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Tales from the Crypt – The Kidnapper (06/07/96)

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Englishman Danny Skeggs is sitting on a park bench and begins chatting up a woman there with her infant. With his English accent he will have her effortlessly charmed and captivated in no time. She will be swept away by his sophistication and mistake his crisp enunciation for a natural wit.

Or would if he weren’t actually in England. So really, he just comes off as a total wanker to this Englishwoman. He says his girlfriend had a baby last year, and picks her baby up out of the stroller. The woman is understandably terrified as this no-accented stranger dangerously holds her baby in the air as he has a flashback.

He remembers when Teresa first walked into his pawnshop, single and pregnant; but more illustrative of her poor life-choices, walking into a pawnshop. She offered up her grandmother’s cameo bracelet. Danny says it is worth 350 pounds, but that he can only afford to give her 75. He becomes very concerned when she begins having pregnant-lady pains near the faux-Persian carpet and passes out.

Not concerned enough to call an ambulance, mind you, but concerned enough to ask this stranger to move in with him . . . somewhere right there in the middle. He says she could stay at least until she has the baby. He says he is single, he owns the pawnshop, and that nobody should be alone at Christmas. Teresa tells him that the baby’s father really hurt her and she is not looking for anyone to replace him. She could use a friend, though — particularly a sap who will feed and shelter her — so she accepts.

Months later, Danny has predictably fallen in love with the pregnant woman. Whether it was the erratic mood swings or her massive swollen breasts is hard to say. He has never been happier despite this not being a sexual relationship. She chuckles over his story of drying a hamster in a microwave oven, but it might have been the wine . . . that the pregnant woman was drinking. Teresa is, however, horrified when he says he loves her.

Cut to some time later as the toddler — who was a massive birthmark on his back — is crying. Danny just wants them to go out to a movie, probably one I will be attending. She tells him to go alone, which also describes their sexual relationship. He complains that “the baby — Mr. Needy — is draining the life out of her.” He complains the baby always needs to be the center of attention as he throws a dish against the wall, tears down some drying clothes, and yells an insult about the baby’s birthmark. She responds with a well-deserved and well-delivered FU.

They make up and the next day take the baby for a stroll in the park. While Danny is getting them some hot dogs, Teresa notices two mimes having a loud argument, presumably over who is the most annoying. As it gets physical, she tries to break it up. They take a bow, quite pleased with themselves, as it was just a performance. Well, wait, they are mimes, after all. Why did their performance include talking? Anyhoo, it was a ruse to enable another mime to steal Teresa’s baby. No wonder people hate mimes.

Danny chases the mime, but the mime gets away despite dragging the stroller backward up stairs, then running with a baby in his arms, getting trapped in an invisible box, and then running against the wind. Waaaait a minute. Danny is laughing. That never happens around mimes. This was a scam on top of a ruse on top of a performance! And still somehow not very interesting.

Danny planned the whole thing in hopes that getting rid of the baby would bring some peace, tranquility, and nudity to their relationship. Instead, he finds that Teresa is distraught. He awkwardly begins cuddling with her and offers to help her make their own baby. She pushes him off the bed and shouts, “Don’t you understand? I don’t want you. I want my baby!”

Which brings us back to the opening scene where Danny is holding the woman’s baby. He says one baby is about like any other. He takes off with the baby hoping it will bring some peace to Teresa. Fortunately, he is caught and beaten bloody by some bloody good citizens. In the tussle, he sees the baby has a huge birthmark on his back.

Honestly, the twist is so weak that it didn’t even register as a twist for me. I just thought, “Hmmm, it’s the same baby.” It lacked any trace of the irony, the revenge, the come-uppance, or the random cosmic cruelty that even the most middling TFTC episode requires. This was just an utter nothing.

You’re probably thinking the same thing that I am – I waited 6 months for this?

Science Fiction Theater – The Throwback (09/24/56)

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At yet another SFT generically named college, “Geneticist Anna Adler [1] is conducting a series of intensive experiments in an attempt to discover what specific hereditary traits are transmitted in animals.”

Two years ago, Dr. Adler discovered that her lab-rats were so sensitive to high-pitched sounds that they were driven into a frenzy.  “By careful breeding, the professor developed a pure strain of these mice.”  Now, eight generations later, she has bred vermin that react crazily to an ultrasonic whistle.  Congratulations for ending up where you started.  A government grant must have been involved.

Dr. Hughes tells her, “Congratulations, you’ve created an inherited characteristic!”  Well, didn’t the fact that it was enhanced by breeding mean that it was already an inherited characteristic?  Breed circumcised baby boys, then you’ll impress me.[2] No, seriously, [2] now.

Hughes has also made some breakthroughs in breeding with Dalmatians.  C’mon man, you know what I mean.  He has a pup that is constantly sniffing around the corner of her cage.  He says that is where the pup’s grandfather had his food dish; or maybe where he dragged his ass.  His conclusion is that she inherited that memory.

Dr. Adler says it is preposterous to think that memory can be transmitted through genes.  Dr. Hughes says this accounts for deja vu, although they were afraid to use that exotic word on TV in 1956.  She challenges him to find a family with 100 generations of written memories to test his theory.

A hot blonde walks in and busts them for quarreling as usual.  Frequent SFT viewers know that scientists on this series frequently have hot daughters, and often the daughters date their father’s proteges.  Although there have been many female scientists on this series, I think this is the first with the cliché daughter.  Dr. Adler says her daughter Marie disproves the genetic memory theory.  “Distinguished scientists on both sides of the family, and Marie has not one brain in her head.  How do you explain that?”  Marie says, “I’m a throwback to Aunt Elenora.  She didn’t have a brain in her head either”.

Anna goes to teach a class, and Marie invites Dr. Hughes to go to a fencing match with her.  Marie says Joe Castle is just as good a swordsman as his father, which is the plot of a video I just saw at Pornhub.  Hughes starts thinking maybe genetic memory has something to do with it.  After the exhibition, Castle’s father says his son is training for the Olympics despite only fencing for a year.  Hughes excitedly asks him, “How did you feel when you first picked up a foil?  Did you have any sensation of having fenced before?  Or dueled before?  Did you have a feeling the movement or stance or holding of the foil came instinctively?”  Joe says literally, “What, who, hunh?”

Marie tells him about Hughes’ genetic memory theory.  Fortuitously, Castle Sr’s hobby is genealogy.  Back at casa de Castle, the father shows Hughes paintings and scrapbooks going back to the 1300s.  They are so old, he used 23 and Thee to do the research.  Hughes notices that Giuseppe Castillo looks exactly like Joe Castle.  Not only that — and I am serious here — he takes it as a confirmation of his theory that Joe Castle’s name is the anglicized equivalent of Giuseppe Castillo.

Shockingly, Dr. Adler is skeptical.  Hughes angrily demands that she wake up and smell the coffee. [3]  “The almost identical facial structure — the chin, the nose, the eyes!  The enormous similarity in their personality!  Both men fearless to the point of recklessness!  The both of them rebels against social convention!  And both of them wonderful swordsmen!  Genes can carry memories!”  Well maybe memory could play a part in the fencing skills, but the rest of his tirade does nothing to support his hypothesis.

Hughes also makes a plausible point by observing that Giuseppe Castillo raced a horse called Esmeralda, and Joe Castle named his race car Esmeralda.  However, he squanders this bit of credibility by predicting Joe Castle’s death.  Giuseppe Castillo died after being thrown from his horse Esmeralda in a race when he was 22 years, 180 days old.  Joe is racing his car next week when he will be exactly that age.  This load of Esmeralda-manure gets Dr. Adler starting to believe in genetic memory even though it does not seem relevant at all.

Joe sits out the race.  When there is a crash in the race, all agree that is a sign that if Joe had been in the race, he would have been killed, but that it would have been great TV.

This one was painful to sit through.  The premise was Ludacris, and the ideas presented to support it were infantile.  Dr. Adler sports a heavy German accent.  She calls her own daughter out as a moron and the girl has no reaction.  Peter Hanson (Dr. Hughes) has an annoying style of shouting his lines when he is the least bit angry or excited.   Joe Castle is portrayed as a muscle-head boob, then at least sharp enough to race cars, and ultimately Hughes gives him a lab coat and recruits him onto the research team.

Just a mess.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Oh, I get it.  She is named after Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler.  Or maybe famed acting coach Stella Adler.  No, definitely Alfred. [1a]
  • [1a] Cheap shot as usual; Virginia Christine had a huge career.
  • [2] I didn’t really want to go there, but couldn’t figure out how to describe how women could be bred to naturally have boob jobs.  I mean, they couldn’t be born that way.  It’s just creepy.
  • [3] Virginia Christine went on to appear in Folger’s Coffee commercials as Mrs. Olson for 21 years.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Man with Two Faces (12/13/60)

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Alice and Mildred are walking out of a theater.  Mildred says it is amazing what they can do with the bible, and Alice mentions how long the movie was.  I figured it was The 10 Commandments, but we see part of a sign advertising The Wives of Solomon.  That does not seem to be a real movie.  The IMDb auto-complete returns The Real Wives of South Boston.  If 10 commandments take 3.5 hours, how long would Solomon’s 1,000 wives take?  Give the answer in square cubits.

The ladies go their separate ways.  About a block away, Alice gets mugged.  As she is crossing the street a mugger jumps out from behind a crate.  I mean, to the viewer, he is behind the crate.  Oddly, to Alice, he would have been in full view, crouching in front of the crate.  But that is just a split second; the robbery itself feels real.  The elderly woman does not give up the purse easily, so they wrestle a bit and she gets a nasty bruise.

The next morning, Alice gets dolled up to go to the police station.  We also meet her daughter and son-in-law who are living with her, having just moved back from California.  Leo seems to be a layabout who should be out looking for a job.  Mabel is . . . well, I don’t know what she is, but she insanely hot.  Way too good for Leo or the name Mabel.

She meets with Lt. Meade who is wearing a tie so thin it makes a bolo tie look like a lobster bib.  Alice says she got a good look at the man’s face.  Meade gives her a stack of mugshot books to look through.  Alice methodically reviews the hundreds of photos before she finds one that looks familiar.  One of the men looks just like Leo, but the name on the mugshot is William Draves.

Back at the house, Leo is nagging Mildred to give him $20.  When she refuses, he tells her she spends more than that on a permanent even though she appears to have never had a permanent unless it was a temporary.  She tells him she knows he will just take the $20 and waste it at the track.  Leo is lazy and a mooch, but is wearing a tie; and, unlike Lt. Meade, one with two dimensions.  He claims to have been a stockbroker in California, so tries to get Alice to give him $20 to “invest”.  Mabel tells him to beat it.

Alice asks what Leo did for a living in California.  Mabel says she has told her mother several times that Leo was a successful stockbroker.  That’s how she got her furs and jewelry.  In a way-too-long scene, Mabel assures her mother that Leo is a good man.  He just needs time to get established in the east.  Alice is still worried about that mugshot, though.

Blah blah blah.  There is a lot to like in the episode.  The actors, especially Alice and Meade, do great jobs.  The twist is excellent, and atypical of what we usually get with AHP.  Unfortunately, it just feels bloated in more than one scene.  Still, despite dragging a little, it is worth watching for the ending.  Rather than reading this, you should watch the episode; or do just about anything else, really.

SPOILER:

In a  nutshell, Alice returns to the police station to get more info on Draves.  Meade figures out that Draves is Leo.  Meade comes to Alice’s apartment that night to arrest Leo/Draves.  The twist is that Mabel is also one of America’s Most Wanted, and not just by me.  In being a good citizen, Alice randomly stumbled across a photo that busted Leo.  No big loss there, but she also has sent her daughter to the big house.

Far be it from me to suggest a legitimate weakness with the consistently excellent AHP, but a couple of things did seem problematic.  Meade makes the point that if Alice had been searching the mugshots for a woman, she would have seen her daughter’s photo.  This is emphasized as if it were the real stinger, but it is anti-climatic.  By that point, we have already seen Alice’s reaction to the news that her daughter is a criminal.

Inexplicably, the final shot zooms in on Mabel alone as she approaches a door frame and pounds it, looking completely beaten.  She’s a crook, no better than Leo.  She does not deserve the focus of the last shot.  We should have ended up on Alice’s face.  She is the center of this scene.  Not only has she learned her daughter — who she clearly loves — is a criminal, but she is responsible for sending her own daughter to prison.  Ya got tragedy, anguish, guilt, helplessness, and just plain old bad luck.  There’s your last shot.

I would have been totally OK with running shots of Mabel under the credits, though.

Other Stuff:

  • Title Analysis:  Alice at first thought it was just the opposite — two men with one face.  However, the title actually refers to the face Leo shows to Alice versus the face he shows as a criminal.  Cool.
  • Mabel’s real name is Bethel, which might actually be worse.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.  BTW, Spring Byington (Alice) was born just 21 years after The Civil War.

 

One Step Beyond – Epilogue (02/24/59)

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The screaming!  My God, the screaming!

The very first words of the episode are screams from Carl Archer in his hotel room.  “SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!  IT WAS NO HALLUCINATION!”  Another man tries to reason with him, but Carl continues shouting, “YOU WANT TO HEAR IT AGAIN?  I’LL TELL IT  THOUSAND TIMES!” It comes as no shock when we learn the other man is a psychiatrist, Dr. Sanders.  Or that Carl just got out of rehab six weeks ago.  Flashback . . .

Carl goes to Nevada to find his wife who has filed for divorce.  He enters the hotel lobby and sees his 10 year old son Steve.  The boy seems a little hesitant, so Carl says, “I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re wondering.”  Does that ring true?  I have little intimate experience with alcoholics, and no intimate experience with 10 year old boys.  Would a father say that?  Even more incredibly, Steve says that his mother sent him down to the lobby to find out if his dad was drunk.  I’m pretty confident I can say that would never happen.

The latest in spelunking gear

Carl tells his young son he will never have to worry about his ol’ Dad being drunk again.  Before he can discuss his financial issues or the time he went to a prostitute during the war with the boy, they go to Helen Archer’s hotel room.  She avoids Carl’s hug, then sends Stevie out to put something in the car, and pick up a carton of Luckys while she and Carl talk.

Carl sees that she got the flowers he sent but that she didn’t read the note.  She tells him he was always sweet and thoughtful.  He adds, “except when I was drunk and looking for somebody to punch?”  Whoa, is that the titular one step beyond?  This is getting pretty heavy for a 1950s TV show about ghosts.  She asks why he came all the way out here.  She says, “The answer is no.”  She always used to think he could change, but has given up.  She recalls “the last time you were drunk, shouting and fighting, and the way those two policemen looked at me!  I’ve forgiven and forgotten so many times that it’s just all gone out of me!”

Carl says, “We both need to remember how horrible it was.  That’s what will stop it from happening again” which simultaneously sounds like the best and worst advice ever.  She starts crying and says, “I can’t go through this again!  I can’t!”  He tells her he was angry at her for having him committed to that awful place, but is now grateful because it made him want to sober up. Anyhoo, he asks to be taken back, she says she’ll think about it, then she takes Stevie to see an abandoned mineshaft.

What’s that, girl? Trouble at the old mine?

They go into the old silver mine which fortunately is one of them mines with natural lighting and no rats or methane.  Helen has chosen to explore this mineshaft in a white dress that comes down to her mid-calfs, so maybe she’s hitting the sauce too.  I must say, though, she looks pretty hot in that slim little dress.  As the Germans say, “She can explore mein shaft anytime” although I’m not clear on why they say half of it in English.

After Stevie talks about his father several times, Helen decides to give Carl another chance.  Steve runs ahead and crawls up onto one of the support trusses and starts hammering away at it.  There is a cave-in on both of them.

Carl is passed out drunk on the sofa in Helen’s hotel room; no wait, he’s just sleeping, but it was a reasonable mistake.  Helen bursts in, her white dress filthy, and begins screaming, “HE’S TRAPPED!  HE’S TRAPPED!  HE’S TRAPPED IN THE MINE!”  They speed back to the mine.

Inside the mine, Carl sends Helen to find more help and begins digging through the rubble to find Stevie.  He struggles with the large rocks and beams.  Luckily 2 guys heard Helen’s screams and come to help.  They finally find Stevie and he is OK.  Then he starts shrieking, “MOM!  MOM!  MOM!  MOMMY!” and runs back into cave-in area.  He starts digging in the rubble, far more effectively than his father had BTW.  He uncovers Helen’s lifeless hand sticking out from under a heavy beam.  Stevie starts shrieking, “DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!”  Seriously, 16 consecutive times in the same ear-splitting, high-pitched shriek.  This could have been a very effective moment if the kid had been better directed, or gagged.  While Stevie is screaming, Carl begins digging Helen out.

When he clears enough rubble to confirm that it Helen’s cold smokin’ hot body, he screams, “OH GOD!” and runs from the area; leaving Stevie in the cave-in site, BTW.  When he gets past the other men, he just wails incoherently and belts out the most deranged screams I’ve ever heard from a human who was not governor of Vermont.  He runs through the mine screaming, his arms flailing about.  This is a brutal situation for a man to be in, but it was hard not to laugh at his hysterics.

He stands silently outside the adit [1] for a moment, appearing to be dazed.  Then he suddenly starts shrieking again.  I see where Stevie gets it.  One of the good samaritans holds him back from returning to the mine.

We end up in the hotel room where we started.  Carl is telling the story to Dr. Sanders.  The doctor explains that Helen was killed instantly in the cave-in.  She appeared at the hotel, but her car never left the mine.  He says Carl was fatigued from a long drive, and under great emotional distress.  When Helen and Stevie were gone longer than expected, maybe he feared they would never come back.  Ergo:  Hallucination.

Carl screams, “I SAW HER!  SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!”  Sanders reminds him that as a chronic alcoholic, he has had hallucinations before.  Actually there is some serious dialogue here, deeper than I would have expected from William Schallert.  One of the men who helped dig out Stevie comes by the room and says it was a woman’s scream that brought them to the cave.  Carl feels vindicated and walks Stevie out of the hotel.

This episode was a little like yesterday’s TFTC in that it seemed to jump genres.  We learn in the beginning that something strange happened.  Then we get pure Lost Weekend melodrama for almost 10 minutes. Then we get the action portion of the tonight’s broadcast, followed by another extended melodramatic scene.

It is all well-done.  Charles Aidman (Carl) was more unhinged than I have ever seen him.  I usually think of him playing calm, rational characters.  He could have used some of this anger to give his 1980s Twilight Zone narration some edge.  William Schallert also surprised me.  I think of him as a comedic actor, but he was spectacular as the psychiatrist.  The mine set was nice, and the cave-in was believable.

But that screaming!  Charles Aidman gets us off to a bad start with his loud shouts.  Stevie is just unbearable as he screams continuously in the mine.  I know his mother was just killed, but his performance is just brutal.  Aidman’s screams as he runs out of the mine are nothing short of histerical and hylarious.  We even get a replay of the opening scream in the closing scene. [2]  So, a good episode, undermined by some over-emoting.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Throwing a bone to crossword puzzlers.
  • [2] Like Pulp Fiction, the wrap around scene is a little different in the beginning than the end.  I understand screwing up a word, but a bellhop delivered an envelope in the opening, but was never seen in the closing.  That’s a pretty hig miss.
  • And that’s 1,000.

Tales from the Crypt – Cold War (05/31/96)

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You might want to consider whether your production needs a little tightening up when the first 2.5 minutes of your episode is three people silently riding in  car. [1]  There is no car chase, it is not going anywhere exotic, and no one is Jack & Rosing in the backseat.  The novelty of the steering wheel being on the wrong side wears off pretty quickly.

This episode is the definition of being less than the sum of its parts.  The scene described above is the first example.  Really, nothing happens, but it does get you interested in Ford, Cammy and Cutter.  They arrive at the bank they were going to rob and find it has become a laundry.  OK, that’s fun.  They then go to Plan B which is to rob a convenience store; although, I would have thought Plan B would be a different bank.

Cammy has a bad feeling, but Ford reminds her that in England only the bad guys have guns.  Wow, can’t see that line getting aired in the USA today or in USA Today.  There is also a bizarre bit where Ford doesn’t know the word wanker.  But that makes sense later.  Maybe.

They walk in to rob the store and find that there is a gang already robbing it.  For no reason at all it is an Asian gang, and for no reason, they are wearing motorcycle helmets.  Well, I guess the reason is that they rode motorcycles.  But it still adds a little pizzazz.

So we started out with a jaunty opening, then had a little comedy, then this scene turned out to be a pretty serious gunfight.  All good stuff, but what does the episode want to be when it grows up?  They go back to their apartment where Cammy digs a slug out of Ford’s leg.  Could be worse — Cutter was killed.

Next thing we see is Cammy picking up a dude in a bar.  Hunh?  That’s out of nowhere.   Ford catches them together the next morning, and shoots the guy.  But the guy is not what he appeared to be.  And Ford and Cammy are also not what they appeared to be.  But they are not the same as the guy, if that’s vague enough for you.  This introduces yet another genre to the episode; maybe two.

All three of them end up crashing through the window.  The guy is not seen again, for good reason.  Ford and Cammy are seen having a drink.  Some of their past dialogue suddenly makes sense, maybe even him not knowing what a wanker is.

During the viewing, they seemed to be making this up as they went along.  However, afterword, remembering the episode, and assisted by the warm glow of a new scotch (Shackleton’s) [2] the pieces began to coalesce into a good episode.  But not good enough to make me sit through the Cryptkeeper’s closing remarks.

Trigger warning:  There is some seemingly racist language that, if you are patient, is not racist.  On the other hand, calling the black guy “Count Chocula” gets no such redemption.  Just to balance things out, there are also female and Asian slurs.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] To be fair, a couple of lines are exchanged at the 1:30 mark.  To be fairer, it was not boring.  The car was sweet, and there was a fantastic jazzy score (described as “really annoying” in the sole IMDb review).
  • [2] What better way to capitalize on the adventurous spirit and soul-crushing adversity of the Shackleton crew who were 100X the man you are — booze!  God bless America; even if it is British.
  • Title Analysis:  I can kind of make it work as the characters represent two factions.  But they are not normally thought of as enemies, so it’s really a stretch.
  • Stars a young Ewen McGregor and young Colin Salmon (you know him even if you think you don’t know him).  Not for nothing, McGregor also starred in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.
  • No, I think that was for nothing.