Category Archives: TV

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Summer Shade (01/10/61)

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Ben & Phyllis Kendall are starting to get discouraged in their quest to find an affordable one hundred year old house in Salem with three bedrooms, a modern kitchen, a study, central heating, and a tree for young Kate’s swing.

Suddenly, Phyllis Kendall gets a premonition.  She tells her husband to take the next right.  They pull up in front of a house that has a sign that says: FOR SALE TO DISCRIMINATING BUYER.  Ben says “discriminating buyer” means it is expensive.  But in 1960, it might have meant something else.  On the plus side, there is a tree for Kate’s swing and it might already have a rope.

The owner, Amelia Gastell, appears and tells them the house is 107 years old.  The Kendalls buy the house even though it is far from any other kids for Kate to play with.  To their surprise, as they are unpacking, Kate mentions meeting a new friend named Lettie at the nearby creek.

Lettie told her about riding in a gig. [1] Kate’s father has to explain to her and to me that a gig is a horse-drawn carriage.  Phyllis says Lettie’s family sounds “like a religious sect — like those people who won’t wear buttons.”  Say, the Kendalls are discriminating buyers.

When Phyllis later sees Kate talking to no one at the nearby creek, she figures out that Lettie is an imaginary friend.  Her father asks if that is the case.  Kate insists Lettie is real.  She even has a picture that Lettie drew of her aunt Bridget Bishop who appears to be puritan.

During a house-call, Kate’s doctor recognizes the name Bridget Bishop.  Ben finds her name and picture in a book about Salem.  She was hung in 1692 for witchcraft.  A local preacher shows Phyllis the grave of Lauretta Bishop who died of the pox in 1694.

That night, Ben goes to Kate’s room to check her fever.  She is wearing a necklace of buzzard bones that she says Lettie gave her “to keep off the pox” and a No Pest Strip to keep off the flies.

Amelia is hired as a babysitter so the Kendalls can have a date-night.  She agrees that Kate needs a real friend to play with.  Ben says, “If you hear about an agency that rents out little girls, let us know.”  After the Kendalls leave, she looks for Jeffrey Epstein’s card.

The next morning at breakfast, Kate startles her parents by asking, “What is an exorcism?”  They are interrupted by Amelia who has brought over a girl Kate’s age.  It is Judy Davidson, the daughter of her milkman.  Today, Kate would ask, “What is a milkman?”

Upstairs, in Kate’s room, it is clear from Judy’s speech that she is possessed by Lettie.  She speaks such archaic sentences as:

  • Twas a fine notion, mistress Kate.
  • Would that we had started it sooner.
  • I want to grow up to be an objective journalist.

Kate warns her to not talk “in that old-fashioned way” so she is not caught and exorcised or banned from Twitter.

Well, I’m glad Kate has a little friend, but what happened to the real Judy?  Did her soul disappear?  Is she stuck silently in that body?  Is she doomed to helplessly watch Lettie’s life the way the poor sap in Source Code was doomed to be stuck in Jake Gyllenhaal, helplessly banging Michelle Monaghan for the rest of his life?  Actually, that doesn’t sound so bad.  Actually, it sounds better than my life.

Not much going on here. No murder, and a dash of the supernatural make this a poor fit for AHP.  I rate it 65 in the shade.

Other Stuff

  • AHP Deathwatch:  Veronica and Angela Cartwright are still with us.  Strangely, on IMDb, Veronica is credited as Kate; Angela is credited as Lettie (uncredited), who we never see.  Sadly, the writer of the original short story died this year of COVID-19.
  • [1] The fact that Kate is torturing a frog at the time seems coincidental to their mention of gigs.
  • For more information about the source material and production, check out bare*bones e-zine.
  • Pictures are of Julie Adams (Phyllis) in Creature from the Black Lagoon because it is 1:09 am.

One Step Beyond – The Vision (03/24/59)

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OK, the network inexplicably allowed Alfred Hitchcock to set several AHP episodes in England.  Maybe that was a demand he made to stay in touch with his mother country.  What is the excuse with One Step Beyond?  Creator / Director John Newland was born in freakin’ Cincinnati!  Four out of ten episodes have been set in Europe.  Well, you say, maybe that’s just where these real-life, documented, fact-based incidents of the paranormal occurred.  That might be a legit point if they were actually true.  The USA has the best ghosts in the world, and the government is making sure we produce more every day!  F*** yeah, Team America!  Oh, wait . . . [1]

At 10:30 pm on 11/14/15, a phenomenon was seen in the skies over Flanders, the East Prussian Front, Italy, and the English Channel.  Again, OSB astounds with its production.  We are dropped into the merde in WWI France.  I suspect it begins with footage from a movie, but is perfectly used and the live action flows naturally from it.  We are introduced to 4 Frenchmen on “a trivial mission” at the front.  The men lament that they are doing this rather than watching the ballet, playing the piano, enjoying vintage wines, or making love.

They see a flare in the sky.  A private asks what will happen if they are spotted.  His sergeant says, “If they kill enough of us, an extra ration of Schnapps.  If we kill enough of them, perhaps they let us take a bath.”  The French private is horrified by both possibilities.

They finally realize that the flare is not descending.  They are entranced by the heavenly light.  All 4 stand and begin walking back to their base.  Soon, they are charged with cowardice and deserting their post because no one has ever heard of Frenchmen retreating. [2]  It’s unheard of, I tells ya.

Captain Tremaine arrives to act as their council.  One of the men describes being “blinded by the light”, then being at home with his mother making him pancakes.  He was so at peace that he dropped his rifle and began walking back.  His pal was cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night.  All 4 have similar tales of being in a peaceful settings — at home, at sea, in a fragrant meadow, and at the Ponderosa Ranch.[3]

At their trial, Sgt. Vaill says that he also heard a heavenly choir.  Tremaine’s defense hinges largely on the fact that the men walked back from the front.  Or was it walked  front from the back?  No, walked back from the front.  He insists that is the act of brave men.  Cowards would have run.

Naturally, our boys are sentenced to death seconds later.  Thanks, Perry Mason!  [That really only works if you pronounce it like Paul Masson wine.  And are drinking Paul Masson wine.]

The next day, Tremaine goes to the dungeon where the 4 are being held and literally says, “Good Morning.”  To the 4 guys sentenced to death.  That he represented.  He says is going to appeal the decision.

While in town, after giving a 10 year old kid a pack of cigarettes (seriously), Tremaine encounters a German soldier.  The weary man says, “for me the war is finished”.  He too dropped his rifle and walked away.  His comrades also saw something in the sky.  John Newland says there were sightings all over Europe by a thousand soldiers.  The General finally believes and the men are saved.

Again, kind of a thin story but, mon dieu, can these guys put on a show!

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Actually, I have no real beef with the foreign settings — they add a little pizzazz.  However, I do subscribe to the Rod Serling / Richard Matheson / Stephen King model that stories in a relatable setting are more effective.  Also Cat Fancy.
  • [2] The closed caption refers to their Court Marshal [sic].
  • [3] For some reason, Pernell Roberts, of Bonanza, is playing one of the French soldiers.

Tales from the Crypt – About Face (06/28/96)

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I must be getting old.  I really don’t like shows that start off with a lot of yelling.  However, because every episode of TFTC begins with the grating, odious Cryptkeeper, the first proper scene is always going to be an improvement.  In this case, a screaming woman giving birth in the first scene is welcome to everyone except maybe the priest who knocked her up.  They are on thin ice, though, when the midwife looks at the baby and joins in the caterwauling.  Luckily, the scene quickly cuts to a lovely young woman getting out of a carriage “sixteen years later.”  

Reverend Jonathan is discussing his new book with his agent.  His wife Sarah tells him a young woman claiming to be his daughter is here to see him.  Young Angelica says she and her twin sister were told by their adopted mother that Jonathan was their father.  Their mother Emma had worked for him as a maid before being a good sport and dying in childbirth.  

Angelica steps outside and Sarah blasts her husband about his sexual indiscretions.  She threatens to go public and ruin him, but he reminds her that she would lose everything too.  So, in a sociopathic exchange for wealth and power, she agrees to ignore his decades of adultery with secretaries and interns, credible accusations of sexual assault, and visits to Epstein Island.

Jonathan’s first inclination is to send the girl away. Before Sarah can arrange transport to Fort Marcy Park, however, he changes his mind.  He calls Angelica back into the room and tells her that he wants her and her sister to move into his house.  He feels that having a family will be good for his image, will increase his book sales, and maybe Angelica will have friends over for a pajama party.  

Angelica moves in, but Jonathan still has not met her twin sister Leah.  She says Leah has locked herself in the bathroom because she feels that Jonathan abandoned them.  That night, Angelica enters the gas-lit room where Sarah is practicing her scowling for the next day.  As she comes closer, Sarah can see it is Leah.  Her face is disfigured, her hair is a fright, and that dress!  Sarah recalls that Jesus visited the home of Simon the Leper, but also that he used his sandal to lift the toilet seat.  She gasps, “What in God’s name!”  Leah shouts, “Silence, blasphemer!”

Leah accuses Sarah of finding her “hideous, foul, ugly, horrid.”  Leah tells her to judge not, lest she be judged, and asks when she last lay with her husband.  Then she raises some beads in the air and curses Jonathan for visiting harlots and abandoning his kids and watching Fox News.  Sarah decides it is a good time take a few days off.  Jonathan approaches Angelica about the encounter, but a few words from the cute sister make everything OK.

Later Jonathan is dictating his latest book to yet another secretary.  After a few sentences, they begin having the sex and Leah hears them.  When Leah later catches the secretary alone, she slits her throat.  This is exceptionally well-done and a much bigger shock than the twist that is to come.  

Sarah returns from her trip.  She screams in horror because Jonathan’s new secretary is a good 20 years younger than her; and also sprawled bloody on the floor.  Jonathan walks in and accuses Sarah of killing the secretary.  Sarah says, “Your little hell-spawn did this!”  For some reason that eludes me, Jonathan then strangles Sarah to death.  Again, this is well-done with the neck-wrenching signified by the delightful sound of a bunch of celery stalks being broken.  Kudos!

SPOILER

Blah, blah.  After yelling at Jonathan, Leah attacks him.  Jonathan pulls a huge crucifix off the wall, and it is finally useful for once as he kills Leah with it.  As she rolls over, we see that she and Angelica are conjoined twins with each having a face pointing in opposite directions.

As I said, the kills in this episode are really better than the reveal.  This is in spite of the fact that the director made no effort to play fair.  The logistics just make no sense in most scenes, but I don’t really care.  Despite exhibiting the leaden tone and complete lack of TFTC-ness that this season has often shown, I kind of liked it.

Science Fiction Theatre – Brain Unlimited (09/14/56)

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Scientist Jeff Conover is placed in a vacuum chamber to simulate the conditions 10 miles above the earth, except he is more comfortable than a Delta passenger.  An experimental drug enables his cells to store oxygen, so he can survive without breathing, which would be good on some of those summer flights.

Jeff is the crème dela crème of test pilots.  In fact, he is the whipped crème dela crème, as he has to ask  his wife’s permission that night to perform the experiment in an airplane the next day.  Lucky for the world of science, she says OK.

Jeff takes an airplane up to 50,000 feet and exits via the ejector seat.  I assume there was another guy in the plane, but that still seems like a strange way to disembark.  Unfortunately, the experiment is a failure as Jeff blacks out almost immediately and parachutes to the ground.  After the doctors leave, he confides to his wife that his whole life flashed before his eyes in the seconds before he lost consciousness.  He takes this to mean the human brain can outperform any machine created.

The next day, Jeff plays his boss a tape of him giving a lecture at 20X the normal speed.  He says that by using the experimental drug, people could understand that high pitched whine and retain it.  Why, this breakthrough could allow college students to becoming f***ing idiots in days rather than years!

In the next 2 weeks, he interviews people who have had similar rapid replays of their lives in dangerous situations.  Wait, didn’t the drug cause that?  While Henry Mason was caught in a cave-in, he recalled a dance he once took his wife to.  He estimates it took 3 – 4 seconds to relive the 4 hours they were at the dance, which is the opposite of how time passes for me at a party.

A little blind girl named Alice is able to give the day of week for any day in history.  Jeff quizzes her on 06/23/1412 and 07/04/2113.  He says she gives the correct answers, although, a fact-check shows that she actually got both answers wrong.  C’mon, no one could check an almanac?  Alice says she got this skill — the sociopathic ability to lie, I guess — after the skeet-surfing accident that blinded her last year.

He asks old Mr. Stevenson the square root of 317.  He says 17.0448.  Oh, so close!  It is 17.8044.  Maybe the elderly actor just screwed up.  Stevenson is played by Burt Mustin who somehow played 100 year old men for 25 years on TV.  He is best known as Gus the Fireman from Leave it to Beaver.  He sat in a chair outside the fire station every day despite having reached the retirement age for city workers 75 years earlier.  However, he totally boots the cube of 4,209 — he gives the answer as 1,309,516,011, the rube!  He is next given a list of phone numbers to sum in his head.  The producers wisely hide the numbers from us, but it is safe to say his answer was wrong.

Finally the scientists refine a serum that speeds up mice in a maze to 10X their normal speed.  Stop, I know where this is going!  Don’t give it to the janitor!  They have less success increasing a dog’s hyperactivity, but probably should not have started with a Jack Russell Terrier.  With time running out (in their research, not — God help me — the episode), they decide to test the serum on a human.

Of course, Jeff decides he will be the first test subject.  He orders his assistant to inject him with 5 cc’s of Solution 012.  They had previously identified the drug as Solution 31d, so I don’t know WTF he’s taking.  He is injected, and his senses are accelerated 100X.  He sees his lab assistants moving very slowly, although they are able to converse normally.  Soon he burns out while Good Will Hunting his way through complex math problems.

He has proven his point.  For this astounding breakthrough that will change humanity and send the stock value into the stratosphere, Jeff is given 2 weeks vacation.  Big Pharma, man!

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Changing Heart (01/03/61)

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Dane Ross enters Klemm’s watch shop and is taken aback by the overwhelming sound of ticks and tocks and clicks and clacks of a hundred clocks stacked chockablock like knick-knacks and bric-a-brac on the shelves. He should be wary of this place as it would be impossible to work here without going insane.

Ulrich Klemm comes out and greets Ross. He hands Klemm a watch that can’t count steps, can’t check heart-rates, can’t display texts, and can’t give GPS directions.  The bloody thing just tells time.  Klemm is none-the-less impressed at the time-piece.  He has not seen one since he left the old country, but thinks he can fix it.

Ross admires the clocks in the shop.  Klemm says he brought them from the old country.  Sadly, he was not able to bring his famous automatons — clockwork figures.  On the hour, the figures — birds, angels, policemen, construction workers, Indian chiefs, bikers — would appear and give little performances.

With admirable precision, all the clocks in the shop strike 6:00 in unison.  Klemm’s beautiful grand-daughter Lisa comes through the door, which is pretty clever when you think back on it.  She asks Ross to stay for dinner.  He accepts under the pretense that he wants to see more of Klemm’s work (i.e. any other hot grand-daughters).

In the rear, Klemm displays figures which play the piano, shine shoes, and some mechanical birds in a cage.  Lisa says these are just simple versions of the work he did for kings in the old country and queens in the village.[1]  Ooops, she cuts her finger preparing dinner and Klemm bandages it.

After dinner, Lisa walks Ross to the door, and he asks her out.  She says she can’t because her grand-father is so protective.  However, the next time we see them, they are at a German restaurant where, it is safe to say, they are not there for the food.  Ross has been promoted and asks Lisa to move with him to Seattle, which was part of the USA at the time. But she won’t leave her grandfather.

They go back to the shop.  Ross tells Klemm that he is taking Lisa to Seattle whether he likes it or not.  Klemm seems to hypnotize Lisa so that she agrees that she cannot go and will never leave Klemm.  Staring blankly at him she says, “I will never leave you.”  Klemm tells her to go to her room.  She complies without any acknowledgment of Ross as she exits. 

Ross accuses Klemm of turning his grand-daughter into an automaton.  Klemm says he is protecting the one thing he loves.  “The one thing I rescued from my old life and brought to this new world. She’s my masterpiece and no one will take her from me!”  Klemm pulls out a knife.  Fearful that he is going to be served more German cuisine, Ross leaves.

Three months later, Ross is living in Seattle.  He sends his friend Jack to the clock store.  Klemm says the watch will be ready Tuesday. 

No wait, Jack wants to know why Ross’s letters to Lisa have not been answered.  Klemm says Lisa is sick and Ross made her that way.  He scoffs at the Amerikanische Doktors and the heartpills they give her.  He insists, “I will not let her die!”

Alarmed by Jack’s report and the newly proposed $.05 postage rate, Ross returns to Klemm’s shop, to find it boarded up.   He busts in and finds Klemm slumped dead at his desk just like I expect to go.  He has left a note that says he was willing to give his life for Lisa to live.  Ross goes into the back room and finds Lisa sitting in a wheelchair.  Ross is thrilled to see her there, eyes wide open.  But she is lifeless as a mannequin.    He hears a ticking and puts his ear to her chest.  There he clearly hears the clockwork ticking in her chest.

First off, let me be clear that this was a great episode and the final shot was awesome.   That said, I do feel like the writer [2] came close to cheating with some of the dialogue and stage direction in the first half as to whether Lisa was an automaton from the start.  But the proof that Lisa was not an automaton is pretty clear.  If Klemm could make a device that looked like the 22 year old Lisa, would he have made her his grand-daughter?

Also, I’m not clear how Klemm saved Lisa.  Yes, she has a ticking heart, but she is glass-eyed, silent, and perfectly still.  This is life?  At the top of the hour does she do a table dance?

Other Stuff:

  • [1] The dictionary labels this merely informal, so I’m keeping it in
  • [2] Robert Bloch, so who am I question him?
  • AHP Deathwatch:  Anne and Ross are still with us.  Jack passed away in January.
  • Oddly, Bloch’s previous script for AHP also involved a clock.
  • Nice bit of trivia from bare*bones:  Anne Helm went on to be in an Elvis movie, and moved in with him after filming ended.  It’s good to be the king.