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Ray Bradbury Theater – Mars is Heaven (S4E1)

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rbtmarsisheaven01Hal Linden (Barney Miller), or is it Barney Miller (Hal Linden)? No, it’s Hal Linden (Barney Miller), is the captain of a ship heading to Mars.

Linden, playing Captain Black, disembarks along with crew-members Henley and Larson to explore Mars.  After a few seconds, they determine that the atmosphere is “thin for breathing, but there’s enough oxygen.”  Showing the same scientific acumen as the crew of Prometheus, they take off their helmets.

Mars isn’t quite what they expect.  Their landing area is the expected barren red landscape, but then they hear a rooster crowing.  They hear birds.  After a short walk, they see trees, grass, tennis courts.  They’re in Club Red; except without the red.

rbtmarsisheaven02One of the men suggests they somehow landed back on earth.  Captain Black assures him, “we traveled 300 million miles, tracked by telemetry every inch of the way.”  As usual, no one could be troubled to pick up an almanac when this story was filmed.  When Mars is on the other side of the sun, it is still never 300 million miles away.  Even the original short story didn’t use this stat.

One man finds his old tennis racket, one sees his grandfather.  Black sees his younger brother and goes with him back to his parent’s house.  He is reunited with his dead mother and dead father.  It is revealed that the house he has come back to actually burned to the ground years ago, killing his brother.

In the short story, one woman — whatever the Martian equivalent of a blonde is, maybe a redhead — almost gives away the game when she threatens to have her husband come outside and “beat them with all his fists.”  Although, really, she could have meant all two of them.

That night, Linden finally begins to question what they have found on Mars.  He wonders if maybe the Martians knew they were coming.  That they may have used their minds to create this world for the humans.  To put them off-guard, to separate them so they could be picked off by people they trusted.

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For some reason, the astronauts wear ASA patches instead of NASA.

As Black leaves the room, an alien hand clasps his shoulder.  We then cut to caskets resting on the barren red Martian soil, 3 helmets atop them.

The idea of finding a replica on earth is old hat now, also having appeared on The Twilight Zone.  When it was published 1948, maybe it was new hat.  I guess the title Mars is Heaven isn’t really a spoiler since it is revealed to not be heaven.

In the story, the Martians inexplicably retain their human form even after the astronauts are dead, and give them a proper burial.  Equally inexplicably, in the episode, we see the coffins but they fade from the shot and disappear completely.

Post-Post:

  • Pointless Duplication:  In the story, Black’s brother died 26 years ago.  He is now 26 years old.  The townspeople say the year is 1926.
  • The short story Mars is Heaven was included in The Martian Chronicles as The Third Expedition.
  • Coincidentally, director John Laing is also credited on an episode of The Hitchhiker which I just watched.  The first disk of that series was so awful, I couldn’t bring myself to write about it.  His episode was probably one of the better ones, though.
  • For some reason, Bradbury alone among sci-fi writers is given license to have breathable air on Mars and other basic scientific inaccuracies.

Death Flight – Robert Wallace

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pulpdeathflightWhat kind of pulp story is this?  No ape-men, no evil dwarfs, no scantily clad women in chains or hunted for sport.

Pilot Lucky James is approaching after a non-stop flight from Cairo to New York which will earn him $50,000; or slightly more than a last-minute ticket to see my parents for Thanksgiving.

The crowd roars as he lands his monoplane (or as we say now, plane).  He opens the cockpit door and humbly says, “Hello fellows, looks like I’ve made me fifty thousand bucks.”

Then THUCK! which is apparently the sound bullets made in 1935.  Lucky James is shot just seconds after emerging from the cockpit.  It would have been better had they opened the door to find him already shot.  At least one pulp theme would have been used — the locked-fuselage murder.

The rest of the story is a fine straight short story, but has none of the standard pulp tropes.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Phantom Detective Magazine, June 1935.
  • Also that month:  Babe Ruth announces his retirement.
  • Lucky James’ $50k prize would be $869k in 2014 dollars.
  • This story was published 8 years after Lucky Lindy made his flight for a $25,000 prize.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Indestructible Mr. Weems (S2E37)

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ahpweems03What’s up with the Weems?  First Borgus, and now the indestructible Clarence.  OK, they aired 14 years apart, so I guess there is no conspiracy.

The board of the Knights of the Golden Lodge came up with a boffo idea for their members.  They bought a plot of land to be used as a cemetery.  The problem is, people aren’t exactly dying to get in.  Taxes and upkeep are killing their cash flow.

They agree that the problem is that no one wants to be the first, so they must find someone to occupy the first grave.  Their first thought is of Clarence Weems, a member who has been in ill health for the past year.  They decide to offer him $50 / week (over $400 in 2014 dollars) until he dies if he agrees to be the first customer at Elysium Fields.

ahpweems09The men go to Weems’ 4th floor apartment to make their pitch.  He doesn’t want charity but agrees to the deal as a business proposition. Papers are signed.

Weems immediately takes a turn for the better; also for the nurse, as he begins feeling frisky.  He applies to have his membership in the lodge reactivated.  The board climbs the 3 flights of stairs to visit him again, but he is asleep.  He does manage to make it to the lodge dance, though.  And enter the cha-cha contest.

The board pays another visit to Weems.  His doctor tells them that they are responsible for his amazing recovery, that having the security of the lifetime annuity has added years to his life.

ahpweems13They decide to see if Weems will accept $500 to release them from the contract.  When they go to his apartment, they see him moving a piano (correction, seems to be something else, but I like my idea better).  This so enrages the Grand Poobah of the lodge, that he keels over on the stairs.  Weems generously offers his grave for the Poobah to be buried in.

A simple, fun little episode even though the Poobah didn’t really deserve to die.  They could have ended the episode with the face-palm realization that it was their generosity that doomed the lodge.  It would have been a bloodless, A.A. Milne type episode, but still rich with irony.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors, but Don Keefer gave it good try, just passing away in September at age 98.
  • Keefer was in The Caine Mutiny where there was a character named Keefer.  There was also a character named Keith, and the similarity always confused me.

Black Pool for Hell Maidens – Hal K. Wells

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Larry Kent is making his way through a swamp that is almost as dense as the prose in this story.

The last rays of an unseen sun had faded until the wooded swamp was a fog-shrouded monochrome of somber shadows and swirling vapors.  The dank chill of slime-wet air seeped coldly through the darkening gray mists . . . Hidden cells deep within his sensitive brain quivered to the stimulus of a familiar and eerie warning.  Somewhere in that chill curtain of twilight fog, Fear lurked, naked and abysmal.

A couple paragraphs of that, and I’m exhausted.  Luckily, Wells takes pity on the reader and lapses into a more readable style.

pulpblackpool01Kent has spent time in the savage wilds of China and Africa, “but never had Kent’s quivering nerves sensed the crepitant feel of Fear more strongly than they did now in the desolate heart of Alabama.”  He valiantly carries on in search of his fiancee, Dorothy Lane, who mysteriously vanished in these swamps four days ago.

His nose leads him to two dead bodies.  Standing over them is “a creature that was a blasphemous caricature of a man.”  Its description is fairly Gollum-esque down to the bulbous eyes and loincloth.  His hands, however, are more more claw-like with the fingers fused together and a giant thumb — like the pincer of a crayfish.  Not nearly dainty enough for my precious.

Seeing Kent, the brute runs off and smack into three men. Kent tells them that he is lost and the men offer him a place for the night, but their hospitality is transparently a ruse. As they return to their lodge, Kent sees Dorothy accompanying them, but she does not acknowledge knowing him.

Back at the lodge, or “House of Grisly Fear” as the chapter heading describes it, Kent sees a room full of men who have suffered various amputations.  Their faces are all the same, though, “stolidly set masks of pure fear.”

Like the creature they encountered in the swamp, they are dressed only in loincloths. From the stumps of their limbs grow strange appendages similar to the claws of the creature — who is not a creature, but a man named Bartlett.

Putting the pieces together, Kent recognizes one of the men as Dr. Enlow Carlin.  The doctor had claimed that he had discovered the gland that granted regenerative powers to certain crustaceans.  He was drummed out of the mad scientists union for such heresy; and also for spending his time on crustaceans rather than ape-men.

When Dorothy finally manages to be alone with Kent, she has no time for explanations, but tells him they need to escape.  Thanks, Madam Curie.  Carlin catches them before they take a step and decrees that they shall be turned over to “The Dweller in the Pool.”

Dorothy reveals that the Dweller in the Pool is her brother Raoul.  He had lost an arm in an auto accident and was “too bitterly proud to tell any of the rest of the family.”  That must have been some arm.  Or some family.

He sought out Carlin for his regenerative skills.  Sadly, his miraculous crayfish injections were merely a scam to blackmail hopeful patients, and reduce them to deformed madmen.  But things are not what they seem with the Dweller in the pool.

A nice pulp piece despite some over-written passages.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Mystery Tales, June 1938.
  • Also that month: Minimum Wage enacted for $.25/hour.
  • Who is the titular Hell Maiden?  Dorothy is the only woman in the story and she seems like a pretty good chick.

Night Gallery – The Phantom Farmhouse (S2E5)

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Like the unwatchable Whispers last season, this segment is hard-core 1970s.

At a new-age (well, new in 1970) high-priced sanitarium, Dr. Winter is holding a session outdoors around a large tree which has several colored platforms built around it.  I don’t know how beneficial it is for therapy, but as set design, it is awesome.

Another 1970s relic, David Carradine is strumming a repetitious tune on his guitar. When one of the other patients takes offense, he goes all Pete Townsend and smashes it.  When another patient asks him a simple question, he responds in the third person, “Gideon takes the fifth.”  A more welcome response would have been “Gideon takes a bath.”

He complains to the doctor that his parents are paying $39,000 a year to keep him locked up there.  That’s $228,000 in 2014 dollars; what a rebel.

ngphantonfarmhouse08The sheriff shows up with a note found at the scene of the death of one of Winters’ patients.  Carradine wrote the note which was an introduction to a mysterious Mildred. Carradine claims he and all of the group are in love with her despite never having seen her.  He says that Mildred is a “super-groove”  who lives in a farmhouse in the woods with a picket fence and old-fashioned well.

The dead patient had gone in search of Mildred and ended up torn to shreds.  Winter retraces his path and ends op at the farmhouse despite the fact that the sheriff had said it did not exist; that there were only ruins there.  There is a young blonde woman there dressed in white who offers him a drink from the well.

Back at the sanitarium, Carradine has pulled together several books of lycanthropy, werewolves.  He believes that is what killed the other patient. The sanitarium’s inexplicably beret-wearing French caretaker also believes that werewolves have killed some of their sheep.

ngphantonfarmhouse12Winter goes back to the farmhouse to see Mildred.  Then returns to the sanitarium where he learns another patient has been torn to shreds.

Then returns to the farmhouse.  Then back to the sanitarium.  Honestly, this story could have used some tightening up.

The next day, before sunrise, he returns to the farmhouse.  Mildred had asked that he read a funeral service over three unmarked graves.  He collapses in mid-psalm and is later found by the caretaker.  Where the farmhouse had stood a few moments earlier, there are only ruins.

So he goes back to the sanitarium . . .  presumably still as the doctor.

Sadly, less than the sum of its parts.  The actors are great — Carradine is the typical sanctimonious hippie, but he is perfect in the role.  Mildred was not very well cast, but the others were fine.  It just went on for too long with not much of a payoff.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy: None really, but Bill Quinn was in the TZ Movie.
  • Skipped Segment: Silent Snow Secret Snow.  This is segment is based on the Conrad Aiken story that everyone used to have to read in school.  Oddly, Aiken’s daughter Joan wrote the Marmalade segment of the previous episode.
  • How can lycanthropy not be in spell-check?
  • Kudos on the subtle indication that Mildred is a werewolf:

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