Tales From the Crypt – The Trap (S3E3)

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tftctrapped17Holy crap, the behind the scenes carnage on this one is approaching Alfred Hitchcock Presents levels. Of the four lead, or at least best-known, actors:  Teri Garr has multiple sclerosis and Michael J. Fox has Parkinson’s.  At least they are alive — Bruno Kirby died at 57 of complications from Leukemia. I hope Bruce McGill is getting regular physicals.

We join the lovely Teri Garr as she is mixing up an unbelievable amount of tuna, taken from a cabinet stuffed with cans of tuna. I assume the joke is that they can’t afford anything but tuna, but it never really pays off as a reasonable viewer will assume there is a cat lady reference coming.  But no, nothing.

Bruce McGill comes home, having been fired from his pizza-delivery job.  God bless anyone who works and doesn’t sit around collecting a check, but if you’re 40 and delivering pizzas, that’s a red flag even if you don’t get fired.

tftctrapped31Teri, who is waaaaaay out of his league offers to get a job giving manicures.  Not speaking Korean would seem to be an obstacle, however.

A call from the insurance company about a past due bill inspires McGill to fake his own death for the insurance money.  He calls his brother Kirby who is conveniently a coroner.

They stage a scene where McGill is the victim of a robbery.  To make it convincing, Garr clubs him in the head repeatedly with a fireplace poker.  He eggs her on by admitting he is also a poker — of her best friend.

Kirby pronounces him dead for the cops.  At the funeral, Kirby starts humping Garr on top of the casket.  She accidentally kicks a lever that begins a conveyor belt into the cremation chamber as McGill is inside reading travel brochures for Rio.  Frankly, with a little work, this could have been a fine ending for the episode.

tftctrapped59Tragedy, and a good ending, is averted.  McGill then heads down to Rio under an alias to lay low.  To avoid suspicion, Garr stays in the US grieving for her dead husband. With Kirby.

After a few months, McGill wises up and returns to the US.  Garr and Kirby are now married and pretend not to know him.

There is a ludicrous trial  where McGill is found guilty of murdering himself.  Garr and Bruno live happily ever after on his insurance money.

The trial could have worked, but the script just wasn’t tight enough.  However, the casting and performances make this one a winner.

Post-Post:

  • This episode was directed by Michael J. Fox.  There is a tasteless joke to be made about him handling the camera, but the last thing I want on this blog is something tasteless.  Or a joke.
  • Writer Scott Alexander has some high profile credits:  1408, Ed Wood, Man on the Moon, The People vs. Larry Flynt.
  • Worst security ever.  I’m not a locksmith, but shouldn’t there be a slot for the chain on the door?

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Oh, I get it.

 

 

Outer Limits – Beyond the Veil (S2E6)

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olbeyondtheveil08Two days ago, I watched an AHP episode with Danny Noonan’s father. Today, it is Danny Noonan himself, Michael O’Keefe starring.  They were possibly the two biggest drags in Caddyshack, and that curse carried on to their respective episodes.

O’Keefe is Eddie Wexler, a Duane Barry doppleganger, who is calling the suicide hotline. He has just taken 16 sleeping pills, but the EMTs get there in time to save him.

Wexler tells the head shrink that he believes aliens have put a device in his neck, although the doctors could find no evidence.  He is also having hallucinations of spacecrafts, aliens and . . . experiments.  He lost his wife and job, and finally decided to end it all.

Turns out this facility was specifically built for people who believe they were abducted. Luckily, there is a young blonde abductee[1], Courtney, to show him around the grounds.

And blah blah blah.  The story is fairly dull, Michael O’Keefe has never been much of an actor, and the blonde — Finn Carter — does not have enough presence to sell the story. Stephen McHattie is great as always, but he can’t do it alone.

Really mediocre, not worth further discussion.

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Screen shot from The X-Files. Not pictured: Lord Kinbote.

One positive note:  The aliens appear to be the same outfits that were used in Jose Chung’s From Outer Space on The X-Files.  That observation prompted me to watch that episode again.  Learn from my mistakes — skip this episode and watch the great Jose Chung instead.

[1] Really, after decades of people being abducted by aliens, abductee is still not in spellcheck?

Post-Post:

  • This episode was an X-Files’ reunion.  Of 14 credited actors, 9 appeared on The X-Files.  Alex Diakun was in 3 of Darin Morgan’s 4 episodes.
  • Chris Brancato wrote the excellent Eve episode of The X-Files.
  • I’m never going to be in GQ, but his jacket looks a little long to me; so this shot reminded me of Short Skirt Long Jacket by Cake.olbeyondtheveil05

Ray Bradbury Theater – Touched with Fire (S4E3)

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bradbury02Like And So Died Riabouchinska, this is a story that appeared first on Alfred Hitchcock Presents (under the title Shopping for Death), and has been recycled 30 years later for RBT.

During a heatwave, a couple of retired insurance salesman are observing the adverse reaction, carelessness or violence, that people have to the heat.

The AHP version gives a few illustrations of their theory — a traffic accident where the driver was reckless, a surprising graphic suicide (we clearly see the body fall 12 stories), and a raging warehouse fire.

In both versions, the men have selected a particular woman that they have calculated is about to crack.  Or more specifically, this being an Alfred Hitchcock joint, she is portrayed as such a shrew that she will bring the violence upon herself.  So it’s really her fault if, for example, her husband guts her with a longshoreman’s hook.

Considering themselves to be good Samaritans they want to protect her from harm. Waiting outside her apartment, they follow her to the local butcher shop.  Jo Van Fleet (AHP) is just a lunatic — shrill, sneering, yelling at everyone, shoving them, littering. Eileen Brennan (RBT) is less of a caricature.  We will still get the sneering, but at least she isn’t yelling at everyone.  Although maybe she did chew out the producers for misspelling her name in the credits.  And for both women — the hair! My God, the hair!

IImage 003n both versions, the aptly-named Mrs. Shrike is rude and abusive to the butcher. She criticizes his meat — ouch! — and accuses him of putting his thumb on the scale. The AHP version is more true to the concept, having the butcher glance at large knife probably thinking of adding a new cut to his inventory.

Her next stop in both versions is a fresh-produce store, with similar results.  Her behavior further convinces the men she is a ticking time bomb of insanity, just begging to be murdered.  Or rather, creating a situation where the man has no free will and must kill her and end up in jail, ruining his life.

They go upstairs to her apartment.  Even before entering they can hear her yelling and music blasting.  They try to explain that she is putting herself in danger, but her natural reaction is to yell at them.  She is abusive to the point where one of them actually fulfills their own prediction and whacks her with his cane.  Well, technically, he merely brandishes it on AHP, but he does swat her on RBT — but it’s still all her fault,mind you.

Leaving, they pass her husband on the stairs.  He is racing up, carrying a longshoreman’s hook.  Damn her for driving him to this!

Post-Post:

  • Sadly, this blog picked up AHP Season 1 after this episode, so I have to slog through it now.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.  Michael Ansara, last seen in The Baby Sitter, gave it a good try, making it to age 91 last year.
  • The RBT episode was directed by Roger Tompkins who also directed the previous episode.
  • I like that, even though it is a heatwave and even though they are retired, the two men are still wearing suits. Different time.
  • The AHP butcher was at least wearing a a full t-shirt whereas the RBT butcher was wearing a wife-beater.  But I’m sure Sir Alfred would have approved.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Dangerous People (S2E39)

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ahpdangerouspeople01Bellefontaine enters the train station as a siren whoops in the background.  In the office, another man is warming himself next to a pot-belly stove.  Bellefontaine tries to start a conversation, but the other man — Jones — doesn’t seemed interested.

The clerk in the station tells him the siren is coming from the Home for the Criminally Insane.  They had one go over the wall today.

Bellefontaine observes Jones’ tattered clothes, and the way he muses about the criminally insane as he fondles a fireplace poker.  He concludes that Jones might just be the escapee.  In a panic, he goes to the restroom and loads a pistol that he was carrying in his bag.

In the second act, Jones begins ruminating on the possibility that Bellefontaine is the escaped lunatic.

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And that’s when he developed his drinking problem.

There are lots of voice-overs as we hear each man’s rationale for believing the other is the escapee.  I’m not sure if it helps the story that we know neither of the men is the escapee, but maybe there is no other way the story could be told.

It is just a very dull slog. Bellefontaine gives a good performance, but the episode’s strength is that unnerving siren that periodically whoops in the background.

The titular danger here is being bored to death.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch: Only bit-player David Armstrong seems to be among the living.
  • Jones was Danny Noonan’s father in Caddyshack.
  • Last episode of Season 2.

Night Gallery – Midnight Never Ends / Brenda (S2E7)

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ngmidnightn everends01Wow, I have to combine these two vacuous segments to really have anything to grab onto.

Midnight Never Ends

In the first segment, Rod Serling is actually the subject of the featured painting.  His one meta-appearance in TZ was awesome, so you might think that would indicate this was something special; but consider how god-awful most of these oil slicks are.  And WTF is he holding a guitar?

The lovely Susan Strasburg is driving through a pitch-black night — and I mean that literally. The minimalist sets in this segment, including the car, are lit only in the immediate area where the actors are.  Anything outside of the car or the room they occupy is completely black.

She picks up a soldier holding a sign for Camp Pendleton.  They are perplexed that they seem to know things about each other.  It takes 20 minutes to get to an ending somewhat similar to Five Characters in Search of an Exit.

The sets are interesting, and Strasburg is good (however, the soldier is pretty bad), but the whole thing just feels like Serling phoning it in again.  And I think I saw this same premise as a sketch on a variety show many years ago.  Played more seriously, the build-up could have worked, but then the let down at the ending would have been just that  much greater (think M. Night Gallery Shyamalan’s The Village).

Even the synopsis on the DVD menu is half-assed:  “Two men can’t shake the uncanny feeling they’ve shared previous experiences.”  Yes, there are other men in the episode, but the soldier and the woman are really the main characters.

Brenda

ngbrenda03aA lot of potential in this one.  Laurie Prang plays a lonely young girl who has her moments of bitchiness — being rude, trampling over sand-castles, etc.  She encounters a monster in the woods — or is it a manifestation of her inner demons?  It is a menacing creature, but not horrific; it mostly just looks like a compost heap, not having any discernible head or limbs.

Laurie Prang is excellent in the role, and also sells her transformation when a year elapses and she ages from maybe 12 to 13.  There really is nothing wrong with this segment, and I actually enjoyed it as I watched it.  It just has kind of a meh ending; and after the first segment, I really needed something more.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy:  Robert Karnes was in The Arrival, and Robert Hogan was in Spur of the Moment.  I saw Hogan in something a long time ago and wondered why they would have used the same name for the character in Hogan’s Heroes.  It also bugged me as a kid that there was a Sgt. Carter on both Hogan’s Heroes and Gomer Pyle.
  • There is more of a connection to Star Trek, where four of the actors in the episode appeared; most notably, Glenn Corbett as Zefram Cochrane (before Farmer Hoggett got the gig).