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Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Forty Detectives Later (04/24/60)

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We see the doors where Munro Dean has methodically visited every Private Investigator in the city.  Rather than maybe optimizing his time by doing it geographically, he apparently tackled this task alphabetically . . . Acme Detective Agency, Confidential Detective Agency, R.W. Harris Private Investigations, Wilson Detective Agency.  He fears he has tried every agency when he realizes William Tyre Investigations was not a place that fixes flats. [1]

Tyre recognizes Dean’s name due to “something with his wife”.  Dean recounts how his wife was killed in 1948 by a slim dark man with bushy black hair.  He saw the man run out the back door, but the killer was never caught.  He has had the titular 40 private detectives on the case, but they came up with nothing.  Tyre says he would probably do no better and shows Dean the door.  But Dean says he has identified the man; he just needs help proving it.

He randomly saw the man in a bookstore.  “It was one of those run-down shops on the north side of town.  You know the kind of thing.”  The guy was working behind the counter.  Dean wants Tyre to set up a meeting.

Tyre goes to the store and pretends, as all jazz-lovers do, to like jazz.  Otto the owner — the man Dean tracked down — is also a jazz-lover.  He tells Tyre he prefers the new hi-fi recordings to the scratchy old ones.  He has quite a collection, but is inexplicably eager to sell it.  I guess investment is one reason people pretend to like jazz.  Tyre asks Dean if he would bring a few of the records to his hotel room that night, which sounds like the other reason people pretend to like jazz.

Otto says it would take a truck to lug all his records over to the hotel.  Also I suspect most hotels in 1960 did not have a turntable among their amenities of a Coke machine, flypaper, multiple ashtrays, and segregated bathrooms.  The other boarders unwittingly dodge a bullet when Otto invites Tyre over to his house to listen to the dreadful caterwauling. [2]

Tyre later briefs Dean on his progress.  Dean, who had earlier said he just wanted to talk to Otto, tries to give Tyre a pistol.  He offers Tyre $3,000 “to avenge me.”  Tyre declines and Dean keep upping the offer until Tyre says, “Stop before you get to a figure that tempts me!”  which sounds like a joke by that old comedian Winston Churchill.  As Tyre leaves, he warns Dean not to take the law into his own hands.

At Otto’s place, Otto is showing off his hi-fi set, and his girlfriend Gloria is showing off her bongos (hee-hee).  Otto offers the records to Tyre for $250.  Tyre says he doesn’t have that kind of cash on him, and suggests Otto come back to his place the following night for the dough.  They agree and Otto writes down the address of the room where Dean will be waiting for him.

Before Tyre can leave, Otto insists they listen to his stereo recording of 2 trains crashing together.  Otto takes such joy in his records that Tyre regrets having to go through with his assignment.

He returns to Dean and tells him when Otto will be showing up at his door.  Dean pays Tyre, who takes the money but encourages Dean to call the police rather than handling it himself.  Dean tells him to butt out.

Tyre just can’t stay away though.  He barges into Dean’s room just as he shoots Otto, and shoves Dean against the wall.  In an uncharacteristically clumsy exposition:

  • The wounded Otto scrambles to Dean’s dropped gun.
  • Otto Shoots Dean.
  • Otto then shoots at Tyre as “the fingerman”.
  • Tyre hides behind one of those bullet-proof hotel chairs you always hear about.
  • Otto is suddenly stone cold dead.  What?
  • Tyre confirms that Dean is dead.
  • Tyre goes back to Otto who is suddenly not quite dead.

Otto spills his guts, literally and figuratively, to Tyre.  In 1948, Dean had hired Otto to kill his wife.  12 years later, Dean was worried that this happy, chubby, jazz-loving business owner who has a girlfriend with big bongos might implicate himself in a murder for hire cold case.

It just seems a little thin.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Tyre would have made more sense if this were an England-based episode.  But then a guy who fixes flats would be a carpenter.
  • [2] Not all jazz, by any means.  But, if there is coherent moment on Bitch’s Brew, please timestamp it in the comments.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  James Franciscus (Tyre) lived to only 57.  All the other actors have passed away, and bookstores are next.
  • I say this with an unbroken life-long streak of heterosexuality: That James Franciscus was one handsome guy.
  • For an authoritative look at the source material and production, check out bare*bonez ezine.

 

Twilight Zone – Appointment on Route 17 (12/31/88)

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Tom Bennett returns to work after having a heart transplant.  You know he is a prick because he is a CEO in the 1980s; the double-breasted suit and massive hairdo are timeless indicators.  I can’t say enough about that hair.  Literally — I just don’t have the vocabulary.  What is it?  It goes way beyond a mullet.

As he walks in, the staff begins singing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.  One guy is accompanying them on piano.  Or is he?  As Tom tells the gang to get back to work, the guy leaves but we see the keys continue to be depressed and the song continues.  OMG, the piano is haunted!  Wait, it’s just a player piano.  But in a show about the supernatural, the most obvious conclusion was that it as a ghost.  Why set up that distraction?

He immediately gets back to work, criticizing a deal made in his absence.  Then he stops and expresses a sudden desire to buy some boots.  So he goes out with his secretary to buy a pair.  Uncharacteristically, Tom then takes his secretary out for a hot dog, and a walk on the beach.  He sees a woman there who looks familiar, but he can’t remember where he has seen her.

That night, Tom and one of his minions go out to dinner.  He drives around aimlessly until he is suddenly compelled to pull up at a run down diner.  He sees that one of the waitresses is the woman he saw at the beach.  He impulsively asks her out to dinner, admitting that “this is out of nowhere” but she declines.

She tells her co-waitress . . . BTW, the women in this universe seem to have no names. [1]  Her friend tells her Tom looks like a good catch, that she should go.  Or she should go out with Ralph — a guy not even in the story, who still rates a name.  But the waitress says she is just not on the market now.  Her friend helpfully reminds her, “Jim is dead.  You aren’t.”  So, another man not even in the story gets a name.

Some days later, Tom’s secretary barges into his office and says, “OK, agreed we have no claims on each other.  Fine, but I will not be humiliated!”  What?  They have had a couple of scenes together, but there was not the slightest hint of any romance.  The dude just had a heart transplant and he didn’t even get a kiss on the cheek or houseplant from her.   Also she specifically feels humiliated because the other woman is “a waitress in some greasy spoon!”  Elitist!

He tells her he goes to the diner a couple times a week.   She sarcastically asks what brings him back, “the ambiance or the cuisine.”  He says he is comfortable there even though no one likes him, just like when Donald Trump does a press conference.  Mary-Jo refuses to serve him — hey, she has a name!   He questions why he keeps going back.  His secretary says, “Poor baby, all that meatloaf, but no love?”  Hunh?  Yeah, diners serve meatloaf, but what’s the connection?  She should have said, “Don’t let your meat loaf, Tom!”  Yeah, baby!

Once again, Tom is drawn back to the diner.  Mary-Jo ignores him when he says hello.  He asks for pie and she snaps, “I’m getting sick and tired of you hanging around here all the time!  You’re not coming here for the food!  And if you aren’t coming here for the food, there is nothing here for you!”  ZING!  She tells him to get in his fancy car and drive away.  After Mary-Jo walks away, her co-worker explains to Tom about her fiancee dying (although this is inexplicably covered up by insipid 1980’s synths).

The friend makes Mary-Jo at least talk to Tom.  He apologizes now that he knows she was in mourning.  Seeing how devastated she still is, Tom says, “You must have been pretty close.”  Close?  Well, he was her fiancee, dumb-ass.  It’s not like they were already married.

Mary-Jo says her fiancee had an auto accident and even then manged to do a good deed for someone else.  Tom catches on, about 10 minutes after the audience, and asks her fiancee’s name.  She gets on the bus, says, “Jimmy Adler,” and bursts into tears.

Tom’s doctor, in a shocking breach of confidentiality, confirms that the heart he received was from Jimmy Adler.  Tom begins to loosen up.  He is not such a shark at work, [2] buys some jeans, and trades in his Mercedes for a pickup. [3]  He goes back to the diner.  He sits there all day, until he is the last customer.

Finally she sits with him.  He says he is willing to wait for her.  She says Jimmy promised he would always be with her.  Blah, blah, they get together, but Tom never gets around to telling her about receiving Jimmy’s heart.

Yet another TZ boy-gets-the-girl happy ending.  I rate it a Disappointment on Route 17.  Obvious, but it’s about what this episode deserves.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] At IMDb, 2 women get character names:  Elise and Mary-Jo.  But I don’t know who half of them are.  The three other female credited roles are Tom’s Secretary, Tom’s Secretary, and Secretary #2.  I guess one of Tom’s Secretaries is Secretary #1.  But he seems to call one of them Hill (Hillary).  A commenter at IMDb suggests the credits are hosed up on this episode.  I believe it.
  • [2] Sorry staff, no bonuses this year because the boss decided to slack off.
  • [3] So, Mercedes bad / pickup good, suit bad / jeans good, wingtips bad / boots good, fancy restaurant bad / hot dog good.  Who’s the snob now?
  • Title Analysis: Just junk.  Appointment?  Was this supposed to happen?  Was this all God’s masterplan for Mary-Jo to win Tom’s heart?  Well, she had already won it when it was still in Jimmy.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much – Randolph Barr (1941)

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The editor apologizes in advance for the story — not a good sign.

The true author is unknown; Randolph Barr is apparently the Alan Smithee of the pulp world.  The supposed shame is that the story appeared in a “Spicy” publication [1]  .  We are warned that “we meet our heroine with her dress ripped down to her waist.”  It is suggested the reader not get his hopes up as “this is what passed for titillation in 1941.”  I don’t know what sorority house you live next to, Hef, but that sounds pretty OK to me.

Our hero is out walking at 2 AM “all the way to 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street.”  I guess he is on his way to Rue 2 to catch the 2 2 Train.  A girl runs up, as advertised, sporting a black dress ripped to the waist.  “Her breasts were heaving from running” which is also what I do from running.  The excitement continues as the man chasing her is gunned down, and another man drags his body away.  Our nameless hero gives me a move to try as he gets the girl in a cab, goes back to his place, only then asking if she would like to come up for a drink.

She tells us her name is Polly and she is the gal of Boss Russo.  The dead man, Dick Tobin, was also hot for her and died from that fever.  Her rescuer is a reporter, but otherwise respectable.  He offers to go to Polly’s apartment to retrieve something a little less ripped-to-the-waisty for her to wear.  For his trouble, he is conked on the head.  Just as he wakes up to see Louis Russo has tied him up, Polly comes looking for him.  Russo leaves with her, delegating him to his flunkies to deal with.

The reporter escapes and goes to Russo’s HQ to save Polly.  He manages to go from merely being tied up before, to now being shot and tied up.  Nice work, Scoop!  The cops save his bacon by breaking down the door and shooting Russo.  Polly, who has somehow found a reason to be topless again, admits that she has been working — oh the irony — undercover to bust Russo.

The editor was right.  It is a breezy little piffle, that is far less interested in telling a story than in getting Polly half-naked a couple of times.  In other words, A+.

Other Stuff:

Outer Limits – Black Box (12/11/98)

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44 minutes of Ron Perlman?  Pass.

Although not on a Pass / Fail grading system.

Instead, here are some pictures from a recent trip; that’s how tedious this Outer Limits episode was.

I’m pretty forgiving of ignorance, but hard-core, pre-planned stupidity gets me every time.  Most of this centers on the hotel, but before I even got there:

Delta Flight:  5 hours late.

Buffalo Wild Wings (ATL):  You bring me sloppy wings, 1 napkin, and disappear for 20 minutes?

Rental Car:  I really liked the car (Kia Soul), but WTF would Hertz have 2 rows of cars with the same parking space numbers?  I go to the assigned black Kia Soul in slot 30.  I use the remote to unlock the doors (or so I thought), throw my stuff in the back, and get in.  I try to start the car and nothing happens.  Turns out I was in the wrong #30 black Kia Soul.  Why, why, why?  They weren’t even next to, or across from each other.

Hotel TV:  You finally arrive after a long trip, what’s the 2nd thing you do?  Ya flops on the bed and turns on the TV.  I have never had a bed that was so far from the TV.

Hotel Room Design: This hallway is comically long.  This is like the telescoping hallway JoBeth Williams ran down in Poltergeist.  30% – 40% of this room’s floorplan is completely wasted spaced.  I’m offended by how stupid this design is.

I still haven’t figured this out.  The top switch must be on in order for the bathroom light to work.  However, the light by the bed is not controlled by the switch.  So if you get up to go to the bathroom at night, you have to walk allllll the way down that crazy hall, flip the switch on to enable the bathroom light, and walk allllll the way back to the bathroom.  I still have no idea what the 2nd switch is for.  If your lights were going on and off, that was me.

While we’re in the bathroom, why would you design the shower door to only swing out?  Between the streaming water and the condensation, it is impossible for the floor to not collect a pool of water after each shower.  I had a lovely inward-swinging door in Clearwater recently, but didn’t take a photo as I did not realize how revolutionary it was.

There is no break in this curtain.  If you don’t want to be awakened at sunrise, you have to feel around through the sheer curtain for the rod, scooch behind the sofa, and reach around the lamp to push the opaque curtain over the window.

They wasted 100+ square feet on that hallway, but could only spare 1 square foot for an end table.  Add the TV remote, my phone, and a charge cord on this table, and I defy you not to knock something off every goddamn time you need anything.

Nuff said.

Is this thing giving me the finger?

The first night, I was locked out of the hotel building because my room keycard stopped working.  Luckily I was able to flag down someone inside to let me in.  They said it was because I carried the card next to my phone.  Maybe that one is my fault; it is a first, though.

This was Marriott Courtyard.  I asked the desk guy what was different about the nearby Marriott Residence.  He said the Residence has a small kitchen . . . . like a residence.  So where was my Courtyard?  My view was a bloody parking lot.  Luckily I didn’t want to go through the daily calisthenics to fully open the curtain anyway.

But it was quiet, and they gave me clean drinking glasses each day.  Well, except for the clean glasses.

So, a bunch of first world problems.  But it does irk me that they don’t put a shred of thought into these things.

Someday in the future:  When the f*** is Panera Bread going to learn how to design a drink & condiments station?  They’ve only built about 2,000 and seem to have learned nothing.

Science Fiction Theatre – Friend of a Raven (11/26/55)

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A couple of dicks — you’ll see in a second — are driving up to the Daniels Farm.  “An ideal place to bring up a child.  But also a place that is lonely and secluded, if there are secrets that one wishes to hide from the outside world.”

Jean Gordon and Frank Jenkins walk up to the Daniels’ front door.  Daniels’ son is deaf and mute.  These two want to see if Daniels would like his son to go to the clinic.  Jean rings the bell and a boy answers the door with a raven on his arm.

The bird flies away and Jean asks if he is Timmy.  C’mon, she knows he’s deaf and mute!  But the boy nods.  Jean asks, “How did you know to answer the door?”  Frank gruffly opines, “If you ask me, the kid’s faking.”

Jean asks, “You did hear that doorbell, didn’t you?”  Tim shakes his head no.  Frank gruffly says, “You can’t stand there and lie, boy!  Speak up when a teacher talks to you!”

Jean says, “I know you heard that bell.  Now just tell me where your father is.”  When the boy doesn’t respond, Frank says, “Now he’s trying to make us think he can’t talk too.  If he was my kid, I’d give him a lesson in manners!”

IDIOTS, YOU CAME UP HERE BECAUSE HE WAS DEAF AND MUTE!

SFT gets one great shot and it is blocked by trees.

Walter Daniels comes in from the field and Timmy runs to him. He asks these two yahoos who they are.   Jean says she is from the State Clinic for the Deaf and Mute, and introduces Frank as a truant officer.

Walter sends Timmy off to play and tries to explain his son’s condition to these chowderheads.  He says Timmy doesn’t use his ears, “he kind of reads your mind.”  Jean says, “Are you sure his speech and hearing are impaired?”  For the love of God, lady, give it up!

Walter says Timmy has been tested.  “He will never talk or hear. He’s hopeless.”  No wonder Timmy prefers talking to animals rather than people.

They see Timmy playing with a Raven and Collie,  He puts the Raven on the Collie’s back and they walk away.  It is a pretty amusing shot, although frustrating.  It is a great shot as the bird rides cowboy-style on the dog.  But they stupidly compose it so trees obscure them for 30% of the frame.  Then they repeat the same piece of film cropped a little differently.  My guess is that someone with a good eye perceptively realized they had accidentally caught an interesting shot — an intern or visitor to the set, the caterer maybe — and they wanted to give it a little more air time.  Maybe they couldn’t re-shoot because of budgetary constraints; or the fact that they had caught a bird riding a f***in’ Collie!

Jean sees Tommy’s gift as even more reason for him to be tested.  Walter is afraid of him being locked up in a laboratory.  They see Timmy run into the woods. Walter says it is because they were talking about taking him away.  Jean says he was too far away to hear them talking.  OMG, I think this women needs to be in a clinic.

While Frank goes back to work, Jean helps Walter look for Timmy.  When she is cornered by a snake, Timmy runs to her aid.  He picks the snake up and begins petting it.  Jean says, “He sensed I was in danger and saved my life.”  Suddenly she is on team-Timmy.

Some time later, Jean goes to see Dr. Hoster at the Speech Clinic. The State Department of Education has sent him the report she wrote about Jimmy.  He questions her crazy tales of ESP, but does not question why she is still wearing the same dress days later.

Three weeks later, Timmy has surgery at the clinic.  Naturally, the operation restores his speech and hearing.  However, it also robs him of his psychic abilities just like Ilsa in Mute.

More of the same.

I went looking for Talk to the Animals, but found this.