Category Archives: TV

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Dusty Drawer (05/31/59)

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Boarding houses were apparently much more popular in the 1950s than I ever realized.  Or maybe it is just a dramatic device that enables AHP to assemble colorful oddballs in a scene; like when an episode is set in England.

Norman Logan and William Tritt are two fairly odd balls having breakfast at Mrs. Merrell’s Boarding House. Tritt receives a telegram.  He tells Logan that if it is another telegram from him, “I shall slap your face.”  It is indeed from Logan who is sitting within slapping distance.  Logan smirks as Tritt reads the wire: “When are you going to pay me back the $200 you stole?”

Logan again confronts Tritt as he is leaving for work.  Ten months ago, Logan deposited $324 but bank teller Tritt only credited him for $124.  He suspects Tritt used the extra $200 to cover a screw-up on someone else’s account.  If he works at Wells Fargo, it is probably a fake account; if he works at HSBC, it probably belongs to a terrorist; if he works at Bank of America, I’ll be surprised if he can find his way to work tomorrow.

Tritt tells him he cannot afford to make a mistake.  “I’m going a long way at that bank,” he says.  Having risen to the position of teller at age 51, I’d say he has bigger problems.

Logan goes to the bank that day to cash in some bonds.  It just so happens that Tritt now handles that function — say, he is moving up.  He has a seat at Tritt’s desk.  After fumbling the bonds as he waits, he notices that Tritt’s desk has an unusual drawer which actually opens on the customer’s side.  When Tritt comes to his desk, Logan has a big smile.  He says he will cash the bonds later and cheerfully exits the bank to Tritt’s befuddlement.

Inside . . .

Logan’s next stop is at a toy store where he buys the most realistic toy gun in the shop.  He returns to the bank.  When Tritt joins him at the desk, Logan furtively pulls the gun on him and demands $10,000.  When Tritt goes to get one of those canvas bags with the big $ on it, Logan stashes the gun in the secret drawer. Tritt manages to alert the guard who pulls a non-toy gun on Logan. Tritt is delighted at this turn of events and tells the guard to take Logan’s gun.

Of course, the guard’s search comes up empty.  Logan helpfully removes his overcoat, scarf, and jacket to be searched.  He takes the suspenders off his shoulders and offers to drop his pants, but the bank president stops him.  When no gun is found, Tritt looks like a boob. Logan looks magnanimous for not suing.

A month later at dinner, another telegram is delivered, but this time to Logan.  He drives Tritt crazy by not opening it at the table because that would be rude.  Tritt tells the group that Logan is taunting him, that this is just part of a ruse to get him fired.  Logan tells him he has a persecution complex and opens the envelope.  He tells the other boarders it is from his mother.  Tritt snatches the telegram.  It says, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Later, Logan comes to the bank again.  This is a fairly plot-intensive episode.  Rather than give a rote play-by-play, I’ll just say there are more shenanigans at Tritt’s expense and Logan gets another chance to drop his pants.  This guy is always about 5 seconds from taking his pants off.  I’m starting to think that was the real reason behind his ruse.

Outside . . . doesn’t matter to this guy.

This is a tight little episode.  It is stuffed full of throwaways in the background, yet has a complex story unwinding in the foreground. I liked the Christmas setting even though it seemed to last for months.  There was the “Christ-mas Spirit” of not prosecuting Tritt for his first breakdown, the tunes whistled by Logan to irritate Tritt, the centerpiece and tree that come and go with the season, the heaping snow drifts outside the bank, Logan slipping on some ice.

The other boarders are really non-entities, but the script gives them bits of business. There is old, and I mean old, Mrs Merrell, bits about bad eggs, and later counting the oysters in the oyster stew.  One of them is even played by J. Pat O’Malley who was in every TV show ever made since 1864.

90% of acting seems to be in the casting.  Philip Coolidge is perfectly cast as the nervous, shifty Tritt.  Dick York is far more successful here than he was in Vicious Circle.  There, as a supposedly menacing thug, he was laughable.  Here, as the smirking tormentor of Tritt, he is charismatic and amusing.

Despite the lack of a murder or cheerleaders, a great episode.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
  • Also dead:  Sadly, Elizabeth Montgomery.  Only relevant here because she played Dick York’s wife in Bewitched, but it’s an excuse to link to a hot picture.

Twilight Zone – Dead Run (02/21/86)

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Johnny Davis (Steve Railsback) is driving like a maniac.  Unfortunately for a little convertible and several bicyclists, he is doing it in a semi. He passes the convertible and several of the cyclists run off the road to avoid getting what they deserve.  This is enough for him to have his insurance canceled.

He meets his father’s old friend Pete at a strip club.  Johnny could work with Pete, but Pete tells him it is a terrible job, a real last-resort gig.  Johnny has had 4 accidents in two years, so jumps at the opportunity. The very next day, they are rolling down some unfamiliar roads to a camp.  The gates are opened by guards wearing visors.

Johnny is disturbed by the shambling, moaning prisoners being herded onto the truck. The guards are visored, scarred brutes who are able to light cigarettes with their palms which troubles Johnny because who smokes anymore?  He goes to help a woman being whipped.  Pete holds him back, telling him these people are not alive.  He proves it by repeatedly knifing one of them.  The man has no reaction which makes me wonder how effective that whip was.

Pete tells us in China and India they have trains, in Russia they have tram-lines, in Mexico it’s old buses — all used to take deliver wretched souls from the Annex to Hell Proper.  When they enter Hell, Johnny is surprised there are no flames.  Pete explains that “Management” doesn’t care if they suffer — the goal is to keep them away from decent people.

They pull into the warehouse which is abuzz with activity.  It is like a multi-level prison, with people running all about.  If I saw this as a kid, I would have never forgotten it . . . unless I did see it and forgot it.

Their cargo breaks the rails on the truck and escapes — maybe before they got to Hell would have been a better plan, though.  Some of the damned tell him why they are there. A woman says it is because she was self-centered, a man says it is because he is dull, another woman says she was a bad mother.  Another man says he is there for not believing in God.  Johnny is heart-broken that he can’t help these lost souls or find hookers on the bill of lading.

There are prison-riot style disturbances in Hell as people are being damned for minor infractions.  A corporate lackey tells Johnny that the Boss isn’t making the decisions anymore, so things have gotten fouled up.  He tells Johnny he can help and gives him the location of “The High Road.”

When Johnny is spotted talking to the man, he is taken to meet Management.  Johnny tells him that he has met many people that didn’t deserve to be there.  Management tells him he has “been taken in by a lot of secular intellectual propaganda.”  He says his predecessor was not a religious man; that he thought there could be some discretion in who went to Hell.  Under new Management, the rules tightened to include not only murderers and rapists, but everything from jay-walkers to pornographers.

When hauling his next load, Johnny pulls over and questions his cargo.  The first man “offed a cop,” the next was a rapist and an arsonist.  From there, the infractions get a lot tamer.  An old librarian is there for stocking books by Vonnegut, Salinger and Huxley.  Another woman is a junkie.  There is also a draft-dodger and a gay dude.  Johnny opens the truck gate and lets those last four out.  Luckily the cop-killer and the rapist draw the line at a little pushing and shoving to escape a trip to Hell.

What a vault!  If only there were some way to escape this truck to Hell.

He gives them directions to The High Road which might lead to Heaven.  Johnny tells them about the time between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection [1] when Jesus was in Hell rescuing the righteous that did not belong there.  He’s just trying to do the same.

He re-locks the truck gate, sealing in the remarkably well-behaved group of doomed souls on their way to eternal Hell.  Although, not to nit-pick, but there was no roof on that transfer truck — these thugs could climb out and escape anytime.  Show some initiative, sheeple — you’re on a Highway to Hell!

I’m a sucker for a good Hell / Purgatory story, especially when live humans are enablers.

I rate it 660.

Post Debris:

Twilight Zone – The Leprechaun-Artist (02/21/86)

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JP and Richie ride their bikes to Buddy’s house.  Buddy is using his time wisely, checking out the latest issue of Boudoir Magazine, although making the rookie mistake of holding it up with two hands.

There are some nice shots of the three suicidal lunatics pedaling down the street with no pads and no helmets. My God, how much did the stunt people charge to pull off this death-defying scene?  The boys hop the curb, ride off-road for a bit, and ditch the bikes.  During the opening narration, they climb a rope up a dirt cliff about 12 feet tall. Can this even happen anymore without CGI?  It really is refreshing to see kids portraying kids acting like kids.

They climb into a tree-house and soon spot a wee fellow singing down below — Faith and Begorrah, it’s a Leprechaun!  I’ll say this for the Leprechaun-Americans [1], they’re snappy dressers.  Even strolling through the forest with a bindle, they can be counted on to sport a blazer, frilly shirt and a top-hat.  When he sees the boys have spotted him, he runs away.  His little legs are no match for the boys, so they quickly catch him and haul him up to the tree-house.

The Leprechaun, Shawn McGool, tells them that because they caught him, they get 3 wishes, but cheaply he divides it up to one wish each.  He does mention that the wishes may be used for charity, but concedes that rarely happens.

Buddy, the porn-fan, goes first.  He thinks long and hard — that gives him the idea to wish for x-ray vision.  The next morning, the x-ray vision starts to kick in on the way to school.  In a dangerous scene for TV, Buddy ogles the teen girls getting on the school bus — naked to his eyes, and obscured by bright light to ours.  It is a good effect, because they were pretty limited on how to sensitively (i.e. legally) handle that scene.  As the ability grows stronger, he is repulsed to see the internal organs of another girl and the skulls of his friends.  He soon realizes that it is not cool to look through unsuspecting girls’ clothes — better to be invisible and sneak into the showers.  Luckily, the Leprechaun is able to take back the x-ray vision before he goes home to have dinner with his parents.

JP is next and magnanimously includes his pals in his wish.  He wishes for the ability to control their parents.  JP goes home and asks his mother for $50 for some records (black vinyl discs used to play music); she complies zombie-like.  Buddy sees his parents just sitting in their car.  He orders his father to bark and his mother to sing. Richie’s father is playing chauffeur as Richie lays in the back seat in rock-star shades. They go back to JP’s house for pizza and ice cream as Buddy’s parents continue to bark and sing in the background.  The dim bulbs finally realize that their parents won’t do anything without instruction from the boys.  JP also asks for his wish to be reversed but not before Buddy instructs his parents to add Cinemax to their cable line-up.

The pressure is really on Richie now.  He wishes for a “new, hot, really state of the art automobile, endless gasoline, and a driver with a mind of his own”.  The Leprechaun agrees; his obligation fulfilled, he disappears to a hollow tree, or the end of a rainbow, or most likely a pub.  They go out to the road and find a white limo and a white limo driver waiting for them.  The driver drives like a maniac and they are pulled over by the cops. Of course, the Leprechaun took “hot car” literally — it is stolen.  The driver disappears and they are taken to the police station.  They see the Leprechaun as they are being booked.  Once again, he lets them off the hook.  They run out the station doors leaping into a freeze frame.

There were a lot of red flags going into the segment, but it exceeded expectations on every level.  The kids weren’t Stranger Things caliber, but they were entirely adequate. Their parents were surprisingly memorable given their brief scenes.  Cork Hubbert as the Leprechaun staggered away with the show, though.  IMDb says he was born in Oregon, so maybe was faking the Scottish Irish [UPDATED] accent.  It sounded great to me and he was consistently fun and interesting.  While certainly not an original plot, it is a classic trope and the script here was funny and clever enough to shake the dust off.

One of their best.

Post Debris:

  • [1] I guess he got in just under the wire for the new immigration restrictions.  I mean literally under the wire.  Because he’s so short.  Walked right under.  The wire.
  • This is the second Leprechaun tale in six weeks.  It is nice that they slyly reference the earlier episode by McGool saying people confuse Leprechauns with extraterrestrials.
  • Classic TZ Legacy:  I Dream of Genie and The Man in the Bottle both had wishes going awry.
  • Title Analysis:  No idea what they were going for. [UPDATED: I am schooled in the comments]

Science Fiction Theatre – One Hundred Years Young (07/02/55)

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I get the impression this was the go-to show for scientifically-minded young people in the 1950s, although that is largely based on the endorsement of George McFly.  But it amazes me how they get the simplest ideas wrong.  The host starts a small steam engine which produces pressure in a tank.  He then says he will “increase the speed of the engine by stepping up the pressure.”  The host, the writer, no one on the set saw this was backwards? [1] 

The host tells us “A young lady [Bernice], the brilliant chief of the company’s Research Department, is working on a project.”  Well this is sci-fi.  Just sayin’ in 1955, this had to be shocking to the viewers.  Mr. Lyman, the president of this crazy upside-down company drops in.  They hear a noise next door.  Maybe it’s the real chief of the Research Department tied up.  C’mon Sci-Fi Theatre, stop pulling my leg!

The president of the company apparently packs heat as he guns down the stranger in the supply room.  They recognize the man as employee John Bowers.  However, the man claims not to know them.  He had worked at the company and even retired on good terms with them at age 70.  Strangely, he doesn’t look a day over . . . well he doesn’t look 70, but they should have cast a guy who did not look like 50 year-old death warmed over.  He was looking for an herb in the lab that enabled his supposed youthful appearance.

The police detective has no problem bringing Bernice along to sack Bowers apartment looking for answers.  They find his home looks like one from the 18th century.  They find a letter from a woman to him threatening to leave him for being so secretive, but it is dated in 1816.  They also find a solution that contains more of the herb he was stealing and determine that it contains a poison.

They visit him in his cell.  He wants the solution, saying that he has built up an immunity to the poison.  He grabs the bottle and chugs it.  He reveals that he is over 200 years old.  His parents were killed by the Iroquois and he was adopted by the Mohicans.  A medicine man taught him about the secret herb as thanks for his people’s treatment by the white man.  Wait, what?

He complains that it has been a “hollow life.”  He has outlived all his wives, his friends, and their daughters.  Bernice is excited about what this could mean for humanity, but Bowers feels cursed. He feels even worse when Bernice gets him a job at the lab and Lyman says he can have it “for life.”  He finally confesses to accidentally killing a woman by bungling the dose of his miracle solution.

He and Bernice work unsuccessfully to replicate the formula he has replicated 400 times during his life.  When he sees the detective and Bernice have started dating he gets very depressed.  When he doesn’t show up for work one day, and doesn’t answer his telegraph, they go to his house.

He is dead but left a note.  He envies them for the happiness he can never have. He apologizes for not successfully making the solution, but not for the needless slaughter of 3 dozen guinea pigs.  He says mankind is not ready for this knowledge, which is probably right; certainly the Earth isn’t.  “We must first learn to appreciate the time God gave us.”

Once again, it seems like they had the elements of a good story and just poorly executed it.  I’m sure the awful quality on You Tube contributes to my negative assessment.  Also the stilted acting of the era is just terrible.

I rate it 30 years young.

Post-Post:

  • [1] The point was to show the engine would crash under greater pressure, and that human beings also explode under the increased pressure of modern society.
  • Just to make sure we get it, he tells us, “Man has not changed since he evolved.” So he steps in it again with a tautology — true, man has not changed since he changed.  Maybe they need to go one studio over to Freshman English Theatre.
  • And don’t get me started on that -re on the end of theater.
  • Title Analysis:  Can’t these people get anything right?  He is over 200 years old!
  • For a better take on the same basic idea, check out The Man From Earth.  Ya better like people sitting around talking, though, because that’s the whole movie. It’s still pretty good.

 

Outer Limits – Double Helix (03/28/97)

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Well, we start off with a laugh as Dr. Martin Nodel walks in wearing what appears to be David Byrne’s big suit in charcoal gray.  I can imagine maybe the shoulders were a little padded in 1980s style, but the sleeves end mid-palm, so there was apparently a problem in wardrobe.

He asks his students if they consider themselves Darwinians [1].  There is a priest present among the students wearing his black suit and collar.  I’m not sure why he’s there; you might as well have a fireman sitting there. [2]  Nodel is researching junk DNA which he thinks could contain messages from God.  Others think it might be leftovers from evolutionary dead-ends such as gills or tails, which makes sense.  Nodel thinks it is there for future evolution which makes no sense.  I am on team-evolution, but it is not known for being pro-active as my back can attest.  To prove his theory, he has come up with a way to activate that DNA.

He has done the testing and I haven’t, so maybe he’s right.  He uncloaks an aquarium which contains a big fish with less space than those bowls used to torture beta-fish.  To the shock of the students, the bass lowers four legs and climbs on to a bit of dirt so that it now has less room than those pens used to torture veal.  I must say it was pretty effective, although not as much as if it had started singing Take Me to the River.  And Nodel had just the suit to join in.

Nodel has self-diagnosed himself with the markers of Wilson’s Disease, which I believe is known more colloquially as Soccer Balls.  Nodel injects himself.

He begins team-building stunts with his class.  He has the guys form a circle around a circle of the girls.  The girls then do a trust fall where they tip over backwards and trust the guys not to grab their boobs.  They then do the experiment where six of them lift a classmate using just their fingers, and are really trusting of the guys.  Nodel tells them they are going to be working in close quarters and will have to abandon all modesty.  He reminds them that they had already committed to having not had any surgery or bodily alterations.  The dude with the dopey pierced ears doesn’t seem to understand the question.  Oh yeah, then the professor says they all need to get naked.  Funny this didn’t come up in his doctoral work at the old folks home.

They protest, but he insists he needs to examine them for birthmarks, scars and tattoos. Unsurprisingly, earring guy has a problem with this and bails.  The remaining students strip.  He notes one of the girls has a small tattoo, but upon closer examination, he decides it is tolerable.  He detects an appendectomy scar on another girl and boots her out because she is not a whole person as humans naturally evolved. He found no defects on any of the guys, so maybe he wasn’t checking them out as closely.

At home that night, Nodel worries that he is left with only 6 subjects when he needs eight. He suddenly cringes in pain.  He takes off his shirt and we see his horribly deformed back.  He realizes that the scars are actually a map.

The next day, he tells the students they are officially part of his research project.  He gives them a list of supplies to bring with them the next day.  I hope clean clothes are on the list because they all seem to be wearing the same clothes as yesterday.  WTH was the wardrobe department doing during this episode?

He is still two bodies short.  Fortuitously, his estranged son drops by with his weirdo girlfriend.  Nodel drives them out to the designated meeting place.  As they are exploring the area, they are surrounded by soldiers.

The soldiers lead the group to an underground facility housing a mysterious object.  Like Admiral Yamamoto, it has stayed in the same position since WWII.  Even digging out the ground below it will not cause it to fall.  The army figures it is 60 million years old. The object is too hard for them to even take a sample.  Nodel sees a triangular indentation on the object.  He pulls his glove off to reveal a similar triangular deformity on his palm.  The weird part is that the marking on the object has the point at the top.  When Noel presses his palm to it, his scar has the point at the bottom.  It should have been like a USB connection where he has to reverse it three times to get it to go in.

A blue light shoots out and raises Nodel like Jesus with his arms outstretched.  He speaks in the voice of the aliens.  They spread their their genetic material across the universe like a hotel bedspread to assure the continuation of their race. The object is a vessel to take the group back “home” so the aliens can see how we growed up. NASA can’t keep track of its moon rocks and home movies for 40 years [3], and they’re expecting these aliens to have a welcoming committee after 65 million?

Like Roy Neary, with no regard for their safety, they board the ship and leave behind family, friends and student loans without a thought.

Pretty straightforward, but dang if it didn’t reel me in like it always does.

Post-Post:

  • [1] It is kind of Jesus-fishy that Darwin had a name so ripe for turning into a noun.  Wallacerians would never have taken off.  See also, Alexander Graham Bell.
  • [2] Of course, he is there for shots of him grimacing as Nodel talks about evolution. It is just strange that he appears with the students, and not with the administrators that come in later.
  • [3] Or so they would have us believe.