Category Archives: TV

Night Gallery – The Dead Man (S1E1)

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ngdeadman02Dr. Max Redford has invited his colleague Dr. Miles Talmadge to his private sanitarium to see the only patient he has there.  Dr. T sees a very healthy young man who appears to just be asleep.  He turns to speak to Dr. R about the man.  When he turns back, the man has become very sickly, emaciated.  Dr. R tells him to take another look whereupon the patient is healthy again.  The shenanigans continue through a couple more iterations before the patient, John Fearing, jumps up and introduces himself to Dr. T.

Redford has discovered that Fearing has the world’s worst / best case of psychosomatic illness.  By giving him suggestions under hypnosis, Redford can cause the symptoms of any sickness to manifest in Fearing’s body.

No, and you can’t make me.

It is not clear what the market is for this ability.  Although duplicating certain side effects of E.D medications might provide 4 hours of entertainment.

That evening at dinner, it is clear that Fearing and Redford’s wife Velia (consistently written as Velda in the CC) are infatuated with each other.  Redford recognizes this, but prizes his research too much to boot Fearing out of his house.  So just as in the atrocious Three’s a Crowd, we have a husband who is allowing his wife to be swept away as he stands by and watches.

The next day, Redford shows off his new trick, producing the symptoms of death in Fearing — no pulse or breath.  Again, not sure what the market is for this skill.  When he tries to revive Fearing, he discovers he isn’t only mostly dead — this guy is stone cold dead.

Redford is truly remorseful and gathers a team to revive Fearing.  But he is too dead.  Velia is distraught.

ngdeadman03Some time later, Dr. Talmadge discovers what went wrong.  Redford was using the wrong post-hypnotic suggestion to revive Fearing.  Velia overhears and rushes to the graveyard to try out the new signal.

It plays out as a Tales from the Crypt but without the humor — just like Three’s a Crowd.  Unlike that turd, however, this episode works.  The actors inhabit their roles perfectly.  And these were solid 1960’s actors who probably had a stogie and glass of scotch just out of the frame.  Louise Sorel as Velia is a little over the top, but maybe the episode needed that juice.

In all, nothing very original, but very well done.

Post-Post:

  • For some reason, it took NBC a year after the pilot aired to get this episode on the air.
  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Co-Writer & Co-Director Douglas Heyes directed 9 TZ’s, 2nd most of anyone.  Despite a long writing career, he had no TZ scripts filmed.
  • Based on the short story by Fritz Leiber, Jr.

Tales from the Crypt – Three’s a Crowd (S2E5)

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What is this shit? asks the most famous review in rock history.  I know the feeling.

I dubbed the previous episode “the one where they just gave up” and this entry proves me right. The big name directors are gone, the famous actors are gone, it’s as if they turned the show over to a crew that had never seen it before.  Where is the camp?  Where is the humor?  Where is the bold color palette?  All that’s left to signify TFTC is that odious Crypt Keeper.

This episode is a somber chore to watch.  Richard and Della’s marriage is on the rocks.  It seems mostly due to Richard’s passivity, insecurity, depression, career problems, and inability to get Della pregnant.  Della is no prize either as she seems much more alive whenever their friend Alan is around, and makes no secret of it.

They go out for a cruise on Alan’s yacht, and are are on an anniversary vacation paid for by Alan.  Della sees this as a generous gift from a successful old friend, but Richard thinks Alan is rubbing his wealth in his face and trying to steal Della.

tftcthrees06Richard is certainly given every reason to worry about Della leaving him for Alan.  Clearly Alan is an exponentially better catch.  He is also constantly flirting with Della, jokingly grabbing her thigh, kissing her, having conversations clearly not meant for Richard’s ears.

This is in no way a Tales From the Crypt episode until the last few seconds which are painfully predictable.

tftcthrees05Richard’s performance is dreadful.  We really don’t give a damn about him and it is torture to watch him on screen.  The rest of the cast is OK, but saddled with other problems.

The script, which doesn’t play fair,  took three writers, two of whom have zero other screenplay credits.  The third writer, who is also the director, must shoulder the blame.  The unimaginative script, gooey with the oppressive melodrama of Lifetime at its worst, and set to a plodding score is just deadly.

This is shit.  There is not a single episode of Ray Bradbury Theater or a single film in the $5 20 movie box set that I would not watch again before this excrement.

I rate it zero out of three.

Post-Post:

  • Director David Burton Morris had a weird 1999 directing both The Sonny and Cher Story and The Partridge Family Story.
  • IMDbs: A new category in which I question the validity of IMDb’s ratings.  This episode is rated 5th best of season 2?  I call BS.

Outer Limits – Dark Matters (S1E11)

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oldarkmatters01Generally, put a few peeps in a spacecraft and I’m immediately entertained.  Not so much here, though.  First we start off with the hackneyed idea of a craft becoming stuck in a region of space with no stars.  Just off the top of my head, in the Star Trek universe this trope has been used in Night, The Void, Where Silence Has Lease, and The Immunity Syndrome.  But as I always say, originality is over-rated — I’m still on board.

John Heard is at the helm — or at least beside it — of the the Nestor as it is sucked into an area devoid of stars.  Annette O’Toole, sporting an ill-advised short hair-do, chews him out for letting his co-pilot take the helm.  OK, the co-pilot showed up 10 minutes early for his shift.  Clearly he was qualified and would have been sitting there alone shortly anyway, so what is the beef?  Heard was two feet away.

In the void, they detect the USS Slayton, lost 10 years ago.  As luck would have it, in the entire universe, they have stumbled across a ship that Heard’s brother was serving on when it disappeared.  They send in a probe that records all of the dead bodies, still perfectly preserved in the vacuum of space; including Heard’s brother.

oldarkmatters04They also spot an alien ship trapped in the void.  The Nestor sends over a probe to investigate, but the alien ship destroys it.  In reviewing the Slayton’s data logs, they discover that the alien ship had sent a message.  I appreciated the fact that the transmission was so “well, alien” that it “couldn’t be assembled into data, much less decrypted” — unlike some movies I could name.

They find a huge chunk of matter that is “so massive it could theoretically warp time and space.”  O’Toole asks if it is so massive why aren’t they being crushed by the gravity — which sounds stupid even to me.  Drawn in and caused to crash, yes — but crushed?  Is it increasing the atmospheric pressure in space?  The crew also gets on my bad side by slaughtering the name of Yuri Gagarin — twice.  I’m no comrade, but the actors and producers grew up during the space race – how could no one catch that mistake?

oldarkmatters02As the aliens begin appearing on the Nestor, Heard’s dead brother briefly appears.  The Slayton’s dead captain also appears on the bridge.  He explains that even though they are dead, their souls can’t “pass on” due to the void they are trapped in.  Thus we have another foray into religion which typically is not a good mix for sci-fi.

Turns out that Heard’s brother has a secret in his past that has tormented Heard.  The brother has an idea that might save the Nestor, but Heard argues with him.  For the 2nd time in the episode, he proclaims, “I’m 37 years old!”  Not to nitpick, but the actor is 50 — not even close.

The Nestor teams up with the aliens and is able to escape the void.  Heard’s brother makes amends for their secret.  Everyone is happy.  Except the people who sat through this episode.  OK, it’s not bad, just a little mawkish.

Post-Post:

  • Obviously, the Slayton is named for Deke Slayton.  Having made that effort, you would expect the name Nestor had some significance.  But not that I can see.
  • Slayton’s sad fate in the Mercury program was not covered in the film of The Right Stuff.  Maybe in the book — time for a reread on that one.  Both book and film are excellent.
  • How to pronounce Gagarin.
  • Paul Lynch also directed Prom Night.
  • Not a bad projection of a future notebook, except for the 144 pt font:

oldarkmatters03

Ray Bradbury Theater – There Was an Old Woman (S2E11)

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bradbury02Maybe I see the problem here.  There are 100 stories in the collection I have of Ray Bradbury’s “Most Celebrated Tales.”  There are 65 episodes in the Ray Bradbury Theater series; but only 14 of the episodes are included in the “Most Celebrated Tales” volume.  Perhaps the other episodes were based on “Volume II: Crapped Out Facing Deadline Tales” or “Volume III: Really Only Worked on the Printed Page Tales.”  Because this series is a legacy-destroyer of Phantom Menacean proportions.

Old and stunningly unattractive Matilda hears a noise downstairs and finds several men coming into her house.  The small old woman winds her way around the tall black-suited men in the sole interesting shot of the episode.  Only one of them, credited as “The Listener” acknowledges her, showing her a wicket casket they have brought.

rbtthere01He sits silently, listening to Matilda pad out the episode with tales of her grand-daughter Emily, the one man of her life (who died), and her philosophy of death.  She tells him that she will not allow herself to die, will not get into that wicker basket.

He continues staring silently with a smile on his face, but she will not be seduced into giving up.  She utters maybe the most horrifying words in this series:  “I’m too old to be made love to.  That’s all twisted dry like an old tube of paint left behind in the years.”

Despite her protestations, she drifts off to sleep.  The screen takes on a golden “magic hour” hue, but it is not clear why.  It is not from either character’s perspective, yet alternates with standard color palette shots.  A few seconds later, the camera moves seem to suggest that it is The Listener’s POV, but this contradicts the earlier shot where he himself was bathed in the golden light.

rbtthere02She wakes up from resting her eyes and sees The Listener is leaving.  She gloats about how he was unable to get her in the casket.  Seeing the men carrying it out, she can tell that there is something weighing it down.

When she demands to see what is inside, the men stop and lower it for her — which is strange because they can’t see or hear her.  To be fair, it is halfway presented as adjusting their grip and halfway as  a freeze-frame moment.  Either might have been OK if they had committed to it, but this is just awkward.  She realizes that it is her in the casket.  But she was already dead in bed upstairs, so what really has changed?

Her grand-daughter enters the house and Matilda greets her, pouring some tea.  There is no way that Emily could have missed her.  Yet, she casually goes to hang up her coat.  Only when she enters the kitchen with Matilda, does she give a blood-curdling scream.  Throughout the scene her sight-lines are bizarre as if sometimes she can see Matilda and sometimes she can’t, or is trying to avert her eyes.  It’s just a mess, but the scream is pretty good.

To stop Emily’s screaming, Matilda slaps her face.  But then, in the struggle, Emily discovers that she is able to pass her hand through Matilda’s stomach.  So is Matilda solid or not?

She makes Emily drive her to the funeral parlor.  She sees the same men carrying a wicker basket and looks inside, but it is not her.  Strangely, the men can see her now as can all of the employees and mourners.

She finally finds her body being embalmed.  She tries to barge in, but is restrained by a fat guy.  She passes through the man’s arms, but that is done off-camera so we just cut to a goofy shot of him standing behind her with his arms in an empty circle.  Again, this could have been played for low-budget laughs had they committed.  Instead, they tried to obfuscate the shot and it just looks weird.  She slaps him, so she is solid again — or, at least that slapping hand is firming up nicely.

rbtthere03She threatens to haunt the funeral parlor unless they give her the body.  They remove her corpse from the slab where the autopsy had already begun with the Y incision.  They then lift her into the casket with the body and somehow the two bodies merge back into her “living” self but somehow wearing the surgical garb the corpse wore on the operating table .  The body in the surgical gown sits up in the coffin, to a pretty subdued crowd.  The Listener literally closes the curtain on the scene.

In the epilogue, Matilda says if any one asks, she will show them the marks “where that crazy funeral autopsy man sewed me right back up.”  WTF would ask?

Post-Post:

  • The Listener is played by Ronald Lacey, best known to American audiences as Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I’m not sure his name was ever used on screen, so he is the HNIC (Head Nazi in Charge).   With the head-piece of the Staff of Ra burned into his palm. You know, with the glasses.  The guy with the nunchuck coat-hanger.  Right . . . .

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Number Twenty-Two (S2E21)

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ah2204

Wipe that smirk off your face, punk!

Coppers are chasing a ne’er-do-well through an alley.  The young man, with a big smile on his face, seems to be taking this as a real hoot, daddio.  Ultimately cornered on a fire escape by the police, he gives up.  The punk with the smirk is Rip Torn, although so young here that he is unrecognizable.

He is pretty proud of himself over his crime-spree of a single robbery.  Of an old man.  In a candy store.  With a toy gun. Lest you underestimate him, he did slug the geezer with the toy gun.

He has a big smile the whole time he walks down the cell-block to his new home.  These are just temporary holding cells, but these are some of the best dressed criminals I’ve ever seen — suit jackets, ties, a nice fedora.  This is the anti-Oz.

He gets to his cell and meets his new roomie, an old man named Skinner, who has clearly been here before.  When Torn finds out he will be photographed for the mug shots, he gets excited.  Will reporters be there?  Will he get his picture in the paper?  Having his priorities straight, he is hoping to impress the “big shots” back at the pool hall.  However, he does worry that the papers will spill the beans that his gun was only a toy swiped from a 5 & 10 (The Dollar Store before inflation).  Wow, guess that really was a spree!

ah2207

Forced perspective trick now used by Tom Cruise.

Torn and Skinner are taken to a line-up where they are questioned from the back of the room by a man with a microphone.  Skinner and Torn are kept for additional questioning.  During the bonus round, Skinner claims not to remember anything in answer to all their questions.  Doesn’t remember last time he worked, or anything about the crime.

Torn continues to take it all as a joke until the detective tells him the old man he slugged in the candy store sustained a cracked skull and died.  That’s murder, baby!  Although, that must have been some toy gun to fracture his skull.

This is a pretty slim story.  The big final twist here is the standard plot point we would expect at the end of the first act in a contemporary crime show.  Maybe it was shocking 60 years ago, but I expect better from Evan Hunter.  Credited with the story, he also wrote the screenplay for The Birds and the 200 87th Precinct novels.

I rate it 8 out of 22.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Rip Torn and Martin Wilkins are still with us.  Although with a 1905 birth year, I suspect Wilkin’s bio might need updating.
  • AHP Proximity Alert:  Ray Teal was just in an episode 4 weeks earlier.
  • Would it have killed them to delay this one week and make it the 22nd episode of the season?
  • Alfred Hitchcock directed movies titled Number 13 and Number 17.  I like to think that if he had directed this episode, he would have renamed it Number 23 just to keep the prime number theme going.  And would have delayed it two weeks.
  • Hmmm, just noticed that there is already a movie named The Number 23.
  • And then there is this strange piece of business.  The man below does not seem to be drunk or stoned.  He does, however, have a snappy haircut and a stylish blazer-over-t-shirt that Miami Vice would not popularize for another 25 years.  The only thing I can think of is that they are hinting at some gay-related crime, but that would be pretty bold to put on TV in the 50’s.

ah2206