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Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Money (11/29/60)

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Angie tells Larry to cut it out and jumps up off the sofa.  She adds, “If you want to wrestle, go down to the gym!”  Which is a funny line, although I’ve never seen wrestling at my gym unless it was to get the treadmills that overlook the aerobics floor.   She is ready to settle down, but Larry just doesn’t have enough cash to suit her.

He has a plan, though.  He’s through taking bets for Patsie.  He is going to work for a guy with a man’s name — Stefan Bregornick — who owns an import-export business.  Angie ridicules him because this job will pay only half of what he made busting kneecaps, but Larry assures her there is money to be made there.  She angrily complains that she isn’t going to wait around 25 years for him to get a gold watch.  Larry inexplicably kisses her on the mouth rather than . . . well, I can’t advocate punching a woman in the mouth, but wow.

At the job interview, Bregornick asks if he speaks any other languages.  “No.”  Did he finish high school?  “No.”  Do you know anything about the exporting business?  “No.”  However, he gives the correct answer when Bregornick asks what he does if a guy pushes him around:  “I push back.”  Bregornick calls Larry’s father a fool, and mocks the neighborhood he lives in.  Who knows what misogynistic, awful, accurate name he would have called Angie if she were there.  But Larry gets the job.

The next night at Bregornick’s apartment, Mr. Miklos comes by to do some business.  Bregornick agrees to buy 900 cases of wine for $7,000.

Four months later, Angie is still bitching that Larry is not making the big money.  Larry finally reveals his plan.  He says Bregornick is the biggest importer on the east coast because he deals in cash and is lax on the paperwork.  Larry figures he has $200 grand in that apartment.  He says after the big score, maybe they’ll flee to Rio, but that could be tomorrow or 6 months from now.

Bregornick tells him to come to his apartment for another big deal with Miklos at 10 pm.  Larry senses this is his big opportunity.  He calls Bregornick and imitates Miklos, but pushes his luck by segueing into Jimmy Stewart there at the end.  As Miklos, he tells Bregornick he is too sick to come to him, and suggests that his handsome, well-built assistant Larry bring him the $30k for the deal.  Bregornick agrees.

That night, Larry goes to Bregornick’s apartment to pick up the cash.  Then Bregornick starts talking about his mother.  He tells Larry they had been engaged back in the old country, and that he could have been his father, but I don’t think that’s how that works.  After this non-sequitur, Larry goes to Angie’s.

She is loud and angry about everything as usual. Then Larry shows her the $30,000 which excites her, and she is happy for once.  But she can’t not be a shrew and says, “I didn’t think you could do it!  I didn’t think you had it in you!”  Then she more positively continues, “You beautiful thing!  Momma’s gonna take good care of you!”  But she is talking to the money.

Thinking big, she is excited about all the shoes she can buy.  She says they can buy all new clothes in Rio!  Although they don’t seem like the type who would have passports ready to go.  Maybe back then all you needed was a driver’s license and a carton of Luckys for the pilot.  He tells her he needs to take every bit of the cash out with him that night.  As he leaves, she yells after him, “You are coming back?”  Obviously he has some master plan, but I applaud him not answering, leaving her to worry.

He goes back to Bregornick’s apartment where Miklos has now arrived.  Larry confesses to making the call as Miklos, and stealing the cash.  Then he says he thought of his father.  He could not steal the money because his father would have been ashamed of him.  He hangs his head and walks to the door.  Bregornick is touched by his almost-son’s revelation.  He stops Larry and gives him a big ol’ bear hug.

Larry goes back to Angie’s.  He tells her he gave the money back to Bregornick and she looks disgusted.  “Why!” she screams.  He just laughs and says, “I got something better than his money.  I got his trust.”

I’ve complained recently about AHP’s that don’t have a murder.  This one doesn’t even have a crime.  It has a good first act for a movie, but even that is ruined by the production.  Larry and Angie are just loathsome human beings.  She is loud, greedy, angry and domineering.  He is Robert Loggia.

I never thought about of Loggia as being particularly vile.  He was pretty curmudgeonly but avuncular in Big.  But then I think about him as a psychopath on The Sopranos, and as low-life trash in An Officer and a Gentlemen.  Maybe he just had great range.  Here, he is just as loud, angry and abrasive as Angie.  Come to think of it, Bregornick shouts all of his dialogue too.  Maybe the director was hard of hearing.

So this gives us 3 viscerally unlikeable people.  The only decent person is Larry’s father, and he is dead.  Add to this an overbearing score, and this is a rare off-night for AHP.

Other Stuff:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
  • It took me 6 weeks to get through this episode.
  • If the title sounds like a Seinfeld episode . . .

One Step Beyond – The Dark Room (02/10/59)

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John Newland is growing on me.  He doesn’t have Rod Serling’s gravitas or sinister demeanor, but he does have his own unique personality.  Whereas the writer Serling made sure every word was polished, I assume Newland as director took the same care to make his series visually interesting.  We’ve seen great location shots, and great use of movie footage that really enhanced the ride for the viewer.

Most of tonight’s episode takes place in a French apartment, but Newland at least gives it a little flair at the opening.  He points out the apartment in which the episode will take place.  He then walks down a tall set of steps.  I don’t recall Serling ever moving, and certainly don’t recall Alfred Hitchcock ever doing a tour de stoop.  The camera pans to to show a street which actually looks like it could be in France, even though there is no mime.  Tonight’s protagonist shows up in the smallest car I’ve ever seen.

The landlord shows her new tenant Rita Wallace (Cloris Leachman) around the apartment.  She promises it will be quiet as one neighbor is a 36 year old virgin who works at WJM, and the other has such self-esteem issues that she doesn’t realize she is just as hot as the virgin.  Rita is happy to find a small room that she can use as a darkroom.  She is a photographer in France to work on a book of photos of people with interesting faces.  The landlord agrees to send someone over.

Rita is returning home from the grocery store — with a baguette, BTW.  Hey, you can get baguettes in this country, you know!  Big baguettes, the best baguettes.  Why does every show in France have people buying a baguette?  Anyhoo, as she is putting away the groceries, she notices a shadow on the wall.  She is startled to see it is cast by a stranger in her living room with an interesting face and an even more interesting concept of people’s personal space.

She asks what he wants and he is silent for a few seconds before saying, “I was sent for.”  Rita takes that to mean her landlord sent him over for her to photograph.  She takes several pictures of the man.  The Frenchman seems to have never seen a modern camera, and is equally perplexed by the shower.  When Rita turns her back to get a glass of water, the man is suddenly no longer there.

When the landlord stops by, Rita thanks her for sending the man.  Of course, the landlord did not send him.  They had another photo session planned for that night.  The man again appears suddenly in her living room without knocking.  As Rita is taking pictures, he begins calling her Cecile and accusing her of being unfaithful.  He chases her around the apartment, but she is able to escape into the darkroom.

Her landlord and a cop show up, but the man is gone.  The police say there is not much they can do; it could be anyone.  They say gee, if only there were some way to show us what the man looked like.  Finally, Rita remembers, oh yeah, I have those 200 pictures I took of his face!  She develops the pictures and finds the man is not in any of them!

The detective, brought in because of his photographic memory, somehow recognizes the man despite him appearing in no photographs.  He takes Rita to a nearby cemetery and leads her to a particular tombstone.  The marker has a photo of the man she saw in her apartment — I don’t know, maybe that’s a French thing.  The man died in 1926, executed for killing his wife Cecile in Rita’s apartment.

As feared, there is a certain sameness to the OSB episodes so far.  However, they are so well done that it is still interesting to watch variations on a limited number of themes.  Newland finds interesting ways to present the story, including smoothly incorporating footage from other sources.  Tonight’s episode was not a great story, but those opening shots and an excellent performance by Cloris Leachman brought it to life.  It doesn’t quite achieve the consistent quality of AHP, but it is one of the better series I’ve watched.

Other Stuff:

  • Yeah, a dead guy appearing in Cloris Leachman’s apartment is weird.  But those clingy dresses, those were unbelievable!  Just like TFTC was always better with a beautiful blonde killer, John Newland seems to be the king of slim hot babes in skin-tight clothes.

Tales from the Crypt – Escape (05/17/96)

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We open “Somewhere in England 1945”.  Four Nazis are running through the woods having just broken out of a POW Camp.  They complain to their leader that they are going the wrong way, although I’m not sure what would be the right way.  They do know England is an island, right?  It’s not like they can bicycle to France like Sedgwick or row downriver to safety like Danny & Willie or . . . or . . . or . . . boy, that Great Escape really didn’t get many people out, did it?

The men turn out to be correct as they run into some English soldiers.  Their leader, Lt. Luger, throws up his hands and surrenders.  His three pals run and the English soldiers shoot them in the back.  Luger is taken to Havenhurst POW Camp which looks more like a castle than a camp.  He asks Major Nicholson about the “arrangement” he had with Major Norris.  Major Nick doesn’t approve of such deal-making.  He is also disgusted that Luger betrayed his men and they died.  On this rare occasion, I must be on team-Nazi and agree with Luger that they should not have run.

Havenhurst POW Camp

Luger tries to justify his actions, but Major Nick is not buying it.  He says, “Three good men are dead because of you!”  Well, let’s not put the flags at half-mast just yet; they were Nazis after all.  He continues, “I’d shoot you myself but you’re not worth a bullet.”  When the other POWs hear that he successfully escaped from his previous camp, he becomes BNOC.[1]  He is recruited into their escape plan.

During the next meeting of the Escape Committee Luger notices an ambulance pull into the camp.  A man is carried into the hospital.  Seeing his look of concern, another POW asks, “Friend of yours?”  Keep in mind, Luger is seeing the man from the 2nd story, across the street, and through a closed dirty window.  And, oh yeah, the injured man’s head is completely wrapped in gauze except for top of his head and a niqab-like eye-slit.

I guess this is not from Luger’s POV, but from the window’s POV because it sure was not that clean.

The Escape Committees adjourns so the Prom Committee can have the room, so Luger goes directly to see Major Nick.  He rats out his fellow Nazis and tells everything about their plan.  He expects some reward from the Major, but Nick busts him for being afraid the new patient — one of the men he betrayed — might tell everyone what happened.  Wait, so Luger bailed on the escape plan, his only chance to avoid this new prisoner; and divulged the plan, thus guaranteeing he remains locked up with this guy that he wants to avoid?  No wonder they lost the war.  Major Nick happily tells Luger they expect the injured soldier to be able to speak in a few days, and goose-stepping by Friday.  I guess the English soldiers are too proper hosts to spread the word of his betrayal themselves.

Before making his escape, Luger goes to kill the man who can identify him.  First, that’s a real escape faux pas.  Second, at least 2 other guys in this camp and the shooters from his previous camp also know what he did.  Is he going to also drop by the other camp before swimming the Channel?

That’s all fine, but this is TFTC not Memorial Day on Turner Classic Movies.  So far this has been a straight Nazi war movie.  Where is the gore, where is the humor, where is the irony, where is the Grand Guignol?  Seriously, the first Wonder Woman was like 3 years ago; where is she?

The dude he just killed rises again.  OMG, is he the undead?  A zombie?  A demon bent on revenge?  Naw, he just got his 2nd wind.  Luger makes his escape in one of many coffins being transported from the camp.  OMG, are the other two guys he betrayed in the coffins?  Are they back from the dead to kill Luger?  Naw, they’re just empty pine coffins.  So Luger must accidentally get buried alive, right?  Nein.

The truck dumps the coffins.  Luger climbs out of the wreckage, and Major Nick shoots him.  There are a couple of, not so much twists, as just other stuff that happens.  Then Major Nick shoots him again.  So I guess he was worth two bullets.

Nothing really wrong here.  It was just a poor fit for TFTC.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] I was thinking it would be cute for him to be Big Nazi on Campus, playing on BMOC (Big Man on Campus).  But dang if BNOC isn’t a real thing.
  • What the hell?  Luger (Martin Kemp) was in Spandau Ballet.

Outer Limits – Essence of Life (07/23/99)

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Daniel Baldwin’s partner

Dr. Nathan Seward has invented a drug which, when inhaled, gives people the illusion that they are being visited by dead loved ones.  Elderly Mrs. Westbrook takes a snort and imagines her husband is there in the room with her.  He appears to her at the advanced age he was when he died; which suggests to me that men and women will use this drug very differently.  Seward peeks in and sees Mrs. Westbrook happily dancing, but there is no one in her arms; she is all alone.

A newspaper tells us that in the impossibly far-off year of 2014, the world’s population is just recovering from a great plague.  The headline credits the rebound to “The Code” which outlawed this drug.  The idea is that by banning the drug, people will “look forward, not back” but I don’t think Mrs. Westbrook was going to be popping out any more kids at age 69 anyway.  But then, who knows?  By 2014, people might be living to be 200 years old!  Sadly, the drug OD has left her as ancient and incoherent as Nancy Pelosi.

Detectives Stephanie Sawyer [1] and Dan Kagan [2] are on the case.  Dan is such a believer in The Code that he did not even use the drug after his young wife died.  He notices that there have been 4 overdoses of this drug tied to Meadow Pines Funeral Home, so he and Stephanie head over there.  They pose as brother and sister, and tell the owner that Mrs. Westbrook referred them.  He agrees to help Dan see his wife again.  Having a dead wife finally has a bright side as he can exploit Juliette’s death in their sting operation.

Daniel Baldwin’s late wife

Dan provides a scarf that belonged to Juliette (for them to harvest DNA), then is summoned to meet Seward in a graveyard at midnight.  Seward hands over a vial of the drug, called Ess, and warns Dan to just use “one drop”.   Dan only pretends to take a whiff (and how do you whiff one drop?) to see Juliette, as Stephanie monitors the sting from the car.  Then they inexplicably let Seward just leave.  What?  They had the inventor, the kingpin, alone, unguarded, on tape, with the drug in his hand!  And they let him go?

Dan dutifully seals the vial up in an evidence bag, puts it in his pocket, and takes it home.  He can’t resist taking a snort and it is clear why when we see his dead wife is Daphne Zuniga — hot-cha-cha!  Sadly, the drug wears off and she disappears like a $500 hooker at midnight.  Dan immediately hooks up with Seward for another batch.  Seward again warns him not to overdo it because “they have an agenda.”  He says the government is working to sanitize emotion and turn people into drones.

Well, it really becomes a slog from there.  The story, though melodramatic, had potential, but this was not the place for it.  A very dull score, a weak performance by Daniel Baldwin, and way more close-ups than were necessary just strangled the episode.

Daniel Baldwin’s apartment

However, it did perk me up a little when the G-men were shooting at Dan in the cemetery and the bullets made sparks as the hit the granite tombstones.  It’s laughable unless it’s, you know, accurate; like flint and steel?  I’m no metallurgist.

I was also amused at how the director missed an obvious shot that was needed as Seward was killed.  As the G-Men were closing in, he snorted from two vials containing the essences of his wife and sons (the sons apparently shared a vial).  Seward extended his arms which allowed a Christ-like death, but there should have been an insert showing his family in his arms briefly before he was blown away.  He wasn’t the bad guy; he deserved a moment of happiness.

Hulu is losing Outer Limits.  I’m trying to power through the rest of the season watching back-to-back episodes.  Outings like this will not make it easy.

To be fair, it is still better than The I-Land on Netflix.  I’m only 27 minutes into the first episode and it is dreadful.  It is, in an astounding number of ways, a complete rip off of Lost.  People find themselves on a mysterious beach, the characters love to keep secrets, one in particular clearly knows more than she is telling, the first shot is a person opening her eye, other shots are also exact lifts from Lost (especially a pan, and shots of women against the surf), two characters — the main chick (an Anna Lucia / Kate hybrid) and a jerk (Sawyer-lite) — find a waterfall, there is an early death in the water, and I just got to — no joke –a flashback.  This is just sad.

If it were well-done, I would love it regardless of its lack of originality.  Unfortunately, this is the bizarro-Lost where they do everything wrong that Lost got right.  The characters are diverse, but only racially.  Where is the old guy like Locke?  Where is the gravitationally challenged guy like Hurley?  Pregnant lady?  Asian people?  An Arab?  Southern accent?  English accent?  A freakin’ dog?  No, this group is young and perfect and I will not remember any of them tomorrow (actually, the women are distinguishable, but the men are fairly homogenous).

On top of that, the dialogue is merely functional, conveying nothing but words.  Too early to tell about the story arc.  Acting ranges from good to terrible.  The score is the usual bland TV noise, but it is almost unfair to compare it to Lost’s incredible music.  Occasionally I read about a Lost prequel or sequel.  This is why I hope it never gets made.

[UPDATE] Oh God, they’re having a debate whether to stay on the beach or move inland near the fresh water.

[UPDATE 2]  Great, they seem to have decided 39 is their version of 4-8-15-16-23-42.  The way they get to it is laughably subjective, though.  Kudos for the scene of them pacing it off — that was fun.  But their explanation completely contradicts the geometry of how they were actually distributed on the beach.  The star actually woke up far from the others — hey, just like Jack Shephard!  The guy who figured it out is a little twitchy, like Daniel Faraday.  Con: another rip-off.  Pro: an actual character trait!

[UPDATE 3] This is a trainwreck.  It’s 1 am but I had to start another episode.  I always thought Sawyer was not a fully developed character in the Lost pilot, or just poorly portrayed.  He quickly became a classic character, though, and it was a great performance.  His doppleganger here does not even rise to the level of pilot-Sawyer.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] It’s the lovely Jessica Steen, not seen since way back in Season 3’s The Refuge.  Great to have Jessica back, her beauty and talent are always welcome!  Hey, I’ve loved your work since Earth 2!
  • [2] Oh, Daniel Baldwin.
  • Seward’s first name is Nathan on IMDb, but is given as Neil in the episode.

Science Fiction Theatre – Beam of Fire (07/27/56)

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Narrator:  “This is where it started and ended.  In the top secret laboratory of world famed scientist Dr. John Bellow.”

Being conspicuously on top of a hill with a 300 foot tower on its roof, I’m not sure how top secret it is.  But it is, at least, secure as there are fences and guards, and history has shown us that no one can cross that kind of border.

Security Chief Steve Conway enters and says he has finished his assignment here.  He will be going on to set up similar security for Dr. Hayes.  Dr. Bellow is sorry for “what I got Hayes into” and “all this blasted secrecy”.  Conway says their work is more important than the H-Bomb.  Bellow still wonders why Conway won’t allow  Hayes and him to at least work together.  I guess it’s like not letting the guys with the formula for Coke fly on the same plane, or the guys who invented New Coke being booked together on Malaysia Airlines 370.

Hmmmm, the telephone that should never ring rings.  Washington had agreed to communicate only by courier, and no one else has the number.  Conway picks it up.  The caller asks if this is 727J [1] and Conway says it is.  The caller asks to speak to Bellow, but says he would not know his name.  What the heck — we cut to a guy recording the call on a reel-to-reel tape recorder.  Where’s our security chief?

Conway hands Bellow the phone and runs to an adjoining room.  Oh, the recording guy works there for Conway.  Wait, that phone is never supposed to ring.  WTF does this guy do all day?  Anyhoo, excited at finally having a purpose, he traces the call.  The caller asks if Bellow will be there in 30 minutes.  He says yes, but Conway tells him he will have to leave for his own safety.  The soldier traces the call to a hotel occupied by the government.  The lab bursts into flames, killing Bellow.

The investigation begins at the hotel.  The Communications Chief tells Colonel Davis that Conway came in at 4:30 and asked how to contact Bellow.  The Chief gave him the phone number to the lab — wait, I thought no one had that number!  Conway — at least according to four witnesses, it looked like Conway — made the call to Bellow then left the hotel.

Conway says Bellow was working on a new rocket propellant capable of inter-planetary travel.  Davis says it is workable and could be finished in a few years.  He orders Conway to fly to Dr. Hayes’ lab as he is “the 2nd most important man on this project.”  Uh, they did hear about the 1st most important guy getting blowed up, didn’t they?  Hayes gets a call similar to the one Bellows got, and he too is soon dead.

Dull story short, they figure out the scientists were fried by high frequency sound beams which makes the title of the episode a complete non-sequitur.  They figure out how to reflect the beam back to the source and kill people who shot it.  But were they people or aliens?  How did they imitate Conway?  Why did they call first?

Other Stuff:

  • [1] What is 727J?  Is this a secret code name?  The Base designation?  Is he confirming he dialed the correct phone number?  I get the KLondike5-#### format, but why does this switch back to a letter at the end?

Ladies and Gentlemen, Johnny Cash . . .