Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Outlaw in Town (11/15/60)

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It wasn’t a dream, Auntie Em, I was there!  It was a real AHP episode called The Little Man Who Was There.  This strange fellow dressed in black came into an old west bar and started doing tricks just like in TLMWWT.  Then he started turning folks against each other just like in TLMWWT.  But it wasn’t a dream!  Arch Johnson was there, and Roscoe Ates, and Clegg Hoytt, just like in TLMWWT.  Maybe this episode is even set in Kansas, who can tell these shitkicker frontier towns apart?

Tony Lorca strolls into the saloon whistling a jaunty tune.  All eyes are conspicuously on him.  He tries to break the ice by asking how they like the weather.  Unfortunately, it is as icy outside as it is inside and they don’t cotton to this stranger’s glib comments when they have crops and cattle freezing.  AHP fans know it does not pay to piss off someone with a corral full of frozen lamb-chops.

He says he just came in over the North Trail.  Bart McCormick is quick to point out that such a passage is impossible during winter.  Lorca asks if it really matters he got to “their miserable little shit-hole metropolis.”  This devolves to a gunfight.  But when McCormick reaches for his pistol, he discovers that Lorca has stolen it from him.  This feat so amuses McCormick, that he takes a liking to Lorca.

Lorca meets eyes with Shasta Cooney across the bar.  He regrets that he has no more cash to buy the widow a drink.  She buys him a small beer and one pretzel.  But then he pours the beer down her back. The widow Cooney storms upstairs.  Lorca remains in the bar; for a second, it looked like he was going to Mount Shasta — heyyyoooo!

Lorca puts up his pistol to get in a poker game with the gang.  In no time, he has lost everything.  One of the locals IDs him as Tony Lorca aka The Whistling Kid.  They read off a long list of crimes on his wanted poster.  The Widow Cooney comes downstairs just in time to hear his true identity and says he is also the man who killed her husband.

On this very clever series, they come up with one of their most original twists.  Lorca has been caught and once the snow clears, someone is going to turn him in for the cash.  The next turn of events is so great I’m not going to spoil it because, paradoxically, it just didn’t work for me.  I can’t figure out why.  It is a great, original idea, the execution was fine, the performers are mostly great, and there is a funny escalation of the idea.  Maybe I’m having a bad day; I don’t want to spoil anyone else’s fun.

The episode is not flawless.  The anachronistic score might be the worst I’ve heard outside of the 1980’s Twilight Zone.  Shasta just isn’t particularly attractive or interesting, not even achieving Fanta levels.  However, Arch Johnson is a hoot, and Ricardo Montalban is awesome as Lorca.  In the 2nd twist, the Sheriff even says of him, “He’s not a man of violence.  He’s more of a CONNNNNNNN man!”

I guess what I’m trying to say is you can search all over for happiness but there is really no need to look any further than your own front door.

One Step Beyond – Night of April 14th (01/27/59)

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Host John Newland tells us he is in April 1912.  He pulls a book off the shelf and mysteriously says “We will return to it later.”  Like me with that 1,000 page LBJ biography.

Grace Montgomery wakes up from a nightmare.  She screams for her mother despite not being six.  In fact, she is a beautiful woman.  Her mother does rush to her room.  She frantically says, “It was water, dark water.  I was drowning.  I couldn’t swim anymore, I was drowning.”  Her mother blames pre-wedding jitters.  “In four days, you’ll be on your honeymoon in Switzerland, and you can’t drown in Switzerland.”  You know, unless ya falls into one of those big vats of chocolate.

The next morning, her fiancee Eric Farley comes by the house to see “how the future Mrs. Farley looks in the morning.”  After his terror when her mother answers the door, they sit down for tea.  Eric surprises her by saying they are not going to Switzerland; they are going to America! [1]  He giddily asks her how she thinks they will get there, but in 1912, that’s not a big f***ing mystery.  It is by boat, specifically The Titanic.  Even more specifically, they are in cabin 111B right next door to John Jacob Astor. [2]  Thanks to Astor’s 29-years younger wife, April 14th won’t be the first night the Farlings have trouble sleeping.

She acts excited, but is worried because of her nightmare.  Her mother reads from the paper that The RMS Titanic is the world’s largest and most luxurious liner.  “By virtue of her five watertight compartments, she’s being hailed in marine engineering circles as the unsinkable ship.”

That night, Grace has another nightmare.  People in the water!  A huge ship going down!  She says she could even read the name Titanic on the lifeboats in her dream.  The next day, she and Eric discuss her dream.  He racistly says, “You don’t believe what you see in your sleep unless you’re a gypsy.”

Surprisingly, the next scene is on Titanic.  Other passengers have also had premonitions, bad feelings, heebies, and jeebies.  More surprisingly, the next next scene is in New York City, although not as surprising as if Grace and Eric were there.  Artist Harry Teller has hypnotically drawn a picture that his wife calls “awful, but his best work.”  To be fair, it is pretty awesome.

That night, Titanic hits the iceberg.  Even after being ordered to the lifeboats, Eric is cheerfully reminding Grace that the ship is unsinkable.  He puts her on lifeboat 4, but he goes down on the ship, and possibly one of the stewards.  Hey, why keep pretending?

Host John Newland returns, as promised, to the book.  It was published in 1898 and tells the story of The Titan, a ship whose dimensions and fate are the same as The Titanic.  It is a familiar story of hubris, arrogance, and the resulting loss of thousands of lives, so even more like that LBJ bio than I thought.

The second episode is as well-crafted as the first.  The production was enhanced by using footage from old Titanic movies.  Still, there is a certain sameness that I fear will creep into every episode.  Is this just going to be the premonition/reincarnation of the week?

Other Stuff:

  • [1] They could have ended the episode right there; like the Twilight Zone that ended with the characters fleeing to Earth rather than from it.  It did not register with me that this was set in England.  I guess the elegance and manners seemed possible to me in this country 112 years ago.
  • [2] The Astors were actually in rooms C62 and C64, which frankly ruined this episode for me.

Tales from the Crypt – Last Respects (04/26/96)

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NOTE:  This is the 2nd episode of the final season.  Like last week, it is an English production.

An elderly couple thinks they have solved their problem by feeding their son to the dogs.  It is the ancient trope of the Monkey Paw again, but that’s OK; it is always fun.  They used their first wish to bring their dead son back to life.  Seeing the horrific results (i.e. he is a millennial who demands to live in his old room and stay on their insurance), they used the 2nd wish to send him to the Dobermans.

The interesting thing is that we are told nothing about the first wish or their son or the Monkey Paw.  The scene takes only a few seconds, and has little exposition.  TFTC has trusted us to fill in the blanks to set up the story.  I appreciate this new confident and economic storytelling, but if they had been a little more efficient, maybe we could have skipped this atrocity completely.[3]  Anyhoo, the woman thinks she is doing a smart thing and impetuously uses the 3rd wish to wish the Monkey Paw to another owner “who really deserves it.”  Although, if she were really a humanitarian, she’d wish it back to the monkey.  Unfortunately her wish means the current owner must die, so the dogs attack them.  I’m out!

Bloody hell, there’s more.

At Mr. Fingers’ Curio Shoppe and Massage Parlor, Yvonne is either tidying things up or making them messier.  It is really hard to tell the difference in a Curio Shoppe.   She wants to expand their inventory to bring in more customers, but her sister Delores doesn’t want to cheapen their fine reputation.  Among the curios is a glass casket containing their dead father.

Somehow this devolves into Delores being criticized for not being married.  Yvonne says, “There’s a good reason no man will have you and it has absolutely nothing to do with that ugly hammertoe of yours.”  I don’t care for these English productions, but they can be funny.  I just can’t see Brooke Shields selling that line.  She says men avoid Yvonne because she is dull, “Duller than Buckingham Palace.”  Although she is clearly forgetting the excitement when Prince Philip said, “Prince Harry is marrying a what?” [1]

Delores and Yvonne want to sell the shoppe, but the younger sister Marlys refuses.  They discover the aforementioned Monkey Paw in a shipment from the estate sale of the couple seen earlier.[2]  Luckily, they already know the legend, so we are spared hearing it its origin again (cool, it only took the Spiderman movies 20 years to figure that out).  Even knowing the misery that has plagued every single owner in history, Delores makes a wish for one million Pounds.  Shockingly, the uber-literal Monkey Paw did not add the pounds to her ass.

Seconds later, the phone rings.  Their father’s lawyer tells Marlys she has inherited 750 pounds.  This is an interesting bit of misdirection 1) to get us wondering why it is 250 Pounds short, 2) to show us that Marlys actually owns the shop, and 3) to show her sisters do not like her (although, being cute and 10 years younger, we could have guessed that).  Wait, so why do Yvonne and Delores want her to sell the shoppe if they are not part owners?  After that crazy-ass Entail in Downton Abbey, I’ve given up trying to understand the English.  Especially the Welsh, literally.

That night, Marlys is in a car accident and dies.  Delores discovers Marlys had a million Pound insurance policy.  Delores is distraught that her wish caused Marlys’ death.  Yvonne advises her to destroy the Monkey Paw, but she is convinced that she can beat it.  Before Yvonne can stop her, she shouts out, “I wish Molly was the way she was just before the accident!”

Seconds later, the phone rings.  Yvonne answers, the Funeral Home has asked them to come there.  Delores is giddy, but Yvonne knows this ain’t good.  Delores goes, but finds Marlys is still cold, pale, and stiff as a board; and not just because she is an English chick.  She had crashed her car because she was shot in the head, so “just before” the accident, she was already dead.

This is wrong in 2 ways.  First, unlike traditional Monkey Paw wishes, this one has really not caused any damage — Marlys is still dead.  Second, the coroner did not notice the bullet hole before?  JFK’s coroner couldn’t have missed that.  Surely they are not saying that the Monkey Paw increased its scope of work to include this murder.  That’s not how the Monkey Paw works.  It is Union all the way.  If it is not in the original contract, fuhgeddaboutit.

The story further flouts the traditional rules, and for no good reason.  The ending twist is a good one, but could have easily been accomplished without playing the pronoun game.

However, TFTC won me over this week.  The move to England, which was so off-putting last week, was a actually a feature this time.  Starring 3 British babes instead of Bob Hoskins probably helped.  A good script and fun direction also helped, but then — note to Hollywood — they usually do.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] That might not be true, but he does say some crazy shit.
  • [2] It is a sad commentary on the quality of TV that the reintroduction of the Monkey Paw and callback to the opening strike me as brilliant.
  • [3] Completely gratuitous — it turned out to be quite enjoyable.  But at that point in the episode, I was worried.
  • Delores refers to Ozzy Osbourne as Iggy Oswald.
  • The Monkey’s Paw story is more traditionally told in the 1972 Tales from the Crypt movie.

Outer Limits – Déjà Vu (07/09/99)

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Dr. Mark Crest is working on a teleportation device.  Bets are being taken on the outcome of today’s test using animals.  I appreciate that the betting pools on the board are:

  • Super-Intelligent Dog (3:2)
  • Animal Soup (7:1)
  • The Fly (20:1)
  • Total Success (100:1)

We also learn that Mark was a naughty boy sexing it up in the cloak room at Lt. Glade’s party last night.  Even more so after Julie joined him.

That has gotten him in trouble with Dr. Cleo Lazar. With a minimum of additional melodrama, they begin the countdown.  The test is to transport a dog and a raccoon “a few miles”.  Wait, how could that result in a “super-intelligent dog”?  Doesn’t that imply the raccoon is super-dooper intelligent?  And what happens to the cute tail and bandit eyes?  Frankly, the smart money is on “Animal Soup”.  A wormhole is created and the animals disappear.  Glade gets excited, but I feel like that is the easy part.  Unfortunately, the animals do not reappear in the lab.  The field keeps expanding, so Mark heroically runs across the lab and unplugs the transformer in an explosive shower of light and sparks.[1]

He finds himself back in time, 18 hours before the test.  And wearing the same shirt, BTW.  Cleo is in a different outfit, so what gives? [2]  He chalks it up to deja vu.  Julie flirts with him, but Cleo interrupts them.  She is already steamed that Mark hijacked her idea for disposing of toxic nuclear waste and corrupted it into a transporter.  Here’s an idea: transport it!

That night, they are at the aforementioned party (and Mark has still not bothered to put on a fresh shirt).  Julie purposely spills champagne on his shirt, so he goes to the aforementioned cloak room rather than, say, a laundry room or kitchen with running water.  Wait, this is replaying the previous night, so he also did not change his shirt after champagne being spilled on it and before work the next day?  Anyhoo, Julie follows him into the cloakroom and begins seducing him.  After some smooching, they come out, to the distress of Cleo.

At work the next day, in the same shirt — having been worn now for at least 36 hours and having endured 2 champagne spills — the deja vu really kicks in when he sees the odds board again.  Everything occurs as before.  The field expands, he runs across the lab, he pulls the plug.  And once again time travels to 18 hours before the test.

Deleted Scene: Cleo goes to the salon and asks for the Ayn Rand.

Since Cleo doesn’t hate him yet, he tries to convince her that they have created a time loop.  He fills a board with equations and tells her he has seen the detonation twice, but she doesn’t believe him.  He tells Glade the same story, and is removed from the project.  Julie finds him, though, and brings him to the test site.  He tries to stop the test, and Glade tries to abort it.  But the device goes off again and Mark goes back 18 hours again.

There are more iterations and reveals, including multiple saboteurs.  It is also pointed out that the time loop is getting smaller each time (i.e. Mark goes slightly less far back in time on each iteration).  This point alone feels very original.  This episode is OK, but the ever-tightening time loop is an idea that could be made into an excellent nail-biter.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Kevin Nealon does a surprisingly credible job as Dr. Crest, despite his main experience being only from SNL, and comedy movies or Adam Sandler movies.  That said, his scream at that moment is pretty bad; like he was back on SNL reacting in a Halloween sketch or to a dropped cue card.
  • [2] You are thinking that maybe Dr. Crest is like Einstein or Brundlefly, and has a closet full of the same shirt.  But no, he says his girlfriend gave it to him.
  • Teri Hawkes (Dr. Lazar) played Jellico in Cube Zero.  Ronny Cox (Lt. Glade) played Jellico on Star Trek TNG.  Crazy, man.

Science Fiction Theater – The Man Who Didn’t Know (06/29/56)

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The XP205 is a new experimental aircraft which, based on the mock-up, has no wings.  It can go weeks without landing, challenging the current Delta on-time records.  Unfortunately, due to a minor design flaw, it exploded just east of Hawaii.  Within hours, navy planes were searching for wreckage.  After a week, the search was called off.

Pilot / Physicist Mark Kendler was lost in the crash, and the heartless bastards in the government notified his wife Peggy by telegram.  Six months later, after she had given up hope, she gets another telegram — from Mark!:

DEAR PEGGY  STOP  I AM NOT DEAD  STOP  HOPE YOU ARE THE SAME  STOP  THINKING OF SELLING MY GOLF CLUBS?  STOP  SPENDING MY INSURANCE MONEY? STOP  [1]

She calls her mother to give her the good news.  OK, everyone was too afraid to face the poor widow when Mark was killed, so they sent a wire.  But now that he is alive, even HE sent a wire.  He couldn’t give her a call?  We know she has a phone, she just used it!

Mark Kendler is introduced to Al Mitchell, Director of the Bureau of Scientific Security.  Mitchell asks if he remembers anything.  He says, “I wish I could help you gentlemen, but I passed out when that ship picked me up, and I can’t remember another thing until I woke up in the hospital in Singapore.”  So is the missing six months between the explosion and being picked up by that ship, or between being picked up and waking up in Singapore?  I think it is the latter because they describe some sort of surgery that was performed on him.  But the former would have been a better story.

His colleagues welcome him back to the office.  They have begun work on the XP206.  Unfortunately, another group overseas, probably foreigners, have begun a competing project.  There is paranoia over how the plans could have leaked to them.  Hmmm, could it have something to do with the top physicist who was abducted and missing for 6 months?  Actually no, this is apparently the new, less-explodey XP206 project that is being duplicated.

As they are investigating the leaks, a spy is picked up on the border.  He has with him tapes of the project’s top scientists, including Kendler, recorded discussing the XP206’s heat shield, aerodynamics, but mostly Marilyn Monroe’s rack.  The offices are searched but no listening devices are found.  As they continue playing the tapes, it is clear the the bug is on Kendler.  They X-Ray his head and find that during his disappearance a chip was planted in his noggin.

Kind of a snooze.  Even Variety did not bother to review it that week.  Arthur Franz (Mark Kendler) got the big paycheck this week ($750).  The other scientists picked up a cool $80 each.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] My favorite joke ever from MASH.
  • The title keeps reminding me of this commercial.  Imagine that ad pitch now:  We have a great idea to sell your gum!  It mashes up 2 great American institutions, high school and guns!