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Night Gallery – Spectre in Tap-Shoes (S3E5)

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The title fills me with a sense of dread that Night Galley only wishes it could achieve legitimately.  I fear another Godawful maudlin show-biz tale like Make Me Laugh.  I was completely wrong in pre-judging Thriller, though, so there is hope.

Millicent Hardy arrives home early from a vacation at “the cape” where rooms were going for an outlandish $35 per night.  She can’t find her sister Marion anywhere.  Her room is a mess, half-open drawers, clothes everywhere, a burned-through cigarette resting on the vanity.  The kitchen isn’t much better with dishes everywhere.

Millie hears tapping upstairs — not the usual haunted house tapping — Marion was actually a tap dancer. She goes to the upstairs studio to see her sister, and finds her hanging from a rope deader that Henri Radin.

ngspectre07Every day for six weeks, Millie has been having strange experiences.  Today she saw Marion’s wig and passed out screaming.  Yesterday, a dress of Marion’s mysteriously appeared in her closet.  Marion’s hair is showing up in Millie’s hairbrush.  There are apple sauce jars left around — a favorite of Marion’s.  Cigarette butts, but Millie doesn’t smoke.

While talking to her boyfriend about selling the property, she mindlessly picks up a cigarette to smoke.  That night she hears the tapping again.  Well unless they were triplets, this has got to go better than last time.  Nothing really happens, Millie just begs forgiveness for not being with Marion in her time of need.

ngspectre08The next day she gets a visit from William Jason to purchase the property.  As he is making his pitch, the piano and tapping start again.  Jason doesn’t hear anything, and it stops the second he leaves.

Going to answer the phone, she finds a locket was buried with Marion that has pictures of a skull and Millie; or maybe Marion herself — who can tell with twins.

She goes to see the doctor who called an begins taking on the characteristics of her dead sister — smoking, referring to Millie as her sister, admitting to being a slut.

That night, a spectral voice calls out to her and lays out a tap dancing outfit for her which she puts on.  There is another noose hanging in the studio and the voice beckons her to “come to me”.  She hesitates and Jason steps out of the shadows.  There are a couple of switcheroos and it turned out to be a good episode.  So much for my prognostication skills.

ngspectre09Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Dane Clark was in Prime Mover and Stuart Nisbet was in In Praise of Pip.  What’s up with Pip?  Serling used that name a few times.
  • WTF!  Sandra Dee (Millie) played Penny on Lost?  That one had me puzzled until I saw that it was a movie from 1983.

Tales From the Crypt – What’s Cookin’ (S4E6)

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tftcwhatscookin01While Fred is searching through a cookbook for more permutations of squid than Bubba had for shrimp, his wife Erma is butchering the latest in a long line of squid served in their squid-only restaurant.  Fred is convinced that he will do with squid what Col. Sanders did with chickens.

Drifter / clean-up guy Gaston suggests that maybe the restaurant might just bring in bigger crowds with, oh say, BBQ rather than squid.  Fred spends a late night chopping vegetables when his landlord Chumley walks in and demands the 3 months back rent owed to him.

Fred loses his temper just briefly enough to nick Chumley’s hand with the chopping knife, and is witnessed by the stoop-dwellers across the street including Gaston.

Officer Phil comes in for breakfast, but Erma tells him they might have some eggs left.  When she looks in the fridge, there are eggs, but also some steaks piled on top of them.  Gaston says a friendly BBQ distributor gave him a good deal.  Can any human being not predict what the steak is?  Especially seconds later when Officer Phil says Chumley has disappeared.

tftcwhatscookin04The smell from the steaks starts attracting other customers off of the street.  When Fred sees Gaston using Chumley’s handkerchief, he gets suspicious.  As business picks up, Gaston must get more steaks from the freezer so he goes in and starts hacking away at Chumley’s fat ass.  Fittingly, Chumley is played by Meat Loaf.

At the end of the day, the restaurant takes in $1,500.  Gaston convinces Fred to keep quiet since the blame would fall on him and Erma.  Soon the Gaston, Fred & Erma Steakhouse opens to lines out the door.

When Officer Phil tells Fred that they might be able to track Chumley’s killer by a residue left by the knife in blood taken from his car, Fred gets worried and Gaston gets busy.

tftcwhatscookin03While Fred is at the restaurant, he goes to see Erma and tells her what is happening and that it was Fred’s idea.  There are a couple of nice twists.

Just an OK episode.  What happened to Christopher Reeve is beyond tragic.  He is still the definitive Superman, and always seemed like a very nice guy; just not much of an actor.  The stiffness actually served him well in Superman (in both roles), but not so much in a comedic episode like this.  Judd Nelson and Bess Armstrong delivered, though.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  Meh.
  • This was 3 years before Christopher Reeves’ accident.
  • Coincidentally, Director Gilbert Adler was later a producer on the dreadful Superman Returns.
  • I can’t believe I almost missed this great gag on Fred ‘n Erma’s sign.  Sadly, as frequently happens with the punny titles, there is no relation to the episode.

Thriller – The Grim Reaper (S1E37)

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tgrimreaper09There will be no more Outer Limits because my Hulu-hate won out; also my cheapness as Season 3 is $35 at Amazon.

I was immediately leery about Thriller.  Stephen King’s blurb says “The best horror series ever put on TV.”  On the other hand, this collection of “Fan Favorites” had to to go all the way the episode 37 for the first entry.  I can only hope they are not going chronologically.

Late at night, there is a knock at the door.  A man is looking for the artist Henri Radin.  For a shiny nickel, the chambermaid takes the man right up to Radin’s room, but warns the man that he might be drunk or on drugs — wow, already edgier than Alfred Hitchcock or Twilight Zone.

tgrimreaper10

The Grim Reaper is the one on the right

She is not a fan of Radin’s art which she says is evil.  The man suggests, “Perhaps a nude?” She responds “There is no evil in nakedness.”  Scandalous for 1959!

The woman knocks, but there is no answer.  The man insists on being let in as he is Radin’s father.  We see the shadow of Radin’s legs as he swings dead from a noose — finally, back to some wholesome 1960’s entertainment.

They take a look at his last painting, and is fairly evil, and better than any of the oil-slicks on Night Gallery.

In his intro to the story, Boris Karloff is examining the painting, which we learn is now over 100 years old.  And there is fresh blood on the scythe.

Paul Graves (William Shatner) arrives at a house and is greeted by his aunt Beatrice (Natalie Schafer).  He is surprised that she bought a hearse, but being a a writer of 27 mystery novels, she bought it as publicity.

tgrimreaper11Beatrice introduces Graves to her fifth husband, Gerald Keller, who is much younger than her.  Also to her young secretary Dorothy.  They go downstairs to see Beatrice’s new acquisition, Radin’s “Grim Reaper.”  It was this purchase that disturbed Graves so much that he had to visit his aunt.  He warns her to get rid of the picture.

He says that since it was painted in 1848, the painting has had 17 owners, 15 of which met with violent deaths.  Beatrice was aware of the curse and also bought that for publicity.  She had also previously heard Grave’s revelation that the painting began to bleed before each death.  Like NOW for instance!

Of course, that night they discover Beatrice dead at the bottom of the stairs.  A few days later, the will is read and everything was left to Keller.  So now Keller is the owner of the painting, and the pieces start to fall into place.

tgrimreaper12They might play a little fast and loose with criminal evidence and estate law, but accompanied by a shrieking score and great performances, it moves toward a twisty, satisfying conclusion.

My initial pessimmism was unwarranted.  This was one of the best episodes I’ve seen in the past year.  At the most basic level, it looked great, very crisp black and white.  The camera work was excellent, and Robert Bloch (Psycho) came up with a very witty script that was well played by everyone.

If there is one nitpick, the score seemed a little overwrought.  But if that was meant to heighten the feel of unease, it worked.  Also, as host, Karloff was no Rod Serling (TZ not NG).

Overall:  Excellent.

Post-Post:

  • It is bizarre that Beatrice jokes that the hearse she bought was driven only by a “little old corpse from pasadena.”  It was not until 3 years later that Jan & Dean recorded The Little Old Lady from Pasadena.
  • At 12:15, it really sounds like Beatrice calls Dorothy “Samanatha.”  She could have said “What’s the matter” — several replays later, I couldn’t be sure.  She later clearly refers to “The Decoration of Independence.”
  • Of course, the two leads went on to be Captain Kirk and Lovey Howell.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Martian (S5E8)

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rbtmartian02Phobos and Deimos — so far so good.  Bradbury might give Mars earth-like gravity, blue skies, and breathable air, but he did at least keep the 2nd moon.  I suspect they would never be in that configuration in the sky, but why quibble.

Down on the Martian surface, LaFarge and his wife Anna are having a restless night, both dreaming about their dead son.

Anna says, “We should have brought him with us.”  Her husband quite reasonably says, “Anna, he’s been dead 5 years.  What would be the use?”  Hers sounds like a crazy comment, but she misses driving to his grave on Sunday and talking to him.  Although I think he is just as likely to hear her on Mars as on Earth no matter what your belief system.

A strange ball of light appears the next night and a disembodied voices says, “Let me go. You caught me.  Let me go.”  LaFarge opens the door and it is his dead son Tom.  He beelines for his mother’s bedroom quicker than Buster Bluth.

rbtmartian04The next morning, LaFarge awakes to hear his wife and dead son having breakfast.  Anna is treating Tom as her real son, but LaFarge is suspicious.  He has heard that the few remaining indigenous Martians can read minds and imitate relatives, which is why we killed the Indians.

The three of them go to an outdoor bazaar that night.  Tom gets separated from his parents.  When LaFarge looks for him, he sees a girl reuniting with her parents — clearly Tom has taken a new form.  All over the Martian town, people are seeing their dead relatives.

LaFarge finds the girl and convinces her to turn back into Tom.  There are so many people around with so many memories of dead friends that he can’t maintain his form as Tom. He turns into several different people, and is finally seen in the act of changing.  Finally he is overwhelmed by the crowds and vanishes completely.

rbtmartian05Not a great ending to the season.  Although it is great that the season had only 8 episodes.

Post-Post:

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Motive (S3E17)

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ahpmotive11Richard and Sandra are lounging around Tommy Greer’s hotel room (?), already extremely drunk.

Sandra discovers Tommy’s hobby — a poster board where he tracks every murder for the year, whether it was solved and whether there was a motive.  He points out to Sandra how the line for motiveless murders runs parallel to the line for unsolved murders.  Yeah, well, all of the lines are parallel, dumb-ass.  Did no one on the set understand basic geometry?

And not to get too nit-picky, but this is equally basic — it appears that ~240 solved murders + ~280 unsolved murders  = ~475 total murders.

Sandra says it’s ten to seven, so she’s got to go.  For the viewer, Sandra is there only for exposition; of the chart and her gams.  But why is she there for Richard and Tommy? Is it 7 AM or PM?  It’s a little early for being that drunk and still drinking at either hour. When she leaves, she kisses both men on the lips, and calls Tommy “Mr. Greer.”

Several reviewers compare this to Hitchcock’s Rope, but it is really more related to Strangers on a Train.  Tommy expounds his theory that a motiveless crime has a 100 to 1 shot of being solved.  Not to turn this into Mathterpiece Theater, but if that is true, the solved line should be much shorter.  Richard says he only got Tommy started on this hobby to take his mind off of his ex-wife Marion.

ahpmotive12Turns out Marion was Richard’s girl, then dumped him for Tommy.  Now she has divorced Tommy, and Richard wants him to get over it. Richard challenges Tommy to commit a motiveless murder and see if he can get away with it.

Shortly thereafter, the two men take an elevator to the lobby which confirms that this is a hotel, not an apartment, and that it is 7 PM. Tommy’s place really looked more like an apartment, but there is a newstand and bar in the lobby.  So are they on a business trip?  And why are they so drunk at 7 PM?

Richard pulls out a Chicago phone book, closes his eyes and — I can’t stress this enough — opens it randomly, and blindly lands his finger on one Jerome Stanton of Chicago as the proposed victim.  Tommy tears the page out of the phonebook — which is not what you want in your possession when trying to commit the perfect crime.

ahpmotive14

Well, he is going to take a poll! Heyoooooo!

Tommy flies to Chicago and calls the Stanton home, but only the maid is home.  She says Mr. Stanton will be home the next evening for the fights, as were all men in the 1950s. The next night, he goes to see Stanton under the guise of taking a poll. Tommy goes through an extensive ruse rather than just killing him outright.

Eventually, however, Tommy talks Stanton into a vulnerable position and pounds him in the head with a hammer.

Back in New York (or, I believe it was an unspecified city 1,000 miles from Chicago), he is eating breakfast and reading the paper.  He sees that Jerome Stanton of Chicago was murdered — because local papers cover every murder in the nation.  C’mon, today it wouldn’t even be covered in Chicago.  He is shocked as he reads it was Jerome Stanton that his ex-wife Marion had left him for, and married. Richard, who had also been jilted by Marion, set Tommy up to kill Stanton and clear his path back to Marion.  Asked by the police for any possible suspects, Marion had named Tommy.

Tommy attacks Richard just as the cops show up.

ahpmotive16

World’s worst proctologist.

This is such a good episode that I’m willing to accept that Richard had somehow bent or marked the page in the phone book to open up to, and had memorized the spot so that he could literally finger Stanton’s name with his eyes covered.

Also that it was just pure luck that Marion didn’t answer the phone when Tommy called, and that she was not home when he went to see Stanton, and that Stanton never mentioned her name, and that there were no wedding pictures around.

I better stop before I talk myself out of the fact that this was a great episode.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Skip Homeier is still alive, but retired from acting at 50.  Tharon Crigler is also hanging on.  Strange career — 6 roles in 1958, nothing before or after.  Gary Clarke is still alive and working despite a 16-year gap 1996-2012 per IMDb.
  • Did Richard smack Sandra on the ass at about 2:15?  Pretty racy stuff for 1958.
  • Not that this was a classic, but Googling Mathterpiece Theater further confirms my theory that it is almost impossible to come up with anything that is original.  It’s like trying to get Joe as a Google login ID.