Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Greatest Monster of Them All (02/14/61)

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Movie producer Hal Ballew is looking through a book on entomology to get ideas for a new monster movie.  He and his screenwriter Fred Logan are unable to come up with a bug that hasn’t been used before.  The crafty Ballew switches gears and tells Logan, “Think you can come up with a high school background?  All those kidddds, full of liiiife!”  Before Ballew can suggest Cuties, Logan blurts out, “Ernst von Croft, the [titular] greatest monster of them all!”  And that’s how Cuties spent 59 years in Development Hell.

Ernst von Croft was an actor in 1930s movies who appeared as hideous, nightmare-inducing characters on-screen just like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Bette Davis.

Ballew brings von Croft into the office and introduces him to his director Morty Lenton.  The actor is perfectly cast — an old cadaverous gent that would have fit right in with the Universal monster classics.  Lenton warns him that this is only a low budget joint.  Von Croft tells him that it can still be a very good picture. “Great films are not made with money.  They are made with love, with care, with integrity.”  I hope the hacks in Hollywood get that because most screenings I’ve seen on Fandango have sold zero tickets lately.

Von Croft still believes they can make a great picture, even after Ballew tells him the writer is no Edgar Albert Poe.  He goes into character, draping his jacket over his shoulders like a cape, wrestling Lenton to the ground, and going for his neck.  Just finding a neck on the tubby Lenton was a feat in itself.  Ballew gives him the job and von Croft even volunteers to do his own make-up.

Blah, blah, blah.  The rest of the episode is confusing and tedious.

  • When Lenton suggests von Croft play the vampire with no teeth, what does that even mean?
  • How is the movie playing in theaters without the producer ever having seen it?
  • But wait, Ballew tells Logan that Lenton did a great job.  So did he see it?  Did he approve of the changes?  Surely not, because he would not have risked damaging the film’s success.
  • Von Croft and Logan are in the theater.  The young audience is digging the suspense and horror.  However, when von Croft’s character speaks for the first time, the audience begins laughing bigly.  Lenton has dubbed in a voice that is identical to Bugs Bunny.  Why?  Was it because von Croft knocked him down?  If so, there was zero indication of his desire for revenge.
  • Von Croft and Logan are humiliated.  Logan gets drunk that night and visits von Croft.  VC (because I’m tired of typing von Croft) angrily makes a point that the director kept insisting on close-ups and that Logan was complicit.  What do close-ups have to do with the cartoon voice?  If anything, wouldn’t you want long shots so the dubbing as less obvious?
  • Later that night, at the studio, the writer finds Lenton dead with two puncture marks in his neck.  But when we see VC, he has a knife.  Did he bite Lenton or stab him?  The bite was not bloody enough to kill him, so maybe it was both.
  • VC dies leaping from some scaffolding.  Did he actually think he was a vampire?  Did he always, or did the humiliation of the film and paying $8 for popcorn trigger him?
  • Logan finds Ballew injured but alive.  Logan explains VC’s actions, “We should have remembered . . . he was the greatest monster of them all.”  Hunh?  There was no history of violence with the actor.  He seemed like a good guy.  Is Logan confusing the actor with his roles?

So I am just baffled by the motivations and some of the dialog.  Jack at bare*bones seems to like this episode, which always makes me conclude that I’ve missed something.

Really an off night for AHP.  I rate this episode a Phantom of the Opera out of the Universal Classic Monsters box set. [1]

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Actually, Phantom might be great, I just haven’t gotten around to watching it . . . in the 6 years I’ve owned the box set.
  • The appearance of Robert H. Harris here is jarring.  I have previously pointed out how this bald, dumpy, middle-aged guy always seemed to be a hit with the ladies in other AHP episodes.  Typically, he would be in a suit with a bow-tie, and a snazzy hat.  Here, however, he is wearing a golf shirt.  Whether this is due to him being a care-free Hollywood producer or due to the general degradation of society in the early 1960’s, I couldn’t say.  But I think we know the answer.
  • One bright spot is Meri Welles. Her brief performance is an aloof dimwit actress is fun.  She was last seen playing another dimwit actress in Madame Mystery.  Not so funny, she died at 36.
  • William Redfield went on to 2 noted roles:  Felix’s brother in one episode of The Odd Couple [2] and Harding in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest [3] (great, now I have to stay up and watch that on Netflix).
  • [2]  He only gets a mention in that episode.  But, holy crap, has there ever been a better written and acted show?
  • [3]  Wow, now that I’m older, Nurse Ratched was actually pretty hot.  No, I’m not watching the series.
  • Why are the AHP aspect ratios always screwed up on dailymotion?  That means I have to walk alllllll the way across the room and put a disk in the DVD player to get some pictures.  No wonder COVID has turned me into Robert H. Harris.

 

One Step Beyond – The Navigator (04/14/59)

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Host John Newland begins by telling us that, in this age of reason, the old tales about sea monsters and sirens have been debunked or explained by science. Dubious unsourced tales of precognition and life after death are still totes for real, though, I guess.

Kudos again to One Step Beyond for looking great!

Stewart the cook Cookie, the steward, knocks on First Mate Blake’s cabin and tells him he has 10 minutes until his watch.  Cookie reports they are “moving like lightning now that we have the sea at our back.” Wait, they’re at sea.  The sea is at their back, front, and both sides, so what does that even mean?  Google provides no clear examples of the phrase, so either it is not a thing or it was somehow deemed to benefit Trump, and was suppressed by the algorithm. [1]

It clearly means something to Blake, though, because he runs up to the deck.  He tells Cookie to have Captain Peabody meet him there.  Blake chews out Ensign Dibble for changing course from NNW without orders, because that’s how the Navy works.  Dibble points to the chalkboard where orders are logged — it says the course is WNW and the Soup of the Day is Navy Bean for the 400th day in a row.

Blake shows the elderly Captain the board.  Captain Peabody orders the helmsman to correct back to the original course.  He then chews out Blake for the error because that’s how the Navy works.  Dibble suggests someone sneaked in and changed the course during the last change of watch.  The Captain notes that the course change has steered them into a dead calm lack of wind, and ice in the water.

Captain Peabody assembles the small crew and tells them the culprit made a mistake.  The new heading was written on the chalkboard, but the chalk was not returned to its holder.  He orders each crewman to empty his pockets.  He finds no chalk, but does finally find those strawberries that went missing.  The officers search the rest of the ship.  In the cargo hold, Blake finds a stowaway.  He has the chalk.  

The Captain shakes him, demanding to know how he got there, why he changed the course, and if he knows any new way to prepare Navy Beans.  The haggard man says nothing, so they chain him up.

From the calm water, the crew hears men shouting for the ship to save them, or to send some girls.  The crew can’t see them because of the fog.  Finally they find four men on a piece of wreckage the size that Kate Winslet hogged in Titanic.  They are survivors of The Flying Eagle which hit an iceberg.  

There is also a dead man.  Blake pulls him on board to give him a decent funeral — presumably at sea, so a good shove would have accomplished the same thing.   Blake recognizes the dead man as the man he caught and chained up in the cargo hold of the ship.  He runs to the cargo hold, and sees the chains are now empty.

This was a fine episode.  The ship was believable and the performances were good.  If I have a beef with this episode, it is with the fickle nature of the universe.  Great, God relaxed the rules and allowed the man to transport to the other ship and trick the crew into sailing toward the four survivors.  You know, he could have just moved the iceberg and saved them all.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Algorithm = some 23 year old punk.
  • For those keeping score, this is 7 out of 13 episodes set outside the USA.
  • Amazingly, Robert Ellenstein (the elderly Captain Peabody) went on to play the Federation Council President in Star Trek IV (and was still younger than Joe Biden).  But then, ST IV was made only 27 years after this episode aired.  By comparison, it has been 34 years since I saw ST IV in a theater.  OMG, I’ve wasted my life!  This mathematical oddity is also enabled by the fact that the ancient mariner, Captain Peabody, was portrayed by a 36 year old actor. 

I will often look to see what historical events happen on the day an episode aired.  I almost never find anything significant.  Check out this list of things popular that week: 

Pope John XXIII was leading the Catholic Church. In that special week of April people in US were listening to Come Softly To Me by The Fleetwoods. In the UK, Side Saddle by Russ Conway was in the top 5 hits. The World of Apu, directed by Satyajit Ray, was one of the most viewed movies released in 1959 while Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart was one of the best selling books. On TV people were watching Lili. 

A little before my time, but I have heard of none of these things except the pope, and that is probably just because they name those guys like a 3-Card Monte scam.

Draw your own conclusion . . . all art is ephemeral, memories fade like the evening sun, Epstein didn’t kill himself.  Seriously, wouldn’t he have waited for Cuties?

I didn’t even want to link it.

Tales of the Unexpected – William and Mary (04/07/79)

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At the burial of her husband, Professor William Pearl, do I detect Mary Pearl exhibiting the slightest smile?  I believe I do.  And, if the first episode is any indication, it is the perfect kick-off to the series.

After an edit worthy of OJ Simpson, Mr. Pearl’s executor Arthur Baxter goes to see Mary.  They meet in a room with more books than a quarantined “journalist” on cable news.  Funny how all these idiots just happen to have their laptop facing a bookshelf.  Sorry, dummies, that does not make you look smart. [2]  And the 80% of you that have a guitar in the background — it does not make you cool.  It makes you look like you bought a guitar, didn’t even buy a case, carefully positioned it in the 15% of the room (i.e. 2% of the house) that is visible on the screen, and are stealing cool from Bob Dylan. [1]  I have yet to see anyone with a piano in the background of their breaking Orange Man Bad scoop.

Mary says she knows William did not leave her much — just the house and £3,000.  She says, “I guess I will just have to go on living in the style to which I am accustomed.”  There is a sealed letter that is to be read by Arthur to Mary.  It says for Mary to make an appointment with Dr. John Landy.  William’s letter also issues a few rules to Mary: 

  • Do not drink alcohol.
  • Avoid television at all costs. 
  • Do not use make-up.
  • Do not smoke cigarettes.
  • Keep my rose-beds well-weeded.
  • Disconnect the phone now that I have no use for it. 

Mary’s stoic response is, “He really did genuinely care about me didn’t he, Arthur?”

That might not read like much.  You might not even find it humorous on the screen.  But the absolutely droll British delivery made me laugh out loud.  It is easy to imagine Frasier Crane delivering that line, but much more tarted-up for American ears

Mary goes to see Dr. Landy.  He knew William through their work on criminal psychopathology.  Landy invented a prefrontal lobotomy technique to remove abnormal parts of the brain that was “not unsuccessful”.  Six weeks ago, he visited William and found him to be a perfect candidate because of his “first class brain”, which was believable in a professor 40 years ago.  Bottom line:  he tells Mary that her husband is alive and just in the other room.  He feels justified, using the “from a certain point of view” theory of English Common Law.

To explain the situation, Dr. Landy shows Mary a picture of a dog’s head on a plate.  The severed head is still alive, with a functioning brain.  He says tubes carry nutrients into the dog’s head and other tubes carry waste to a bucket, or the carpet if he is nervous.  The legitimacy of the scientific feat is called into question, however, when a Korean chef briefly appears in the background.

Landy explains to a stunned Mary that he removed a portion of William’s brain just before he died.  He was also able to retain one optic nerve, but unable to save an ear.  The whole disgusting sentient blob is in a metal box.

Before he takes Mary in to see her husband, he explains that the eye never shuts, and can only look directly up at the ceiling.  To be honest, not a lot happens after that.  Mary insists on taking the box home with her.  She revels in the opportunity to pay back some of William’s years of passive-aggressive abuse.  She breaks all of his rules, wearing make-up, drinking booze, smoking, and I’ll bet those rose-beds are as unmanicured as her . . . er, let’s just say, he probably liked things neatly trimmed.  She even has a little angled mirror set up over the box so she can cruelly force him to watch John Oliver on the telly.

We know of William’s agitation because of the beeps coming from the oscilloscope hooked up up to him.  As she callously laughs, blows smoke into his eye lens, and flaunts his rules, the beeps become more rapid than the telegraph on the Titanic.

Dry as it was, I really enjoyed the episode.  You first sympathize with the widow Mary.  As she begins to have her revenge on William, however, can you really enjoy that?  I dig a good lady’s revenge flick, but the dude’s an eye in a freakin’ box!  The thought of that hellish existence would have given me nightmares if I saw this as a kid.  Not only is he trapped silently in the box, now his wife is going to torture him for years.  At least Stephen Hawking got some fresh air and had depth perception.  Well, he did have to listen to his wife.

In the intro, author Roald Dahl oversells the episode a little by calling it a “very nasty tale.”  Disturbing might be a better word.  Nasty is fleeting, but disturbing stays with you.  I will think about this episode for a long time. 

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Would also have accepted Johnny Cash, Eric Clapton, or Jimi Hendrix.
  • This was actually the 3rd episode.  The first was The Man from the South.  I saw that on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and I can’t believe they could do better here.  The second was Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat, also seen on AHP.  In that case, I don’t think I could do any better.
  • Kudos to the British ethic of ignoring looks in casting.  They cast based on talent, not on age, a nice smile, or a hot body.  That freedom from preconceived cultural norms of beauty enables their shows to be much more grounded and emotionally accessible.
  • No, seriously, get some babes in the next episode.

[2]  OK, Megan Kelly gets a pass.

 

Science Fiction Theatre – Survival in Box Canyon (10/12/56)

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“At an atomic test base in Nevada, preparations are underway for the detonation of a nuclear device.  The purpose of the test is to measure metal resistance in military planes for heat and shock waves generated by a nuclear blast.”

Dr. Raymond Michaels looks at the weather report.  A low pressure area is forming to the west, and will be here in 18 hours.  It will be a week before atmospheric conditions are stable.  Dr. Michaels decides, because of the storm, to move up the nuclear bomb test, which sounds like the kind of thing that could be arbitrarily rushed through with no ill-effects.

The only problem is that Dr. Barton is visiting his family in family in Los Angeles.  Hey, it’s TV’s DeForest Kelly from TV’s Star Trek!  He and his son are looking at complicated formulas on a blackboard.  Mrs. Barton tells her son that his father works on physics all week, so he probably doesn’t want to look at it in his off-time.  She got this theory from her sister who married a gynecologist.  Turns out Barton and his son were working on a formula to see who would win the World Series, where e = steroids and the Astros were stealing the cosines. [1]  Barton gets a call from Michaels to come back to Yucca Flats.

Sadly, his plane’s ETA gets later and later until it finally just disappears from the arrival board like a Delta flight.  Like Lindsay Lohan, it is no longer even a blip on the radar.  As a precaution, the scientists opt to delay the nuclear tests, although why there is an FAA approved flight-path over a nuclear test range baffles me.

There is an extended sequence of stock footage which prompts credits at the end thanking the Civil Air Patrol, the Uncivil Air Patrol, and the Antifa Air Patrol which just harasses travelers at the terminal food court.

The Civil Air Patrol finds an aircraft rudder and amusingly runs it back to the lab.  One of the CAP dudes says, “That was Barton’s tail section alright.”  OK, but why wouldn’t it be in the same vicinity as Barton?  He wasn’t hit by a missile like TWA 800 after all.  OK, maybe he bailed out.  Or had an escape pod like the President in Escape from New York. [2]

Back at the base, the CAP commander says they can’t find the rest of the plane.  He surmises that it has disintegrated on impact and the pieces disappeared like Flight 93 or the plane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11, although his intimate knowledge of those future events is problematic at best.

He continues to believe that Barton is still alive.  He calls the base meteorologist.  By feeding the computer the last known location, time of bail-out, wind-speed, and Dr. Barton’s weight, they hope to calculate where he landed.

At 13:47, the audio went out on the Dailymotion video I was watching.  I  will try to follow the story just from the visuals.

They input the data into the computer which is, appropriately, as enormous as a 1956 computer.  It gives them a range where Barton might be.  Major Sorenson goes out into the desert and finds Barton in a box canyon.  Barton thanks God that Sorenson showed up because he was about to cut off his arm to escape.  He then complements Sorenson’s firm buttocks, although that is just speculation since the sound is out.  I could be thinking of other movies.

He is taken back to the base.  Thank God he is in no danger, so the base can perform its A-Bomb test which is visible to Barton in the hospital, tourists in Las Vegas, and soldiers at the base, leading to all their early deaths decades later.

This series is impossible to rate, but I will miss it when it is gone.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  I know more about cosines than sports, so apologies if the Astros reference makes no sense.  I blame Google.
  • [2]  Did ya ever think how goofy that was?  The President ejects with no Secret Service?  Plus, that must have been a rough landing with no parachute.  And WTF is a Limey doing as our President, anyway?
  • Truman Bradley earned his pay this week as there is a huge amount of narration required over the stock footage.
  • DeForest Kelly was paid a princely $150 for his work on the episode.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Last Escape (01/31/61)

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Keenan Wynn is struggling in a strait jacket.  No, his fellow actors did not have him committed for voting for Nixon last year.  He is playing the self-titled Great Ferlini, a member of the only modern profession other than Russian Empress or actor to exalt themselves that way — Escape Artist. [1] His assistant Wanda brings out a screen to block the audience’s view which, frankly, is not usually required in this stunt.  C’mon man, Harry Houdini did it hanging upside down from a crane.  Martin Riggs did it in a Police Station.  A few seconds later Ferlini emerges holding the strait jacket and blows Wanda a kiss.

In the dressing room, Wanda says his agent Harry is taking them to dinner.  She asks Ferlini not to bring up the “water trick”, in which he drinks a glass of water and a waiter actually returns to refill it before the check comes.  She says it is dangerous at his age, which enrages him.  He says, “I seen 10 new wrinkles on your face in the past week, sugar!”  He roughly grabs her head and shouts, “Who you calling an old man, hunh?”  He berates her for not keeping in shape like him.

At dinner, Ferlini tries to convince Harry that the water trick will work.  Even though it’s old, the new generation has not seen it.  Harry finally relents and asks how Ferlini would do it.  He maps out a strategy including controlled breathing, ropes, chains, a skeleton key, hand-cuffs, razor blades, and a sack — all stuff he fortuitously picked up from the kink.com auction.

The next day when Ferlini is swimming in the lake, Harry goes to see Wanda.  She says every day is getting worse.  She even saw a psychiatrist in Louisville for a while, but then Ferlini got a gig in Vegas working for Moe Greene at the Tropicana.  Wanda is in tears because Ferlini thinks about nothing but his work, even while asleep.  She says he sometimes throws off the covers and takes a bow.  C’mon man, who among us . . . anyhoo, she spots Ferlini’s hand-cuffs and gets an idea about switching the keys. [3]

Harry announces the event.  He has Police Chief Wallace put hand-cuffs on Ferlini.  A couple of locals get the honor of tying him up.  He is then placed in the sack like a bottle of Crown Royal.  The men are directed to put Ferlini into a trunk.  The trunk has many holes in it which Harry says are to help it sink; or are maybe collateral damage from the Moe Greene hit.  Chief Wallace locks the trunk and it is tossed in the middle of the lake.  After 38 seconds, it is clear Ferlini is not going to resurface; even though David Blaine can hold his breath 17 minutes.

We join Ferlini’s funeral as the pall-bearers set down his coffin.  The preacher says, “Who is to say that Joseph Ferlini, in his last moment of earthly glory, was not happy in this choice that was made for him by the almighty arbiter of life.”  I don’t know . . . drowning seems like a brutal, horrific way to go.  I say that based only on Kurt Russell’s death in the Poseidon Adventure remake.  And I know from brutal, horrific pain because I sat through the Poseidon Adventure remake.

A man interrupts the preacher and asks if this is the Ferlini funeral despite the water leaking out of the coffin.  He tells the crowd he is from the Coroner’s Office and his daughter is selling Girl Scout Cookies.  Also, he has orders to collect the body because the Coroner wants a second examination.  Hmmm, underwater for 30 minutes, bound by ropes, chains, hand-cuffs, stuffed in a sack, and locked in a trunk.  Yeah, let’s take a second look there, Quincy.  If they are in Florida, it will be listed as a COVID death.

The pall-bearers, luckily not union men, are called into service a second time to carry the coffin to the caretaker’s cottage.  The Deputy Coroner opens the casket and it is empty.  Wanda shrieks in horror at the cash she wasted on the casket.

Later, in the Coroner’s Office, Harry explains.  Ferlini had made him promise that if he died, Harry would abduct the body.  Harry slipped the Undertaker $50, and hired an actor to play the Deputy Coroner.  That way, Ferlini figured, he would be remembered forever . . . longer than Houdini.  Yes, his years of toiling away in Dinner Theater would obscure Houdini’s innovations in magic and escape, international stunt performances, movies, books, and pioneering the debunking of seances and mediums.

Unfortunately, they didn’t quite nail the ending.  The final shot is of Wanda in a strait-jacket.  Done right, this could have had the same jaw-dropping impact as the last shot of The Changing Heart; especially knowing how Wanda might be treated in an asylum 60 years ago.  They lobotomized a Kennedy [2], what do you think they’ll do to her?

Ironically, both episodes endings fall apart if you think too much about their last shots.  Why is Wanda in the strait-jacket?  She must know Ferlini is dead — that was the plan all along.  I guess we are supposed to believe the Coroner didn’t go public with the disposition of Ferlini’s body, so she is waiting for him to return like Ted Danson in Creepshow.  Maybe Harry came up with another $50.

Hey, maybe Harry can recoup the cash by going on tour with Wanda.  You know, if she can wriggle out of that strait-jacket like Ferlini did.  Even better, if she can take off her bra without removing the strait-jacket, like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance.  What a feeling!

There were missed opportunities with the final shot and, as Jack notes at  bare*bones, a flatness to Ferlini’s escape and the coffin reveal.  However, Keenan Wynn was a powerhouse as always, and the lake location was almost worthy of One Step Beyond.  Reworking the final shot in my head, I can get this up to a 7.0.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  See also famed stunt-thing Gonzo the Great.
  • [2]  Referring to Rosemary, not Ted.
  • [3]  Come on, man.  Houdini didn’t use no keys.
  • Born in 1874, Houdini could have maaaaaybe been alive when this aired, if some punk had not sucker-punched him.  Proof that the séances were fake:  He didn’t come back and whip that kid’s ass.