Category Archives: TV

Tales of Tomorrow – Test Flight (10/26/52)

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tottestflight01After a brief diversion to CARE last week, we are back to being sponsored by wrist-band king Jacques Kreisler.  Featured this week, the men’s Monte Cristo which is packaged in the barrel of a gun, perfect for air travel (and fabulous served with red currant jelly).  For the ladies, they feature the Flirtation — styled “from the times of Madame Pompadour” so you too can look like an 18th century French whore.

CEO Wayne Crowder is arguing with company controller Davis about his expensive plan to build a spaceship.  He shows this detailed map of his route to Davis and displays a Sharptonesque grasp of the written word, “what we’ll do on the first test flight, break out of the . . . the . . . this . . . into the stratosphere.”  Really, he couldn’t have just guessed either “troh-po” or “trop-po”?  Or showed up sober for rehearsal?

tottestflight11Eager to show off how how much better his SAT math score was than his verbal, he pulls out another chart that maps his planned Velocity per Second versus Light Years.  The trip to Mars is is about 34,000,000 miles, and one light year is 36,000,000,000,000 miles.  I’m no Norman Einstein, but I’m not sure why he has scaled the chart to 11 Light Years.  And how that would only take 7 seconds.

His chief engineer tells him the initial costs for the rocket will be over $500 million.  And this is in 1952 when $500 million meant something. We get stock footage of production, scrap metal being salvaged, trains running.  Crowder places an ad in the paper:  “$100,000 for man to fly me into space.”

tottestflight02After $20M is spent and he still doesn’t have an engine for his rocket, Davis tells him that he should think what will happen to the smaller stockholders.  Crowder gives his detailed plan of how he will pull off this amazing feat of engineering: “I’ve never failed and I won’t start now.”  This guy should be running for president.

The engineer then brings in Mr. Wilkins, a man who can design the engine for his rocket.  Wilkins has brought no blueprints or designs.  He says his concept will use magnets.  Opposite poles attract, similar poles repel.  The Roarkian designer is less interested in being paid than being able to build the spaceship.  He does however insist on a few things.  There will be no questioning of his design, and he gets to be on the flight.

As Crowder builds his rocket, the press labels it Crowder’s Folly and his company’s board tries to stop the project.  When Wilkins tells Crowder that he will need $100M of Mercurium to fuel the ship, Crowder vows to get it.

Eventually, the ship is completed.  On the day it is to lift off, the newspaper headline is WALL STREET LABELS ROCKET “CROWDER’S FOLLY” which is exactly the same headline it had months before.  Or maybe the paper has just been laying around for a few months.  Crowder admits that to fund his folly he fraudulently “over-subscribed the stock” and stupidly paid with a credit card so the subscription automatically renewed.

tottestflight10Wilkins and Crowder board the ship and strap into chairs in the absurdly cavernous cockpit — the engineer in Alien had a tighter capsule.  Once they are in the stratosphere (having passed that other sphere) Wilkins gives the OK to unfasten the safety belts and move freely about the cavern.  This was, after all, only the titular test flight.  Crowder proclaims it a success and tells Wilkins to head back to Earth so he can start work on another $500M ship capable of reaching Mars even though he has committed stock fraud, and pissed away more of other people’s investments than the Clinton Foundation.  Wilkins informs him that this ship is going to Mars.

Crowder overpowers Wilkins and tries to change course.  Wilkins has frozen the controls and says that he is “going home to Mars.”  Crowder wanted to build an empire on Mars, Wilkins just wanted to go home.  As Crowder watches, Wilkins transforms into an alien.  Well, technically he was an alien the entire time; now he no longer species-identifies as a human.

A little disappointing as the world was not destroyed as it was in the first 2 episodes.  Still, for all the hammy acting, live TV mishaps, cheap sets, and cheesy organ music it is very enjoyable.

Test Flight is a success.

Post-Post:

  • Lee J. Cobb was #3 of the titular 12 Angry Men.  I’d like to see a sequel called 1 Happy as Shit Man starring the clearly guilty psychopath that Henry Fonda is responsible for setting free to terrorize his neighborhood and those who testified against him.  Snitches get stitches, bitches.
  • I’m not sure if Mercurium is a real thing.  The only other reference is in Star Trek Voyager, also as a spaceship fuel.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Handler (10/27/92)

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Ibradbury02‘m in the final stretch of RBT and I feel like Quint waiting in the water to board the rescue ship.  Viewing the series has often been torturous (but never tortuous; also, no tortoises); having the end in sight should be a relief but is causing some anxiety — like I’ll get to the last episode and someone will discover another season of lost episodes in their attic.

This episode does, at least, get off to a promising start as we see the always amusing but criminally under-used Michael J. Pollard.  He is the soul-proprietor [1] of a mortuary and small graveyard.  He is ringing the chapel-bell [2] and turns it up to 13 only to be busted by a kid outside who also has too much time on his hands.

Later that day, he shakes hands with a yokel who says he has a cold hand, must have just embalmed a frigid woman.  So he imagines the man dead.  A clerk in a store hassles him to speak up, so he imagines her dead.  Six minutes in, I’m imagining me dead.

rbthandler02Back at work, he puts on Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and starts talking to his clients. Pollard enjoys punking them before they are buried.  He bakes a gluttonous fat woman into a cake.  He injects black ink into the body of a racist.  He removes the head from a muscular man so he can have his head sewn onto it someday.  It’s not clear if that is intended to be a joke.

One of the stiffs turns out to have been merely pining for the fjords.  Because he heard Pollards confessions, he is killed.  That night — which is dark, as nights are wont to be, and stormy — shadowy figures come for Pollard.

The next morning, one of the yokels discovers blood on a tombstone and asks, “What kind of storm was that last night?”  Spoken without any humor or irony, it is just another example of why Bradbury should have outsourced the screenplays.  Pollard’s name is also scrawled on all of the tombstones in his cemetery.  One of the yokels makes the profoundly stupid statement, “He couldn’t possibly be buried under all these tombstones.”

rbthandler04“Couldn’t he?” says the kid.

I get that Bradbury was great stylist of the prose in a short story, but the man had a George Lucasian grasp of dialogue.  I keep telling myself that he was born in a different time, and wondering if maybe the small town America he grew up in was really accurately reflected in his stories.

 

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Death Sentence (04/27/58)

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Norman and Paula Frayne are in bed — or rather, they are in separate twin beds as all couples were in the 50’s (hence the title Death Sentence).  Paula is noticeably 10 years older than Norman. Apparently Hitch didn’t get the Hollywood memo that when a woman is at least 5 years older, she is to play the man’s mother.

ahpdeathsentence02Norman is worried about a contract he lost at his real estate office.  As the contract was won by a realtor named Kennedy, he should just be thankful he’s still alive.  But I’m a little baffled how he works at Frayne Real Estate which his wife’s father owned.  He is pretty wimpy — did he take his wife’s name when they married?  I suppose the correct answer is that he inherited the firm and renamed it after himself, but that seems an unlikely move for his wimpy character.

Touchy-Feely!

The next morning at the office, he is surprised by a visit from an old pal. Norman had committed a robbery with Al Revnel, but only Al had been caught.  He did not rat out Norman who spent 12 years in the can as he was charged with murdering the night watchman. You never hear about day watch-men being killed — that seems like the better career move.  Al figures $50,000 should make things even between them, and keep him from implicating Norman.  As that would be $413,000 today, that would shut me up too.

Well, he did keep Norman out of prison.  And the vermicelli-spined (and not even al dente) Norman would have made first season Beecher look like sixth season Beecher.

Touchy-Feely!

Al is one of those bullies who likes to touch his victim’s face and get very handsy with them.  He tells Norman to call Paula and tell them he is coming to live with them.  He also calls Norman “buddy-boy” about 400 times in 25 minutes. The first month, he milks Norman for $800 of advances.  He also likes to drop in to have lunch with Paula every day while Norman is at work.

Norman actually shows about 25% of a gonad and forces a confron-tation; although with Paula, not Al.  She says their rondevouzes [1] are very innocent. Apparently Al is feeling Norman up more than he is Paula.  She says she is going to go on a trip to Detroit with a gal-pal.  As this is 1958, she stands a pretty good chance of coming back.  Norman thinks she might be sneaking off with Al so he buys  some dynamite and wires up his car.

Touchy-Feely!

Paula hears an explosion, and the twist is that it wasn’t Al who was in the explosion — Norman killed himself.  Kind of anti-climactic.  Al goes back to jail for life for violat-ing his parole by leaving the state. Twelve years for murdering an innocent man, but make the state look bad, and it’s LIFE buddy-boy!

Post-Post:

  • [1] The plural of rondezvous is also rendezvous, but you pronounce the “s”.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  James Best made it until this year.  Probably best known as Rosco P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard.  He also starred in Jess-Belle.
  • I was watching The Walking Dead on a second screen at the same time as AHP — Does the Dos Equis slogan make any sense at all?  Isn’t “Stay Thirsty” telling people to not drink their beer?  Their “Most Interesting Man in the World” is about as interesting as a Rothko painting.
  • Hulu sucks.

Touchy-Feely!

Twilight Zone S4 – In His Image (01/03/63)

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tzinhisimage02At 4:30 am, Alan Talbot strolls out of his hotel.  It is a great location because he walks to the subway, goes down to the platform, and it is still 4:30.  He starts feeling woozy and hears electrical sounds.  The only other person in the station — a crazy cat lady with no cats — starts preaching to him, so he throws her in the path of the oncoming train.  It must be the Express, because it ain’t stopping.

His gal-pal Jessica is in her apartment when Alan comes to the door.  After a little goofy repartee about being a Junior Woodchuck, she invites him in.  He is astounded to learn he is 45 minutes late.  He was supposed to be there at 5:00 a.m. to take Jessica to meet his Aunt Mildred for the first time.  After a lengthy 4-day courtship, they are going to get married.

tzinhisimage03They arrive in Alan’s hometown of Coeurville and he begins pointing out the landmarks to Jessica.  He has only been away from home for a week, but his memory is a little spotty.  He doesn’t recognize some buildings, remembers a restaurant where there never has been one, goes to the wrong house expecting his aunt, and points out an empty field where he remembers his office being.

He goes to find his parents . . . at the cemetery.  In their plots he discovers a tombstone for Walter and Mary Ryder.  On the way back of town, Alan jumps out of the car and sends Jessica away for her own protection as the electronic noises overwhelm his brain.  Having second thoughts, he runs out into the road where he is hit by another car. The accident leaves a gash on his arm, exposing electronic circuitry.

tzinhisimage06Looking through a phonebook (a very thick object made of dead trees and containing phone numbers), he finds the name and address of Walter Ryder Jr.  At the Ryder house — as in every show I’ve posted about — Alan feels free to let himself in and explore the house.  He is surprised by Ryder who turns on the lights.  He is surprised again as Ryder looks exactly like him.  Ryder tells him, “You’re a machine, Alan!” — words he longed to hear from Jessica.

Ryder tells Alan how he dreamed as a kid of “building the perfect artificial man, not a robot, a duplicate human being.  Why he chose himself as the template rather than Marilyn Monroe or some other 60’s babe is a topic for discussion.  Sadly, Alan blew a gasket, attacked Ryder with a pair of scissors and fled the house a week ago.

tzinhisimage05Ryder takes him downstairs to his “birthplace” in the basement.  He shows Alan a couple of other spare Alans that were factory rejects.

Ryder is kind of a loser, but he does come up with a pretty good plan.  Someone with Alan’s face shows up at Jessica’s apartment.

There is a sly humor to the episode which is a sure sign Serling didn’t write it.  Some of it is slightly absurdist as when Alan points out the empty field where he works.  George Grizzard is quite good at delivering scenes like that, although he doesn’t get a lot of support from Gail Kobe as Jessica.  She comes off as a little desperate, and I don’t mean her character.

Tales From the Crypt – Forever Ambergris (10/02/93)

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tftcforeverambergriss01Title Analysis: This section floats to the top because I have no idea where they got this from.  Ambergris is french for grey amber. Which adds just another layer of confusion as it is a waxy substance that is secreted by the intestines of sperm-whales and does not look or smell like amber.  It does, however, rate its own chapter in Moby Dick. Forever Amber is a novel about a 17th century ho’ who sleeps her way to the top and several other positions.  This episode is not set in the 17th century, contains no one named Amber, and no whales; although, there is some sperm (thankfully not seen due to admirable restraint of Cinemaxian proportions).

Award-winning photographer Dalton (Roger Daltrey) and his sidekick Ike (Steve Buscemi) are on a plane back home from their latest war-zone assignment.  Dalton knows that he has lost the eye of the Tigris[1] and that his assistant is now the superior artiste (or at least, snapper of self-immolation and severed-limb porn).  Ike invites his mentor back to his house to meet his girlfriend Bobbi (Lysette Anthony).

tftcforeverambergriss07Dalton arrives at the door and is greeted by the beautiful Bobbi, giving him just one more reason to resent Ike.  I guess because he drank a glass of wine at dinner, Dalton sleeps on the couch.  He gets up in the middle of the night, as a 50-year old guy is wont to do, and catches a peek at Ike and Bobbi having the sex.  She catches him in the mirror, but doesn’t seem to hold a grudge as she comes out later to share a doob’ with him.

Dalton and Ike get an assignment in another war zone.  A little ambition from Ike combined with a little manipulation by Dalton result in Ike going alone to a more dangerous village where people are being hacked into little pieces.  Dalton goes with some tough-as-nails mercenaries to a less dangerous zone.  We know they are tough because they smoke and drop f-bombs.  So, tough and cool!  Seriously, has a leather jacket ever looked good on anyone?  Dalton doesn’t mention that one of the mercs told him this village was contaminated with poison gas.

tftcforeverambergriss14That night, they regroup at camp.  Not only did Ike survive, but he got some great shots, just fueling Dalton’s resentment.  Dalton is awakened by Ike’s screams as he is covered in blood and puking.  To his credit, Dalton isn’t immediately cheered up by this.  But give him a few seconds and he sees his opportunity to get rid of Ike and claim his work for his own.  He allows Ike to further deteriorate into a foul-smelling goo to the point where his eyeball slides out.

’round the breakfast campfire, one of the mercs tells charming story of a pal in Nam who had his nose eaten off by bugs.  The next morning the soldier “beat the bushes and every bug he would find, he would cut open to find little bits to put his nose back together.”  But at least he didn’t smell.  Heyoooooo!

tftcforeverambergriss18Dalton stumbles into the breakfast nook looking like The Incredible Melting Man.  Dalton mows him down with the merc’s M16.  Could be contagious, you know.

Back in the states, Dalton pays a condolence call on Bobbi.  Wearing a little black mourning dress, she tells Dalton about a letter she received from one of the mercs saying that Dalton had stolen Ike’s pictures and murdered him.  She claims not to believe it — they light up another bone and jump in the sack.  We all grieve in our own way.  We get some all too rare nudity in this episode when Bobbi shows her squeezebox.

Bobbi reveals that the weed they just smoked was sent by Ike from the village he went to, so they are infected.  She starts to disintegrate into a slimy bloody mess on top of Dalton.  He tosses her off and runs about 3 feet to the bathroom.  Somehow in the space of 3 feet, his nose has been chewed off.

tftcforeverambergriss25Overall, an enjoyable outing if you don’t think about it too much, and why would ya?  The scenery was simple, but effective whether it was the hold of a cargo plane or just out in the woods.  Daltrey is not a bad actor either.  But some of the story elements . . .

Who doesn’t love Steve Buscemi?  He’s always great and as commanding or scary or hilarious as a scene requires.  However, you have a guy who is going to decompose and become a hideous shuffling zombie.  This is like the complaint about Nicholson in The Shining — he was crazy from frame one, and Buscemi . . . well he didn’t have as far to fall as, say, Brad Pitt would have.  Sure Ike was smart and had great character and personality, but the episode isn’t about him becoming an asshole.

The nose thing was just out of left field.  The campfire conversation was kind of a non-sequiter about an incident on the other side of the world.  How did it become part of this story?  And the nose was eaten off by bugs, but Ike’s problem was caused by a chemical weapon.

And the soldier was cutting open bugs hoping to reassemble the nose?  That would be some pretty small bits.  Maybe it was an act of desperation like trying to lift the car off an accident victim?  It’s just so absurd that it calls attention to itself.

Dalton sees Bobbi is a bloody mess (not the in British way), so he leaps from the bed still having a nose, goes to the adjacent bathroom and sees his noseless reflection in the mirror.  Those are some fast-ass invisible bugs.  I wonder if this is a mistake as a few shots just before he de-beds seem to purposely avoid showing his face.  And did he not feel anything before it literally fell off?  Pain, a sneeze, anything?

Finally, alas poor Bobbi.  Her death was completely avoidable.   She could have baked the dope in brownies and then claimed to be on a diet, for example.  I guess she couldn’t stand to live without Ike.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis II:  Plus, ambergris is just an ugly word — ugly to look at and ugly to hear (actually, it’s kind of fun to speak).  I was going to say it is harder to listen to than Russian Opera, but apparently Russian Opera exists and is well-regarded — the world’s most annoying art-form sung with the world’s most grating accent.  There’s a reason the world admires your silent chess, gymnastics and ballet, comrades.
  • [1] Tigris is the only other word I can think of that ends with gris.
  • Yet another TFTC cover that is fine artistically but is contradicted by the story.
  • Weed, dope, pot . . . there is no word for marijuana that doesn’t make you sound like a narc.  Doob’ comes closest, I think.