Category Archives: TV

Tales from the Crypt – Dead Right (S2E1)

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tftcdeadright01Dinty Moore goes to see a psychic on her lunch hour.  Madam Vorma has the second sight and reads vibrations.

Vorma reads her as a secretary wasting her life away, waiting to meet Mr. Right or Mr. Rich.  She says Dinty will lose her job and get another one today.  Dinty says her boss is out of town so this is impossible.  But Madam Vorma knows her stuff.

Dinty is fired (by Sarah Connor’s shrink) for for taking 25 minutes too long at lunch.  Walking down the sidewalk, a strip club manager offers her a job.  Sadly, as a waitress.

tftcdeadright03aDinty goes back to Vorma.  She “sees” Dinty getting married, and her husband inheriting a lot of money shortly after they are married.  After he inherits the money, he will die violently.

Back at the club, Miss Nude Nebraska 1948 is introduced.  Thank God this was not set in present day.  Dinty sees George (or possibly Oscar) Bluth waddle into the club.  He begins hitting on her.  Jeffrey Tambor, not a looker on his best day, is padded out in a repulsive fat suit, blubber and prosthetic nose.

Dinty is disgusted by him but her greed out-weighs her nausea.  Soon they are dating and married.  Unexpectedly, Dinty wins $1 million by being the one-millionth customer at the tftcdeadright04automat.  Taking place 50 years ago, this must have been the combined revenue of every automat in the country.  That’s probably what killed them.

Vorma is proven correct in her predictions and, as always, justice is served like apple pie at an automat.  Sadly, though only to Dinty —  Tambor is really an object for pity in all of this.  A hideous hulk who actually thought he was going to be happy with a beautiful wife — what a maroon.  And though he did kill her, it was her greed and cruelty that propelled him to old sparky.

The episode ends ominously with another customer coming to Vorma.  Yet another botched ending as it suddenly shifts perspective to make Vorma the focal point of the evil.  All she did was correctly predict the future.tftcdeadright05

Still, a good twist and some excellent performances from the leads make this a great episode .  Also some great make-up on Tambor, and some great style — fashion, make-up, hair — from Dinty.  She really comes off as a classic movie star.

Post-Post:

  • This aired just as Demi Moore was becoming huge — Ghost was the same year.  A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal and Disclosure would open in the next four years.
  • She really was nothing short of perfect in this.  It’s too bad she didn’t use that comedic talent in more of her roles.
  • Howard Deutch also directed the episode Only Sin Deep.

Outer Limits – Virtual Future (S1E7)

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olvirtual01Josh Brolin is working on a virtual reality program and discovers that he can project himself into the future.  All the great low-budget sci-fi tropes are here:  Incredible cutting edge science being developed by only 2 guys in a dark lab, world-changing discovery worth billions being treated as only moderately interesting, security for this goldmine laxer than Doc Brown’s garage, and a wife who doesn’t appreciate the magnitude of the work.

And for the most radical discovery in history — time travel — Brolin sells out pretty cheaply — for a job and his own lab.  Who knows, maybe he can even get a 3rd guy and a light bulb.  As in previous OL episodes, there must be a sinister corporate weasel to exploit Brolin’s discovery for eeeeeveeel, here played by David Warner.

It surely break’s Warner’s heart that the first time he takes the leap forward, he uses that knowledge to save a woman from being murdered at an ATM.  Well, there’ll be time for blackmail and murder later.

Soon enough, Warner announces that he is running for the Senate, thus commencing his life of crime.  Sadly, he does a time-jump, and sees that he will lose the election, and his victorious opponent will subpoena the records of his company.  The next morning, Brolin sees on TV that Warner’s opponent has died mysteriously.

There is a confrontation, and soon all is well again with the world.  Well, except for the dead guy.  Another just OK episode.  Brolin, however, shows the chops that will make him a star a few years later.  David Warner, as always, plays the role of David Warner, but totally pulls it off.  Sadly, the wife is a little bit of a non-entity, but does come through like a champ at the end.

Post-Post:

  • Sadly Brolin did not use his knowledge gained from time-travel to warn everyone, “Don’t remake Oldboy.”

olvirtual02

Ray BradburyTheater – Punishment Without Crime (S2E7)

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cover02Another bloody European episode.  At least we have a recognizable face in this one — Dr. Loomis himself, Donald Pleasence.  Despite airing 22 years after Fantastic Voyage, he has barely aged at all.  Which is a sad commentary on his 1966 self.

Pleasence is George Hill, a billionaire investment banker who is married to a woman 40 years his junior — I have no problem with that.  It is, admittedly, kind of creepy to see them together.

In an ineptly choreographed scene which involves the complex procedure of, er, opening a door, Hill sees his wife Katherine making out with a man who is also approximately 40 years his junior.

Update: I finally realized what happened.  Although the story is told 99.9% from Hill’s first-person POV, the director inexplicably switched to a third-person omniscient-POV for about 2 seconds.

So, naturally, Hill hatches a plan to a) have a robot duplicate of Katherine built (and she was built to start with, heyyyoooohhhh), and 2) kill said robot.  Having the cash, a better plan would have been to build 2 robot Katherines and not kill them.  But then, he’s a pretty old dude and this is PV (pre-Viagra).

rbpunish01The plan really makes no sense unless you look at it as a cathartic act where just going through the motions will give him some satisfaction — like Westworld.  But Katherine will still be alive.  And, by the way, will expect half his stuff to be handed over to her and her lover in the divorce.

Such is his anger that he can’t stand to wait the 2 weeks it takes Facsimiles, Inc to build the perfect mechanical duplicate of Katherine.  BTW, like all high-tech facilities in low-budget sci-fi, it has the standard completely inefficient floorplan, and is apparently staffed by one person who sits in the dark until needed.  Hill opts to be put into suspended animation until she is ready.

Naturally, once he meets Katherine 2.0 (now with fidelity!) he decides he wants to keep her.  Alas, that is not an option as she can’t be bought, only rented.  If she is an Apple product, there won’t even be a way to replace her battery.  Hill insists there must be a way he can keep her, but she has been well-programmed.  She speaks of cheating just as Katherine 1.0 did to taunt him into shooting her.  It works as he shots her and synthetic blood spills out onto the white floor.

Within seconds, a police detective arrives and arrests Hill for murder.  He is put on trial because a few hand-wringing do-gooders have decided that robots should have the same rights as humans.  He is found unanimously guilty in a televised trial that seems to be some sort of precursor to reality-TV, complete with soundtrack and stinger queues.

rbpunish03Katherine 1.0 comes to visit him in jail.  Even though the jailers know Katherine is alive, the sentence is carried out.

Post-Post:

  • Unlike my recap — a model of economic narrative — the episode opens with a framing scene, then a flashback, then a flashback within the flashback, ending with the same framing scene.  Sort of.
  • The opening and closing scenes cover the same material, just as in Pulp Fiction.  Also, just as in that film, the scenes are not exact duplicates.  I give Tarantino the benefit of the doubt that there was a point to his changes due to shifting perspectives, or even the nature of reality.  I think it was just incompetence here.
  • Nice cell he has, with access to the prison exterior security cameras.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Creeper (S1E38)

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ahbabysitter03The episode gets off to a good start with Reta Shaw as Mrs. Stone.  Anyone who has watched too much 1970s TV will recognize her from usually playing a bulldog of a cleaning woman.

Mrs. Grant has been waiting for the locksmith to install a chain on her door.  Her idiot lout of a husband berates her for being afraid of a strangler — the titular Creeper — that has been terrorizing the neighborhood.

Shaw and the new janitor are discussing the Creeper and Shaw opines that the women were probably asking for it: “Decent women don’t get themselves murdered.”

ahpcreeperwomen06Mrs. Grant’s husband is a surly jerk and they appear to live in the Kramdens’ old apartment. He has just been passed over for a raise, and is currently working nights like the husbands of the murdered women. When she asks if he can switch to the day shift, he berates her.  There is never any insinuation that he is the strangler, although it seems they are about equal in their respect for women.

Mr. Grant stops off for a beer before work, maybe explaining why he didn’t get that raise, and talks to his friend Ed who had once dated Mrs. Grant.  Ed does come off as a possible suspect.  When Ed points out that the victims had both been blondes home alone, it finally occurs to Mr. Grant that maybe his wife is legitimately scared.

Ed drops by the Grant home, appearing suddenly, to Mrs. Grant’s shock.  He says he came to keep her company but won’t say how he got in.  Mrs. Grant does not believe his story that her husband asked him to keep her company.  For good reason — Mr. Grant does not strike me as a guy who would send a former boyfriend to keep an eye on his property, er, woman.

ahpcreeperwomen03Plus Ed is pretty creepy, and does try to force himself on Mrs. Grant until some neighbors complain about the noise.  She uses that opportunity to ask him to leave.  Seeing the man, Shaw wastes no time accusing Mrs. Grant of being a tart who will get what she deserves in the end, just like those other two victims.

Finally the locksmith arrives as Mr. Grant calls to apologize.  Unfortunately, he does not apologize for sending Ed to keep her company.  She tells him the locksmith has arrived and he tells her the police are saying the Creeper has been pretending to be a locksmith.

ahpcreeperellen05Hands come into frame to choke her.

So, for the ladies, another love song of J Alfred Hitchcock.

 

 

 

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  All dead.
  • Christ!  Reta Shaw was only 43 in this?
ahpcreeperah03

To be fair, I’m sure he considers rape a close second

Tales from the Crypt – Collection Completed (S1E6)

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tftccover01Starring M. Emmett Walsh and Audra Lindley, my first thought was Christ, don’t let there be a love scene.  I just saw one with Tony & Carmella Soprano and my stomach can only take so much in one week.

Walsh is a surly, bitter old man who has just faced mandatory retirement after 47 years on the job.  Now he and Lindley have more time to spend with each other, and that is not good news for either of them.  Lindley is probably legitimately nuts with her animal obsession, and this makes Walsh even nastier.

Eventually he takes up a new hobby — taxidermy — and the ending pretty much writes itself.  His first object d’art is a dog that Lindley had named after him.  He stuffs it, and further horrifies his wife with a remote that can make the eyes light on and off.  Tacky.

tftccollectiondog01The only question is which of these 2 annoying characters will end up stuffed.  You’d hate for it to be Lindley because she seems to have a real psychological problem.  You’d hate for it to be Walsh because . . . well, that would actually be OK with me.

Yet another botched ending as the character who gets stuffed absolutely should have been given the same blinking-light eyes that the dog had — leaving that out was just sloppy.

Post-Post:

  • Directed by Mary Lambert the same year she directed Pet Sematary.  Nothing much interesting since, although Mega Python vs Gatoroid sounds promising.
  • Co-written by Battle Davis who IMDb says died 5 years after this aired, at age 42. Also co-written by A. Whitney Brown; a very funny guy who seems to have disappeared from comedy.  Maybe this episode is cursed.
  • Please let this have been a joke, just so this episode has something going for it (even though there is no pike in the tank).tftccollectionpike01