Category Archives: TV

Night Gallery – The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes (S2E1)

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ngearthquake01Starting Season 2 on Hulu because I’m not sure the box is worth $23 at Amazon.  Outside of the Pilot, NG has had zero rewatch potential.

This whole episode is a cornucopia of 60’s and 70’s stars.  In this segment,  we get Michael Constantine (Room 222), Bernie Kopell (Get Smart, Love Boat) and Clint Howard (geez, everything from Gentle Ben — Christ, a show about a kid who has a full grown BEAR for a pet! —  to Arrested Development, with one iconic episode of Start Trek in between).

10-year old Clint is at a TV studio with his grandfather.  They have given him a spot doing commentary, apparently having the same criteria for maturity as MSNBC.

He begins talking about some books he’s read and a telescope he hopes to get, driving the station manager crazy at the banality.  Then he gets very serious and describes a missing girl being found, and an earthquake occurring the next day.

Despite Clint’s track record of having been 100% right on previous predictions, the station manager is outraged and threatens to fire everyone and burn the tape.

Of course, Clint is 100% correct, so we flash forward 18 months (during which young Clint has not grown an inch).  Finally, after a year of public predictions being 100% correct, a doctor is sent to study Clint.  The government also sends a man to monitor every show.

While getting made up for the day’s show, Clint gets very anxious and wants to go home.  He is cajoled into staying,and makes a prediction of an event the next day which will turn earth into a paradise with everyone loving each other.  Of course, he is lying.

ngearthquake02The next morning, Clint admits the sun is going supernova and will incinerate the earth.  Unfortunately, the episode takes a couple of minutes making this revelation when the audience gets the gist in a few seconds.  Also, the cast seem to be bathed in a amber light, but the event doesn’t happen until tomorrow, so why the special lighting?  Clint even points to the sun and says tomorrow it won’t be like that, indicating that today, the sun is normal.  Maybe it was just magic hour.

Other than botching the twist, everything was pretty great, especially Clint Howard.  I give it a 6.5 on the Richter Scale.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Michael Constantine was in another heliocentric episode, I am the Night – Color Me Black.
  • Nice opening shots in what I assume was an actual production studio at NBC.  It’s like old-time NASA with the bulky equipment.
  • John Badham went on to direct Blue Thunder, WarGames and Saturday Night Fever.
  • Hulu sucks.

Tales from the Crypt – Lower Berth (S2E14)

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ftfclowerberth01A carnival barker is rounding up rubes to see the Freak Show.  If he had shortened his spiel, he might have squeezed in one more show per night.  After an interminable intro, he lets the people in.

After the Fat Lady and the Midgets, he brings out Enoch the 2-Faced Man who is exactly what he sounds like.  I’m not a fan of birth defects as entertainment, so no pictures.  Being obese isn’t a birth defect, but I’m no fan of Fat Ladies either, so no pictures of her either.

A well dressed man — a tuxedo at the carny — shows up in Mr. Sickles’ trailer.  He is played by Mark Rolston, the Space Marine from Aliens.  No, not Hicks, not the robot, not the black guy, not the women, not Bill Paxton, not the Lieutenant . . . the other guy.  Yeah, him.

He has come into possession of a Mummy which he wishes to sell to the carnival.  Sickles agrees to take the Mummy and pay the man a 40% commission.  Enoch probably doesn’t get much action, so is enamored of the Mummy.  Sickle mocks him for having human feelings.

Sickles sees in the newspaper that the Mummy was stolen in New Orleans.  The man does not deny it, but says he had no use for the Mummy, he just wanted the jewelry which could not be taken from the Mummy due to a curse which would castrate the thief.  If a very brief scuffle, Sickles accidentally kills the man with hedge clippers.

Hmmmm, castration curse and the introduction of hedge clippers.  Don’t need to visit Madam Zoltan’s tent to see the future for this one.

Sickles steals the jewels, and Enoch uses the hedge clippers to castrate him.  He can’t say he wasn’t warned; at least, he can’t say it in a low-pitched voice.

ftfclowerberth03

Gotch’er nose!

Enoch and the Mummy miss their next curtain call.  One year later, the police pay the carnival owner a visit.  A local boy discovered a cave where Enoch and the Mummy had lived. And apparently gave birth to the Cryptkeeper, who appears at the end as a baby.

Post-Post:

  • These TFTC titles are getting tedious.  I get that they are calling this baby a product of lower or lesser beings, but it should have been “Lower Birth” to make the pun work.
  • Screw the producers!  Knowing my dislike of the Cryptkeeper, they made him part of the story so he couldn’t be avoided.
  • Kevin Yagher has only two directing credits, both on TFTC.  His brother Jeff plays Enoch the 2-Faced Man.
  • Kevin married Catherine Hicks, and Jeff married Megan Gallagher.  Wow.

Outer Limits – Birthright (S1E20)

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After a press conference hyping his energy bill, Senator Richard Adams from Idaho is in a car being driven by his aide.  Adams puts some eye-drops in his eye, and the aide says he could use some too.

So the Senator gives the aide the bottle — while he’s driving.

And the aide leans his head back and takes a few drops — while he’s driving.

These guys are too stupid to be in poli . . . . er, never-mind.

The human gene-pool is strengthened by the death of the aide, but Adams wakes up in the hospital.  Maybe his doctor is not so sharp either as she seems surprised to find that Adams has strange organs and four lobes in his brain instead of two.  Frontal, occipital, parietal and temporal lobes are pretty much standard issue on humans.  Oh, we could throw in the limbic, but don’t start your cerebellum crap.

olbirthright09Adams’ security detail swarms his hospital room and hustles him out of the room.  When it is clear he does not realize who he is or what “the mission” is, the men decide he has to be killed.  He is able to escape and make his way back to the only person he can trust, the doctor.

He begins falling apart.  He is cold, fatigued, losing his hair, fingernails peeling off.  This is a result of his not taking a supplement that had kept him looking human and being able to breathe earth’s air.

He discovers that his energy bill, rather than being good for the atmosphere, will actually destroy it, making it poison to humans, but hospitable to his alien race.  We’re on to you, Al Gore!

olbirthright16He decides to rat his people out to the press.  Things don’t work out.

At the end, he is wearing the doctor’s Redskins cap.  So not only is he an alien, he’s a raaaaacist.

Post-Post:

  • The US Senators from Idaho when this episode aired were Larry Craig and Dick Kempthorne.  Craig resigned after some suspicious shenanigans in an airport restroom.  Kempthorne managed to hold on to his job after being accused of spending $222,000 on renovations to his bathroom at the Dept. of the Interior.
  • Them Idaho senators sure loves their shitters.  Kempthorne was even succeeded by a guy named Mike Crapo.
  • Hulu sucks.

Ray Bradbury Theater – The Haunting of the New (S3E8)

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rbthaunting00.client.1413241041.conflictSuperman’s hot mother — no, not Ma Kent — Susannah York calls her writer friend Charles at 5 am from one of those houses that is so fancy that it has a name — Greenwood.  She asks him to come to Greenwood, and says he can have the house . . . if the house likes him.

The next morning, he slicks back his hair, puts it in a pony tail, dons his round wire-frame glasses, driving gloves, bow-tie, french cuffs, winged collar, scarf and pocket square, and hops in his convertible — yeah, a bit of a dandy.

When he arrives, he finds York sitting in the garden.  She says the house won’t let her in.  In fact, at her party the previous night, the house drove away the guests.

rbthaunting01She tells Charles the house is his if he wants it, but he must go in alone.  He goes in and imagines the house burning down.

I got nothing.

Neither does this episode.

Just crap.

I wrote a diatribe about how boring the next RBT episode (The Chicago Abyss) was, but it probably belongs in this post.

Post-Post:

  • Roger Tompkins also directed A Miracle of Rare Device.  He has no non-RBT credits.  None.
  • Idea:  The Haunting of the Newd.  Then you got somethin’.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Hands of Mr. Ottermole (S2E32)

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ahpottermole01This episode, set in 1919 London, seems to have been the beneficiary of some available sets which make it more interesting than the story itself.

In foggy London town, we follow a business-man who has just gotten off the train.  Walking through the station, he stops at a newsstand and picks up a paper, declines to buy a flower offered from a tray by an old woman, and turns to walk down a foggy tunnel which opens onto a foggy street.  Conveniently, he lives the second door down.  He waves to an acquaintance whistling Greensleeves as he enters.  His journey is a single shot that lasts over a minute with just one edit at the flower lady.

ahpottermole03He arrives home and seems pretty excited that his wife is making kippers.  There is a knock at the door, and we shift to the visitor’s POV.  The man invites him in for dinner, but we see hands reach out and strangle him.

The man’s nephew stops by while the police are at the crime scene.  A pushy reported barges in, but is turned away as the ambulance arrives.  Lucky Officer Otterpoole was on the job.

The newspaper chides the cops when the crime is not solved after 4 days

ahpottermole02Next, the flower lady is strangled by man she knows whistling Greensleeves.

Hanging out at the police station, the reporter and a cop agree that the man must be a foreigner, like the heavily accented Ottermole; who drinks tea, like Ottermole is doing at that very second; is smiling at the police’s inability to catch the murderer, like Ottermole.  And have two hands — like Ottermole!!!

Next a cop is found dead, so shit gets real.

In the pub, the reporter talks about how when something is right before our eyes, we don’t stop to ask how it got there — “like that ham sandwich.”  Is this a reference to Ottermole aka the police aka pigs?  OED has references of cops as pigs as far back as 1811.

The reporter figures it out and brilliantly confronts Office Ottermole on a lonely foggy street.  Ottermole says he doesn’t know why he killed the people.  His hands seem to have a mind of their own.  He strangles the reporter before being grabbed from behind.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Only Theodore Bikel is still with us.
  • The title just rubs your face in the fact that it is a cheat.  But then “The Hands of Officer Ottermole” would have taken some of the suspense out of the story.
  • A kipper is also known as a red herring.
  • Ellery Queen wrote of Thomas Burke’s original 1941 story, “No finer crime story has ever been written, period.”
  • The tune to Greensleeves is the same as the Christmas carol, What Child is This.