Author Archives: don

One Step Beyond – Image of Death (05/19/59)

Posted on by
3

First things first.  This is the 10th episode out of 18 to be set outside of America.  I guess they have to go wherever these “true” stories take them.  This week it is a Chateau in the Rhone Valley.  Still no paranormal activity in Africa or Asia.

A respectful length of time after his wife’s death (1 commercial break) Marquis Jacques de la Roget is married to Charlotte.  She was just a girl from the village, but is clearly pleased with her new wealth and power and indoor plumbing.  The new couple is barely through the door before she is ordering the butler Ernest to get her some strawberries, “A lot!  A big plate!” [1]

She complains that the furniture is old, but Jacques says it is antique.  Expect a lot of that sort of thing when you marry into the Roget family.

Charlotte is disturbed by the life-sized portrait of Jacques’ late wife Jeanette that overlooks the room.  She callously says, “Am I going to have to look at that 24 hours a day?”  Kudos to Jacques for showing that legendary French backbone and saying, “Yes”.  He reminds her that she had liked Jeanette.  But it turns out, they were not friends.  Charlotte was merely a nurse and companion during Jeanette’s last days.  She made sure that the weak Jeanette ate every spoonful of her meals.

Jacques snaps at Charlotte’s callousness, but she counters, “How you have changed from the impatient lover who complained so bitterly, ‘Why does it take so long, why does it take so long!'”

So either they were slowly poisoning Jeanette, or Jacques was complaining how long it took Charlotte to have an orgasm.

They are interrupted by Ernest with the strawberries.  Charlotte orders Ernest to take down Jeanette’s portrait.  Jacques shows that actual French backbone and allows Charlotte to have her way.

Some time later, Jacques notices a blotch on the wall.  It is shaped like a small dog or reindeer.  It fades away when he calls Charlotte to see it.  Late that night, Charlotte catches him trying to scrub away the stain, which now looks like a jelly fish.  Jacques believes it looks like a skull.  Clearly, however, I see a vagina with penguins flocking out of it.

The next day, Charlotte is barking orders at Ernest for a big party while being fitted for a fancy gown.  Jacques enters and dismisses the servants.  He is panicking because the stain is looking more like Jeanette.  Jacques wants to lock the room up.  Charlotte says that it is just his conscience torturing him for what they did to Jeanette, and he agrees.

She insists that Jeanette’s portrait be rehung over the stain so she can have her big party.  We do not see the big party, which is the way I like my big parties.  But it leaves Jacques consumed by guilt.  Charlotte offers to make him some hot chocolate, but they both know the score.  Jacques solemnly tells her, “I want it to work quickly, not like Jeanette.”

When Charlotte brings him the hot chocolate, he shows her how the stain has come to look just like Jeanette.  Apropos of a French woman, she croaks.  Jacques foolishly fesses up to his role in the shenanigans.  The police inspector insists on seeing the stain.

Now, about that stain.  I’m no nitpicker, but come on.  It starts as the little white dog.  Then it fades to nothing in front of Jacques as if it were supernatural.  Then it comes back as a jellyfish, then a little Jesusy.  The maid can see these because she tries to clean them off.  Then the stain evolves into a screaming face.  When the inspector looks at it, it is the little dog again, except black.  But wait, when it was the white dog, it disappeared completely so is it real or not?  During John Newland’s closing remarks, it looks like someone sneezed against the wall; and that is the family-friendly interpretation.  Just looking for some consistency.

So not a great week.  A nice set and great production values are no match for two annoying leads and a pedestrian story.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Strawberries!  Pfft!  The most over-rated of fruits.  Sure, they’re good when covered in sugar, but what isn’t?  I suspect most people would prefer banana or peach in their Neapolitan.

Tales of the Unexpected – A Dip in the Pool (05/12/79)

Posted on by
2

Wow, a helicopter shot! Pretty extravagant for this cheap TV series. They zoom in on a cruise ship. We can see this week’s guest star is actually on the ship. This is no One Step Beyond insert. [1] However, if I had one of those devices they use to track debates by the second, here is where the line would nose-dive like when Hillary speaks  appears is introduced.  This week’s star is the odious Jack Weston.

To be fair, that reaction might just be due to his role as Julius Moomer in The Bard episode of The Twilight Zone.  He was the most repulsive citizen of TZ, just edging out Feathersmith in Of Late I Think of Cliffordville.  That is strange because he was one of the first people I recognized as an actor when I was a kid.  I liked him as the avuncular friend in The Incredible Mr. Limpet.  As I got older, I realized his screen persona was an obnoxious man-child.  I didn’t see it earlier because I was an obnoxious child-child.

Weston is on the Lido Deck, scribbling in a notebook, wearing a leisure suit.  The Renshaws sit next to him and he introduces himself as “Botibol:  B Brooklyn, O Oliver, T Tommy, I Idaho, B Brooklyn, O Oliver, L as in Love” — an affectation so floridly over the top that Roald Dahl should have sent Ray Bradbury a gift basket.

He bribes his way to the Purser’s table at dinner and asks Gopher about the Ship’s Pool.  After a brief fright that we might see Botibol in a Speedo, we learn that the titular Pool is actually a wager on how many miles the ship will travel by noon tomorrow.

During the meal, the sea gets rough.  Botibol thinks maybe Captain Stubing did not account for this when he estimated the mileage.  If the storm slows the ship down, it might be worth a bet.  Unfortunately, Gopher doesn’t know if the Captain was aware of the storm.  What is this, the Costa Concordia?  Wouldn’t the Captain have checked the radar, monitored weather reports, or heard the non-stop complaining about sore joints of the 800 retirees on board?

The Captain’s estimate is 515 miles.  Botibol bids $1,000 that the actual distance traveled will be less.  He sees Renshaw and tells him about the bet, and the Pool which is now $14,000.  He is sure there is no chance of him losing.

The next morning, Botibol is the only one onboard sad to see that the storm passed uneventfully.  The ship is cruising along now, making up the time it lost.  He is distraught at the money he is sure to lose.  He wonders how he will be able to tell his wife.  Although, how did he explain he was taking a cruise?  How did he plan to explain the suntan (ahhh, maybe that explains the leisure suit by the pool).  I have a feeling his gaining 10 pounds in a week would not be a red flag.

Botibol decides he will jump over the rail, forcing the ship to stop.  Thus, the ship would fall short of its goal, and he would win the Pool.

He sees an old woman on the fantail.  He chats her up to be sure she isn’t blind.  Then he jumps.  And credit for the stunt here.  It sure looks like Jack Weston took that plunge.

The old lady’s nurse walks up and does not believe her patient’s crazy story about a man jumping in the ocean.  She is clearly in a Bidenesque fog of dementia.  So we close with Botibol becoming a smaller and smaller flailing shape in the distance.

Sadly, the casting of Jack Weston was hard to overcome for me.  There was also an unnecessary flatness to the story.  Surely, there was a way to foreshadow the old woman.  Maybe she could have been Renshaw’s senile mother.  As is:

  1.  Renshaw exists only so this is not a one-man show (brrrr, shiver me timbers).
  2.  The old woman jarringly appears as a new character at the last second.
  3.  A better opportunity of humorous misdirection over her faculties is squandered.

On the other hand, actually being filmed on a real ship was awesome.  Also, since there is no supernatural element, his predicament is relatable and quite scary.  So, there are some things to like, but it could have been so much better.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  With all due respect to OSB who does that expertly.
  • For anyone who did not click the link above, this is stunning.  Hey, there’s Arte Johnson, Bernie Kopell, Rich Little, that guy from Dallas, Iowa Congressman Fred Grandy, F Troop’s Forrest Tucker, and Donnie Osmond!  All seriousness aside, I look forward to a remake full of tattoos, piercings, green hair, shaved heads, trans-women, and all your favorite reality TV stars from My 600 Lb. Life.

Science Fiction Theatre – Human Circuit (12/07/56)

Posted on by
Reply

“On the afternoon of April12th, Dr. George Stoneham received an emergency call to a large downtown nightclub [The Kitten Club].  Chet Arnold, manager of the club and a personal friend of Dr. Stoneham, summoned the physician when Nina LaSalle, a dancer, collapsed screaming in the middle of a rehearsal.  Although Dr. Stoneham didn’t know it yet, this was to be one of his most unusual cases.”

Oh yeah, the case when he left the suffering tubercular patients in his office in the middle of the day to make the country’s last recorded house-call at a nudie bar?  Yeah, that one might stick in the memory.

With no evidence at all, Stoneham says his diagnosis is “severe pressure on the optic nerve.”  Once the pressure is relieved, the hallucinations should go away.   Nina says that was no hallucination, she really saw an atomic explosion. [1]  When Mrs. Dr. Stoneham learns her husband abandoned his practice to ogle young women, he might feel a pressure on his optic nerve.

That night, Stoneham has dinner with his friend, scientist Dr. Albert Neville.  During desert with Neville’s mother, he mentions that Nina had a hallucination of a nuclear explosion.  While Ma Neville is doing the dishes, her son reveals that at exactly the same time Nina had her hallucination, a nuclear bomb was exploded by accident in the Pacific.  Since there was a democrat in office, the press did not deem it worth reporting. [2] 

Neville suggests Nina might be clairvoyant.  He helpfully defines it as “the faculty of perceiving a pictorial representation of a current and distant scene.”   Neville’s hobby is the paranormal, so he wants to further examine the case; which means — well, well, well — a trip to see the girls at the club.

Nina says she had a vision once before when her boyfriend Larry died.  He was in uniform, clutching his gut.  An army pal of his confirmed his exact time of death as the same time she had her vision, plus there was a time-stamped receipt from the Taco Bell near the base in his pocket.  Then SFT surprised me by earning the only laugh in its entire run:

  • Neville: Have you ever heard of clairvoyance?
  • Nina:  Who?

Nina agrees to help the boys with an experiment about clairvoyance.  Just as they are leaving, though, she collapses.  They take her to the dressing room and connect her to an EEG.  Neville tells her “radiant energy” is the reason for her clairvoyance.  The electrical wave-lengths of her brain are too close together.  Nina has another clairvoyant episode in the lab.

Blah, blah, blah.  The episode gets bogged down trying to conjure a scientific basis for Nina’s clairvoyance.  That’s really too bad because they had a genuine talent in Joyce Jameson as Nina.  No nudie bar employee since Jack Ruby has so quickly emerged from the pack to blow away others on screen.

As often happens on SFT, the discoverer or possessor of the skillz does not seem to reap the benefit of their talent.  For taking time off to cultivate her clairvoyance, the bar manager allows her to change her stage name from Nina (pronounced Nine-uh) LaSalle to . . . Claire Voyance!

No, that would be too much to expect from SFT.  He allows her to change her name to the god-awful Saturday Knight.  Seriously.

The two doctors received $500 and $750 for the episode.  Joyce Jameson was paid only $300.  Even sadder, she would be dead by 59.  She was a ray of sunshine here, though.  Enough to recommend the episode?  Oh, hell no!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Note the complex, clockwork, Nolandesque exposition: First, an evidence-free diagnosis, then a treatment, followed by the symptom.
  • [2]  Oh, alright, Eisenhower was President when this aired.
  • And it wasn’t a nudie bar.  But this COVID thing is going on for so long . . .

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Horse Player (03/14/61)

Posted on by
8

Hey, the church roof is leaking and the pastor is played by Claude Rains.  If you’re looking for criticism more insightful than that, let me save you some time right now.

Pop Quiz: This screenshot is stretched out like the _____ ____ ________ .   Correct answers will be deleted.

Father Amion’s church is in bad shape.  Not only is the service sparsely attended, but the roof is a sieve, with multiple leaks drizzling water into buckets, onto heads, and unto their feet. [1]  A Building Contractor stops by the church after the service and surprisingly speaks without his tongue catching fire.  He tells Amion it will cost $1,500 to fix the roof.

The church doesn’t have that kind of ready cash, but things are looking up as a ten-spot appears in the collection basket.  At the next service, Amion pulls aside the church’s generous new member.  The benefactor, Mr. Sheridan, is not dressed like the other church-goers.  He has no tie, is in a wrinkled jacket, and is sporting a goofy hat.  Actually, he is dressed like a church-goer, just one from a few years in the future.  Slackers!

He says he has lived in the area for 20 years.  He just started coming in after seeing the church’s sign TRY PRAYER.  He was a loser, and found that prayer turned his life around.  Father Amion is happy to hear the man has found religion, but less so when he learns that Sheridan credits prayer for “six winners out of eight” at the track, and “one of them was a 20-to-1 shot.”  Amion might have felt better if he knew the Jesus responsible for the 20-to-1 win was the Guatemalan stable-boy.

Yes, more stretched out screencaps this week. I own the DVDs, but they’re waaaay over there on the other side of the room.  Blame COVID.

Amion tries to explain to Sheridan why this is wrong.  He asks, “What if everyone rooted for their own horse; what would God do?”  He’s God, I think he could come up with something.  Sheridan says it is their own fault for “not being wise to this prayer racket.”

A few days later, Sheridan returns to the church and gives another $30 to Amion.  He even suggests a horse that Amion might want to place a bet on — Red Devil in the 4th race at Belmont.  Amion declines.

A few days later, Amion sees Sheridan in a new convertible, and wearing a bow-tie.  The “prayer racket” has continued to pay off.  Sheridan has hit on 14 of his last 18 bets.  He again tries to give Amion a hot tip.  Sally’s Pal broke the track record and is going to be running against “broken down fillies”.  Sheridan says colts run from fillies “like burg-u-lars.”  The odds are 15 to 1, so there is big money to be made.

Sheridan says if he hits it big, he is moving to Florida. If I hit it big, I’m leaving this freakin’ hellscape.  

Amion asks how much he would win if he bet $500.  Sheridan says, “Let’s say worse comes to worse and the horse only pays 10 bucks, the least a guy would pick up would be about $2,500.”  Amion asks Sheridan to place the bet for him.  Kudos for this subtle reference to the nuances of Win Place & Show betting.  To the casual boob (i.e. me), the math seems way off at first.  However, after some thought (or Googling), you can see how it would not only be possible, but also explain the denouement.

Amion is immediately seized by guilt and confesses to the monsignor.  The monsignor says he must pray for the horse to not win.   “You can’t expect a reward for your sin, no matter what the consequences.”

Amion does pray for the horse not to win.  He is still praying when Sheridan returns to the church.  He immediately apologizes to Sheridan for the horse not winning.  Sheridan confuses Amion by offering him a wad of bills.  He says, “You didn’t expect me to risk your dough on a WIN bet did you?  I took the $500 and bet him to PLACE.  He came in 2nd and paid $8.40.”   Sheridan hands over his winnings of $2,100.  The Lord works in parimutuel ways.

As always, another class act from AHP.  This one has the benefit of being directed by Hitchcock himself.  Claude Rains does his usual excellent job.  The surprise is Ed Gardner as Sheridan.  He is such a great presence, that I can’t believe how slim his resume is at IMDb.  

Other Stuff

  • [1]  I feel like I need to point out this is a reference to Lamp Unto My Feet — a show whose title I found hilarious as a kid.  It was a religious program that ran for 30 years and, astoundingly, was produced by CBS.  It’s almost like it was a different millennium.  They might still be embarrassed by Hee Haw but surely this one is censored from the archives completely.
  • For information about the background and production, check out bare*bones e-zine.  
  • Were some of the musical cues in this episode used in Leave it to Beaver?

One Step Beyond – The Haunted U-Boat (05/12/59)

Posted on by
2

One Step Beyond had a good run of episodes set in the USA — two.  The tally is now 9 out of 17 episodes of this American series being set elsewhere.  This week we are asked to empathize with the crew of a Nazi U-Boat.  Is it too late to get that Hollywood Blacklist back?

U-Boat 147 is docked off the coast of Northern Germany.  Everyone who thought Germany was landlocked, rise your right hand. No, wait, don’t!  They are welcoming aboard Herr Bautmann, an aide to Der Fuhrer.  He is played by Werner Klemperer, Klink from Hogan’s Heroes.  In less than one minute, the words Hauptmann, Captain and Kapitan are all used.  Thus the TV precedent is established for Sgt. Schultz’s ein, zwei, three, four style of speaking. [2]  

As Bautmann is boarding, the sub is strafed and bombed.  The plane’s crew should be embarrassed that, with no defensive fire, they did not kill any Nazi’s or damage the sub.  The SFX crew should be embarrassed that the strings on the model plane are clearly visible. [1]  They submerge, but hear a clanging on the hull.  Fearful that they have left a man or bottle of schnapps on deck, the Captain wants to resurface, but Bautmann orders him not to.  Strangely, the entire crew is accounted for.

Bautmann takes a nap, but is awakened by the crew singing.  He is not mad, though.  He is cheered by the vitality of the young Aryan men on board.  He joins them with a bottle of cognac.  The clanging starts again and he nervously drops the bottle.  He runs to the captain and demands to know what the sound is.  He gets increasingly frantic and accuses the crew of doing this to “shake his nerves” and rattle his brain.

Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!

The captain surfaces and the crew begins searching again for the source of the banging.  Bautmann is snoozing outside on the conning tower.  Word has come over the radio that Hitler has killed himself.  Bautmann is furious that someone has made up this lie to make him crazy.  He takes the radio and reports to the crew that Hitler died as a hero, leading his troops into battle.  Imagining that little uni-testicled asshole doing such a thing will be the best laugh you have in the next 5 minutes (admittedly a low bar).

The captain gets word that a ship is approaching, and orders the sub to dive.  Bautmann is furious that he won’t stay surfaced and find that clanging.  In observation of Axis Diversity Day, a crewman uses a karate chop to shut him up.

While the sub is pursued by the ship, Bautmann wakes up in his bunk.  He runs to the bridge shouting, “I can’t breathe!”  Then the clanging begins again.  He cries like [NAME REDACTED] [3] for the pounding to stop.  He finally passes out and the noise also stops.  The captain then realizes that they only hear the clanging when Bautmann is awake.

As depth charges explode around them, the Captain decides to surface and surrender.  Hitler is dead, the war is over, and he has no clean turtlenecks left, so what is the point?

Klempererer really chewed the bulkheads as he played Bautmann going insane.    The story didn’t quite gel, though.  Why did this phenomenon attach itself to him?  Sure, he’s a Nazi, but look around — they’re all Nazis!  Don’t forget that!  I guess we are to assume that he was an especially bad egg because he served so close to Hitler.  Then why was it audible to everyone, unlike the Tell-Tale Heart which was clearly an inspiration?  It was clearly directed at Bautmann since it occurred only during his waking hours.  

I guess that doesn’t really matter, and they only had 25 minutes to cram the story into.  On a note so routinely positive that it is getting boring — this show again looks fabulous!  The model at the beginning is only jarring because it is cut in with much other actual footage.  Kudos also on the submarine set.  It felt very accurate to me — to this day, I remember the layout, the claustrophobia, the smell of my countrymen packed in.  I must admit, I spent time aboard a German U-Boat during the war. [4]  

Disturbing banging on naval vessels became a regular trope.  We saw it on The Twilight Zone in the 1960’s.  Then in the 1970’s with these guys.

John Newland sez, “Next week we travel to the chateau country of France.”  Sacre bleu!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  No points deducted for that.  It is really only an issue because it was preceded by so many great inserts of actual war footage.  Besides, seeing a model is kind of charming vs the CGI we are used to.
  • [2]  Bautmann is a civilian.  If he were a captain, he would be Hauptmann Bautmann.  That’s almost the Nazi equivalent of Major Major, but not as funny.  Whaddya want, they’re f***ing Nazis.
  • [3]  Nope, not here either.
  • [4]  OK, it was about an hour inside U-505 at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry during the Gulf War, but isn’t that actually better?