and samples the honey while he talks to the bees as if they understood English; you know, like a dog does.  And kudos to the actor (Timothy West) who appears to have done this himself and risked ending up like Nicolas Cage in the Wicker Man.  And by that, I mean becoming an object of mockery and ridicule, not being stung.

White Condos for his Bees

In the house, Mabel Watson is trying to feed their new baby, but she won’t eat.  Albert is not too concerned even though the baby weighs 2 pounds less than when she was born.  He is more interested in the local news because is appearing on a segment tonight.   

He tells the “journalist” he built his first bee-hive when he was twelve to hide porn and now has six acres of bee-condos filled with porn.  He is a local legend because he never wears protection, yet has never been stung by a bee or gotten the clap.  When he was a kid, he let the bees crawl over his face and hands.

Upstairs, the baby is wailing.  Mabel is distraught over her baby’s condition.  For some reason, she is lounging about gratuitously sporting a lavender condo for her own B’s.

Lavender Condo for her B’s

On the telly, Albert is talking about the titular Royal Jelly.  It is secreted by bees like milk is secreted by mammals.  It is fed to some bees for only three days, but a queen gets it for her whole larval life.  This allows her to increase her weight by 1,500 times in five days.  The “journalist” suggests a 7.5 pound baby would balloon up to 5 tons.  Hmmm, I wonder . . .

Albert has the same idea.  He goes up to their bedroom where Mabel is crying and the baby is still shrieking.  He wheels the bassinet to the spare bedroom and tells her to rest for twelve hours.  He will take care of the next feeding.

Mabel wakes up late the next morning and finds Albert working on the beehives.  He has the baby out there with him which seems dangerous.  He had no trouble getting her to eat.  Mabel is thrilled that she already looks healthier.  

That night, Albert proudly admits he has been sneaking Royal Jelly into the baby’s bottle.  Mabel is pissed.  He says it “keeps people young, makes their hair grow.”  Which, of course, makes you wonder why he isn’t spreading the stuff thick as avocado on his toast. 

But wait, he then says he drank it and it increased his fertility so he could finally knock Mabel up after 9 years.  So why is he bald?  I guess that is explained by the hair seen peeking out of his shirt cuff.  OK, so his arms are hairy.  Like a bee. 

He has also started interrupting his speech with random bzzzzzzes.  Hmmm, they do know that a bee’s buzzing sound is made by its wings, right?  It is not them talking.

Mabel looks at the baby and is horrified to see it has turned into a giant grub.  Well, she has to be horrified for all of us because we don’t get to see it.  The frame freezes and a very cheap and pointless video effect prevents us seeing anything.  Viewers got a better payoff at the end of Rosemary’s Baby.  We saw tiny hands gripping a weapon, the emaciated frame, the crazy eyes, the satanic hair — and that was just Mia Farrow! [2]  Heyyoooooo!

So it certainly was another episode.  Susan George is always welcome, and becomes the hottest Mabel since The Man with Two Faces. [3] How this beauty ended up with a dumpy balding guy 16 years older than her is another story — and one I would study like the Zapruder film.  The story is very simple, and the ending becomes pretty obvious (although it could have been the amazing colossal baby instead).  Robbing the viewers of that shock was just criminal.  

Other Stuff:

Science Fiction Theater – Facsimile (12/21/56)

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On the morning of the 16th of September, an ambulance was summoned to pick up Dr. Camp who fell ill in the research department of the Cooper Electronics Corporation.  He was the second person to collapse in the past 2 hours.  At the hospital, the two scientists are diagnosed with appendicitis and ileitis. [1]

Hugh, the director, thinks it is just coincidence.  Dr. Bascomb is not so sure.  He believes their groundbreaking work on transistors might have been sabotaged.  To prove this, he takes Hugh to “the computing machine.”

He types in the odds of appendicitis = 1 in 24, blocked intestine = 1 in 2,000,000, one year = 365, and two specialists in a department of four.  The odds of the 2 men being stricken at the same time are calculated to be 55 billion to one — the same odds that the writers ever took a statistics course — there’s yer coincidence!

Hugh realizes both men got sick in the lab, and Barbara is in there now.  They are concerned to find the woman on the floor without a scrub brush in her hand.  She is diagnosed with a brain injury and is partially paralyzed.  She must go into surgery immediately.

George asks the doctors how three people could have gotten so sick.  There is no radiation in the lab, no poison, no Indian food.  Dr. Stone goes to the lab with George and Hugh.  They check the air, the chemicals, and the light frequencies.  They get a call that the two sick men were in surgery, but it was discovered that their appendix and intestines were fine.  Barbara is still in a coma, though.

They detect an electronic wave permeating the lab.  They rig up a direction-finder and trace the signal to the hospital and a room where Dr. Schiller is running electronic experiments.  They can’t figure the connection, though.

They hear a SHREIK, which unintentionally prompts the funniest moment in this series:

George:  “What’s that?”

Dr. Schiller: (very unconcerned)  “Oh, that’s a patient.  The surgery preparation room is right above us.”

They go to the head nurse [3] and see that other patients went in for surgery for appendicitis, ileitis, and brain surgery at the same time each of the three people were stricken in the lab.  Turns out Schiller’s equipment was reading the pain of the patients in the operating room above him.  Somehow.  And then transmitting the signal all over the city.  Somehow.  And the new super-sensitive transistors were picking it up across town.  Somehow.   And the transistor made the three people sick if they were standing near it.  Somehow.

They decide to test the theory by looking at the oscilloscope in the lab while another patient goes in for surgery.   The hospital lets them know when another poor sap is wheeled in.  George tells Dr. Stone not to stand near the oscilloscope during the test.  Oh, for the love of God, the oscilloscope isn’t causing the illness, the transistor is!!!

And, by the way, where is this butcher shop that induces such pain in the operating room that patients regularly scream and psychically broadcast their pain?  Don’t they use anesthetics at this chop shop?

They watch the oscilloscope go crazy as the surgeon slices into the poor bastard.  Dr. Stone says, “Do you realize what you’ve got here?  A device to see pain visually!”  Yeah, I’m looking at it, pal.

Barbara wakes up from her coma and doesn’t even complain about the guys calling her “Bobby” throughout the whole episode.  George proposes to her now that she is no longer paralyzed from the waist down, despite there having been no suggestion of a relationship up to this point.

After last week’s gem, this was bound to be a let down.  Still, they did surprise me a couple of times.  First, they actually named the corporation where 2 employees nearly dropped dead, and Second, it was not Amazon. [2]  The rigging of the direction-finder was cool (and did not rely on micro-changes in air density).  Then the boyz took a little road trip with their new toy.

Better than the average SFT, but that is one low-ass bar.

Other Stuff:

  • Title Analysis: The three people who were carried out of the lab had only the symptoms (or facsimiles) of their diagnosed ailments.  I’m not clear on how that is better.
  • Apologies to the fictional family of Dr. Hargrove who I rolled into Dr. Stone.
  • [1]  Inflamed or blocked intestine.
  • [2]  Would also have accepted:  Foxconn.
  • [3]  The head nurse did not have much of a part.  She is worth a mention though, because she played old Geena Davis in A League of their Own, and because of her IMDb picture.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – A Woman’s Help (03/28/61)

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I don’t want to bury the lede, so:  I’m surprised someone didn’t bury the leads.  These three lifeless nobodies are so dull that they bring down the episode.  It was never going to be MacBeth, but it was a perfectly adequate story with a twist at the end.  OK, maybe it was MacBeth. [1]  

How much time is left in this episode?

Actually, Arnold Burton is timing an egg above.  At the right precise second, he takes the egg from the water and places it in one of those egg cups that I’ve never seen anyone use and usually in movies looks too top-heavy to be practical.  Don’t be too impressed — Chester the butler was spotting him the whole time.

Clearly, Arnold is a kept man.  Despite having no job, he is dressed in a snappy suit and tie at the crack of eight for no other reason than to bring breakfast on a tray to his chronically sick wife Elizabeth who is ringing a bell from her bed.

A new nurse is starting today and Elizabeth expects she will just be some floozy.  Arnold reminds her that she actually did the hiring.  This woman is just nasty.  AHP stacked the deck by casting an actress that is 2 years older than her husband.  In Hollywood, that usually means you’re playing the mother.  They also gave her the high-forehead / tall-hair look that made Margaret Thatcher such a sexy mama in the 1980’s

Chester picks Miss Grecco up at the train station and brings her to the house.  Sadly, this role is also poorly cast.  I think she is supposed to be a beauty, but I’m just not seeing it.  Arnold nervously tries to make small talk.  While Miss Grecco rings his bell, Elizabeth rings her bell.  After being introduced to Elizabeth, Miss Grecco goes to freshen up.  This gives Elizabeth a chance to further berate Arnold for hiring a “chorus girl from the Folies Bergère.”

Six months later, Elizabeth is in her wheelchair, sitting outside with Arnold and Miss Grecco.  Arnold is reading a Shakespeare poem to her.  She calls it “romantic glop” and says he reads it badly.  He hands the book to Miss Grecco.  Funny how it falls open to The Rape of Lucrece. [3] She wisely chooses another piece and is much better at the reading.

Late that night, Arnold is in the kitchen having a warm milk and appreciating that Jack Paar isn’t still telling jokes about Nixon every night even though he lost the election months ago.  Miss Grecco enters and he gets her a milk.  After a very lame rebuff, they start kissing.  She makes it clear that if he expects these shenanigans to continue, she expects him to marry her.

The chemistry here is ELECTRIC, I tells ya!

He confesses he has no money of his own, and just hanging out with no duties, at the beck and call [2] of an unbalanced authoritarian invalid has prepared him for no job except Vice-President.

Hmmm, how could he be no longer married, yet become financially independent?  Hmmm, I wonder.  Check the name on the door, baby — AHP!  Similar to the plot in OSB’s Image of Death, Arnold and Miss Grecco come up with a plan to slowly poison Elizabeth’s food.  Wait, that’s exactly the murder plot in Image of Death!

They begin poisoning Elizabeth with very small doses, expecting it to take about 2 months.  The plan is foiled half way through when she fires Miss Grecco for having no first name.  Also Elizabeth catches Arnold and her smooching.  She proclaims that she will hire the next nurse, again overlooking the fact that she hired Miss Grecco.  

A few days later, she informs Arnold that she has hired a replacement, and that he will not like her.  He goes downstairs and meets the new nurse who is unattractive and old enough to be his mother (I probably need a comma in there somewhere).  There is some unnecessary misdirection here, but it is quickly revealed the new nurse really is his mother!  And, guess what, she is totally on-board with murdering Elizabeth!  But still won’t shut up about the piece of gum he stole when he was six.

First of all, major kudos for foreshadowing that Elizabeth had never met her mother-in-law.  It was just one line spoken several minutes ago.  How many series covered here would have sewn up that plot hole so nicely? 

However, the episode was a bit of a slog.  Who to blame?  Writer Henry Slesar was a machine, cranking out dozens of fine AHPs.  Director Arthur Hiller went on to make The In-Laws, so he gets a lifetime pass.  So I guess I have to fault the actors, especially Scott McKay as Arnold.

A rare miss this week for AHP.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  In which Shakespeare basically says a woman is nothing but a vagina.  With a quill like that, how did he get Anne Hathaway?
  • [2]  What does that phrase even mean?  Can you just be at the beck of someone, but not at their call?
  • [3]  It should go without saying, nothing funny about rape.  Just not what you expect from The Bard (I won’t even link the dreadful TZ episode of that name).
  • Cheers for the civic-minded Lillian O’Malley (Arnold’s mother)!  She appeared as “Townswoman” four times in The Virginian, once in the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, eleven times in Laramie, twice on Frontier Circus [4], nine times on The Deputy, twice on The Tall Man, twice on Riverboat, once on Johnny Staccato, ten times on Cimarron City, five times on The Restless Gun, and twice on Trackdown.
  • [4]  Frontier Circus sounds like the name a foreign market would give to F-Troop.
  • I always feel like I’m on the right track when I agree with bare*bones e-zine.  Tip o’ the hat for suggesting Peacock also.

One Step Beyond – The Captain’s Guests (05/26/59)

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Andrew takes his wife Ellen to a house that he has his heart set on renting.  It’s just what he has been wanting . . . 200 years old, on the water.  He doesn’t even know if it is for rent, but has no reservation about trying the front door — locked!  Realizing his error in judgment, he tries a window instead.  Yep, they climb right in.

All of the furniture is covered with sheets.  Ellen notices a portrait of Captain Michael Klaussen (1860-1902).  Andrew is momentarily hypnotized by the picture.  He snaps out of it and tells Ellen they have to rent this place!

They go to a real estate office, but the agent doesn’t want to rent it to them.  He quotes a price of $500/mo ($4,500 today) to discourage them.  Andrew says he is a pretty good architect and knows that figure is ridiculous.  Then he rents it.  That’ll show him.

They go back to the house and start looking around.  Ellen opens some trunks and gets a peek at the Captain’s Log (hee-hee).  Andrew goes into a light trance and says, “Get away from there” and “you have no right to look” and “ignore that scrimshaw of me junk — it must be the salt water.”  Ellen is concerned, but Andrew snaps out of it and doesn’t remember the incident.

Later, Ellen finds the diary of Elsbeth Klaussen.   It mentions that Michael has gone hunting.  Another day he is working in the field and his bad leg starts causing him to limp.   He has also been showing signs of being jealous of his old friend Gideon.

Andrew grabs her — literally — he is kind of a grabby guy. [1]  He wants to explore the rest of the house.  As they are coming down the stairs, Andrew suddenly gets a stabbing pain in his leg.  The next day, he is badly limping.

He becomes abusive to Ellen.  He even accuses her of having an affair with his business partner Bill.  During his ranting, he calls her Elsbeth.  Ellen wants to move out, but Andrew insists they will stay.

Ellen goes to see the Real Estate agent.  He tells her the house was built by Klaussen’s father in 1801, meaning Mr. Big Shot architect was off by 40 years.   Wait, let’s say Klaussen Sr was 30 when he built the house.  That means he was almost 90 when Klaussen Jr was born in 1860.  Way to go, Klaussen Sr!

Sadly, Klaussen Jr. was a slave-driver. Well, not literally a slave-driver, because slavery was over.  So relative to an actual slave-driver, he was a pretty good guy.  But he was still cruel to his crew and was responsible for some of their deaths.  Finally the men mutinied and keel-hauled [3] him, nearly scraping off his right leg.  He came to resent his wife as limp men often do, and strangled her.

Ellen calls Bill to come talk some sense into Andrew.  She tells him Andrew has started hunting rabbits in the yard.   He has also taken to drawing ships at his drafting table, and flies at the dinner table. [2]  Andrew limps in and begins yelling at Bill.  He accuses Bill of coming here to “consort” with Ellen, calling him Gideon.  Before we are treated to an accusation of “fornication”, Andrew points the gun at Bill.  Bill, understandably, leaves.

Andrew pushes Ellen around pretty violently, then begins strangling her.   A knocked over lamp catches the picture on fire and Andrew runs to it.  His hair is now thick and white like the Captain’s.  Andrew screams and collapses.  As the picture burns, he returns to normal.

A pretty flimsy episode.  That must be why John Newland’s introduction was interminable.  The story was also undermined by Andrew being a pushy jerk even before being possessed by the Captain.  Maybe unfair, but the presence of Robert Webber (Andrew) pretty much dooms an episode for me.

I rate it 2 bells.

Other Stuff:

  • Finally, another OSB episode set in the USA!  Current tally:  9 USA episodes out of 18.
  • Title Analysis:  Why are they referred to as guests?  They were not invited, and they are not welcome.
  • Dramatisation [sic] credit to Charles Beaumont from whom I expect better.
  • [1]  Everyone in this episode seems unusually grabby.  Even Bill had his hands on Ellen enough to make me wonder if they really were having an affair.
  • [2]  Ya think there was a lot of bathing on 19th century ships?
  • [3]  Who came up with keel-hauling?  Hey, I have an idea, let’s drag the Captain under the ship!  First, we need about 500 feet of precious rope that will be damaged.  Then someone has to swim under the ship in sea monster infested waters to loop the rope around.  Me?  No, it was my idea.  Then we tie him to each end of the rope.  We have to measure perfectly to give it enough slack to go around the ship, but it will have to be taut enough to pull him against the barnacled hull.  Question, Jenkins?  Well, I suppose he could be naked, but that’s not really the point.  Put away your scrimshaw tools.
  • [3]  After 30 seconds research, turns out it wasn’t done like that.  Also it might never have happened on English or American ships.  Those crazy Dutchmen are a different story.