Night Gallery – The Phantom Farmhouse (S2E5)

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Like the unwatchable Whispers last season, this segment is hard-core 1970s.

At a new-age (well, new in 1970) high-priced sanitarium, Dr. Winter is holding a session outdoors around a large tree which has several colored platforms built around it.  I don’t know how beneficial it is for therapy, but as set design, it is awesome.

Another 1970s relic, David Carradine is strumming a repetitious tune on his guitar. When one of the other patients takes offense, he goes all Pete Townsend and smashes it.  When another patient asks him a simple question, he responds in the third person, “Gideon takes the fifth.”  A more welcome response would have been “Gideon takes a bath.”

He complains to the doctor that his parents are paying $39,000 a year to keep him locked up there.  That’s $228,000 in 2014 dollars; what a rebel.

ngphantonfarmhouse08The sheriff shows up with a note found at the scene of the death of one of Winters’ patients.  Carradine wrote the note which was an introduction to a mysterious Mildred. Carradine claims he and all of the group are in love with her despite never having seen her.  He says that Mildred is a “super-groove”  who lives in a farmhouse in the woods with a picket fence and old-fashioned well.

The dead patient had gone in search of Mildred and ended up torn to shreds.  Winter retraces his path and ends op at the farmhouse despite the fact that the sheriff had said it did not exist; that there were only ruins there.  There is a young blonde woman there dressed in white who offers him a drink from the well.

Back at the sanitarium, Carradine has pulled together several books of lycanthropy, werewolves.  He believes that is what killed the other patient. The sanitarium’s inexplicably beret-wearing French caretaker also believes that werewolves have killed some of their sheep.

ngphantonfarmhouse12Winter goes back to the farmhouse to see Mildred.  Then returns to the sanitarium where he learns another patient has been torn to shreds.

Then returns to the farmhouse.  Then back to the sanitarium.  Honestly, this story could have used some tightening up.

The next day, before sunrise, he returns to the farmhouse.  Mildred had asked that he read a funeral service over three unmarked graves.  He collapses in mid-psalm and is later found by the caretaker.  Where the farmhouse had stood a few moments earlier, there are only ruins.

So he goes back to the sanitarium . . .  presumably still as the doctor.

Sadly, less than the sum of its parts.  The actors are great — Carradine is the typical sanctimonious hippie, but he is perfect in the role.  Mildred was not very well cast, but the others were fine.  It just went on for too long with not much of a payoff.

Post-Post:

  • Twilight Zone Legacy: None really, but Bill Quinn was in the TZ Movie.
  • Skipped Segment: Silent Snow Secret Snow.  This is segment is based on the Conrad Aiken story that everyone used to have to read in school.  Oddly, Aiken’s daughter Joan wrote the Marmalade segment of the previous episode.
  • How can lycanthropy not be in spell-check?
  • Kudos on the subtle indication that Mildred is a werewolf:

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Tales from the Crypt – The Secret (S2E18)

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tftcsecret02Theodore is the oldest kid at the orphanage, and there is little chance any parents will adopt him.  Being the oldest and the biggest, the standard bowl of orphan-chow they serve just isn’t enough.

We catch him sneaking down the stairs to the kitchen to steal a snack.  In the fridge, there is one chicken leg, an apple, an onion and half a bottle of milk.  This is to feed about 10 kids, so if they are hungry tomorrow, I don’t think it is going to be his fault.

He is busted by the headmaster Mrs. Hagstead who, like Mrs. Goodbody in the Bradbury episode, is not quite appropriately cast.  She is an older woman, but not a hag.  The casting director was on the ball casting a hottie as her assistant Miss Heather, though,  because, as science has proven, all Heathers are hot.  Hagstead tells Heather she must never talk about what happened to Theodore’s parents.

tftcsecret07Hagstead instructs Heather to take Theodore back upstairs and lock him in his room. That night, Theodore sneaks out again by the full moon and comes back in the morning covered in dirt from his escape.

Against all odds, a couple comes to the orphanage and thinks Theodore is the perfect choice to live with them in “the lap of luxury.”  Theodore is in awe of the large house and his room which is filled with toys — which is a good thing since they keep him locked in his room.  All he has to keep him company are the many toys, Tobias the butler and a never-ending series of cakes, pies, sundaes, eclairs, ice cream, napoleons and milkshakes.

During a moonlight stroll around the estate, the couple tells Theodore that the have a special surprise coming up for him, but that it is a secret.  Tobias, also an orphan, seems genuinely concerned for Theodore’s welfare.  One night, Tobias is caught trying to smuggle Theodore out of the house.

tftcsecret13He is caught by the couple who are revealed to be vampires.  Theodore manages to escape, but is caught running across the estate.  Turns out Theodore has a secret of his own.

That night, or at least at night, Theodore returns to the orphanage dressed like Danny Noonan at the Yacht Club and tells Hagstead and Heather that there are going to be some changes.

Great episode — this is how you handle kids, Outer Limits!

Post-Post:

  • No idea when this is set, but Hagstead calls Theodore a “little Sputnik”, so it had to be after 1957.  Sputnik seems to have a few translations in English: Something that travels with the earth, Traveling Companion, Fellow Traveler.  This is funny considering the colloquial meaning of fellow traveler in this country even before Sputnik.
  • Tobias is played by Larry Drake, last seen in the great And All Through the House and The Message.
  • This is the writer’s sole credit.  The director had only one other directing credit, but was a production designer on a lot of big movies.  Despite these slim resumes, the writing and especially the direction were better than the average TFTC.
  • Last episode of the season — don’t forget what you learned over the summer, guys.
  • Gaines Orphanage, I get it.

Outer Limits – Unnatural Selection (S2E3)

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A very sad episode in more than one way — and made nearly intolerable by the use of a young actor playing a deformed kid.  OK, nothing is off the table in genre fiction; I’m even enjoying American Horror Story this season.  But their “freaks” are at least presented as human and in service of a good story (well, at least in the episodes I’ve seen so far; I’m not hearing good things).

I’m even kind of ticked off at the summary on IMDb:

Howard and Joanne Sharp are pregnant and are considering the possibility of black-market genetic enhancement which will result in a perfect baby or a 1 in 10,000 of creating a monster.

First of all, Howard isn’t pregnant.  Second, later in the episode we see one of the unlucky .01%’ers.  Yes, he has severe problems, but let’s reserve the “m-word” talk for It’s Alive or Basket Case scenarios.

Also, I think they meant to have the word “chance” after “10,000.”  Even with that, the sentence isn’t quite right, but going on would be a waste of good pedantry on a bad episode.

To be fair, my disdain for the execution taints some good aspects of the episode.  The acting was fine with pros like Alan Ruck and Catherine Mary Stewart.  There was some interesting misdirection involving spousal abuse, and I’m always up for a good genetic engineering story i.e. Gattaca, or even previous Outer Limits episodes.  But if you’re going to have a monster, make him a monster.

Post-Post:

  • It was nice to see Mary Beth Rubens again, sadly in her 2nd to last IMDb credit ever.
  • IMDb is full of strange resumes.  Writer Eric Morris seemed to burn pretty bright, selling a lot of scripts in a 5 year run — then nothing after 2002.  IMDb values writers about as much as Hollywood does, so no idea if he is still alive.  OK, probably the union won’t give up the info.

Ray Bradbury Theater – Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! (S3E12)

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rbtmushrooms01Ray actually participates in the beginning of this episode.  Looking around his writing room, which is destined to be on an episode of Hoarders, he pulls out a bound copy of the Johnson Smith catalog from his childhood.  Amazingly, unlike Ray, the company is still a going concern — in business, celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

The episode opens with a jaunty tune.  Young Tom is leafing through the catalog full of X-Ray specs, magic tricks, whoopee cushions and inexplicably is taken with the ad for growing giant mushrooms in your basement.  Unlike the x-ray specs, I can guarantee this ain’t gonna get you any closer to seeing your classmates’ underwear.

Maybe he is just a — ahem — budding horticulturist because in the next scene, he is enthusiastically mowing the lawn with an old push mower over grass that clearly does not need cutting.  He stops at his dad’s feet as dad holds up 2 tickets to the ball game.

rbtmushrooms07Their neighbor, a plain middle-aged woman who Bradbury cruelly named Mrs. Goodbody is pumping clouds of DDT onto her plants.  Out of the blue, she starts complaining about invaders from outer space.  Tom’s attention is elsewhere as he sees the mailman coming to his house.  Sure enough, the mushrooms have landed.

The box promises “Giant Abyssinian/Amazon Mushrooms!”  There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as Abyssinian mushrooms, and if they were real, what exactly does a mushroom from Ethiopia have to do with the Amazon?  And if your life is so dull that mushrooms deserve an exclamation point, for the love of God, get the whoopee cushion next time.

Tom plants his mushrooms and proudly shows them to his parents even though they are tiny and shriveled — fungal shrinkage.

rbtmushrooms02The next day, Tom’s father Hugh is carpooling to work with their neighbor Roger.  After Hugh turns off a radio broadcast about a meteor shower, Rog says he feels like things are going to hell, he is having panic attacks, shivering at night.  He can feel the dust falling on him and the weather changing second by second.  “Something awful is is going to happen to all of us,” he warns.  Luckily this stretch of road is largely abutment-free.

When they get to work, Roger just walks off and does not return home.  That night, Tom brings up a tray of mushrooms which seems to unnerve his mother.  Hugh suspects something crazy might be happening when he sees that Roger’s son is also growing mushrooms.

Roger calls Hugh and tells him to warn the neighborhood not to accept any special delivery packages from New Orleans.  Hugh starts to worry about the world being taken over with out a shot being fired, because what fun would that be.

After eating the mushrooms on a sandwich, he gets seems to get with the program and can’t wait to feed mushrooms to his wife.

A nice little episode as long as you don’t burden it with expectations.  It really is Invasion of the Body Snatchers-lite.  But that’s OK.  For what it was attempting, I think they succeeded.

Post-Post:

  • Yet another first time director.
  • Abyssinia, Henry was the M*A*S*H episode where Henry Blake was killed.  Also, it always bugged me that there isn’t an asterisk after the H.  Don’t they represent the missing letters in the acronym?  Are they just there to separate the letters?
  • There have always been Miss Goodbodys and Nurse Goodbodys in popular culture. Where are all the Mr. Goodbodys?  They must have fathers.  And why do they tend to gravitate to the medical or secretarial fields?  Has there ever been a Senator Goodbody?
  • Charles Martin Smith directed the first episode of Buffy.  How could having that on your resume not launch a huge directing career?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Father and Son (S2E36)

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Set in London seven years before The Hands of Mr. Ottermole.   1912 slacker Sam Saunders is in his father’s pawnshop hitting him up for money.  His father tells him that at 35 it is time he stood on his own two feet, and he will not give him any more money.

Sam is not much of a negotiator, saying to his father, “Are you afraid if you give it to me there won’t be enough left for you to get drunk on?”

At the saloon, Mae has just finished pounding out a tune on the piano when Sam starts hitting on her.  When Sam finds out she is going off on a holiday, he says, “I ought to have my head examined, wanting you, knowing what you are,” basically calling her a whore.  This guy could really benefit from the Dale Carnegie course; and in 1912, he could take it from Carnegie personally.

ahpfatherson12aShe laughs off his proposal saying he is gutless and never has any money.  He says he’ll come back when he has plenty of money.  She says to ask her again when he has the money.

What a whore.

Sam overhears his father talking to an old friend.  The friend is dodging the police who wrongly suspect him in a murder, and there is a 50 quid bounty on him.  Sam goes to the police and rats out his father for harboring a criminal, leading to an awkward meeting at the police station.

However, the friend has disappeared after getting a warning from Mae, who was disgusted by Sam’s weaselly maneuver.  He does get the reward, however.

On the way out of the police station, he falls down the steps.  This episode is just unbelievably lame — he doesn’t even die, he just hurts his knee.

I give it 1 out of 3 pawnshop balls.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch: No survivors.
  • Edmund Gwenn played Santa Claus in Miracle on 34nd Street.