Author Archives: don

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Dwarf (S3E1)

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bradbury02I was really torn whether to invest the time in a 3rd season of RBT.  At least they seem to be filming in the USA again, and they are doing A Sound of Thunder this season — so, one more chance.  Although I’ll miss bitching about Europe.

Ralph the bald carny man at the Mirror Maze drags his co-worker Aimee to his place to see Mr. Big.  She is clearly out of his league in looks and also because she has the more manly concession — the pellet guns.  He tells her to hide, for reasons I can’t figure, because Mr. Big is coming.  Turns out that Mr. Big is a midget.  His name is actually revealed later to be Bigalow, but I don’t think Mirror-boy know that.

rbtdwarf02As he does every night, he has come to the Mirror Maze and bought a ticket.  Ralph tells Aimee she ain’t seen nothing yet.  He leads her to spy on Mr. Big checking himself out in the mirror, admiring his tall thin reflection.  Ralph thinks this is quite a hoot.  Maybe if there was a mirror that showed him with hair, he would understand his cruelty.

Mr. Big hears them hiding behind a wall and bolts.  Aimee worries that they have humiliated him and that he might never come back.  But the next night he is there again.  Aimee follows him to a newsstand and discovers he’s a writer of . . . er, short stories.  No, really.  He sees her following him and takes her home with him.  She sees that he lives in a tiny little scaled down house in a warehouse.

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Attack of the 5’3″ Woman.

She returns to the Mirror Maze and admires herself in the same stretchy mirror, which makes no sense.  It’s not like she is a dwarf or even fat.  The stretchy mirror just makes her look anorexic.  Aimee catches Ralph staring at her.

Ralph goes in to break the mirror, but has a better idea.  He replaces the stretchy mirror with one that scrunches the midget down even more.  Ralph gets a laugh out of the midget’s anguish.  Aimee smacks him up side his bald noggin.

From somewhere, the midget has gotten a gun and starts deliberately shooting Ralph’s reflections one by one.  When only the real Ralph is left, Aimee stops him, saying Ralph has been dead for years.

I really wanted to like it.  The girl was cute.  The midget being a writer reminded me of The Smoking Man’s literary aspirations.  And quite the snappy dresser.  His tiny house and her peeking in were intriguing.  It just didn’t come together.

As usual, the short story was better especially if you grade it on a 60 year old curve.  The Dwarf was a little more fleshed out on TV, and the ending was more clearly presented.  In the short story, Ralph and Aimee both see Ralph as a small dark monster in one of the mirrors.  There is a gunshot, but whether it is Ralph or the Dwarf being shot is left to the reader.

Post-Post:

  • Megan Follows was previously seen in The Outer Limits, and Miguel Fernandes was in Trancers.
  • Really misnamed episode as it features a midget not a dwarf.
  • I’m sure it was some 6 foot tall douche-bag who came up with “Little Person” as the PC word.  Midget was a perfectly respectable word.  Why replace it with a word that specifically points out the person is not a person, he is a little person?
  • Same thing with cripple which was eventually deemed offensive, replaced by handicapped which was also eventually deemed offensive.  Then disabled.  Now I guess it is the absurd handicapable or even worse, differently-abled.  Gee, it’s almost like it isn’t the words that bothers these do-gooders.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – One for the Road (S2E23)

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ahponefor03I’m no expert in pharmacology, but all three characters in this episode must be strung out on the 50’s version of Xanax or be pioneers of medical marijuana.  Their muted reactions to infidelity and murder are so bizarre, they are more like pod-people than human beings.

Charles Hendricks is starting out with his morning coffee into which he dumps 2 spoons of sugar — believe it or not, a critical plot point.  He is heading out of town for work as he frequently does. His wife is clearly devoted to him, tying his tie, packing his bag, watching his diet, opening a fresh pack of cigarettes for him — although those last 2 don’t seen entirely compatible.  She is all smiles and good cheer until she whips out a lighter and suggests it belongs a lady friend.  She seems to accept that he mysteriously picked it up at some unknown office.

It is very strange as he doesn’t seem alarmed by her accusation, and she doesn’t seem too upset by his cheating.  Yet again, after Three’s a Crowd, And So Died Riabouchinska, and The Dead Man, we have spouses that react to infidelity with a yawn. Sure enough, he is soon having a martini with his girlfriend.  AHP really stacks the deck against Mrs. Hendricks by casting a much prettier woman in the role of mistress Beryl.

ahponefor01Upon returning home, his wife accuses him of meeting a girlfriend in Lockton with the initials B.A. as engraved on the lighter she found in his suit pocket.  “So what if I happen to see a woman in Lockton,” he says.  “What of it?”  Charles is certainly a bag of the douche variety, but this is pretty callous.

Hendricks returns to his girlfriend that night,  He tells her of his wife’s suspicions.  When Beryl suggests that maybe they should get married, he says the current arrangement suits him just fine.

Back at home the next — frankly I’m having trouble keeping up with his schedule — his wife says that he is still seeing that woman and there is lipstick is all over his shirt.  He replies, “I’m trying to work it out.  You’ll just have to be patient.”   He says.  To his wife.  What a stud.

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Twin beds — this might be part of the problem.

The next day, Mrs. Hendricks drives to Lockton.  Pretending to be collecting clothes for a charity, she enters Beryl’s home. While there, she puts poison in the sugar bowl.  Only after she arrives back home does she get a message that her husband will be late because he has gone to Lockton.  Doh!

Charles tells Beryl it might be a good idea if they took a “break” for a few months.  She is not thrilled at the idea.

The wife rushes back to Lockton to warn Beryl about the poison before her husband has his coffee.  Beryl, as befits the tone of the episode, seems pretty cool with Marcia nearly MURDERING her.  Beryl tells Marcia she didn’t get here in time — that she just watched Charles drink his standard coffee with two spoons of sugar.  She is not too choked up over the attempted murder of her lover, either.  She says he left about an hour ago.

Marcia leaves, intending to confess to the police.  After she leaves, Charles comes strolling out of the bedroom where he had been hiding.   Beryl coldly offers him a cup of coffee — one for the road.

Great story, perfect plot for this series.  Acting was fine except for the odd acceptance of murder.  And refined white sugar.  I rate it a Venti.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Proximity Alert:  For crying out loud, Mickey Kuhn was just in the previous episode!
  • AHP Deathwatch:  As mentioned before, Mickey Kuhn (who was in Gone with the Wind) is still alive.  Georgeann Johnson is also hanging in there at 88, probably having finally gotten over her father clearly wanting a boy.  Here she is in Star Trek TNG 32 years post-AHP.

Night Gallery – The Little Black Bag (S1E2)

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Great job, Rod.  You had 13 months after the pilot aired and you came up with bupkis (as Mr. Bauman would say) in the first episode; then adapted someone else’s story for your first contribution.  I’ll say this for Ray Bradbury Theater — it might not be very good, but Ray’s name was on the marquis, so he showed up to work.

On the plus side Serling chose good source material.  The Little Black Bag is a fun read and considered a classic in the genre.  I’m all about results, so I went in with high hopes.

Future techno-clerk Gillings reports that a medical bag has been accidentally sent from the current year of 2098 back to then-current 1971.  The episode actually aired in 1970, so they were covered through the rerun and maybe did not expect this series to last long enough for syndication.  Disgraced doctor turned Hobo-American Dr. Fall (Burgess Meredith) and his new pal Hepplewhite (Chill Wills) find the bag.

Dr. Fall’s immediate inclination is to hock this baby for a couple of bucks.   The pawn shop is not interested, but he does attract the attention of a woman who begs him to come look at her sister.  He goes with her and sees a young girl in pain.  Using the instruments in the bag, he realizes that they are not just objects, but are actually leading him through procedures and performing procedures miraculous in the current day.

ngblackbag07He heals the girl, and then a man at the flop-house where he lives.  Back in his room, he imagines giving a speech to the medical community.  His brilliant idea of a demonstration is slicing his neck open with a scalpel from the future.  The scalpel slips through the skin like water with the incision closing up behind it.  It also knows to avoid muscle and important organs.

Hepplewhite fears that the doc is going to cut him out of sharing the wealth from the bag.  He demands a 50% cut.  Dr. Fall, quite the potty mouth, calls him a garbage headed termite.  Chill Wills gives one of the most bizarre performances I’ve ever seen as he threatens Dr. Fall.  He stands almost exactly in this position for 4 minutes.  Early on, he let a few words slip between his lips.  Then for a while, he just stares at the ceiling with his mouth gaping wide for no reason . . . on and on and on.

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Seriously, this goes on for almost 4 minutes.  Even more amazing, NBC LOVED this performance.

Dr. Fall is getting his medical jones back and is more altruistic, wanting to use the bag to better humanity.  Hepplewhite then kills Dr. Fall, although how he did it with the future scalpel which is designed to NOT kill is not shown.

In the next scene, Hepplewhite is clean-shaven, in a suit and introduced to a room of doctors as William Fall.  Darn the luck, the future techno-clerk gets a warning that the bag has been used for nefarious purposes.  He deactivates the bag and Hepplewhite slices his own throat.  Again, sadly off-camera.

The broad framework of the episode is true to the short story, but there is a major departure in the characters.  Doc Fall’s pal in the episode, Hepplewhite, is not in the short story.  However, his “partnership” with Fall, his greed, the falling out, and the denouement are all assumed by an 18 year old blonde who is the sick girl’s sister.  Gotta say, I would have preferred the blonde babe to the gaping maw of Hepplewhite.

Pointless changes: The clerk of the future is name Gillings on TV, but Gillis in the short story.  The doctor is named Fall on TV, but Full in the short story.  The bag is from 2098 on TV, but 2450 in the short story.  Actually, that last one might make sense.  In 1970, 20 years after the story was published, these instruments probably didn’t seem quite so crazy.

Also, in the story, the doctor takes a blue pill that “hits him like a thunderbolt.”  Combined with the 18 year old blonde sidekick, that could have been a verrrry different episode.

Overall, a good episode.  I don’t see that the changes helped, but it they didn’t wreck the story either.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy: Burgess Meredith was one of the kings with 4 appearances in starring roles.  Jason Wingreen was in 3 episodes.  William Challee was in 2 episodes.  C. Lindsay Workman was in one episode.  Tragically, Brit Marling was in zero, having not been born.
  • A third story in this episode was a trifle called The Nature of the Enemy, Serling’s first original contribution since the Pilot.  It is just crap, and evidence that Rod Serling might have been a great writer, but picking up a paycheck was his priority.
  • From the short story:

Dogged biometricians had pointed out with irrefutable logic that mental sub-normals were outbreeding the mental normals and super-normals, and that the process was occurring on an exponential curve. 

Amen, brother.

Night Gallery – Room with a View (S1E2)

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ngroom08Diane Keaton is working as a nurse for the bed-ridden Mr. Bauman whose accent makes Judd Hirsch in Independence Day sound like my Dutch grandfather.  She is also fooling around with Vic the handyman who has a strange habit of waxing the car in long black pants and no shirt.  We know this because Bauman has a pair of binoculars trained on them; don’t assume he is checking her out.

Keaton gets to his room 6 minutes late.  She is perky and takes his nagging with a smile.  He grills her on boyfriends and lovers.  Keaton made her TV debut only 1 month earlier in The Love Boat.  That is easier to believe than that it was only 2 years later that she was in The Godfather.

ngroom04Mrs. Bauman comes into the bedroom to check on her husband.  Keaton’s role in the episode is just to be a cute young nurse, not a sexpot or object of fantasy.  That being said, Mrs. Bauman BLOWS HER OFF THE SCREEN!  Holy crap is Angel Tompkins (I know, who?) sexy in this!  Screen-caps do not do her justice.

After his wife leaves to run errands, Bauman again picks up the binoculars and sees her talking to the shirtless waxer.  He’s still working on the same spot, so he’s not even very good at it.  He talks to Keaton for another minute, then looks back.  He needs to pan up as the action has moved upstairs to his quarters as the waxer is about to become the waxee.

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Diane Keaton demonstrating Hollywood’s expertise of firearms.

Bauman asks her to have her boyfriend Vic take a look at a pistol that he keeps by his bed.  Bauman claims to be so ignorant of the weapon that he doesn’t even know how to unload it.  He watches through the binoculars as Keaton looks for her boyfriend beside the one shiny spot on the car, then heads upstairs with the loaded pistol to find him.

We hear the sound of gunshots, but because the story is told from Bauman’s POV, we don’t know which, or if both, were shot.

Really a pretty slight tale, running only about 11 minutes.  Still, it is interesting to see the young Diane Keaton, and certainly to see Angel Tompkins.  Unfortunately, Bauman’s accent is such a caricature that it is impossible to enjoy his performance.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy: Joseph Wiseman was in One More Pallbearer 8 years earlier.  I don’t recall him having the accent.
  • Diane Keaton had only three more TV roles before going into the movies.  She had a great run in the 70’s with The Godfather, Play It Again Sam, Sleeper, Godfather II, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Interiors, Manhattan, and Reds — a couple of them even without sleeping with the director.
  • OK, Reds came out in 1981, but was so long it probably started in the 70’s.
  • Sadly, the more deserving Angel Tompkins has no IMDb credits in the last 25 years.  I assume she married some rich guy and retired.  God bless America!

Curtains (1983)

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curtains0220 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part XVI.

I actually had some hope for this one going in.  It is still in print as a stand-alone at Amazon, although I’m not sure what it means that the DVD cost $3 more than the Blu-Ray.  Usually it would be a case of supply and demand.  But is anyone really demanding this, in any format?

Unfortunately, the transfer is this collection is god-awful, making it impossible to properly evaluate the film.  It has quite a few decent reviews online — ranging form not half-bad to calling it a gem — so I’m willing to blame the transfer for my boredom.

It gets off to a cheesy start with Samantha Eggar holding a gun on an unseen man as she yaps on and on.  The credits roll over the scene like it is a TV episode.  The camera draw back to reveal that she is an actress on stage performing for John Vernon.

Vernon and Samantha go to see a doctor Pendleton.  During their meeting, she freaks out and tries to stab Vernon.  When alone, they laugh as this was a ruse to get her admitted to the sanitarium to research a role.  She is no R.P. McMurphy as the residents bring her down rather than her enlivening them.

Also unlike McMurphy, she escapes from the institution — after hearing that Vernon is auditioning other actresses for the role she is researching.  Six women are invited to Vernon’s house to audition.  Of course, they start getting picked off, even before they get there in one case.

curtains07Probably the best kill is of the aspiring actress who is supposed to be a pro ice skater.  She can skate, but her movements and tiny leaps make it clear that the director of this movie did not hire a pro ice skater as an actress.  An old hag, or maybe a hag wearing a hag mask, begins skating toward her with a scythe.

There are more auditions, dead bodies, a head in a toilet  The conclusion has an interesting wrinkle.  Really, though, my copy is so awful, it is hard to care.

Post-Post:

  • Director Richard Ciupka asked to have his name removed from the credits.  The director credited on-screen is John Stryker — the name of John Vernon’s character.
  • Writer Robert Guza, Jr. shows up for the 2nd time in this collection (along with Prom Night).
  • Samantha Eggar was nominated for an Oscar, and won a Golden Globe for The Collector.
  • John Vernon was inexplicably snubbed by the Academy for his work as Dean Wormer in Animal House.