Author Archives: don

Twilight Zone – Special Service (04/08/89)

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John Sellig is shaving and thinking how much he looks like the guy from American Werewolf in London.  He is using a noticeably odd wall-mirror, small and not part of a medicine cabinet.  That design is necessary as one side suddenly gives way and the mirror begins swinging.  It reveals a camera behind the mirror.

John calls for his wife, but an English guy enters the bathroom instead and repairs the mirror.  I have no beef with the English, but this guy is just awful.  Being the 1980s TZ, you know there is a good chance they will squander a good premise.  I peeked ahead, and sure enough this is prime example.

They take an idea so good that The Truman Show won Oscars for it 9 years later, strip away all the nuance, slap on one of their patented, god-awful scores, and completely blow it.  Archie is just the first sign.  His chirpy demeanor, unthreatening accent, and tubby body are the perfect metaphor for this show.  Take anything unique, and grind it down until it is a featureless ball with no edges.  I know they only had 20 minutes to work with, but somehow Rod Serling did it 25 years earlier, backwards and in heels (although I might be mixing up 2 Hollywood stories).

David Naughton is a fine actor, but completely miscast here (actually he is well-cast for what TZ wanted to do — they were just wrong).  He always seems like a nice, dull, relatable guy on-screen.  That’s what made him effective in American Werewolf.  He was an average guy thrust into something horrific (lycanthropy, not Jenny Agutter).  When you take a dull guy and water down the conflict, you just get a dull, wet guy.

The story, such as it is, doesn’t even play by its own rules.  WTF would Archie show up to cover up the mirror?  How was he there so quickly?  Why is he English?  How does he think taking John into a closet to talk is not suspicious to viewers?  Then why does he keep spilling the beans after they leave the closet and go to the front door?  The ending tries to be clever.  In a way, it is, but I’m not even sure they meant it that way.

How to wrap up this mess?  Have John tap dance in his living room while the dreadful closing narration decisively undermines the episode.  There might be no better example in this series of an great idea just pissed away.

Other Stuff:

  • Title Analysis:  Hunh?  Special Service?  There is no way, in combination or individually, that I can relate these words to the episode.

Gangster’s Brand – P.T. Luman (1931)

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Two small, trim feet, then shapely legs in thin silk swung below the fire-escape in the dim light of the area way.  They swung for only an instant then dropped ten feet to the concrete pavement below . . . Carlotta Wynn, active member of “Mort” Mitchell’s mob waited expectantly for the opportunity to plug the guys who had spoiled one of the prettiest lays the gang had had for many a month.

Now that’s how you hook a reader.  Although it turns out the “lay” is not Carlotta, but the criminal opportunity that was just lost.  Mort, Carlotta, “Rod” Crandall, and “Needle” Schwartz get into the getaway car and flee the scene of the non-crime, while “Needle” wonders why “Rod” gets all the girls.  For the 3rd time, the gang has been foiled in a planned heist.  They take the getaway car to their hideaway at bar Dapper Dan’s Speakeasy.

Mort wants to find the rat.  They retrace the crime from the very beginning, but start after the basic part where they are all sociopathic parasites.  They got the tip from The Hag.  She is a hideous crone who hangs out in front of the Metropolitan Opera panhandling with a sob-story that she used to be beautiful and a dancer in the show herself; on the plus side, she no longer has to listen to the operas.  She told the gang she overheard the Vanderdoodies would be away from home and their diamonds left unguarded.

Hmmm, come to think of it, she gave them bad intel on their last three heists.  Mort thinks The Hag might be working with “Blackie” Rang’s gang to run Mort out of the business.  He assigns Carlotta to go to The Met on Friday and watch The Hag. He doesn’t tell her to actually watch the opera; the man’s not a monster.  He is a little oblivious, though.  The beautiful Carlotta has the hots for him, but he throws it in her face that he is stepping out that night with the vivacious Vi Carroll.  Little does he know Vi is in cahoots with Blackie.

Back at Blackie’s lair, he tells Vi they will try the old “passing Mort a bum tip via The Hag” scam a FOURTH time to lure him to the ol’ Horton place for a hot lead dinner.  How dumb are these people?  He mentions that Mort’s moll Carlotta never bares her right shoulder and Vi nervously realizes she knew her by a different name back in Chi-town.

Thanks to Carlotta’s spy work, Mort does not take the bait this time.  So Rango tells Vi to try the exact same scam a FIFTH time!  This guy makes that meathead Sonny Corleone look like a master strategerist.  Mort and Carlotta are a step ahead of them, finally, and turn this into a set up.

The shoulder thing is explained, and the good guys win.  Well, not good guys, but at least our bad guys.  Actually, I’m not even sure why they are our bad guys; we just happened to be introduced to them first.

It is a fine story with some good twists and three interesting dames.

Other Stuff:

  • First published in the August 1931 issue of Gun Molls Magazine.
  • Born that month:  Barbara Eden and Regis Philbin.  One of them was prohibited from showing their belly button on TV on the 1960s.

Tales from the Crypt – Doctor of Horror (01/04/95)

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Vaginacam POV

It’s hard to say whether it bodes well for an episode that it begins with an upskirt of a corpse.  I can’t even say it depends on the corpse.  But the corpse is on a gurney, and it is over quick.  Even stranger, the next shot seems to be a POV from a vaginacam showing the outstretched legs and red toenails. [1]

Security guards Richard and Charlie escort funeral director Ben Stein, looking more cadaverous than the corpse, to the exit of the funeral home. [2] He berates the two security guards and warns them there better be no funny business.  Seconds after Stein leaves, the guards spot the gurney.  A man is attempting to snatch the body, a crime which really needs a catchy name.  When they bust him, he offers them $500 to help.

They help the man, Orloff, back to his house and carry the corpse to his laboratory in the cellar.  Maybe mad scientists are mad because they work in cramped, dark, dank cellars.  Props to Dr. Frankenstein for his revolutionary open space design and unique skylight feature.  Still mad though, but at least he learned his lesson and didn’t play God a second time . . . oh yeah.

Orloff cuts open up the corpse looking for soul, but comes up empty.  He has a walk-in freezer full of empties proving that his strategy of trawling for souls at Moby concerts is quixotic at best.  There is a funny exchange where Orloff asks the guards to dispose of the bodies.  After getting $500 to help with one body, Richard shrewdly negotiates only $600 to dispose of 10 bodies.

On the way to the well where they will dump the bodies, Charlie expresses some remorse about what they are doing.  Richard — in a movie trope never once performed in real life — kisses the wad of cash and says, “I got $1,000 right here, baby!”  Wait, they got $500 for the first gig, then $600 for this one.  Where is the other hundred?  Is he not splitting the dough with Charlie?  And why is it still in his hand while he’s driving?

Charlies fears that if the bodies are buried without souls they will be “lost forever.”  Well, whatever your beliefs, doesn’t the soul leave the body at the time of death?  How is this different?

Anyhoo, they transport the bodies in the open bed of an El Camino, but did at least put them in trash bags so the corpses wouldn’t be embarrassed by being seen in an El Camino.  On the way back, after ditching the bodies, Richard is still trying to cheer Charlie up by waving the cash in his face.  Does this guy not have a wallet?

They concoct a brilliant plan to pretend to have fallen asleep at work.  Ben Stein arrives in the morning and catches them sleeping.  He yells, “Goddammit, get up you idiots!”  Well wait, why did they need the snooze ruse?  They could have just been doing normal security guard things things like walking patrols or masturbating when Ben Stein got there.

Ben Stein notices that Ms. Myers, presumably the first body we saw, is missing.  Wait, how does he know that?  He just got there.  The guards are actually in the Cadaver Storage room, so he did not look for her before he got to them.  He accuses the guards of stealing the body and leaves to call the police.  Richard brains him with a Maglite.

They take Ben Stein’s body to Orloff.  Even though he is still alive, Orloff cuts him open to look for a soul.  For the first time, he actually discovers one.  In Ben Stein.  Who knew?  And so on.

Kissing the cash

Despite my bellyaching, it is a good outing.  Things get crazier from that point in the way that TFTC is supposed to.  Hank Azaria, Ben Stein, and Austin Pendleton are all perfectly suited to this series.  They know how to work it better than the producers seem to sometimes. Travis Tritt was in there also, but as the moral center of the episode he didn’t have much opportunity to shine.

In some ways, it was a good example of what TFTC should be — over the top acting, a little gore, some laughs, and revenge.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Director Larry Wilson’s other credits are for writing 5 TFTCs, 1 AHP, The Addams Family, Beetlejuice, and The Little Vampire.  This guy just loves dead people.  He also wrote The Year Without Santa Claus . . . uh oh, where’s Santa?
  • [2] Why is it called a Funeral Home?  The funeral does not happen there.  Hmm, I guess it does.  Wikipedia says it is just the ceremony connected to a burial.  I did not know that; but I bet Larry Wilson did.

Outer Limits – Ripper (05/07/99)

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It does not bode well that the story is set in history’s dullest era, Elizabethan England.  The opening shot is a dull matte painting which dissolves into a dull soiree with formally dressed, jaded stiffs lounging about, just the kind of lethargic gathering that — hey boobies!

I guess this is more of a ho house.  Dr. Jack — in an episode called “Ripper” — York seems particularly uncomfortable.  He is reading a Jules Verne novel in the lobby rather than taking a girl upstairs.  He is apparently a regular so is not bounced out for his impudence.  No, I said impudence.  One girl does catch his eye.  When she leaves, Jack follows.  He finds her nearby making out with another women, so naturally he watches them; as one does.  Improbably, this is not the highpoint of his evening.  A ghostly green snake-like entity bursts from the chest of the girl, and zooms down the throat of her lover.  Jack runs.

Back at his house, his fiancee demands, “You must promise me that you will never go back to that place again.”  But when he begins kissing her neck, she says, “Not until after we’re married!”  Well, which is it, baby?  If that is not bad enough, Jack is in a deep depression over a grievous error he made with a patient who died before her insurance had run out.  Like Oscar Wilde, he has become addicted to Absinthe, and is getting no action from the ladies; but for different reasons.

The next day, he does take a girl upstairs.  However, he notices a green slime around her mouth like the monster he saw earlier.  Jack recoils even though he had not previously coiled.  Wait, they were kissing, how did that slime suddenly appear on her mouth?  They begin fighting, then Jack grabs his cane in which a knife is hidden.  The woman tries to seduce him saying, “I’m old, Jack.  Older than you.  Older than London.”  She might be an ancient spirit, but boy has she not learned what to say to a man.  He stabs her in the gut just as the madam and some of her girls come in and witness the bloody attack.  The girl runs outside to the alley where she snakes into another woman.  So at least somebody’s getting some action.

Jack escapes and runs home.  As he his polishing his shillelagh, his fiancee catches him.  Awkward.  She is furious that he missed a scheduled lunch with her mother.  So his afternoon could have been even worse.  It does go downhill, though, as Police Detective Langford shows up and arrests him.

The next day, his fiancee humiliates herself by saying Jack could not have killed the woman because they were fornicating at the time of the murder.  I guess the eyewitness testimony of the five professional fornicators who saw the murder was less believable.

Well, then things get personal for Jack, then personal for his fiancee.

The production design was excellent.  The settings and costumes seemed very authentic.  The Britishness was further enhanced by Cary Elwes as Jack looking very much like Malcolm McDowell in Time after Time, and David Warner from the same film playing the Detective.  Although, thank God the cast’s teeth were not era-appropriate. [1]

Maybe it was those darn British accents, but the performances in this episode were just incredible.  Cary Elwes had to convey everything from ennui to insanity, and pulled it off magnificently.  Clare Sims as his fiancee was equally excellent.  Frances Fisher and David Warner are old hands and are as solid as ever.  The alien was a little hammy at times, borderline Dr. Frankenfurteresque, but not a dealbreaker.

Overall, excellent.

Notes

  • [1]  Seriously, check out the trailer for They Shall Not Grow Old.
  • It is goddam impossible to verbally ask Google to spell fiancee without getting a bio of Beyonce (if you just say the word, don’t phrase it as a question).

Science Fiction Theatre – The Green Bomb (04/27/56)

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Truman Bradley reminds us that animals are smarter we think.  He shows us a chimp named Terry operating a kind of typewriter.  The li’l fella plunks keys that bring up cards stating [TERRY] [LIKE] [BANANAS].  Fortuitously, the machine does not include cards for [RIP OFF] or [FACE].  We also see a smart snake and brainy bugs.

Then he brings out a dog that “has been exposed to large doses of radiation in an experiment to see how much radiation a living body can safely carry.”  Awwww.  Don’t worry, they have “shielded the animal’s spleen”.  He is “given constant care, daily baths, regular blood transfusions, attendance by a staff of veterinarians, feeding from a special kitchen, and certain new drugs.”  Thus, Truman tells us, dogs like this “can live a normal life.”  Yeah, normal except for the spleen shielding, constant care, daily baths, regular blood transfusions, attendance by a staff of veterinarians, feeding from a special kitchen, and certain new drugs.

At the atomic research facility, security chief Davis thinks Dr. Maxwell Carnaven might be stealing secrets.  Director Scott wisely points out that he would be stealing secrets that only he knows.  On the other hand, Carnaven was probably a Nazi 10 years ago, so who knows.  Davis also complains that Carnaven and his secretary go in through “the back gate” but I don’t feel that is any of our business.  The director says allowances must be made for a genius like Carnaven.

Still, Davis is concerned that Carnaven has been irritable lately and has access to the nuclear button and the Kuerig machine.  He brings in psychiatrist Dr. Frake.  Scott asks if Davis has a point about Carnaven’s irritability.  Frake wisely says, “Diagnosis by hearsay is impossible.”  He and Scott might be the smartest guys ever on SFT.  Frake does say that tension and overwork can lead to a breakdown.

Frake is introduced to Carnaven, but seconds later, there is a crisis at the nuclear facility — one of the radioactive dogs has escaped.  Davis’s team jumps into action, bringing on another shift, and arming the men with scintillometers, although I think geiger counters would have made more sense.  This plan aggravates Carnaven so much that he declares this to be the dark ages and storms out.

Now that Dr. Frake has had a full 20 seconds to observe Carnaven, he feels qualified to make a diagnosis.  He says Carnaven is overwhelmed by guilt and seems to be hiding something.  While the search is on for the dog, another scientist alerts Davis that four pounds of fissionable material is missing.

The dog is found, coincidentally, near Carnaven’s house.  The whole area is showing signs of radioactivity.  Dull story short, Carnaven has been atoning for his atomic research by building a “benevolent bomb”.  Combining radioactivity with choroplasm, and exploding it over the desert should turn the sand fertile.

Sadly, Carnaven has been exposed to lethal doses of radiation.  He surrenders peacefully to the authorities, shrewdly putting Uncle Sam on the hook for his long, painful, and expensive death from radiation poisoning.

Other Stuff:

  • C’mon, according to SFT: A History of the Television Program, a big star like Whit Bissell was only paid $200 for this episode?  But then, this was before his groundbreaking work in I Was a Teenage Werewolf.