Category Archives: TV

Ray Bradbury Theater – By the Numbers (09/11/92)

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bradbury02We get a brief prologue of a drill sergeant shouting marching orders.  Well, he’s a drill sergeant that is wearing a t-shirt — maybe that happens, but we also get a glimpse of his white pants, which don’t strike me as standard issue.  And his soldier, which we see only in quick shots of body parts, freckles, and a rippling reflection in a pool is a young boy.  We’re not given enough data to know for sure what’s happening, but we can put the pieces together if we want to.  I initially thought this was a mess, but I’ve reconsidered.

rbtbythenumbers01Flash-forward 10 years.  A man on a train orders 2 martinis and tells the waiter that one is for him and one is for whoever might sit in the empty chair across from him, “It saves time.”

Because nothing entices a stranger, particularly a young lady, more than a pre-mixed, lukewarm drink with a soggy olive offered by a stranger.

The man sees another younger man come in and instinctively neaten a stack of linen napkins on a cart.  This brings memories back to the man who seems to have no name.  Fortuitously, the alcoholic car of the train is nearly full, so the young man takes the seat and is offered the martini.  He tells the young man that they met previously — 10 years ago on a hot summer afternoon in a Malibu hotel, by the swimming pool.

rbtbythenumbers02Back then, the boy had worked for his father managing a pool at a luxury hotel.  The father drills him with military precision, marking every second as he runs from task to task straightening stacks of towels, lining up chairs, collecting stray glasses.  While the father has a white shirt (sleeveless — generally the sign of an idiot) and long white pants, the 10 year old boy is wearing next-to-nothing, just a small blue Speedo.  This lends an air of creepiness to the episode that really is not part of the story.

Finally after all of the chores are completed at exactly 12:00:00:00, the boy runs to unlock the gate for the waiting guests — both of them — maybe it is off-season.  The boy unlocks the gate, is ordered ABOUT FACE and ordered to the edge of the pool where he is commanded to HALT.  The father turns and begins pumping some fairly unimpressive iron.  The man and his friend think it is inhuman that the boy can’t take a dip, but the boy has a smile on his face

rbtbythenumbers03The men tell the father that they think he is acting like an idiot. The father tells them that this is his turf.  He has an agreement with the hotel that their jurisdiction ends at the pool gate. Any dissent, and they will be removed “bodily.  I possess a Black Belt in Judo, Boxing, Rifle Marksmanship Certificates. Shake my hand and I’ll break your wrist, sneeze and I’ll crack your nose, one word and your dental surgeon will need 2 years just to reshape your smile.”  Apparently he has a similar jurisdictional agreement with the local police, attorneys and child protective services.

He’s not a monster, however.  He does give his boy time to frolic in the pool — 40 laps worth.  One of the men swims a few laps along side the boy, but can’t keep up.  After a break to serve a few drinks poolside, he is back in the pool.  Again, this is very creepy. Outside of Thailand, who wants to be served alcoholic drinks by an almost naked 10 year old boy?

rbtbythenumbers04The guy’s friend, mustache-guy (because no one has names in this story) predicts that one day the boy will murder his father. That’s why he invited his friend writer-guy to this luxury hotel — maybe this scenario will relieve his writer’s block; or maybe a little shoulder massage is worth a try, too.

Once the pool closes, the father orders the boy to stand at the edge of the pool for an hour.  The father leaves his watch on a towel and tells the boy to consider that the watch is him standing there.  When he returns, now dark, the boy is still at attention.  When the father picks up the towel and the watch falls in the water, the helpful son dives in without permission to get it.  His father merely says, “Waterproof,” smacks him up side his noggin and gives him demerits.

It finally ends when the father finds a used towel after the boy had cleaned the area.  He irately orders his son to stand at the edge of the pool and not move for an hour.  Then dear old dad trips over the towel and falls in.  Turns out dad can’t swim, and is now screaming for help.  He had tricked the boy before and punished him — see the watch incident, for one — so the boy is waiting for an “AT EASE.” before he dares to move.

rbtbythenumbers06The now-grown boy gets up, and heads back to his room.  He stops and sheds a single tear as he straightens the napkins again. Presumably, writer-guy comforts him by following him back to his berth as the last shot is the classic train going into a tunnel.

Interesting little slice of a weird life episode.  But for god sake, get the kid a real bathing suit next time.  Maybe even a shirt when he is serving the guests.  Does the Health Department not have jurisdiction here, either?

Post-Post:

  • Mustache guy was named Sid.
  • Very few deviations from the short story, although framed slightly differently on the train.

 

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Return of the Hero (03/02/58)

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The scene:  Wartime France.  Hitchcock’s opening and closing remarks are very subdued this week due to the gravity of the story.  This isn’t ordinary Americans being killed after all, it’s . . . well, more on that later.

Gendarme, stop that man -- he has no baguette!

Gendarme, stop that man — he has no baguette!

Cafe owner Leon is forcing his daughter into a marriage with the butcher.  Therese has her eye on the salami of a soldier named Sgt. Andre, though, and is heartbroken by his discharge; I mean, that he as been discharged.

Andre’s friend Marcel is telling a barfly how he saved Andre’s life.  He tells her Andre is rich and engaged to a baroness.

Andre is much more humble and honest, telling Therese that a few kisses in the dark meant nothing, that a soldier needs a girl, it was never going to last past Marseilles.  She tells him she wants to be with him anyway, to look after him.  He brutally says he  wants to get back to his family.

ahpreturnofthehero02Meanwhile Marcel is still talking up Andre to the barfly — how he has a yacht, has a winning racehorse. One of the disbelievers at the bar calls Andre’s mother to verify Marcel’s stories.  Andre takes the phone and tells his mother — now seen in an evening gown at a glamorous party — that he will be home in 2 days.

BTW, the Countess is played by Iphigenie Castiglioni; I wonder if that is the same Iphigenie Castiglioni that was in Hitchcock’s Rear Window?

He says he invited a friend to come home with him.  He assures them all that he is fine, but his friend has lost a leg in the war.  His family, the snooty society folk are aghast! The friend has not had time to get a prosthetic leg, so he will have to walk on crutches or — avert your eyes, ladies — a wheelchair!

His fiancee says, “That’s terrible!  To bring a cripple in here.  He won’t fit in.”  Well, we really can’t judge her until we measure the doors.

Andre’s mother sympathetically is only thinking of his poor friend.  She says he is welcome, but “don’t you think it will be a little awkward?  He won’t be able to ride, or swim, or dance — he will be so out of it!”

When Andre says the man saved his life, his mother promises the best life for him . . . just so it’s not too close to the family.  They will be happy to send him to Switzerland to recuperate, but “don’t bring him home!  Not Now!  It would be so depressing having such an unfortunate boy around.”

ahpreturnofthehero04After the call, he tells Marcel that he can’t take him home with him now, because he is not going home.  He tells Therese to marry the butcher and lead a long and happy life. He then hobbles out on crutches, revealing that it is actually him who has lost a leg, and he was testing his family’s reaction.  Therese runs after him, and will probably catch him . . . what with having two legs.

Alfred says at the end that he will dispense with his usual gallows humor as this show has no desire to make light of men who have suffered as a result of war.  Hopefully next week he can have us rolling in the aisles again with tales of murdered Americans.

ahpreturnofthehero05This episode was OK, but another missed opportunity.  Marcel was seen walking around, so we know he is doing OK.  There are tell-tale crutches prominently displayed leaning against the bar in several scenes. And the accents made it an effort to listen to the dialogue.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Susan Kohner is still with us.
  • Sir Alfred is correct, there is nothing funny about wounded soldiers.  But it did remind me of the classic sketch by Dudley Moore and Peter Cook.
  • This idea has apparently become an urban legend even showing up in Snopes, but its roots go back even further.

Night Gallery – Finnegan’s Flight (12/03/72)

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Pete Tuttle is standing in the yard as Finnegan (Burgess Meredith) enters.  Well, yard is charitable as there is no grass to be seen.  It is a prison yard enclosed by concrete walls.  No pool, no tennis courts, so you can be sure there are no politicians here.

Finnegan approaches the wall and looks at the guard atop it.  He asks for permission to leave.  Even though he says “please”, he is understandably denied, and begins pounding the concrete walls with his fists until they are bloody and broken.

He wakes up in the infirmary with the prison shrink.  He has been a model prisoner for his extended stay — current 30 years for murder, and before that a string of lesser crimes. Nowadays he mostly says please and thank you and follows orders, gets three meals a day, clean sheets and free health care.  Although haircuts do not seem to offered.

The doctor asks why he smashed his hands, and he says, “Do you know Pete Tuttle? Just between us, Doc, that’s the only time I care about living. ngfinnegansflight09 When Pete Tuttle makes me feel I’m something.”  This is getting a little uncomfortable, but he continues that Pete Tuttle has the ability to make him feel that he is somewhere else, outside the prison.

The shrink calls Tuttle into his office and learns that on the outside he was a professional hypnotist.  Apparently it didn’t work on the judge, because he is in the jug too, doing 5 years for a B&E.  He says Finnegan is the perfect subject for hypnotism — a guy locked up forever longing to get out.  Why Tuttle felt the best way to assist him was to give him the suggestion that “his fists were made of pig iron” is not clear.  How about, “You are the best laundry truck driver in the world.”

Suggesting (or maybe “suggesting”) to the shrink that Finnegan is so amazingly responsive to hypnosis, that there might be a book in it, the shrink has the guards bring Finnegan down to his office. Tuttle puts him under in a few seconds.  Pouring a cup of water from a cooler, he tells Finnegan that the water is boiling hot and commands him to put his fingers in it.  The power of his suggestion, or the receptiveness of Finnegan’s mind is so strong that blisters appear on his fingers.

ngfinnegansflight10It is an impressive display of hypnosis, but couldn’t Tuttle come up with demonstrations that didn’t end up mangling Finnegan’s hands every time?

The next time, Tuttle gives a more gentle suggestion that Finnegan is in an airplane.  We see Finnegan pretending to hold the controls and even making an airplane noise.  The warden comes in — bizarrely seeming to have been costumed for a WWII Nazi role — and doesn’t like what is going on.

Finnegan begins coughing and laughing.  Imagining himself in the jet, he has induced hypoxia — a lack of oxygen — in himself.  Did he imagine the Jet had no canopy?  Well, it was mentioned earlier in the episode that jets were invented after his incarceration, so I’m willing to give that a pass.  His face begins to blister as he were 50,000 feet up, almost in a vacuum.

ngfinnegansflight11Tuttle suggests to Finnegan to bring the plane down, but Tuttle must have also trained the 9/11 hijackers — he got Finnegan in the air, but can’t teach him how to land.  Finnegan is terrified, imagining himself in a dive.  His hair is even being blown back by his imagination, so maybe he does think jets are open-cockpit like bi-planes.

His perception of being in a jet is so strong, that as he “crashes”, the hospital ward explodes in flames even though — just as at the Pentagon on 9/11 — there were no airplane parts. [1]  Coincidence?

Pretty good episode of what I suspect is not an original concept.  But Burgess Meredith elevated every episode he was in . . . just not above ground-level in this one.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Burgess Meredith appeared in 4 episodes.
  • Aired 4 years before Meredith was in Rocky.
  • [1] Of course an airplane hit the Pentagon — shut up.

Tales From the Crypt – Maniac at Large (08/19/92)

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tftcmaniacatlarge03You can’t get a title more promising than that, but sadly the episode does not meet expectations; and I would argue only the word “at” is accurate.

Some gangstas are hanging out at the library, as gangstas are wont to do, terrorizing an old man and stealing his newspaper after jabbing a knife through it.  To be fair, there was a Nike coupon on the back.

Librarian Pritchard bravely confronts them and has security man Grady escort them out. After all, everyone knows public libraries are for smelly homeless people to hang out in, not gangstas.

This is witnessed by the meek new librarian Margaret who is given the task of cleaning up the gangsta’s vandalism.  Beneath the newspaper, she finds that one of the little angels left a switchblade which she slips into her pocket.  No one sees her except 1980’s singing star Adam Ant, who is no goody two shoes.

tftcmaniacatlarge04Despite there being a Maniac at Large as both the newspaper headline and episode title informs us, Pritchard has scheduled a late night inventory count.  Actually, Pritchard is treated about as if she were an ogre of a boss, but she seems pretty reasonable to me, so maybe I’m the ogre.

Adam Ant give Margaret a scare as he is hanging around past closing time.  He wants to checkout a reference book, but Margaret tells him it must stay.  He ominously says that if the police read this book, they might be able to catch the killer. Plus he’s British!  Just like a certain “the Ripper” I recall, hmmmmm?  He predicts the next victim will be a woman.  And speculates that the killer is set off by fear of living in the city.

tftcmaniacatlarge06Pritchard give Margaret some items to take to the basement where she sees the shadow of a knife repeatedly stabbing someone or something.  She runs upstairs to have Grady take a look.  He goes down but finds nothing.

She tells Pritchard who just happens to be talking to a police detective.  In the basement, they find an art book of nekkid ladies that has been slashed up.  The detective says he could pick up the ganagstas but “probably couldn’t make the charge stick”; unlike the pages in the book of nekkid ladies. Still no idea who it was as the gangstas were long gone, and Grady and Pritchard were upstairs.

tftcmaniacatlarge07Serial killer buff Adam Ant is trotted out again with some scary talk.  After he leaves, Margaret sees the newspaper headline again and starts to freak out.  A man with a deformed face bangs on the door menacingly, but Pritchard later explains he is a regular, just trying to return a book. And this guy was trying to return the hell out of it, banging on the door, waving the book, pressing his face to the window.  Perhaps he as unaware of the Book Drop earlier observed behind Grady’s desk.

Pritchard invites Margaret upstairs for a chat.  In Pritchard’s office, Margaret accuses her of killing Grady, and accuses her of “wanting to kill me.”  Pritchard tries to calm her down, but Margaret grabs the switchblade left behind by both the gangstas and the detective and plunges it repeatedly into her boss.  Echoing Adam Ant’s prediction, she rants “I knew you were after me, just like all the others!  But I’m not afraid anymore!  I showed you!”

tftcmaniacatlarge08Grady picks that moment to show up again and sees Pritchard stabbed to death.  Margaret is staring out the window, and says “I guess I’ll have to resign, but I liked it here.”  On the bright side, there is a higher position available for her promotion; stabbed to death being the only way to vacate a civil service position.

She wistfully continues that “the city makes me nervous.  So much crime.  I don’t like being afraid all the time.”  While she is giving the monologue, there is no indication what Grady is doing.

A guy with John Frankenheimer’s resume knows what he’s doing, but there were problems here.  Grady’s disappearance in the final scene, for example.  Blythe Danner did a fine job, but wasn’t really used well.  I’m an old fashioned guy — she was really hot back then, but we barely got a clear well-lit shot of her smiling and looking pretty.

Pritchard was regarded as a bitch, but really was just trying to run the library efficiently, and was pretty conscientious for a civil servant; I never considered her a suspect.  And who was doing that stabbing in the basement?  I suspect it was just a paranoid delusion by Margaret, but being the only such hallucination gave it too much credibility.

However, the set was great.  Maybe not a great library, but a great set — I really liked all the stairs, and levels, and railings.  And the performances were all good.  Adam Ant was over the top, but that is de rigueur in a good TFTC episode.  Blythe Danner just seemed beautiful and classy as always. Even while murdering her boss, she seemed classier and more relatable than her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis: I didn’t consider Margaret to be a “maniac” in the classic raging asylum dweller sense.  And she wasn’t “at large” — she was at work in the library for the whole episode.  Technically, I guess it was true, but not as brutal as I had expected.
  • Almost 20 years earlier, Grady (Clarence Williams III) was in a show whose concept still amuses me.  It was a serious police show where 3 hippies worked under cover (or am I thinking of 21 Jump Street?).  The best part is the cool name the 50 year old suits with long sideburns at the network gave it to really reel in the teens:  The Mod Squad.  Of course, the Porno-Industrial-Complex did the obvious and released The Bod Squad.
  • Or maybe not.  I could swear I remember seeing it on a drive-in marquee, but I can find no evidence of it,  I don’t think I’m confusing with this one.
  • The third of Mae Wood’s lifetime screenwriting credits, all on this show.
  • The classy beautiful Blythe Danner:  I’d like to book her . . . no, that doesn’t work. I’d like to make her decimal system dewy. . . no, too disrespectful.  I got nothing, but then I’m writing this in a craft brewhouse within walking distance of my front door, so I’m lucky to be forming complete. Sentences.

Thriller – The Cheaters (12/27/60)

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tcheaters01I always considered Robert Bloch’s screenplay to Psycho to be about as perfect as you can get — well-paced, quotable, manipulative, funny, scary.  I guess it should be no surprise that 3 of these first 5 episodes of Thriller — Fan Favorites — have been written by him or adapted from his work.  I would like to read more of his work, but sorry Amazon, I’m not shelling out $18 for a paperback of his best.

A not particularly useful prologue (hey, who wrote this rubbish!)[1] shows us a very crabby Dr. Van Prinn inventing a new type of spectacles.  When he tries them on, he looks in a mirror and screams in horror much as I do at Eye-Glass World.  They’re just glasses — they aren’t going to make me look like George Clooney.

Van Prinn is so distraught at what he sees (but we do not) that he screams in horror. Host Boris Karloff informs us that he hanged himself before dawn.  Rather than destroy the damnable specs so no one else suffers his fate — won’t someone please think of the children! — he apparently tucks them away in a desk drawer where they remain for 200 years.

Act II

tcheaters02Maggie and Joe live in a modest home (better than the Kramdens’ apartment, maybe more like Norton’s — which always sounded a little nicer, but I’m not sure was ever seen).  Maggie is just the kind of nagging shrew that we usually get from Alfred Hitchcock.  She is berating poor junkman Joe about bidding $100 on a blind lot from an abandoned building.  She is really a harridan, continuing to insult him as his young, single, handsome, athletic employee Harry enters the apartment.

They find nothing but disintegrating books, a lot of cobwebs, and broken furniture. Charlie mocks Joe just as his wife did and leaves thinking they have been had; but Joe finds the glasses which have been hidden away for 200 years.  He has been having trouble seeing, so these are the titular “cheaters” in the optical sense of the word.

When Joe gets home, Maggie is as dolled up as she can get.  She apologizes for being so rotten and selfish that morning.  When he puts on the titular cheaters, though, he can hear the truth from Maggie and see her “true” face — she plans to kill him. Charlie comes over to the house and Joe, through the specs, can see their unexpressed thoughts.  A gas company wants to buy their property for big bucks (because where better to drill than in a residential neighborhood (well (no pun intended), this was in the days before the EPA was created by Richard Nixon (that’s right, Richard freakin’ Nixon!)).  Not only that, Charlie and Maggie are planning to kill him — which explains Charlie’s interest in this 20-year older . . . I’m running out of synonyms that don’t stat with C.[2]

Joe brutally takes a tire iron to Maggie and Charlie.  A policemen overhears the disturbance and runs into the house.  Joe looks at the glasses and yells, “the cheaters, the cheaters!” adding a nice double-meaning to the title.  He raises the tire iron to pulverize the spectacles, but is gunned down like Michael Brown — except he was going for the glasses and not for the cop’s gun; or to attack him physically; or to rob a convenience store; or to assault a clerk.  Otherwise, pretty similar.

Act III

tcheaters03The story cleverly maintains continuity by having the glasses show up in an estate sale to get rid of the contents of Maggie and Joe’s home.  They are purchased by an old woman who can see that her children are planning to murder her.  She sees through the specs that the trustee of her husband’s estate is in on the murder plot so she jams a gigantic hatpin into his heart.  That hat must have been the size of Turd Ferguson’s.

Act IV

tcheaters04A year later, at a costume party, her son is mocked for lacking spectacles to complete his Ben Franklin get-up. Once his wife provides the specs, he finds he can hear his guests’ thoughts about the cards they are holding.  When he accuses another player of cheating, it gets turned around so he appears to be guilty. There is a fight and Thomas Jefferson clubs him in the head, accidentally killing him.  Cleverly, another twist on the word “cheater.”

Act V

tcheaters05Sebastian Grimm, one of the players at the game, takes the specs, suspecting that they have some special property.  He is writing a book about the glasses and goes to the old Van Prinn place, abandoned for decades.  He wants to know why Van Prinn hanged himself.  His wife begs him to not go upstairs, to go home with her.

He goes up, puts on the cheaters and looks in the mirror just like Van Prinn.  Grimm sees a hideous reflection, for reasons I am not clear on.  Did he do something that I missed?  Was it the hubris to think he could look within his own soul?  Was he seeing the evil that is in all humans?.  He screams in horror and claws at his face until it is bloody.

On the plus side, he does stomp on the glasses and put and end to their trail of carnage.  So there should be some redemption for that.

Great episode.

Post-Post:

  • [1]In retrospect, the prologue was an integral part of the story.  But am I going to start rewriting at 1 am?  Well, for that matter, is there any evidence that I ever do?
  • [2] Ya kinda need to know the yacht is name The Seaward.  Thanks for mangling one of the best jokes of the series.  And screwing up the aspect ratio.
  • Etymology Corner:  I’ve been using “for that matter” a lot lately — kind of a weird phrase.  I recently bookmarked an article on “believe you me” that I will actually read some day.
  • For all my praise of Robert Bloch, he did write 3 of my least favorite episodes of Star Trek.  On the other hand, dude wrote 3 MFing episodes of Star Trek!
  • Title Analysis:  Finally, I can give an A.  The multiple meanings and continuity were beautiful.