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One Step Beyond – Premonition (03/10/59)

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Oh, One Step Beyond, every week I find something to compliment you on.  It might be the direction, the set design, the use of stock footage, or Cloris Leachman’s slinky dress.  But the visual triumphs are always in service of a slice of the genre pie that is shrinking every week.  Honestly, after this week’s slight entry, I don’t know how much lower OSB can go.

Dude, you never go full-Biden!

In 1901, rambunctious 11-year old Lisa is being hunted down for her ballet lesson.  The maid and her French personal ballet instructor find her on the veranda.  So, yeah, her widowed father has money.  When Lisa sees her father watching, she runs to him and he goes full-Biden, hugging her and picking her up.  It is a little strange because the 11 year old is played by a 15 year old who is a little too curvy for the part and a little too chunky for the ballet.  Oh well, in 5 years, Hollywood will be casting her as the mother.

She shows off her skillz for her father, ending up with a series of pirouettes.  Frenchie implores her to go faster, faster.  When she is about to burst into flames, the teacher tells her to slow down.  But Lisa seems to be in a trance.  She continues spinning and can’t stop even as she sees the ceiling begin to crumble and a large chandelier crashes down on her.  This is one of those visual touches that make the series bearable — really well-done.

As the title of the episode might spoil, this did not really happen — it was the titular premonition.  And it is the only premonition in the episode.  It ain’t exactly a train derailment or the Titanic.  See what I mean?  Lisa collapses, and a doctor is called.  He asks her father if she suffers from Vertigo.  I know it left me unconscious the first time I sat through it.

Lisa awakens and begins screaming that the chandelier fell on her.  This is a high-pitched killer of a scream like the kid in the OSB episode Epilogue.  And this caterwauling goes on for almost a full minute.  John Newland, who directed both Epilogue and this episode had no idea how to restrain kids.  I find a 6 mm nylon line perfectly adequate.

That night, Lisa goes to see the chandelier and gets hysterical at the sight of it.  Any time she must enter the room, she will not walk under it.  The sight or her father or maid walking under it gives her a conniption.

Ten years later — I repeat, ten years later — her caring father has a carpenter finally examine the chandelier fixture.  The carpenter says it could withstand an earthquake.  He calls Lisa in so she can hear that for herself.  She is still terrified of it, though.  Her fiance tries to convince her that they can safely dance under it because he was not in her vision.  He’s really a dick about it, reducing her to tears.  But he finally waltzes her beneath it and she is even able smile about it.

We skip ahead to 1947 — I repeat, 1947 — and Lisa is having a coming-out party for her grand-daughter, which meant something completely different back then.  She seems very happy with life until she hears the chandelier rattling in the ballroom.  Lisa rushes into the ballroom, but we just get a shot of the back of John Newland’s head.  We hear a scream and the sound of the chandelier crashing to the floor.

But who was killed?  Lisa’s grand-daughter was pointlessly also named Lisa.  So was that old Lisa screaming or young Lisa?  Was the premonition 46 years ago just that someone named Lisa would die?  Newland even f*cks with us, delivering his usual, “We know to whom it happened, we know when it happened . . . ” spiel.  Well, spill it dude — who was killed?

Again, there were great elements to the episode.  An Analytical Guide to Television’s One Step Beyond (AGOSB) discusses how cleverly the chandelier is photographed much better than I can.  On the other hand, the book also says this is a high point of the 1st season.  I just find it hard to get excited about a premonition that comes true 46 years later.  She could have predicted a World War and been right twice.  A lot of things can happen in almost half a century.

So, well-presented, but these stories need work.

Miscellaneous

The real mystery is, who is Debbie?

  • The episode description on Amazon says, “Debbie is haunted by the fear of her own demise at the hands of a chandelier in her home.” [1]
  • AGOSB refer’s to Debbie’s vision of the ceiling cracking.
  • The cast list in AGOSB includes “Pamela Lincoln (Debbie).”  Strangely, none of the other actors have their character name included.
  • Per IMDB, Pamela Lincoln plays “Older Lisa Garrick.”
  • There is no question that the girl with the visions and her name-sake grand-daughter are both named Lisa.  So where is this Debbie coming from?
  • [1]  Hands of a chandelier?

Tales from the Crypt – Report from the Grave (06/14/96)

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Elliot and Arianne are walking through the cemetery.  Elliott has a contraption that he wants to hook up to a dead brain.  Dude, Arianne is right there; and she’s no rocket scientist!  Quite the opposite, she ridicules his narrow focus on “physics” and “facts”.  She believes metaphysics has the answers.

They enter a mausoleum which holds the body of Valdemar Tymrak.  Elliott says he is #13 in the World Class Psychos Trading Card set.  Literally — Elliot pulls out the rookie card with his name on it.  He reads, “26 certified kills, 19 women, 7 men.  Tymrak was a renowned mesmerist who apparently hypnotized his victims with a single stare.  Under his control, they were made to commit terrible and depraved acts before he murdered them and bathed in their blood.”  Elliott believes Tymrak’s powerful brain makes him a good candidate to hook up to his device.  Some people might have preferred final revelations from Gandhi or Hawking or Einstein or Jeffrey Epstein, but they didn’t have no trading cards.

Elliott opens the tomb and Arianne winces at the smell.  Elliott explains that the smell is formaldehyde.  Well, wouldn’t it have smelled worse without formaldehyde?  For any trip to a exhumation, a COVID-19 N95 mask dipped in camphor or catshit would probably be a good idea.  Anyhoo, I happily suspend disbelief and accept that this guy’s machine can read a dead man’s thoughts.  But after being embalmed?  C’mon, man!

The whole time, Elliott has been a little snippy because he suspects Arianne stole some research papers from him.  Arianne says she has no interest in such things.  She uses a red marker to draw a heart on the palm of his hand and says, “You’ll always have my heart in your hands.”  In a good episode of TFTC, that would literally have come true.

He hooks Tymrak up to the device.  While adjusting the settings, he sees his stolen research papers spill out of Arianne’s bag.  Fortuitously, she happens to be putting the other headset on her own noggin.  He angrily cranks up the volume causing her to scream.  Once she starts shrieking, he suddenly becomes very concerned.  Well, what did he expect?  He pulls the headset off of her and she stops screaming, but I suspect that heart drawn in his palm will be smudged in the morning.

Oh, Arianne was killed.  Elliott wakes up in an asylum due to his guilt — especially after he learns Arianne only took his papers to submit for an award for him.  He dreams of Arianne and 2 other topless women, but seems to have actually awakened before flies land on his window and assemble in the shape of a new circuit.  Elliott uses this new circuit to upgrade his device.  Like every WordPress / Excel / Adobe upgrade in the past 5 years, it is a disaster.

Maybe I fell asleep and missed something — I admit to the falling asleep part — but nothing after this point makes any sense.  He, of course, decides to use his new device to resurrect Arianne.  He appears to have procured 3 dead women for the process, none of them Arianne as far as I can tell.  What are the 3 women for?  Was it just because he dreamed of them?  I dream of topless women all the time, but they don’t show up at my job.  He turns on the device and papers start swirling around the lab like Nakatomi Plaza.

Arianne appears in a ghostly form, then hardens just like Elliott.  That is not the way I expected her to return.  He was working on a scientific approach, not supernatural.  He is OK with it, apparently, as within minutes he is banging her.

Unfortunately, the device must remain on, and Tymrak returns through the same gateway.  Although, he seemed to take a different off-ramp.  Arianne and Elliott are in the bedroom when they hear Tymrak tearing things up.  They rush back to the lab, and Tymrak breaks down the lab door to kill them.  Well, wait — wouldn’t he have also materialized in the lab?  Where did he go?  There was no English bird waiting to have sex with him — he killed them all.  It’s just that lack of foresight that kept him out of the Top 10.

Anyway, Elliott has to shut down the machine to get rid of Tymrak, and Arianne is lost in the process.  A few days later, Elliott is found to have committed suicide.  He is bloody in the tub, probably from trying to scrub the smell of formaldehyde off his wiener.  I guess we are to assume that he was distraught after killing Arianne twice, something not even Tymrak ever pulled off.  Or maybe this was his attempt to join her in the after-life.

However, we also see a sign that she returned to him.  The police notice a heart drawn on the window, but I still can’t figure out what they are getting at.  An officer says to a detective, “It’s on the window sir.  There’s something written in the dew.”  Well, drawn not written — there is a heart.  The officer seems to think it is strange that it is on the outside, and that all the windows are painted shut.  I get the callback to the heart she drew on his palm, but what is the big deal about the dew being outside and the window painted shut?

Of course we are meant to assume Arianne came back and drew the heart, but how?  There was no fore-shadowing of an ability to come back yet again.  Why can’t Tymrak come back?  OK, Elliott was reading a book about talking to the dead, so did he actually find a way bring her back without the device?  Why did he bring her back outside?  Was she floating outside his 2nd floor window?  Can she fly?

Another missed opportunity.  The pacing is humorless and plodding; however, the actors are great in their roles.  Tymrak’s make-up looks like a drunk 3rd grader put it on in the car; however, when combined with the editing, it is surprisingly effective.  The episode is done in by the complete lack of self-awareness, irony, campiness or gore that is supposed to be the sine qua non of the series.

Other Stuff:

  • Title Analysis:  Hunh?  There is a grave — or at least a mausoleum — but no report is filed from it.
  • Great comment on the You Tube version:  Any less pixels ……………….. would make this radio.
  • The awful screen-caps above are from the DVD.  I mucked up the color somehow.

The Devil’s Bookkeeper – Carlos Martinez (1931)

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“Across the roof-top, a dim shadow slipped silently to a barred window, like a dull gray wraith that merged perfectly with the curling fingers of fog drifting in from the lake.”  For those unfamiliar with shadows, we are told that it made no noise.

The “hissing intake of breath, unmistakably a woman’s” reveals who is casting that shadow.  She cuts a circular hole in the window, and fires two shots at a man sleeping in bed: “two dull clicks from the blue metal in his fist.”  Wait, is the killer a man or woman?  Dude breathes like a lady.

The next morning, Detective Dan Conley tells Captain Steele, “Mugs Brandon was bumped off last night in that roof-top apartment of his.”  Conley says the killer is a woman because, “There was one footprint on the roof under that window, and it was made by the rubber sole from a woman’s shoe.”  Steele suspects it was either one of Mugs’ old molls, a Clancy Street Dame, a Hallway Baby, or Totie Fields.[1]  Conley more specifically suspects, “Clerical Clara.  It looks like her work.”

Steele responds by spitting in “the brass cuspidor which is a part of every police captain’s furniture.”  That response, though disgusting, is well-earned.  Steele points out, You know dam’ well that dame ain’t never been mixed up in this booze racket.”  OK, so how exactly did this look like her work then?  And by the way, in 1931 was leaving the “n” off of “damn” enough to bamboozle the censors?

Despite his captain’s well-reasoned spitting, Conley heads over to Clara Beaumont’s accounting office.  As well he might, as she is a “blonde beauty . . . between twenty-five and thirty-five, according to her mood.”  She denies knowing Mugs Brandon, and Conley notes her feet are 2 sizes smaller than the print left at the murder scene.  Clara says, “You dicks make me sick”.  Sensing there would be no double-entry posting with the bookkeeper that night, Conley leaves.

Ten minutes later, a “quietly-dressed girl” enter’s the office.  Clara  feels threatened because the girl has a pistol, and also is 10 years younger than her. The visitor is “a dark slender girl of about twenty-two, with the regal high-breasted carriage that speaks of breeding in any language.”  They exchange some snappy dialog, but the purpose of the visit is not clear.  Not having Conley’s eye for feet, the girl also suspects Clara shot Mugs.  She holds a gun on Clara all during the witty repartee, and threatens to kill her next time she sees her.  Then leaves.  Hunh?

Two days later, Mugs is buried.  After the festivities, “Sergeant Conley could not have told you what prompted him to return to the apartment where Mugs Brandon had been killed” (i.e. the writer couldn’t think of a reason).  In Mugs’ desk, he finds a box containing $50,000 and a list of names written in Clara’s hand:

  • Jake Cling, $5,000.
  • Soapy Taylor, $5,000.
  • Toad Wilson, $3,000

Once he remembers that “Jake” is just a nickname, he realizes what all three men have in common — they were recently shot.

Clara shows up and pulls a gun on Conley.  She is owed the dough for killing the three men on the list.  Then the younger woman, Mugs’ moll Carmen, shows up and pulls a gun on Clara.  Clara is able to elbow Carmen in the mouth, and the ladies start fighting.

20 minutes later, when it is clear this brawl is not going to lead to any ripped clothing or them kissing, Conley tries to escape.  But Clara holds them both at gunpoint.  The cops bust in, but Clara is able to get away.

It goes on, introducing a couple of unnecessary characters, but maintains a good pace.  Bonus points for Clara hiding out disguised as a messenger boy at the end.  My mental image of that outfit is pretty cute, but wholly impractical as the scandalous décolletage would have given her way immediately.  But think of the tips . . . from the customers, I mean.

Some crackling prose and good zingers make this a pretty good read . . . of the short story, I mean.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] No one under 80 will get that reference.  I am under 80.  Ergo I don’t get my own reference.  What?  It is 2:10 am.
  • First published in the August 1931 issue of Gun Molls.
  • Also that month:  Lou Gehrig played his 1,000th consecutive game — nothing can stop him now!

Science Fiction Theater – The Miracle of Doctor Dove (08/31/56)

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We start, as always on SFT, in a generically named institution — tonight, The Office of Scientific Security.  Jim Spencer is investigating the disappearance of three leading food scientists, all of them patients of the same doctor.  He is curious why these scientists chose to visit that doctor when there were other doctors closer to their homes with smaller index fingers. 

He finds it especially strange because all 3 scientists are over 70.  Wait, why are these geezers even still working?  And they are the leading scientists?  Where are the new food scientists of tomorrow coming from?  And accordion players?  He has heard that another patient, Dr. Kenneth White, has closed his bank account, sold his wife and car, and paid his bills.  

Spencer goes undercover to the doctor for a physical.  In the waiting room, he observes on the doctor’s diploma that he graduated in 1907. He exclaims to the nurse,  “That would make him at least 70!”  Well, yeah, if he graduated from medical school at age 21 it would.  Maybe there was less to learn then.  They were only up to COVID-3.

Spencer recruits the nurse as part of his investigation.  He tells her to take time off to care for a “sick relative” so he can send Nurse Kinder as a spy to take her place.  Kinder can find no connection to the missing scientists, but does discover a secret lab in the office.  Dr. Dove interrupts them, and Kinder introduces Spencer as her fiancee.  Dove lets it slip that his dog is 33 years old.  

This is apparently good enough to get a warrant because they wiretap Dr. Dove’s office.  Sadly, that does not work, so they have Nurse Kinder do some surveillance.  She sees a man named Gorman leave the lab.   He is rolling down his sleeve like he just had an injection, or forgot his handkerchief.  They get his fingerprints and learn that he died 18 years ago, which is shocking because he looks like he died only 10 years ago.

They learn that his fingerprints belonged to a forger who died in prison, and that Dove was the prison doctor.  By wiretapping Dove’s lab, they learn that Gorman is providing forged passports in exchange for injections of a youth serum which, frankly, doesn’t seem to be doing him much good.  

Sweet Jesus, this thing is only half way through!  Dull story short, Dr. Dove has discovered a serum which will add 50 years to the average human life.  But the real stunner is that  SFT actually came up with an interesting twist.  If life expectancy increased that dramatically, then the population would quickly increase, leading to mass starvation as the lines at Cracker Barrel grow to a mile long. 

Ergo, Dr. Dove is keeping the doctors alive so they can research how to greatly increase food production before he reveals his youth serum to the world.  Dove says, “Their work may take years.  My serum will keep them alive and active.  And when people notice that they never wrinkle, never weaken, never grow holder, then they will disappear and show up elsewhere” with younger girlfriends.  

Blah blah.  Lockhart is sent to jail for passport fraud.  Without the serum, he shrivels up and dies of old age off-camera in his cell within days.  Or so Hillary Clinton would have you believe.

Dreadful.

This is how bored even the host of the show was.  Hey, the camera’s still running, dude!

Other Stuff:

  • The book Science Fiction Theatre: A History of the Television Program tells us Gene Lockhart picked up a cool $2,000 for his work as Dr. Dove.  It was worth it to not have an actor tell us how dreamy Adlai Stevenson is, and that Eisenhower is Hitler.  
  • Strangely, the chapter devoted to this episode has several typos.  I like to think the author was easing his pain the same way I am.
  • Epstein didn’t kill himself.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Baby-Blue Expression (12/20/60)

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Executive James Barrett barks at his secretary to book him a flight to Toronto.  He is leaving the Muldoon merger in the hands of young Philip Weaver.  After handing off the file, Barrett calls his dimwit, baby-talking, still-in-bed trophy wife who thinks Canada is overseas.  What could such a mature, educated titan of industry see in this numbskull?  Oh, she’s 29 years younger than him.  Not quite the 37 year difference we saw in yesterday’s OSB, but he’s got time to put another trophy on his shelf.  It just might not be a participation trophy by that time.

Mrs. Barrett meets Phillip for lunch.  This being AHP, they discuss their plan to kill off Mr. Barrett during his Toronto trip.  Phillip says he will mail her the details of their murder plan.  Wait, what?  He’s putting it in writing and mailing it to the victim’s home?  God help Mr. Muldoon if Phillip is really this dense.

The next morning, the doorman comes up to their apartment to drop off the mail and pick up Mr. Barrett’s luggage.  After her husband leaves for the airport, Mrs. Barrett rifles through the mail until she finds Phillip’s letter.  She reads, “By this time, my sweet, your adoring husband is on his way to the airport.”  Phillip is pretty trusting that the USPS would get that letter there on the right day.  Even more-so that it would be only be delivered after Barrett left, although he did improve his odds by mailing it the same day as the Monkey Ward catalog.

The letter continues on, instructing her to “write James a good, smarmy letter, leaving nothing to the imagination.”  She is to mail it to Toronto so the police find it in his room.  “That’s all you have to do,” he assures her.  Then he suggests that she throw a cocktail party that very afternoon as an alibi, which seems more complicated than writing a dirty letter.  Finally, he does show a slight bit of brains as he reminds her to destroy the incriminating letter.  Although, inexplicably, he does add a PS that he just recruited a sap named Oswald to be a patsy in assassinating the president in 3 years, includes a sketch of the grassy knoll, a copy of a $10,000 check signed by LBJ, and a clean set of fingerprints.

Mrs. Barrett . . . she doesn’t seem to have a first name.  Let’s just call this treacherous, cheating ninny Helen.  No reason at all.  Just seems like a Helen.[1]  So Helen immediately addresses an envelope to her husband’s hotel in Canada.  After getting stuck because she doesn’t know what “smarmy” means — no, seriously — she pulls a picture of Phillip out of the desk drawer for inspiration.  Wait a minute — she keeps a photo of the guy she is cheating with in her desk at home?  And this is not a wallet size photo, this is an 8 x 10 glamour shot.  It is even framed!  These are the dumbest criminals ever.

Helen begins the letter, “Dearest James, you might think I am a feather-brain for writing to you so quickly”  Yada yada.  “Your adoring wife, Poopsie.”  She stuffs the letter into the envelope and goes downstairs to mail it.  

Back in their apartment, Helen begins calling people to attend her cocktail party.  I have to give her credit, though, she remembers more phone numbers than I can.  Suddenly this brainiac remembers that she left Phillip’s framed picture on her desk where Gladys might find it.  She puts it back in the drawer.  Then she remembers she also left his murder-instruction letter on the desk.  Uh oh, she realizes she accidentally mailed the murder instructions to her husband.  She runs back to the mailbox hoping to catch the mail man picking up, but just misses him.  

Back in her apartment, she is mortified.  I really felt for her, sitting on the sofa, almost catatonic with anxiety. Although in my case, it would have been because I had to attend a cocktail party.  On the other hand, she does look pretty snappy in her little black cocktail dress.  Gladys suggests that she go to the Post Office and see if she can retrieve the letter.  She does, but again just misses the letter as it is sent out.

As the guests begin to arrive, she calls her husband.  His office says he never checked into his hotel, so Phillip must have already whacked him.  She is distraught that her husband is dead and their plan will be discovered.  Just then, the doorman arrives with a delivery from the liquor store and good news, but I repeat myself.  He tells her the postman returned her letter because she had forgotten to put a stamp on it.  The doorman then proudly tells her that he added the postage and sent the letter back out.

Of course, AHP’s sheer professionalism makes this better than most of the crap that airs then or now.  However, it did not completely seem to gel.  I felt like Helen’s pursuit of the letter at the mailbox and post office should have had a more farcical tone.  Maybe an hour episode could have pulled that off.  Also, while I did appreciate her stoic reaction to the pressure she was under, it should have been better used at the end to emphasize the twist.  If she had finally come alive with excitement upon hearing the the letter was returned, she would have lit up the screen.  Then the zinger that the doorman re-mailed it would have been devastating in contrast.  As played, it was just too flat to evoke any reaction in the viewer.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] I only realized later that the housekeeper in this episode is coincidentally also named Helen.  Just doesn’t seem like a name of someone who keeps things tidy.  Let’s call her Gladys and keep Helen for the evil pea-brain slob.
  • Sarah Marshall (Helen) was the mother in Twilight Zone’s classic Little Girl Lost.