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Tales from the Crypt – A Slight Case of Murder (05/03/96)

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This might be the worst opening I’ve ever seen to a TV episode.  It begins with 83 seconds of Sharon Bannister typing.  That’s it.  There is no suspense, we can’t read what she is typing, she isn’t topless.  It is just typing for 83 seconds. [1]

Sharon removes the last page of her new book from the typewriter and we see the title, Death by Love.  This will be an ironic capper to her series sitting on the bookshelf: Death by Greed, Death by Pride, Death by Envy, Death by Lust, Death by Remorse, Death by Revenge, Death by Hate.  She seemed to have a 7 Deadly Sins thing going there (if you count Revenge as Wrath (any Trekkie can explain the connection)), but what is Remorse doing there? [2]

Her neighbor Mrs. Trask has come by to borrow a cup of sugar although, frankly, that’s the last thing she needs.  She has also asks Sharon to read a story that she has written.  Sharon’s review is, “In the pantheon of mystery writers, there’s the greats, there’s everyone else who’s ever written a book, and then there’s you.  Agatha Christie can rest in peace.”  The actors are well cast, the line is fabulous, but this is painful.  I like some good dry British humor, but this is just death.  The lethargy — which seems like a good English word, but I guess they all are — is stifling.

She hustles Mrs. Trask out, and the cycle begins again.   She hears noises, then gets a call from her ex-husband Larry.  She hears the door and tells Larry, “They’re coming in.”  She picks up a fireplace poker and advances toward the noises.  Again, this is so flatly staged that it creates zero suspense or tension.  Of course, it turns out to be Larry playing a trick on her.  As he enters the room, she calls him a bastard.  He replies, “You used to call me biscuit” which is just cringe-inducing.  Yada yada, he kills her, which in a good episode would have been one of the yadas.

This awful tone is sad, because there are some great bits here.  The two women are great in their roles, or could have been.  There is a nice scene where Mrs. Trask comes back after Larry has killed Sharon.  He has propped her up at her typewriter with a ruler in a way which is just awesome.  After Mrs. Trask leaves, Sharon falls over, and that is used to transition to a shot of Larry dumping her body on the floor of the basement.  Great stuff, although I’m not sure a famous author would live in a house with a dirt floor in the basement.

Well, Mrs. Trask’s loser son Joey has a crush on Sharon, there is a bit over some missing keys, Sharon is maybe not as dead as suspected, Joey gets a gun and Larry finds some hedge-clippers.  This plays out nicely, but is just so deadly dull that it is hard to care.  As if to really punish the audience, the return of Mrs. Trask is literally in slow motion.

This strikes me as the greatest misfire in 7 years of TFTC.  There have been some awful episodes, but none that had so many great assets totally squandered.  Amp up the energy, give it a decent score, and this story could have been a classic.  How this got to air is puzzling.  The writer can’t blame the director because he is the same guy.  And that guy was responsible for L.A. Confidential and a lot of other fine work.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Just the opening credits, you are thinking.  No, only the Producer and Writer/Director overlap with this scene.  And I only started the clock when she was visible, not at the sound of the typewriter.  To be fair, some of it is hand-held, indicating a voyeur, but that soon gives way to a more standard shot.  It’s a lot of typing is all I’m saying.
  • [2] Seven books (or eight with the Love capper) seems to indicate a lack of confidence.  Maybe she learned a lesson from Sue Grafton who just missed finishing the series.  If Stephen King’s titles followed a formula, he could have probably made it through the Periodic Table of Elements by now.

Outer Limits – The Inheritors (07/16/99)

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It’s too bad about Jacob Hardy.  I was just starting to like him for his willingness to speak truth to power . . . ful stench of modern art.[3]  Sadly we do not get to see the referenced work “Problem Stain 11” before a meteor streaks through the atmosphere and shoots a lugie into Jacob’s melon.  He falls to the ground with blood pouring out of the wound, creating both a bigger problem and a bigger stain.

He is taken to the morgue and we get a good look at that wound.  There is no exit, so Dr. Ian Michaels reaches in and pulls out a metal projectile the size of his thumb if he had a larger weiner.  A tentacle pops out of the hole and flails about before retreating back into Jacob’s noggin.  Even more shocking, Jacob gets up and walks out of the morgue.

That night, Ian dutifully goes to visit his wife Daria who is in the hospital.  She expresses no shock or surprise at her husband’s story, but that might just be the coma.

Jacob’s girlfriend is surprised when he walks in the front door.  He seems changed, cold and distant.  Within seconds, he packs some clothes and says, “I have to go away.”  Wait, did they delete a sex scene?  He makes her promise not to reveal his plans which he didn’t reveal to her, then he leaves.

He meets up with 2 other people who had similar experiences with meteor tentacles in their heads.  Whatever it is that they are going to do, it is agreed they have 6 days and 10 hours to do it. [1]  It is important because Jacob says, “Everything depends on us.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Michaels has discovered online that in addition to Jacob, Curtis Sawyer and Kelly Risely were apparently killed by the meteor that night, then got better.  Dr. Michaels somehow thinks their recoveries might hold the solution for bringing Daria out of her coma.

Jacob funds the team with $500,000 in 2 days of day-trading with a Clintonesque level of success.  Kelly bones up on metallurgy at the library, and Curtis gets a consulting gig at a tech firm.  They use these resources and one of the slugs in their head to create a large device.  They test it out on a cat, zapping it out of existence.

Next they round up patients both old and young who don’t have much time to live, and take them to the device.  Daria is among the patients.  There is a good reason for their actions that boil down to “Life for life.”

Interesting justification for their actions, but a pretty average episode with pretty average performances.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] We have the standard twerp who is compelled to point out it is really 6 days, 9 hours and 40 minutes.  That’s OK here, but it bugs me when a character says something will happen in 6.2 seconds.  Is that from when they start speaking, or from when they say “6.2”‘, or from the end of the sentence?  I’m lookin’ at you, Star Trek!  But not on CBS All Access.[2]
  • [2] What f***ing idiots are encouraging CBS by subscribing?  Just say NO, people, and it will be free.  You know, like NetFlix, Amazon, HBO or Hulu.
  • [3] Honestly, this sentence seemed like a good idea last night.

 

 

Science Fiction Theatre – The Phantom Car (07/20/56)

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Host Truman Bradley tells us the show opens in “Mesa Flats . . . 105 degrees in the shade . . . but there is no shade.”  WTF?  Could there be a more useless piece of exposition?  We see prospector Mort Woods who is luxuriating in a cool swimming pool . . . but there is no swimming pool.  He is sitting on some rocks beside the dusty flats.

He sees a car approaching which is strange because there are never cars there.  He tries to flag down the car, but it zooms right past him.  He can see that there is no driver.  Being from South Florida, he even checked for skeletal fingers on the wheel and the tip of a hat.

Mort thinks this is so significant that he runs in the 105+ degree heat to report it to Sheriff Barney Cole in Mesa City.  Mort has had hallucinations before, but Barney goes out to the desert with him.

Meanwhile, Dr. Arthur Gress and his wife Regie are also in the desert.  She calls up to him on a ridge to ask if he sees anything through the binoculars.  He says, “No, I can’t see a thing, Regie.  Better turn off that engine.  As soon as it cools, I’ll tape up that radiator hose.”  So he has brought his wife to collect samples in the 105+ degree desert, left the car running, knows there is a radiator problem, and risked stranding them in this furnace because the car overheated?

Dr. Gress heads into the desert where he spotted an outcropping of ore.  Regie is left at the car.  Soon, she hears another car coming.  She attempts to flag it down, hoping they have some water or eligible bachelors.  Unfortunately, the erratic car swerves and mows her down.  Gress arrives just in time to see that there is no one in the car!

The sheriff meets Gress’s car in the desert.  Both cars stop and the Sheriff says, “You won’t get very far that way, mister.  You’ll burn up your engine.”  I guess he thinks Gress was speeding.  They put Regie in the Sheriff’s car and head back to Mesa City.  On the way, they are surprised to meet an ambulance that has already been summoned.

At the hospital, she remains unconscious with the diagnosis of a concussion.  The local doc calls a specialist in Los Angeles, but learns the doctor is already on his way to Mesa City, summoned, like the ambulance, by a mystery caller.

Morty and Sheriff Cole go back to the desert to search for the driverless car.  At 1:45 they spot it and begin a swervy pursuit.  Somehow, on the vast empty flats, the driverless car is able to shake these two bumpkins.

The specialist, Dr. Avery, is able to patch Regie up pretty quickly.  Gress dutifully stays by his injured wife’s side, nursing her back to health, making sure no further harm comes to her.  Naw, he borrows some equipment from the Air Force and heads back to the desert with the Sheriff and Morty.  I guess the deleted scene where they convinced the Air Force to hand over a million bucks of radar and acoustical equipment to a Geologist, a Sheriff, and a smelly desert rat will be on the DVD.

While they are fiddling with this high-tech gear to locate the car, it does a drive-by and almost clips them.  Nice work, fellas!

Back at the hospital, Gress says the car they are looking is radar-controlled, and electronically-guided.  And apparently solar-powered because it seems to go forever without gassing up.  When the Sheriff gets a call about another hit-and-run they go back to the desert.  WTF — the victim is the local doctor!  Before he dies, he confesses that he built the car and tells them how to stop it.

There isn’t much going on here, yet I liked the episode.  Hollywood, not noted for ever learning a single f***ing thing [1], has never understood the appeal of just watching a pile of American metal zooming down the road.  Whether it is Barry Newman in Vanishing Point or Steve McQueen in Bullitt, Americans are hypnotized by a vehicle in motion.  Even when there is an utter nothing in the driver’s seat like in the schlock classic The Car or Peter Fonda in Easy Rider.[2]

The shots of the runaway car zooming across the desert were just awesome.  By any objective standard, the episode is awful, but I give it a thumbs-up.  God Bless America!

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Like how the overuse of the F-word hurts movies.
  • [2] R.I.P.
  • Title Analysis:  Hmmmm, it is pretty clear that it is a real car.  The phantom seems to be the driver.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Outlaw in Town (11/15/60)

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It wasn’t a dream, Auntie Em, I was there!  It was a real AHP episode called The Little Man Who Was There.  This strange fellow dressed in black came into an old west bar and started doing tricks just like in The Little Man Who Wasn’t There.  Then he started turning folks against each other just like in The Little Man Who Wasn’t There.  But it wasn’t a dream!  Arch Johnson was there, and Roscoe Ates, and Clegg Hoytt, just like in The Little Man Who Wasn’t There.

Maybe this episode is even set in Kansas, who can tell these shitkicker frontier towns apart?  Tony Lorca strolls into the saloon whistling a jaunty tune.  All eyes are conspicuously on him.  He tries to break the ice by asking how they like the weather.  Unfortunately, it is as icy outside as it is inside and they don’t cotton to this stranger’s glib comments when they have crops and cattle freezing.  AHP fans know it does not pay to piss off someone with a corral full of frozen lamb-chops.

He says he just came in over the North Trail.  Bart McCormick is quick to point out that such a passage is impossible during winter.  Lorca asks if it really matters he got to “their miserable little shit-hole metropolis.”  This devolves to a gunfight.  But when McCormick reaches for his pistol, he discovers that Lorca has stolen it from him.  This feat so amuses McCormick, that he takes a liking to Lorca.

Lorca meets eyes with Shasta Cooney across the bar.  He regrets that he has no more cash to buy the widow a drink.  She buys him a small beer and one pretzel.  But then he pours the beer down her back. The widow Cooney storms upstairs.  Lorca remains in the bar; for a second, it looked like he was going to Mount Shasta — heyyyoooo!

Lorca puts up his pistol to get in a poker game with the gang.  In no time, he has lost everything.  One of the locals IDs him as Tony Lorca aka The Whistling Kid.  They read off a long list of crimes on his wanted poster.  The Widow Cooney comes downstairs just in time to hear his true identity and says he is also the man who killed her husband.

On this very clever series, they come up with one of their most original twists.  Lorca has been caught and once the snow clears, someone is going to turn him in for the cash.  The next turn of events is so great I’m not going to spoil it because, paradoxically, it just didn’t work for me.  I can’t figure out why.  It is a great, original idea, the execution was fine, the performers are mostly great, and there is a funny escalation of the idea.  Maybe I’m having a bad day; I don’t want to spoil anyone else’s fun.

The episode is not flawless.  The anachronistic score might be the worst I’ve heard outside of the 1980’s Twilight Zone.  Shasta just isn’t particularly attractive or interesting, not even achieving Fanta levels.  However, Arch Johnson is a hoot, and Ricardo Montalban is awesome as Lorca.  In the 2nd twist, the Sheriff even says of him, “He’s not a man of violence.  He’s more of a CONNNNNNNN man!”

I guess what I’m trying to say is you can search all over for happiness but there is really no need to look any further than your own front door.

2025 UPDATE:  The clip below was from Kentucky Fried Movie, not The Wizard of Oz.  Just didn’t want anyone thinking I went soft.

One Step Beyond – Night of April 14th (01/27/59)

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Host John Newland tells us he is in April 1912.  He pulls a book off the shelf and mysteriously says “We will return to it later.”  Like me with that 1,000 page LBJ biography.

Grace Montgomery wakes up from a nightmare.  She screams for her mother despite not being six.  In fact, she is a beautiful woman.  Her mother does rush to her room.  She frantically says, “It was water, dark water.  I was drowning.  I couldn’t swim anymore, I was drowning.”  Her mother blames pre-wedding jitters.  “In four days, you’ll be on your honeymoon in Switzerland, and you can’t drown in Switzerland.”  You know, unless ya falls into one of those big vats of chocolate.

The next morning, her fiancee Eric Farley comes by the house to see “how the future Mrs. Farley looks in the morning.”  After his terror when her mother answers the door, they sit down for tea.  Eric surprises her by saying they are not going to Switzerland; they are going to America! [1]  He giddily asks her how she thinks they will get there, but in 1912, that’s not a big f***ing mystery.  It is by boat, specifically The Titanic.  Even more specifically, they are in cabin 111B right next door to John Jacob Astor. [2]  Thanks to Astor’s 29-years younger wife, April 14th won’t be the first night the Farlings have trouble sleeping.

She acts excited, but is worried because of her nightmare.  Her mother reads from the paper that The RMS Titanic is the world’s largest and most luxurious liner.  “By virtue of her five watertight compartments, she’s being hailed in marine engineering circles as the unsinkable ship.”

That night, Grace has another nightmare.  People in the water!  A huge ship going down!  She says she could even read the name Titanic on the lifeboats in her dream.  The next day, she and Eric discuss her dream.  He racistly says, “You don’t believe what you see in your sleep unless you’re a gypsy.”

Surprisingly, the next scene is on Titanic.  Other passengers have also had premonitions, bad feelings, heebies, and jeebies.  More surprisingly, the next next scene is in New York City, although not as surprising as if Grace and Eric were there.  Artist Harry Teller has hypnotically drawn a picture that his wife calls “awful, but his best work.”  To be fair, it is pretty awesome.

That night, Titanic hits the iceberg.  Even after being ordered to the lifeboats, Eric is cheerfully reminding Grace that the ship is unsinkable.  He puts her on lifeboat 4, but he goes down on the ship, and possibly one of the stewards.  Hey, why keep pretending?

Host John Newland returns, as promised, to the book.  It was published in 1898 and tells the story of The Titan, a ship whose dimensions and fate are the same as The Titanic.  It is a familiar story of hubris, arrogance, and the resulting loss of thousands of lives, so even more like that LBJ bio than I thought.

The second episode is as well-crafted as the first.  The production was enhanced by using footage from old Titanic movies.  Still, there is a certain sameness that I fear will creep into every episode.  Is this just going to be the premonition/reincarnation of the week?

Other Stuff:

  • [1] They could have ended the episode right there; like the Twilight Zone that ended with the characters fleeing to Earth rather than from it.  It did not register with me that this was set in England.  I guess the elegance and manners seemed possible to me in this country 112 years ago.
  • [2] The Astors were actually in rooms C62 and C64, which frankly ruined this episode for me.