Category Archives: TV

Thriller – The Weird Tailor (10/16/61)

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Arthur Smith, Jr. drunkenly arrives home to the family estate.  We, never see it from out side, but the double doors open into a long hallway lined with sculptures, so I’m thinking this ain’t my neighborhood.

The tipsy trust-fund infant stumbles from piece to piece offering no admiration or respect.  He puts his hat on one, and gallantly wraps his overcoat around a nude Venus de Milo [1] (although the sleeves need to be taken up a tad) who is scandalously showing her marble-hard nipples on TV in 1961.

Darn the luck, he arrives just as his father is performing a satanic ritual.  Arthur opens the door just as smoke is rising from a pentagram.  He stupidly walks directly across the pentagram to the booze on the other side of the room.  Down goes Arthur — another alcohol-related death.

Smith’s father goes to see Madame Roberti, a blind psychic.  He wishes to bring his son back.  He offers his entire fortune, but she admirably does not deal in such blasphemy, damnation, and defiance of of God . . . but she knows a guy.

She offers him a business card to go see Honest Abe at a used car lot — now there’s a guy used to blasphemy and damnation.  Honest Abe pulls an old manuscript out of his safe — Mysteries of the Worm.  There are only 3 copies left in the world — the others were burned centuries ago along with their owners.

Honest Abe figures he can let it go for, oh say $1,000,000 . . . $1,000,500 with undercoating.  Despite the lure of insanely low APR financing, Smith pays cash for the book (something that was done back when there used to be places called Barnes & Noble or Borders (there also used to be a place called “The Border” in the southwest United States.  Alas, that is gone because Congress still takes cash).  But I digress.

tweirdtailor17Erich (or Erik on IMDb) Borg’s landlord Schwenk storms in and demands the rent, but Borg doesn’t have the dough.  He goes in the back to where his wife is sewing in their apartment.  As usual in these stories, Anna is far too good for him (and 24 years younger), a disparity made even more evident when he tells her to “shut up” and smacks her; when, really, just the smack would have been sufficient.

The store is having a busy day as a second person arrives.  Mr. Smith has brought his own magical fabric required to resurrect his son.  It looks like something Elvis might have made into a gold lame suit.  Borg is to be paid $500 upon delivery.  When Anna asks about the strange fabric, he physically shoves lovely Anna away and she runs to the bedroom to confide in her only friend — a damaged mannequin.

tweirdtailor18In bed alone as Erich works only the unusual specific hours required by Smith, Anna comes out to look at the suit.  It tingles when she touches it, probably more than she can say for Erich.

The next morning, he delivers the suit.  He treats Anna horribly and laughingly threatens to leave her. She goes to have a heart-to-heart talk with the mannequin which she has named Hans.  It is very sad as she describes how she has been beaten and they have both been broken by Erich’s abuse.

Unfortunately, when Borg delivers the suit, Smith is a little short on funds.  Borg is suspicious when he notices that Smith has a nice new refrigerator.  He opens it up to find Smith’s son frozen inside.  In a scuffle, Borg (fighting a man for a change) kills Smith and takes the suit back to the shop.

He instructs Anna to burn it while he goes out for a drink; but, having priorities, he takes time to shove her around a little first.  When he returns, he finds that Anna has dressed Hans in the strange new suit.  Borg admits to killing Smith and Anna says she can’t live with a murderer, so he puts his hands around her throat and proves her correct.

During the struggle, Hans jerkily begins moving.  He chases Borg into the shop and kills him so he and Anna can live happily every after.  At least until she realizes he is not anatomically correct.

Henry Jones (Borg) was probably one of the first “that guy” actors, but I don’t remember ever seeing him play a character who was so despicable and pathetic.  On the other hand, this was Sondra Blake’s first-ever credit on IMDb.  Both were great in their depiction of this sad marriage.

As always, a good story and screenplay from Robert Bloch.  Twilight Zone and Rod Serling are so iconic, they will never be surpassed.  But Thriller is exposing me to a whole new genre I didn’t know existed — quality horror programming, well-written and cast, that was from that same era.

Maybe the fact that the Fan Favorites collection contains only 10 of the 67 episodes is a clue to the consistency of the quality, but I’m going to have to give the others a try.  The Hitchhiker wasn’t even able to pull together ten good episodes for their compilation.

But with one iffy exception, like the other episodes, this one is good stuff.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Always the quipster, writer Robert Bloch has Arthur say to the armless Venus, “We’re gonna have to take those nail clippers away from you.”
  • Title Analysis:  Borg is an abusive loser, but does not seem particularly weird.  Maybe it is just a play on “Weird Tales.”  If so, it fails because the double meaning isn’t there.  But then I also never understood the Best of Both Worlds title of the Star Trek TNG Borg episode.  Maybe Picard was the best of humanity, then of the Borg after assimilation?  Of course his attempted genocide of them 5 minutes later might have tainted his legacy among the Borg.
  • Hmmm, I wonder if Madame Roberti is played by the same Iphigenie Castiglioni that was in Return of the Hero?
  • Borg’s landlord was the guy who sold the Tribbles in Star Trek.
  • Strangely, Hans was taller than Anna, but when he became animated, he seemed very small.  We never saw him scaled against anything, so it could have been poor camerawork.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Long Rain (09/19/92)

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rbtlongrain01Screwed again.  One of Bradbury’s most famous stories and is it in “100 of His Most Celebrated Tales”?  It is not.

Four men crash on Venus, although they are traveling in a craft named Neptune; perhaps a wrong turn at Albuquerque.  But then, the Atlantis didn’t go to Atlantis; but Challenger on the other hand . . .  well, never mind.  Still too soon.

Venus, according to Bradbury science, is a tropical planet of non-stop rain.  Like Mars, the air is breathable.  The crew’s GPS tells them it is 8 miles to the nearest Sun-Dome. These are structures built so that travelers have a permanent warm, dry place to stay while visiting Venus, kind of a One-Seasons Hotel.

They make their way to the Sun Dome at about 1 mile an hour, not rbtlongrain03aexactly a breakneck pace considering the path seems pretty clear for them.  Hour by hour, mile by mile, the GPS calls out their progress.  Somehow, they end up right back at their ship like the time my goddamn GPS took me in circles for an hour trying to get in the DFW airport.  But I digress.

Going in a circle and ending up back at the ship makes sense if you are the dolts from The Blair Witch Project using a map (did they have a map?  Or did they have a compass, but not the brains to use it?  Or were they just staring at Heather’s ass instead of watching the terrain?).  But explorers using a GPS type of device?  That is a Prometheus-level of stupidity.

The men go a little crazy being lost in the non-stop rain.  Boltz destroys the GPS and drowns himself by swallowing the rain, Cooper opens himself up to be killed by lightning. Captain Trask and Simmons start out again for the Sun Dome.

Only an hour from the Sun Dome, Simmons gives up and they have a long argument. What’s strange is that in the shots of Trask, he is in pouring rain, but in shots of Simmons, it doesn’t seem to be raining at all.  This is the ultimate continuity error as it should be CONTINUOUSLY raining — that is the defining characteristic of Venus in the story, the constant maddening rain.

rbtlongrain10Only Trask is left to make it to the Sun Dome.  He makes it to the Dome and opens the doors to the warm, dry interior.  And then something happens. No, wait, nothing happens.  This might be the most pointless story in the series, and that’s saying something.

This episode is — ahem — awash with poor decisions.

rbtlongrain03Instead, in the original short story, the group begins falling apart when the first Sun Dome they reach has been destroyed by Venusians.  My guess is that this pivotal point was ruined by budgetary constraints — less effective, but much cheaper to just show the ship twice.

More could have been done with some men just breaking and staring up at the sky until they drown from the rain — an interesting idea that gets about 10 seconds here.

Similarly short shrift is given to the carnivorous plants.  If you die, they lasso your body and I presume drag you off somewhere to be eaten.  A few times when the men aren’t moving fast enough, the ivy wrapped it self around their ankles and they had to break free.  Fortunately this wasn’t directed by Sam Raimi.

rbtlongrain09

Oh my God, I’ve lose my entire crew in the last few — hey is that a sauna?

And what of that Sun Dome?  It is pretty clear that Trask makes it and enjoys a nice warm day at the spa.  A little ambiguity of his fate, or remorse for his men would have been welcome.

Post-Post:

  • Does anything ever get long shrift?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Right Kind of House (03/09/58)

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ahprightkind02Well, right kind is a very subjective term.

Mr. Waterbury sees a sign for Ivy Corners, population 6,000 and seems to like the cut of the town’s jib.  Although, if I know AHP, the population will soon be 5,999.

He goes to the real estate office of Aaron Hacker to inquire about a house that he has his eye on.  Even though Hacker has the listing on the house, he tries to steer Waterbury to another home. Waterbury offers $9,500, but the owner Sadie Grimes is asking $50,000, possibly explaining why it has been on the market for 5 years.

Waterbury goes to see Sadie and shocks her and Hacker by agreeing to buy to house for the outrageous $50,000.  As if that isn’t enough, she pulls the geezer trick of giving him a lemonade and making him listen to an interminable story about people he doesn’t know  Sadie tells him about her dead youngest son who had gone to the big city and become very successful.  He used to send her money every month, but something went awry.ahprightkind01

Michael never told his mother about his problems, but he showed up in the middle of one night after 9 years. He just claimed to be sick of his job, so he quit and came home to mommy for a few weeks.  In reality, he admits he was fired and is very protective of a little black bag he was carrying.

He hung out for a long time, never going out.  And this was in the days before ESPN, blogging and internet porn, so what did I — er, he — he do all day?  His mother treated him like Little Lord Clavin, but the black bag was never seen again, and she never searched for it, having little interest in porn.

One night, it ended as he got late night visitors who were either the rest of his gang or the most persuasive Jehovah’s Witnesses ever.  When Michael would not donate the loot, whatever their identities, they killed him (although to be fair, that doesn’t sound like a Jehovah’s Witness).  The sheriff tells his mother that Michael had been a naughty boy in New York.  He and three other men had held up a bank and stolen $200,000.  Michael ended up ahprightkind03with all the loot, see?

An insurance investigator with the sheriff is more interested in finding the $200,000.  Ms. Grimes denies seeing the money or even the black bag. That was 5 years ago, and she immediately put the house up for sale for $50,000.  She asks Waterbury if he thinks the bank would accept $50,000 as full restitution for the theft.  He seems to think so after this long.

Waterbury has caught her in a lie about the little black bag, and she readily admits it. She was waiting for the only person in the world who would pay $50,000 for this modest house — a person who thought there was $200,000 hidden inside.  And that would be the man who killed her boy — her 40 year old boy.  He would have been on his own gwown-up health care plan for 14 years.

ahprightkind05Waterbury smugly tells her that she shouldn’t have told him this story until after she called the police.  She calmly replies that she didn’t tell him the story until after he drank the lemonade. LOL.  OK, that deserves my second ever 🙂 .

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch: James Drury is still with us.
  • So I guess the population will indeed go down to 5,998 as Waterbury croaks and Ms. Grimes is sent to the big house.

Night Gallery – She’ll Be Company for You (12/24/72)

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This one is painful.  Maybe it’s because it is following a run of pretty good reviews.  Or maybe it is just awful.

Henry Auden is at the funeral of his wife.  He loved her, but she had become a burden with her wheelchair and her bell that she would ring to call him.  Of course, he could have save a lot of trouble by having her bedroom on the first floor.  Truthfully, he is relieved to have her gone.  As soon as the funeral wraps up, Maggie’s best friend Barbara (Chief Brody’s wife in Jaws) tells Henry that they need to go back to his house, to Maggie’s bedroom.  This woman is a player.

Sadly, Barbara is just a nut who just wanted too see the room and see if Maggie still somehow occupied it.  Downstairs, Henry believes he hears the bell that Maggie had used to summon him.  He accuses Barbara of ringing it, but she is coy about whether she did or not — way too coy for the story.

Barbara feels bad for Henry all alone in the big house, but apparently the bedroom tease leads to nothing.  She does, however, send him her cat Jennet to keep him company.

ngshellkeep02In addition to hearing the bell ringing, Henry also hears the roars of large jungle cats just outside his home.  He even believes he sees their shadows.

The next day he hears the bell again in concert with the roaring cats.  This sets not only his head spinning, but his entire body as the director apparently had him standing on a lazy-susan.  Now there’s a behind-the-scenes photo I want to see.  Finally, he thinks he’s sees a leopard in the doorway.

That night he hears the ringing again, but he sees the bell sitting on the table.  In fact, when he examines it, there is no clapper.  OK, that proves there was no ringing, but there must have been one in there when Maggie was alive.  What happened to it? Nothing happened to it — it was just needed for a story point.

ngshellkeep04Hearing another roar, Henry looks out Maggie’s bedroom window.  The leopard has changed its spots; in fact, he changed them into stripes because he’s a tiger now.  Henry looks for a weapon in the kitchen. Initially picking up a rolling pin.

Remembering he is not a 1950’s housewife, he discards it for a carving knife about the size of a machete.  What were they have at Thanksgiving, ostrich?  Even with that lethal weapon,he’s pretty ballsy going after a tiger.

He begins hacking away at foliage, even beginning with some plants in the house.  He gets glimpses of the tiger slinking away, but never catches him before falling exhausted to the ground.  He walks back to the house, still hearing the bell.  He dutifully marches up to Maggie’s bedroom.

Barbara comes by to see Henry that day and we see Jennet his lapping up blood dripping from his mauled body.

ngshellkeep05Post-Post:

  • Or maybe it was all just a bad case of tinnitus.
  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Leonard Nimoy was in A Quality of Mercy.
  • The director has only 3 directing credits but a ton of Director of Photography credits, including the just about the entire run of Star Trek. so, that Leonard Nimoy was really a good sport.
  • The director has admitted he was over his head in directing this episode.  The writer also accepted some blame, but he has a pretty impressive resume.

Tales From the Crypt – Split Personality (08/26/92)

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Image 002Burt Young, playing a role even dumber than Paulie in the Rocky movies, somehow thinks that 1) his stack of $50 chips are $5 chips, and 2) that he is in big trouble showing 10 in Blackjack.  After unsuccessfully pleading with the dealer (an uncredited Joe Pantoliano) to let him off the hook, he gets a 9 so is sitting fairly pretty (a first for Burt Young) at 19.

Joey Pants reminds him that the dealer could have 20.  Joe Pesci strolls over and encourages him the that next card is will be a 2, paying 5 to 1 for 5-card Charlie, a prospect as smelly as a One Wipe Charlie.  So the poor sap loses everything and — no, wait, he actually gets a 2 and wins a fistful of dollars!

He goes to give Pesci a tip for his asinine, almost sure-to-bankrupt-him advice.  Joe tells him he can’t accept a small gratuity.  On the other hand, Pesci Image 006has the inside line on a no-risk, tax free limited partnership guaranteed to to double all the money almost overnight.

At the bar, Young and Pesci discuss this fail-proof scheme.  Pesci says he has always had a thing about the number 2 — Young drawing the 2, this deal to double the cash.  So Young ends up penniless after all. Oddy Pesci is celebrating with only one hooker.

The next day, a black cat crosses the road causing him to run off the road and blow a tire on his BMW.  He ignores the warning signs and walks to a nearby house featuring identical classic convertibles in the driveway.  When he gets to the strangely designed pink house, in inimitable Joe Pesci style, he says, “What the fuck is this shit?” [1]

Image 014As in every TV episode on this blog, he lets himself into the house to use the phone.  He is surprised when a beautiful brunette pulls a gun on him as he is looking at a picture of the house’s architect — her father — on a magazine cover.  And further surprised when her twin sister appears.

It is quite reasonable that Pesci would would try a scam to pass himself off as an admirer of her father’s work based on a glimpse of the magazine cover,  But then he spouts off about the architect’s other buildings, German Expressionistic influence, 1950’s Futurism, Bauhaus — HTF does he know all that by looking at one picture?

The girls — April and June — are charmed by Pesci’s miraculous knowledge of their father’s work and invite him to have a drink, probably a double.  Unfortunately, just as he learns the twins are Image 016worth $2 billion, the tow truck driver shows up.  Which is really strange because 1) it didn’t take 2 hours, and 2) Pesci was holding down the phone cradle buttons (i.e.was faking the call, for those unfamiliar with 20th century tabletop rotary phones).

But the girls invite him back, and they go out multiple time.  He is amazingly 1) able to get them out of the hermit-like existence of their house, and 2) able to get them to be seen in public with him.  As he continues the story to his solitary hooker.

He starts charming each of them individually and they agree that they wish there were two of him.  In order to marry both of them, ensuring that he can scam them out off all their money, he pretends to suddenly remember he is a twin.  One always has to stay in South Africa to oversee their business interests.  Soon, the twins marry the “twins.”

Image 036Eventually, a tell-tale clue (which sadly requires only Pesci to be topless) enables them to figure out the scam.

There are a couple of twists and, more importantly, a couple of bustiers.  The twins might not be great actresses, but there were beautiful enough to deserve longer careers.  Joe Pesci was a force of nature as always.  Kudos to him for restraining his career and not wearing out his welcome by appearing in 3 movies a year.

No split decision on this one – good episode.

Image 049Post-Post:

  • [1] I wouldn’t have done that for anyone but Pesci.