Author Archives: don

Tales From the Crypt – Showdown (08/01/92)

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tftcswhowdown05Outlaws Harley and Quintaine are pursued by a posse. They think they lost them 3 days back, but Harley is in pretty bad shape from a gunshot wound.  When he can no longer stay on his horse, Quintaine shoots him. The not-so-lost posse finds Harley’s fresh grave — which Quintaine idiotically marked; and with his partner’s initials — and continue their hunt.

Quintaine rides into a small frontier town, leading Harley’s horse.  Somehow, the posse has beaten him to the town and Texas Ranger McMurdo is waiting for him.

With no discussion, they walk out into the wide, dusty street and have a duel, which is not the way I remember the Texas Rangers operating; not even when George Bush owned them.  McMurdo takes a slug seemingly directly in the heart with trademark Peckinpaw-ish projectile bleeding, but stays standing,  The 2nd bullet takes him down.

tftcswhowdown02He goes into the saloon for a whiskey.  A stranger tries to sell him a miracle elixir, but Quintaine is quite the negotiator.  Refusing to buy, the medicine man gives him a bottle for free and says he will pay Quintaine a dollar tomorrow if it doesn’t live up to his hype. He takes the bottle and chugs it.

The “snake oil” is fast acting as Quintaine hallucinates that he sees Doc Holliday, a bounty hunter that Quintaine killed.  Maybe there was more than one gunfighting dentist by that name in the old west — the Doc Holliday most people know died of TB (see Val Kilmer wheezing in Tombstone).

tftcswhowdown03He begins to see other of his victims in the saloon.  Among the dead . . . Harley, Frank Little Bear, and Tom McMurdo, still, freshly dead in the street.

McMurdo tells him they are all in Hell. Quintaine screams like a little girl for them to all go way.  When he raises his head, the dead men are gone.  In their place is a gaggle of tourists being shown the saloon which has “it’s very own ghost, the legendary Billy Quintaine” according to the guide who surely regrets dropping out of high school now.

The tour guide relates the story that McMurdo’s posse cut down Quintaine after McMurdo was shot in a duel.  It might have been helpful for the posse to have been a little more pro-active.

Outside the saloon, Quintaine see a modern scene — a hot-dog cart, people on bikes, kids running around. I assume with a bigger budget this would have been a commentary on consumerism, capitalism, or fat American tourists in shorts.  He goes back inside and calls for Tom, but no one appears.

tftcswhowdown04What follows is not clear.  It is either a flashback to what actually happened after the duel, or Quintaine is getting a second chance.  We did not see the first iteration, but this time he is clearly aware there are other shooters, and he impressively kills several of them before finally being shot down.

Also not clear:  We see some modern tourists gawking at the grave markers of McMurdo and Quintaine.  After they leave, McMurdo and Quintaine ride up on horseback to see their own graves.  They are chummy and in pretty good spirits for a couple of guys in Hell. Also they are part of a bunch that all have horses and the freedom to ride off wherever they want to.  Is this Hell or a Dude Ranch?  The guys in City Slickers weren’t this chipper.

And where exactly are they riding to?  Back into the past to pick up the next gun-fighter who is killed?  Does the group just get bigger and bigger?  Does anyone ever actually go to Hell?  On the plus side — probably many houses of ill-repute in Hell. [1]

Great episode as far as performances and directing, but a little muddled on the story.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  Meh.
  • McMurdo says, “Heaven or Hell, whatever you want to call it. It’s warm here; it’s quiet.” Another man says, “We’re all here — those who lived by the gun and died by the gun.” So the murderers and and lawmen and even the innocent trot-by shooting victim are in the same place simply because their deaths were gun-centric?
  • And don’t get me started on why it took the posse 3 days to catch them.
  • Written by Frank Darabont, so I’m sure I’m missing something.  Unless they ejected him half-way through like on The Walking Dead.  Darabont should have come back from the dead like McMurdo and collected the dumb-asses who stuck the Walking Dead group at that farm for a whole season.
  • [1] I’m fairly libertarian myself, so would not consign the houses of ill-repute to Hell; or would at least locate them conveniently near the entrance.

Thriller – The Watcher (11/01/60)

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twatcher04A really — to be charitable — unattractive man is holding down a blonde girl’s head, and not in the good way.  He drowns the the girl and washes the blood from his hands.

Freitag, the titular watcher, is spying on a couple in a car in front of his house as the indulge in some 1950’s style necking, perhaps even heavy petting.  As Larry gets out of the car, and Beth drives away, Freitag typewrites a threatening letter to Sheriff Matthews:

IS THERE ANOTHER CORRUPTOR ABROAD?

I MUST BE SURE BEFORE I KILL AGAIN.

The next night, Freitag sees Larry leave the house, probably to see that hussy Beth. Freitag puts on a suit, tie and hat and takes off following Larry.  Surely he is disappointed to see that Larry just went in for a little OT at the boat shop where he works.  Freitag goes in and tells him what a great boy he is for taking care of his aunt.

twatcher05He tells Larry “a good-looking young man like you doesn’t have any trouble finding female companionship . . . it must be a problem for you.  I mean, avoiding unwelcome attention.”  Well, maybe it was annoying for Richard Chamberlain, but I personally never felt burdened by hot babes calling me at all hours.

He continues, “I’d really like to help you.  An older man can sometimes help keep a boy straight.”  Ahem.  He does everything but start massaging Larry’s shoulders.  Larry says if he ever need’s Freitag’s advice, he knows where to find him.  Down by the elementary school would be the first place to look, I imagine.

Beth leaves her house after getting chewed out by her mother by going out totally nude — no wait, she’s wearing blue-jeans, which was apparently equally taboo back then.  She goes to see Larry.  Standing out in the rain, Freitag sees the silhouettes of them stripping off their wet clothes.

twatcher06Later on a picnic in the woods, Larry asks Beth to elope, but she wants everything out in the open.  Which it kind of would be after they came back from eloping.  They think they see someone watching them from the rocks above but find no one.  When they get back to the car, however, it has a flat tire.

Not having a spare, Larry wheels it back to a gas station until he is given a lift.  Freitag suspensively creeps up on the car where she is now sitting.  When she spots him, she lays on the horn for so long that he cleverly pops the hood and disconnects the battery. Beth helpfully faints, but Freitag does nothing with her.

Back at the filling station, which is apparently do-it-yourself, Larry is working on the tire. Freitag knocks him out and lowers the car lift onto him.  The police take Beth home where her mother is so relieved to see her alive that she calls her a tramp.  Luckily Larry survived due to a tire rim blocking the lift.

twatcher07Larry is taken back to his boarding house to recover, where the owner also calls Beth a tramp.  Freitag has a good vantage point of all the activity from his room across the street.

When the landlady goes out to the drugstore to pick up a prescription for Larry (luckily the neighbors have not burned it down like in Baltimore), Freitag sneaks upstairs.  Beth catches him and brains him with a ceramic pitcher.  This is apparently enough for him to stagger around until he falls from the window and beaks his neck.

A decent episode carried by the casting and performances of the actors.  An extra layer of entertainment is found in the clearly homo-erotic overture in the boat shop.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Happiness Machine (07/17/92)

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rbthappiness13That Ray Bradbury was one happy son-of-a-bitch.  Or at least he comes across that way in his stories.  Part of it was having the luck to grow up in a simpler time when the country was growing, and growing in the right direction.  His timing also couldn’t have been better for a 50 year window where it was possible to make a good living writing short genre fiction.  A story called The Happiness Machine sounds right in his wheelhouse.

Also lucky, is the star of the episode who has made a fine living for decades despite being possibly the only actor worse than Bill Paxton ever to get steady work.  Elliott Gould awakens one sunny morning to birds chirping, dogs frolicking, bees buzzing, birds soaring.  He is so goddamn happy he decides he needs to pay it back (or forward as we say now).

rbthappiness14He pulls various pieces of junk out of his garage to invent a Happiness Machine.  He then walks around the neighborhood taking pictures of little boys climbing trees and little girls playing hopscotch.  His luck continues by him not being arrested.

He spends hours in the garage soldering, welding, wiring, painting and finishing the Happiness Machine.  Under deadline from his wife who has called the city to haul it away, he tests it out by putting her in it.

She dances by the Danube, sees the Sphinx, sees London, sees France, sees a little girl’s underpants. She is having the ride of her life until suddenly she is in tears.  She emerges distraught from the Happiness Machine.

rbthappiness15Turns out it, the Happiness Machine is great on the way up, all sweetness and light, hope, birds chirping . . . like experiencing Bradbury’s life.

But when you step out of the machine into shitty reality, it is soul-crushing.  It leads only to sadness and depression . . . like experiencing Bradbury’s TV show.

Gould’s wife begs him to destroy it.  He tries it out himself and briefly experiences the euphoria before a fire starts that destroys it.  It pains me to say it, but there is an effective ending.  He is saddened by the destruction of his Happiness Machine, but his wife tells him to look in the windows of his house.  He sees his kids playing the piano, the violin, showing off a painting, modeling a new blouse.  His home and family are the Happiness Machine.

rbthappiness16

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Equalizer (S3E19)

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ahpequalizer05Eldon Marsh (Martin Balsam) has just whipped his boss at golf.  The boss is better at the long drives than the diminutive Eldon, but has a tendency to be a 3-putt chump. Eldon credits his putter which he dubs “The Equalizer” for the win.

At the Club that night, his boss isn’t sure he will fare too well against the strapping young new salesman Wayne Phillips (Leif Erickson (really?)).  At the moment, Eldon should be more worried as Phillips is dancing pretty close with his wife Louise.

After they return to the table, the boss suggests the men-folk retire to the game-room for some Bridge.  Phillips declines, mortifying the other salesmen; maybe because of the effrontery to his new boss, or maybe because he is left alone with their wives — a situation he immediately takes advantage of by flirting with another wife, making Louise visibly jealous.

ahpequalizer06That night in their bedroom, Eldon asks Louise what she thinks of the new salesman Wayne Phillips.  She not quite convincingly assures her husband that she did not like Phillips. She slips off her robe and they get into their separate twin beds, as real couples did in the 1950’s.

The next day Phillips, with his salesman smile, comes into Eldon’s office.  He tells Eldon what a lovely girl Louise is.  Phillips accuses him not not trusting his wife,  Eldon says he trusts Louise implicitly but doesn’t trust Phillips as far as he could throw him.

Phillips stands up, about 6 inches taller than Eldon and says, “That wouldn’t be be very far, would it little man?”  Eldon warns him, “Don’t try to test your irresponsibility with my wife.”  Eldon actually comes off as a pretty cool customer.

ahpequalizer07That weekend when Phillips misses a tee-time with the boss, speculation runs wild among the salesmen that he was playing a round with some dame instead. Overhearing this, Eldon assumes Phillips is banging his wife; especially when she does not answer the telephone (back when they were tethered to the wall and not easily transported to a Motel 6).

Later at the club, Eldon believes he sees his wife and Phillips making eyes at each other.  After she leaves, he throws a drink in Phillips face, and says, ‘I want to fight this man!’  Phillips refuses to fight, but finally Eldon takes a swing at him and Phillips decks him.

At home, the real switch is that Louise admits Eldon was right.  Not only that, she berates, him, “These things happen all the time.  Some men have enough sense not to make a spectacle of themselves.”

He assumes she will go to Phillips now, but she blames him again.  “You very nicely ruined that for me!  You created such a scandal that we couldn’t possibly go on!”  She does leave him, though, just not to go to Phillips.

ahpequalizer08The next day, cleaning out his desk, even his boss blames him, saying, “I don’t understand why you put me in a position where I had to fire you. You couldn’t just let this blow over?”

Eldon says he could have tolerated it if Phillips had loved Louise, but he was just making her look cheap.  For that, they must fight.  His boss even offers to fire Phillips instead of Eldon, but it’s no good — he wants that fight.

Later at the club, as Phillips is flirting with another of the wives, Eldon comes in and challenges him to a duel.  They idiotically agree to meet for a duel — 10 paces, turn and fire.

Eldon arrives for the duel, but doesn’t see Phillips.  As he is looking out over the city, he hears Phillips emerging from the shadows.  Before he can say anything, Phillips plugs him.  Phillips dutifully calls the cops and claims self-defense.  Unfortunately, Eldon is unarmed, not even bringing a knife to this gunfight.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  All equally dead.
  • Title Analysis:  The titular Equalizer is the fact that Eldon feels he has nothing left to lose, thus he is not afraid of Phillips.  That would be good had they not muddied the water-hazard by Eldon earlier referring to his putter as the Equalizer rather than, say, the old Billy Baroo.
  • For a more in-depth look at the story, performers and production, head over to bare-bones ezine.