Category Archives: TV

Twilight Zone – The Beacon (12/06/85)

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Icon of cool, Charles Martin Smith is wearing his flat cap, Member’s Only jacket, and driving his VW Cabriolet. Also, he is Charles Martin Smith.[1]

His car fails to proceed, so he pulls over to the side of the road.  There is steam shooting out of the radiator, so I’m guessing leak?  His car, like mine, lacks the big ON/OFF switch under the hood that other guys seem to know about.  He grabs his suitcases out of the backseat and starts hoofing it.  After only a few steps, he encounters a sign reading:

PRIVATE PROPERTY

KEEP OUT

ABSOLUTELY NO SOLICITORS

OR TRESPASSERS

Not entirely clear on the meaning of the ambiguously-worded sign and padlocked gate, he slips between the barbed wire.  Before the opening narration is complete, he arrives at a beautiful cove with cliffs and a lighthouse overlooking the water.  Or maybe he is visiting the art gallery of the local maritime museum because he is in front of the most obvious 2-dimensional seascape rendering I have seen since I went to the art gallery of the local maritime museum.

He walks to the town which seems very 19th century, with dirt roads, sage brush growing here and there, and the Bellweather General Store.[2]  The dark store appears to be closed, but he knocks on the door.  Proprietor William Cooper-James reluctantly lets him him, but warns him there are no phones here.  Despite having been closed, this is Bellweather’s biggest day of the year as 10-year old Teddy (a 10-year old, not as weird as he will be later, Giovanni Ribisi) then comes in.  Smith introduces himself as Dr. Barrows, but Teddy doesn’t know what a doctor is.

tzbeacon13Barrows inquires about a room but of course there are no hotels here, what with the sign, barbed wire, and padlock having really taken a bite out of the local tourism.  Young Teddy, showing just how detached from reality this town really is, offers this strange man a room at his house.  As they leave, Teddy says to Cooper-James, “May the Beacon pass you by.”

Teddy’s mother lets him in, as is the town custom, reluctantly.  Dr. Barrows offers to take a look at her sick daughter Katie, but she declines.  Shortly after he settles in, the titular lighthouse beacon sweeps across the community scaring the citizens like Sauron’s eye.  Their reaction is reasonable as the light stops on Teddy’s house and his sick sister takes a turn for the worse.

Dr. Barrows checks out the girl.  Like all TV doctors on vacation, he travels with his medical gear and is a mobile pharmacy.  Teddy is now worried that maybe it was Katie’s time to die and “now it will be like we disobeyed it.”  They look out the window and see the townspeople approaching there house to see who will die.  They are carrying lanterns despite the house being swathed in a 4-billion watt light.  Teddy explains that the lighthouse “just picks a house.  Then shines a light on the house and somebody dies.”

Dr. Barrows is having none of this and gets Teddy to take him to the lighthouse.  Along the way, Teddy explains that the Beacon “protects and guides and keeps us happy”.  Well, except for the ones it kills. Cooper-James tells Barrows the story of Seth the lighthouse keeper 200 years ago.  Everyone in the town is descended from him which might explain some of the weirdness.  When ships started going to other ports, possibly due the sheer 100-foot cliffs along the shore, Seth taught the people to live off the land.  Years later, on his deathbed, “Seth decided that he just wasn’t going to go.”

tzbeacon17Yada, yada, Barrows doesn’t buy the story of how Seth’s spirit inhabited the lighthouse, and how it protects the townspeople.  Because he saved Katie from death, the town sacrifices him to the Beacon.  They close in around him, he screams, the Beacon goes out.

Everything was fine as far as it went, but it just seemed to leave too much unexplained.  Seth’s story is a little underwhelming.  Is Seth even real or is Cooper-James pulling the strings? Either way, I can imagine this being fleshed out into a really good movie with a little more time.  We get a little The Village, a little The Lottery, a little Harmony, a little Children of the Corn, but with secluded small towns, there is going to be overlap.  Charles Martin Smith has an everydweeb quality that makes him very watchable.  Martin Landau is always solid.  The womenfolk weren’t given much to do.  Giovanni Ribisi had not yet acquired that weirdness that makes him interesting.

I rate it 75 watts.  That’s not great, but I consider the roll from last weeks episode to be continuing.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Actually, for directing the first episode of Buffy, he gets a lifetime Cool Pass.
  • [2] Short for general merchandise store.
  • Classic TZ Legacy:  Martin Landau was in two episodes.  This was really more of a Night Gallery episode, though.

Science Fiction Theatre – Stranger in the Desert (05/07/55)

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notpictured01

“Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration.” What the hell?

Truman Bradley tells us how physicist Antoine Becquerel worked with Pierre & Marie Curie to first extract Radium.  But this not their story.

A couple of uranium prospectors in a jeep are pulled over to the side of the dirt by the sheriff. He tells them 7 men have been killed in this area in the last few months; 200 if you include radiation sickness.  After checking their gear and — God bless America — firearms, the Sheriff sends them on their way.

As they drive up the mountain, the Geiger Counter starts clicking.  They see an eagle on the ground that seems to be the source of the radiation.  Sadly the bird is dead.  The prospectors throw a blanket over the dead corpse and decide to “keep him for luck”.

They throw the eagle in the Jeep and it not only comes back to life, it is no longer radioactive.  They get the bright idea to use the eagle as a Geiger counter.  This is a great idea except unlike a Geiger counter, you must feed it, keep it from flying away, listen to it squawk, and have it shit on your arm all day.  Oh yeah, and you have to check it with a real Geiger counter to see if it is radioactive.

They find what they believe to be a $10 million deposit of uranium.  They decide to file a claim on it, but notice a miner’s shack nearby with smoke billowing out of the chimney.  They grab their guns and kick in the door.  Inside they find a man named Ballard calmly tending to some plants.  He claims to be a naturalist, not a prospector.  He tells the men that the spot they found does not contain uranium, but some other form of radioactive energy.

Nevertheless, one of the men goes to file the claim while the other keeps an eye on Ballard,  He continues working on the plants which he plans to “take home.”  His home is lacking these life forms that breathe carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

200 years before the Weyland-Yutani shake and bakes, this sets up an interesting premise that I suspect not many people in 1955 had ever considered — terra-forming.  Unfortunately nothing is done with this intriguing premise.  Nothing.

In fact, such a nothing is done with this that I have to wonder if the episode is complete.  It only runs 22:25 on YouTube whereas some episodes run 3 – 4 minutes longer.  They had everything going for them — a mostly exterior setting, an eagle, interesting actors, and a great premise.

Having all that and blowing it earns them a rating of Death Valley.

Post-Post:

  • Meh.

Outer Limits – Last Supper (01/31/97)

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“Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration.” What the hell?

From the intro:  “Events in our past seem to slip further away with time.”  Well, duh.

Star athlete Danny Martin brings his new girlfriend home to meet his parents.  She is named Jade as are all mysterious Chinese women on TV.  This is also a coincidence of Lou Gehrigian proportions as she has freakishly green eyes.

Awkward:  Danny’s father Frank immediately recognizes her as a girl he tortured 20 years earlier when he was in the army.  He remembers her screaming in pain while strapped to a chair.  I took an immediate dislike to Frank (Peter Onorati) because he has one of them butt-chins. [1]  Also for torturing a cute girl, but mostly the chin thing.

Rather than try to avoid being recognized, Frank begins making the usual small dinner-table talk about where she is from, if she has ever been to Virginia, if she ever had a car battery clamped to her nipples.  While Danny and Jade go upstairs to fool around, Frank has another flashback.  Turns out, he was merely a witness to the torture.  He was standing guard as Doctor Sinclair injected her with chemicals to test her blood.

Shockingly, eight minutes into the episode when they are alone, Jade tells him his memory is correct.  Quite reasonably, however, he assumes she is the daughter of the girl who was experimented on.  At that very minute, in a nearby town, a scarred Dr. Sinclair sees her in a news clip with Danny as he has just been MVP of whatever sport he plays.  Sinclair thought he was the only survivor of that explosion at the lab.

Not a good night for the Martin men.  Frank’s past has come back to haunt him.  Then after dinner, Danny’s mother — let’s call her Carol — tells him that he and Jade will not be sleeping together under her roof.

Frank again flashes back to that night.  When Sinclair and his staff take a torture break, he enters the operating room to see the screaming girl.  She begs him to let her go.  Frank is caught by Sinclair as he is carrying Jade to safety.   Through a freak accident, a gunshot sets off a gas tank [2] and explodes Frank and Jade right out the 2nd floor window like Darkman.

When Frank and Jade are alone again, he asks her if he is her father.  Poor Danny is cock-blocked for the second time as Frank says she can’t be with his son because he would be her step-brother!  OK, maybe he isn’t quite as prudish as Carol since “step-sibling porn” is decades in the future.[3]  She finally tells him that she is the girl he saved in the lab.

She says she is centuries old.  When she was a teenager, the Black Plague swept through her village in northern Spain.  Wait, were there Chinese people in 14th century Spain?  Did they live in Chinapueblo?  Is that why there were no cats around to catch the disease-ridden rats?  OK, settle down.  Jade even shows him her portrait in a book of paintings from the 18th century English Romantic Period, reasonably thinking the Cubist book would offer little proof of her identity.

After she goes up to bed, Frank again thinks back to that rainy night night long ago, when he rescued the beautiful girl from sadistic doctors . . . when, scared and alone, they found comfort in each other’s arms . . . where they hid out in an abandoned warehouse . . . and how he banged the shit out of his future daughter-in-law.  Carol asks if he is coming up to bed.  He fortuitously has the art book in his lap, and says he’ll be along soon.

He goes upstairs alright, but takes a detour to Jade’s room — they sure seem to end up alone a lot.  This time, she takes the opportunity to show him a crescent wrench shaped birthmark that he would surely remember 20 years later.  She drops her top and he touches it, just below her bare breasts.  And . . . in walks Danny.  No, now this is awkward!

Frank tries to explain, but Danny punches him out.  When Carol comes down to see what is going on, Danny immediately rats his father out.  Jade comes downstairs and pleads for everyone to listen to her and Frank’s story.

Dr. Sinclair breaks in and ties everyone up at gunpoint.  He hooks an IV up to Jade to get some of that magic blood.  The blood does clear up his complexion, but it goes further, transforming into a younger man, a boy, a baby — I guess a fetus would have been a little too pro-life, so the baby just devolves directly into a puddle of goo.

At least this proves to Carol and Danny that Frank’s and Jade’s story was true.  The next morning, Jade goes out to wait for a cab.  As his parents watch from a window, Danny goes out and kisses her.  So I guess everything is alright, but these are going to be some tense-ass Thanksgivings.

There was very little science-fiction to be had here.  In fact, it seemed more like one of the recent melodramatic 1980s Twilight Zones.  Somehow, it works though.  Maybe it was Sandrine Holt’s performance as Jade and some solid directorial choices.

I rate it a medium well-done.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Seriously, I can tolerate only about five people on this list.  It would have been six, butt they somehow left off the most famous butt-chin in motion picture history.
  • [2] Just as in Halloween II.
  • [3] I read somewhere recently that the most searched term in porn is now “step-sister”.  Of course, trying to find the original article just returned a million porn sites in Google.  Two hours later . . .
  • Title Analysis:  I think I get it.  This was literally the last supper this family would have before their relationship was changed forever.  But is the dinner itself really that important?
  • Well-directed by Helen Shaver, previously seen in The Sandkings.

The Hitchhiker – Last Scene (03/25/86)

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hitchlastscene1Enough with the shots of guys’ sweaty sex chests.  This time it is somewhat less odious as on top of the layer of sweat, there is a layer of topless blonde.  Also because the guy is credited as “Bad Lover.”  The blonde sends him packing; and not in the good way.

Immediately after he leaves, the phone rings.  She asks who it is and the caller replies, “Charlie.  Call me Charlie” in a creepy breathless voice, which is not how I remember the commercial.  He continues, “I’m watching you.”  She spins around to see the condo facing her room.  After her recent performance, there ought to be a dozen faces against the windows.  He says, “I’m always watching you,” as he lowers the binoculars.  We see that he is taking no chances — over the phone, in another building, he is still wearing a mask to hide his identity.  He then opens a switchblade.  The scene it is not staged well-enough to demonstrate that she is actually seeing him rather than reacting to the sound on the phone.  However, there is still some residual goodwill from the boob-scene, so no problem.

hitchlastscene2She let’s out a scream and the camera pulls back to reveal she is on a monitor being drooled over by another three guys.  Inexplicably, the picture quality of her scene on the monitor is far superior to the picture quality of the rest of the episode.  How is that even possible?  Why didn’t they apply this same technology to the boob-scene, or even — crazy talk — the whole episode?

Sadly, the blonde actress Leda Bedell is not much of an actress.  She was forced on first-time director Alex Nolan by his producer.  The producer accuses him of making an “artsy-fartsy film” when it is clearly the standard humorless melodrama that Cinemax specialized in.

As Alex watches her rehearse the last scene of the movie, her male co-star Duncan has a hissy fit because she “is not giving me what I need.”  Alex chews him out and takes Leda into his office for a little private rehearsal, and maybe what he needs.  Fortuitously, they were shooting the death scene which includes a long kiss.  After the smooch, there is a very effective fake-out.  Kudos on that anyway.  She agrees to meet Alex for dinner that night.

hitchlastscene4As she is getting ready, there is a knock at the door.  A man with the same mask hands her a dozen roses.  The door closes, and when she looks back in the hall 2 seconds later. there is no one there.  The roses are still there, however, with a card that says RIP.  In her parking garage, she sees Duncan and accuses him of being flower-guy.  On the way to the restaurant, she sees the man in the mask following her on a motorcycle.

Alex is late, and Leda accuses him of being motorcycle-guy.  She thinks Alex did it to coax a good performance out of her.  There she gets a phone-call at her table from Charlie.  That night she gets another call from Charlie and sees him across the street in a window.  For a change, a woman in the movies does the sensible thing and calls the police. She goes with them to the apartment where he appeared, but there is just a harmless old man living there.

The police leave her downstairs.  As she goes up to her apartment, she sees the masked man in the stairwell. He starts swinging the switchblade, but she is able to get away and get to her apartment.  As she leans against the door, the knife plunges through right next to her head.  The masked man begins breaking through the door and . . . son of a bitch if they didn’t trick me again!

hitchlastscene5After shooting a scene, Alex repeats something the masked man said, so she runs away.  She discovers a mask in his office, so takes off.  That night, Alex gets a call,  “I’m watching you, always watching you.”  He turns and sees Leda wearing the mask in a window across the street. She continues, “Let’s do the last scene for real.”

They meet in a disco.  Alex admits he was the man in the mask.  He pre-recorded the phone-call.  He used fancy Hollywood make-up to pretend to be the shorter, older man across the street.  Their confrontation is very effective with Leda wearing the mask on the back of her head.  It is surreal to see her dancing that way, and when she spins around face-mask-face-mask.  She gets her revenge and does so is a logical way that calls back to an earlier scene.

There is so much to like here.  It is impossible to tell whether LaGena Hart is a bad actress or is effectively playing a bad actress, so I will give her the benefit of the doubt.  Peter Coyote is always good.  The script takes just enough turns, and the final face-off is visually arresting.  Unfortunately, that deadly 1980’s vibe is a wet blanket over the whole episode.

Still, it manages to be pretty good.

Post-Post:

  • Thus starts the first post of The Hitchhiker – Vol 1.  The fact that they went all the way to Season 3 for the first episode does not bode well.
  • Directed by Paul Verhoeven, later to make RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct and oh . . . Showgirls.
  • Writer Robert Avrech wrote an earlier episode which may show up later according to the logic of this set.  He also wrote the screenplay for De Palma’s Body Double.
  • Bad Lover guy is actually married to LaGena Hart.  He was also Roy Munson’s dad in Kingpin.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – I’ll Take Care of You (03/15/59)

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“Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration.”  What the hell?

Russell Collins and Ralph Meeker — two men truly obnoxious in very different ways. Meeker was an oily and unctuous clothing salesman in Total Loss.  Here he shows his range by portraying an oily and unctuous car salesman.  Collins was an unbelievable sourpuss in Mrs. Herman and Mrs Fenimore.  Here . . . well actually, he is a decent old guy here; except for the betrayal, blackmail, and covering up a murder.

A trio of college boys drive onto Meeker’s used car lot.  They are looking for a wreck they can use in a carnival to charge people 2 bits for 3 whacks.[1]  Unfortunately, rather than offer up old man Collins, Meeker charitably tells them he’ll try to have a car for them Friday.

Meeker has called Collins “Dad” several times.  However, when Collins’ wife shows up with his lunch, it becomes clear that Collins is not his father and the woman is not his mother.  That kind of pointless obfuscation always bugs me.  Collins is worried Meeker might sell the lot, but Meeker says, “I’ll take care of you.”

The next day, Meeker’s wife Dorothy stops by the lot.  After dissing Collins, she tells Meeker she wants to go to New Zealand to visit her cousin.  This, the day after their expensive anniversary party.  He tells her to cancel the trip.  After she leaves, he bravely says, “I’ll get her a one-way ticket right out of Cape Canaveral!  Zoom!” [2]  To the moon . . .

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“Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration.”  Seriously, what the hell?  My wi-fi works.

Meeker goes home at lunch to prevent his wife from going to their club and blabbing about New Zealand.  While he is changing clothes, she darts out and steals his car.  Knowing the car was running on empty, Meeker gallantly takes one of his used cars to rescue her. Seeing her out there on the side of the road in her mink stole is just too tempting.  He runs her down; we don’t see her hit, of course, but we do see him get an gratifying bounce as he crosses her dead ass.

Meeker goes back to his house and tells Dad he did not see Dorothy, but did accidentally run someone down.  Why more pointless obfuscation?  Even a Washington journalist could connect those dots.  He tells Dad to take the car back to the lot, and expects him to back his alibi that he was there all night.  He shows Dad the busted headlight and tells him to get it fixed.  “If you take care of this, Dad, I’ll take care of you.”

The cops show up at the lot, followed seconds later by the college kids.  Seeing a chance to get rid of the deathmobile , Collins cleverly sells them that for $50 instead of the wreck Meeker had set aside for them.

The cops tell Meeker they estimate his wife was knocked about 30 feet into some shrubbery.  They checked the tire tracks, but naturally they did not match Meeker’s car.  Collins backs up Meeker’s alibi to the cops as we see — in a beautiful composition — the college kids driving the car out behind them.  Meeker is all smiles when Dad tells him of the ploy.

That night at the carnival, Dad and his gal Kitty go to see rubes paying to take whacks at the car.  Meeker sees Collins and Collins informs him that they are partners now, that a man his age has to look out for himself.  They both see the cops come in, and Collins assures Meeker he never said a word.

They nab Dad.  After all, he was the one that sold the evidence — a $500 car — for $50 and insanely low APR so some college kids could whack it into junk.  Pretty fishy.  The cops haul Dad away and Kitty comes out of the tent looking for him.

This is where things get confusing.

Kitty is all smiles and says Dad has been a good husband all those years.  She says to Meeker, “That headlight you asked me about today, I never asked him why he had it hid.” She looks around.  “I  get so nervous at night if I can’t find Dad.”  She takes Meeker’s hand and says, “Will you take care of me?”

Kitty’s cheery attitude baffles me.  Does she know that Dad was just hauled away to what will certainly be life in prison if the sentence is more than six months?  They seemed like such a happy old couple.  It makes no sense for her to be so chirpy.

If she doesn’t know Dad was just taken away, why is she slyly bringing up the hidden headlight?  And why is she so chirpy?

What’s with the  “I  get so nervous at night if I can’t find Dad” and “Will you take care of me?”  The second part must a veiled threat, but why make herself appear vulnerable? He’ll just bonk her on the head, strip the house and destroy the evidence.  After all, he is a liar, a murderer, and a used car salesman.

If you concentrate on the ending they were going for rather than what they actually put on the screen, this is a better episode.  Russell Collins, who I despised before as the bitter old crank was pretty likable here.  Acting!  Meeker’s smarmy salesman shtick is effective, but does he ever play anything else?  Acting?  I especially like the repeated use of the title as it took on different meanings.  There were some great shots, and the college kids and carnival were given more character than I would expect in a 30 minute show.

Great stuff.

Post-Post:

  • [1] I’ve witnessed one of these events — you have to be Conan to make a dent in those old cars.  Also, the price later goes up to 4 bits.  Soon people would be bashing American cars for free; and rightly so.
  • [2] I wonder what viewers thought of that.  The Mercury 7 would be chosen the next month.  The first man wouldn’t go into space for 25 months; the first free man 2 weeks later.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  Richard Evans, one of the college kids, is hanging in there.  Another, James Westmoreland just died this year.