Category Archives: TV

Tales of the Unexpected – Lamb to the Slaughter (04/14/79)

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I was really looking forward to this. It is the second episode of a new series for me. The first episode was très disturbing with an incredibly dry wit. The original short story by Roald Dahl is a classic.  The Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode based on it was not online at the time I would have watched it, so this was a great opportunity. Plus, it stars the beautiful British actress Susan George. What could go wrong?

In 2020 on a Halloween with a full moon, everything, of course.

Sadly, a few years later and now on Peacock, Episode 28 of Season 3 of AHP is still conspicuously missing. [1] The Cheney Vase shows up more places than the FBI Anti-Piracy Warning, but still no Lamb to the Slaughter.  Susan George is playing a pregnant woman and, apparently, went all method for the role because she is about 25 pounds heavier than expected.  Pictures of her in this post are not from this episode.

But the real disappointment is the episode itself.  It tends to sink an episode when the weakness is the episode.  The previous TOTU episode took a story that did not at all suggest any humor, and gave it a droll veneer.  This episode does the opposite.  It takes a clever, funny concept and deliberately drains it of all humor and suspense.  A major let down.  The series ran 9 seasons so, hopefully, this is just a glitch.

The opening scene is illustrative of what follows.  Pointlessly, the first scene now takes place after the murder.  This is a major change from the short story and AHP adaptation. [1] Unfortunately, they compounded this error in judgment.  When Susan George goes through the charade of coming home from the market and calling for her husband, there is not a hint of chicanery.  It is a full-on cheat to the audience.  There is not even a sly wink that might intrigue the audience or just be appreciated only later.  I understand she is trying to get in character, but this is a yuge wasted opportunity.

OK, this one is actually Melissa George, the American Susan George.

[1]  Bare*bones posted a link to the original, so I finally got to watch the AHP version.  It is so superior in every way to TOTU that I don’t want to besmirch it.  

Barbara Bel Geddes is excellent.  The AHP structure really allows us to empathize with her just like audiences did with Norman Bates (but for different reasons). [2]  Alfred Hitchcock and Roald Dahl were nominated for Best Direction and Best Screenplay Emmys respectively.  They were respectively disrespected with a loss and a loss. [3]

Let’s just hope this was an off-night for Tales of the Unexpected.  I rate it 100 lambs:  z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z.

Other Stuff:

  • [2]  The final shots of the main characters are even remarkably similar.  Both are sitting placidly upright in a chair.  Only Anthony Perkins gives us a smirk, and Barbara Bel Geddes breaks out in laughter like she just struck oil.
  • [3]  Both losses were to an Alcoa Theater episode starring Mickey Rooney.  The Alcoa episode won several Emmys, but Rooney lost Best Actor to Fred Astaire.  Rooney was seen in the restroom pounding the mirror yelling, “F*** ’em.  F*** ’em all!  How dare they!”  That is a great demonstration of the short-man / celebrity intersection of self-importance.  At least he can take comfort that he is 3 inches taller than the similarly mouthy Greta Thunberg.  You know, if he were standing up.
  • In the TOTU version, the husband is played by a future Nazi in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (RIP to Sean Connery today!) [4] — the “No ticket” guy.
  • [4]  I happened to hear the news while listening to MSNBC for laughs this morning on XM.  What a sad excuse for a news channel — they said he was the first James Bond.  Bullshit. 
  • They did uncharacteristically miss a Trump-bashing opportunity to say his favorite Bond flick must be From Russia with Love.  Although anyone who has seen his NY digs knows it would be Goldfinger.
  • NPR got it wrong, too — I want a refund!
  • In poking around the Emmy history, I learned that Alice from The Brady Bunch was nominated for 4 Emmys and won 2 (although, shockingly, not for The Brady Bunch).  And here I thought Robert Reed was that show’s star at pretending to be something he wasn’t.
  • I feel like Lynda Day George ought to get a mention here.
  • Whatever dumb son-of-a-bitch came up with the Block concept in the WordPress update should be in jail. Lock him up! Lock him up!

Science Fiction Theatre – The Voice (10/26/56)

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We open in the home of Roger Brown, “an outstanding attorney at law”.  He and his wife Anna are enjoying a quiet evening at home watching Mendoza the Mentalist perform “an amazing demonstration of mental telepathy.”  Even more astounding, Brown is smoking a pipe while lying on his back.  Bravo!

Vertical pipe smoking: #1 cause of burnt corneas. #2: Emily Ratajkowski.

They watch as Mendoza correctly describes the contents of an envelope that contains a picture of the host’s nephew in a graduation gown.  The crowd is less impressed when Mendoza correctly predicts that the TV host will be voting for democrat Adlai Stevenson in 11 days.

Anna believes the demonstration, but Roger thinks the scientist observing was duped.  He says, “It would be a lot easier to get an innocent man out of the death cell by mental telepathy.  You know, just sit here and tell it to the judge.”  Yeah, I agree the existence of telepathy would clear the “innocent people” out of death row, but not the way he thinks.

Anna thinks there was something paranormal about the way the Sloan case landed in Roger’s lap at the same time new evidence just happened to be revealed.   Roger chalks it up to coincidence:  “The young man’s guardian just happened to wander into my office, that’s all.  A pure paranoid — wants to sue the city because he tripped on the sidewalk.  A pathological liar who let it slip he was with Sloan on the night of the murder.”  Wait, so you’re building the defense around the testimony of a known pathological liar who has a pre-existing relationship with the accused?

Brown has a pilot’s license, but apparently from the same Caribbean correspondence flight school as JFK, Jr.  Brown goes down like Frasier.  He wakes up paralyzed in the wreckage and tries to send out a telepathic SOS.  An old man driving by picks up the signal.  Hundreds of miles away, Anna involuntarily writes the word CRASH on a piece of paper.  How that slip of paper made it into the Best Picture envelope at the 2005 Oscars is not discussed, but explains a lot.

Roger wakes up in a hospital, but is unable to move or speak.  A nurse thinks she heard him ask for a glass of water, a doctor enters the room thinking he heard Roger call for him, and KHJ says he was caller #4 for the Carl Perkins tickets.  Anna enters the room, so I guess he telepathically sent her the hospital address also.

The rest of the episode is as lifeless as Roger’s paralyzed body.  At least one thing is cleared up.  The guardian is again referred to as a paranoid psychopathic liar.  But he is the accuser, not defending the prisoner.  Roger is able to get the man released.  But, c’mon man, he was probably guilty of something.

This was really a slog.  The story was not very interesting, the lead character was paralyzed, the video was in terrible condition, and Roger looked like Fredo Corleone.  That last item might not sound like a big deal, but now I’ll be imagining Fredo banging cocktail waitresses two at a time all weekend.  Maybe I would have been better off with one of the recommendations dailymotion put on the same screen.

Yes, a lot of potential there.

Oh, this is a recipe for disaster.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Greatest Monster of Them All (02/14/61)

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Movie producer Hal Ballew is looking through a book on entomology to get ideas for a new monster movie.  He and his screenwriter Fred Logan are unable to come up with a bug that hasn’t been used before.  The crafty Ballew switches gears and tells Logan, “Think you can come up with a high school background?  All those kidddds, full of liiiife!”  Before Ballew can suggest Cuties, Logan blurts out, “Ernst von Croft, the [titular] greatest monster of them all!”  And that’s how Cuties spent 59 years in Development Hell.

Ernst von Croft was an actor in 1930s movies who appeared as hideous, nightmare-inducing characters on-screen just like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Bette Davis.

Ballew brings von Croft into the office and introduces him to his director Morty Lenton.  The actor is perfectly cast — an old cadaverous gent that would have fit right in with the Universal monster classics.  Lenton warns him that this is only a low budget joint.  Von Croft tells him that it can still be a very good picture. “Great films are not made with money.  They are made with love, with care, with integrity.”  I hope the hacks in Hollywood get that because most screenings I’ve seen on Fandango have sold zero tickets lately.

Von Croft still believes they can make a great picture, even after Ballew tells him the writer is no Edgar Albert Poe.  He goes into character, draping his jacket over his shoulders like a cape, wrestling Lenton to the ground, and going for his neck.  Just finding a neck on the tubby Lenton was a feat in itself.  Ballew gives him the job and von Croft even volunteers to do his own make-up.

Blah, blah, blah.  The rest of the episode is confusing and tedious.

  • When Lenton suggests von Croft play the vampire with no teeth, what does that even mean?
  • How is the movie playing in theaters without the producer ever having seen it?
  • But wait, Ballew tells Logan that Lenton did a great job.  So did he see it?  Did he approve of the changes?  Surely not, because he would not have risked damaging the film’s success.
  • Von Croft and Logan are in the theater.  The young audience is digging the suspense and horror.  However, when von Croft’s character speaks for the first time, the audience begins laughing bigly.  Lenton has dubbed in a voice that is identical to Bugs Bunny.  Why?  Was it because von Croft knocked him down?  If so, there was zero indication of his desire for revenge.
  • Von Croft and Logan are humiliated.  Logan gets drunk that night and visits von Croft.  VC (because I’m tired of typing von Croft) angrily makes a point that the director kept insisting on close-ups and that Logan was complicit.  What do close-ups have to do with the cartoon voice?  If anything, wouldn’t you want long shots so the dubbing as less obvious?
  • Later that night, at the studio, the writer finds Lenton dead with two puncture marks in his neck.  But when we see VC, he has a knife.  Did he bite Lenton or stab him?  The bite was not bloody enough to kill him, so maybe it was both.
  • VC dies leaping from some scaffolding.  Did he actually think he was a vampire?  Did he always, or did the humiliation of the film and paying $8 for popcorn trigger him?
  • Logan finds Ballew injured but alive.  Logan explains VC’s actions, “We should have remembered . . . he was the greatest monster of them all.”  Hunh?  There was no history of violence with the actor.  He seemed like a good guy.  Is Logan confusing the actor with his roles?

So I am just baffled by the motivations and some of the dialog.  Jack at bare*bones seems to like this episode, which always makes me conclude that I’ve missed something.

Really an off night for AHP.  I rate this episode a Phantom of the Opera out of the Universal Classic Monsters box set. [1]

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Actually, Phantom might be great, I just haven’t gotten around to watching it . . . in the 6 years I’ve owned the box set.
  • The appearance of Robert H. Harris here is jarring.  I have previously pointed out how this bald, dumpy, middle-aged guy always seemed to be a hit with the ladies in other AHP episodes.  Typically, he would be in a suit with a bow-tie, and a snazzy hat.  Here, however, he is wearing a golf shirt.  Whether this is due to him being a care-free Hollywood producer or due to the general degradation of society in the early 1960’s, I couldn’t say.  But I think we know the answer.
  • One bright spot is Meri Welles. Her brief performance is an aloof dimwit actress is fun.  She was last seen playing another dimwit actress in Madame Mystery.  Not so funny, she died at 36.
  • William Redfield went on to 2 noted roles:  Felix’s brother in one episode of The Odd Couple [2] and Harding in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest [3] (great, now I have to stay up and watch that on Netflix).
  • [2]  He only gets a mention in that episode.  But, holy crap, has there ever been a better written and acted show?
  • [3]  Wow, now that I’m older, Nurse Ratched was actually pretty hot.  No, I’m not watching the series.
  • Why are the AHP aspect ratios always screwed up on dailymotion?  That means I have to walk alllllll the way across the room and put a disk in the DVD player to get some pictures.  No wonder COVID has turned me into Robert H. Harris.

 

One Step Beyond – The Navigator (04/14/59)

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Host John Newland begins by telling us that, in this age of reason, the old tales about sea monsters and sirens have been debunked or explained by science. Dubious unsourced tales of precognition and life after death are still totes for real, though, I guess.

Kudos again to One Step Beyond for looking great!

Stewart the cook Cookie, the steward, knocks on First Mate Blake’s cabin and tells him he has 10 minutes until his watch.  Cookie reports they are “moving like lightning now that we have the sea at our back.” Wait, they’re at sea.  The sea is at their back, front, and both sides, so what does that even mean?  Google provides no clear examples of the phrase, so either it is not a thing or it was somehow deemed to benefit Trump, and was suppressed by the algorithm. [1]

It clearly means something to Blake, though, because he runs up to the deck.  He tells Cookie to have Captain Peabody meet him there.  Blake chews out Ensign Dibble for changing course from NNW without orders, because that’s how the Navy works.  Dibble points to the chalkboard where orders are logged — it says the course is WNW and the Soup of the Day is Navy Bean for the 400th day in a row.

Blake shows the elderly Captain the board.  Captain Peabody orders the helmsman to correct back to the original course.  He then chews out Blake for the error because that’s how the Navy works.  Dibble suggests someone sneaked in and changed the course during the last change of watch.  The Captain notes that the course change has steered them into a dead calm lack of wind, and ice in the water.

Captain Peabody assembles the small crew and tells them the culprit made a mistake.  The new heading was written on the chalkboard, but the chalk was not returned to its holder.  He orders each crewman to empty his pockets.  He finds no chalk, but does finally find those strawberries that went missing.  The officers search the rest of the ship.  In the cargo hold, Blake finds a stowaway.  He has the chalk.  

The Captain shakes him, demanding to know how he got there, why he changed the course, and if he knows any new way to prepare Navy Beans.  The haggard man says nothing, so they chain him up.

From the calm water, the crew hears men shouting for the ship to save them, or to send some girls.  The crew can’t see them because of the fog.  Finally they find four men on a piece of wreckage the size that Kate Winslet hogged in Titanic.  They are survivors of The Flying Eagle which hit an iceberg.  

There is also a dead man.  Blake pulls him on board to give him a decent funeral — presumably at sea, so a good shove would have accomplished the same thing.   Blake recognizes the dead man as the man he caught and chained up in the cargo hold of the ship.  He runs to the cargo hold, and sees the chains are now empty.

This was a fine episode.  The ship was believable and the performances were good.  If I have a beef with this episode, it is with the fickle nature of the universe.  Great, God relaxed the rules and allowed the man to transport to the other ship and trick the crew into sailing toward the four survivors.  You know, he could have just moved the iceberg and saved them all.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Algorithm = some 23 year old punk.
  • For those keeping score, this is 7 out of 13 episodes set outside the USA.
  • Amazingly, Robert Ellenstein (the elderly Captain Peabody) went on to play the Federation Council President in Star Trek IV (and was still younger than Joe Biden).  But then, ST IV was made only 27 years after this episode aired.  By comparison, it has been 34 years since I saw ST IV in a theater.  OMG, I’ve wasted my life!  This mathematical oddity is also enabled by the fact that the ancient mariner, Captain Peabody, was portrayed by a 36 year old actor. 

I will often look to see what historical events happen on the day an episode aired.  I almost never find anything significant.  Check out this list of things popular that week: 

Pope John XXIII was leading the Catholic Church. In that special week of April people in US were listening to Come Softly To Me by The Fleetwoods. In the UK, Side Saddle by Russ Conway was in the top 5 hits. The World of Apu, directed by Satyajit Ray, was one of the most viewed movies released in 1959 while Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart was one of the best selling books. On TV people were watching Lili. 

A little before my time, but I have heard of none of these things except the pope, and that is probably just because they name those guys like a 3-Card Monte scam.

Draw your own conclusion . . . all art is ephemeral, memories fade like the evening sun, Epstein didn’t kill himself.  Seriously, wouldn’t he have waited for Cuties?

I didn’t even want to link it.

Tales of the Unexpected – William and Mary (04/07/79)

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At the burial of her husband, Professor William Pearl, do I detect Mary Pearl exhibiting the slightest smile?  I believe I do.  And, if the first episode is any indication, it is the perfect kick-off to the series.

After an edit worthy of OJ Simpson, Mr. Pearl’s executor Arthur Baxter goes to see Mary.  They meet in a room with more books than a quarantined “journalist” on cable news.  Funny how all these idiots just happen to have their laptop facing a bookshelf.  Sorry, dummies, that does not make you look smart. [2]  And the 80% of you that have a guitar in the background — it does not make you cool.  It makes you look like you bought a guitar, didn’t even buy a case, carefully positioned it in the 15% of the room (i.e. 2% of the house) that is visible on the screen, and are stealing cool from Bob Dylan. [1]  I have yet to see anyone with a piano in the background of their breaking Orange Man Bad scoop.

Mary says she knows William did not leave her much — just the house and £3,000.  She says, “I guess I will just have to go on living in the style to which I am accustomed.”  There is a sealed letter that is to be read by Arthur to Mary.  It says for Mary to make an appointment with Dr. John Landy.  William’s letter also issues a few rules to Mary: 

  • Do not drink alcohol.
  • Avoid television at all costs. 
  • Do not use make-up.
  • Do not smoke cigarettes.
  • Keep my rose-beds well-weeded.
  • Disconnect the phone now that I have no use for it. 

Mary’s stoic response is, “He really did genuinely care about me didn’t he, Arthur?”

That might not read like much.  You might not even find it humorous on the screen.  But the absolutely droll British delivery made me laugh out loud.  It is easy to imagine Frasier Crane delivering that line, but much more tarted-up for American ears

Mary goes to see Dr. Landy.  He knew William through their work on criminal psychopathology.  Landy invented a prefrontal lobotomy technique to remove abnormal parts of the brain that was “not unsuccessful”.  Six weeks ago, he visited William and found him to be a perfect candidate because of his “first class brain”, which was believable in a professor 40 years ago.  Bottom line:  he tells Mary that her husband is alive and just in the other room.  He feels justified, using the “from a certain point of view” theory of English Common Law.

To explain the situation, Dr. Landy shows Mary a picture of a dog’s head on a plate.  The severed head is still alive, with a functioning brain.  He says tubes carry nutrients into the dog’s head and other tubes carry waste to a bucket, or the carpet if he is nervous.  The legitimacy of the scientific feat is called into question, however, when a Korean chef briefly appears in the background.

Landy explains to a stunned Mary that he removed a portion of William’s brain just before he died.  He was also able to retain one optic nerve, but unable to save an ear.  The whole disgusting sentient blob is in a metal box.

Before he takes Mary in to see her husband, he explains that the eye never shuts, and can only look directly up at the ceiling.  To be honest, not a lot happens after that.  Mary insists on taking the box home with her.  She revels in the opportunity to pay back some of William’s years of passive-aggressive abuse.  She breaks all of his rules, wearing make-up, drinking booze, smoking, and I’ll bet those rose-beds are as unmanicured as her . . . er, let’s just say, he probably liked things neatly trimmed.  She even has a little angled mirror set up over the box so she can cruelly force him to watch John Oliver on the telly.

We know of William’s agitation because of the beeps coming from the oscilloscope hooked up up to him.  As she callously laughs, blows smoke into his eye lens, and flaunts his rules, the beeps become more rapid than the telegraph on the Titanic.

Dry as it was, I really enjoyed the episode.  You first sympathize with the widow Mary.  As she begins to have her revenge on William, however, can you really enjoy that?  I dig a good lady’s revenge flick, but the dude’s an eye in a freakin’ box!  The thought of that hellish existence would have given me nightmares if I saw this as a kid.  Not only is he trapped silently in the box, now his wife is going to torture him for years.  At least Stephen Hawking got some fresh air and had depth perception.  Well, he did have to listen to his wife.

In the intro, author Roald Dahl oversells the episode a little by calling it a “very nasty tale.”  Disturbing might be a better word.  Nasty is fleeting, but disturbing stays with you.  I will think about this episode for a long time. 

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Would also have accepted Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton, or Jimi Hendrix.
  • This was actually the 3rd episode.  The first was The Man from the South.  I saw that on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and I can’t believe they could do better here.  The second was Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat, also seen on AHP.  In that case, I don’t think I could do any better.
  • Kudos to the British ethic of ignoring looks in casting.  They cast based on talent, not on age, a nice smile, or a hot body.  That freedom from preconceived cultural norms of beauty enables their shows to be much more grounded and emotionally accessible.
  • No, seriously, get some babes in the next episode.

[2]  OK, Megan Kelly gets a pass.