Tales from the Crypt – Let the Punishment Fit the Crime (10/31/94)

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Superlawyer Geraldine Ferrett — kudos on that last name — is hauled into the Stuecksville Courthouse for driving an unlicensed vehicle.  She calls her office to let them know where she is.  When she pronounces Stuecksville the way any sane human being would, a local corrects her that it is pronounced Sticksville.  No, it is clearly not.  If ever a situation cried out for an umlaut . . .

As Geraldine is looking over photos of public executions that should be de rigueur in every courthouse, Austin Haggard introduces himself.  The town has appointed him to take Geraldine’s case.  She just wants to pay the fine, but Austin advises against that because “this is a very strict town.”

. . . I could tediously recap all the working parts and short scenes — you know, as usual.  But time might be better spent just stating up front that this episode was a lot of fun.  There were a lot of fun ideas, the roles were well cast and performed, and it had a nice comic-book look to it.  Really, one of the best.

That said, there were several choices that confused me.

For unknown reasons, Austin Haggard is wearing Buddy Holly glasses, a big mop of hair, a bow tie, and a too-plaid, too-small, two-button jacket.  No one else is so strangely costumed.  I can think of two reasons why, one serious and one not funny.  1) the suit is a shorthand visual clue for a switcheroo that comes later, and 2) this somewhat masks the presence of Peter MacNicol who has a Jack Blackian talent for ruining nearly any project he appears in.

Geraldine talks to a local who is on trial for Felonious Auto Sales, i.e. rolling back the odometer.  Her first clue that this court means business is that he is found guilty and they cut his nose off.  Hunh?  I expect — nay, demand — a little more irony from TFTC.  I dunno, just spitballing here, maybe they could have rolled his eyes back in their sockets.  Ya get some “rolling back” irony, and a neat white-eyes visual.  I mean, that vagina they left in the center of his face was swell, it just lacked that extra level.

There are three courtrooms, A, B, and C.  A different judge presides in each.  All three are played by the same actor.  Again, I don’t see the point of this choice.  Tim Curry pulled off a triple-play in an earlier TFTC episode, but he’s Tim freakin’ Curry!

Geraldine is charged with driving an unlicensed vehicle because they say her license plate has an invalid number of characters.  Since the state has a monopoly on distributing licensess, wouldn’t this be impossible?  Nitpicky, but it just seems like an odd choice to build the episode around.  It did, at least, give them a chance to show off her SUE EM license plate.

For her heinous crime, she is immediately put in the pillory.  She can hear screams of agony from the other cells, but at least she has a private room.  Wait, a couple of figures emerge from the corners.  A man with hole in his chest says she killed him by suing his pacemaker company into bankruptcy.  For some reason, the hole seems to have teeth like Norris’s chest in The Thing.  Why?

A filthy, bloody woman complains about not being able to afford a doctor because lawyers cause them to pay so much for malpractice insurance.  OK, but what does that have to do with her being slimy?

There is another man beside her with his arm twisted behind his neck —  likewise no explanation.

Austin shows up and the figures disappear.  He says her appeal was granted.  I’m not sure what means as the judge still summarily pronounces her guilty.  However, her community service punishment is to become the new public defender . . . in hell!  This is where the wacky costume pays off — Geraldine is now dressed in Austin Haggard’s zany outfit, except with a mini-skirt.

So we have an episode with several lazy minor choices which still turns out to be one of the best.  Even the casting works in spite of expectations.  Peter MacNicol, usually insufferable, is a hoot as Austin.  Catherine O’Hara is not usually cast as a sexy babe, and wasn’t believable as a lawyer so evil that she went to hell.  And yet, she too was great.

Despite my bellyaching, there were some clever moments in the writing.  I especially appreciated how they finally nabbed Geraldine for soliciting a handicapped client.  Only later do you understand his responses about how he was injured.

This is what TFTC should be more often.

Outer Limits – In Our Own Image (12/18/98)

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Oh Outer Limits, you sly fox.  You want to dump a clip show on us, so you schedule it right after an episode with the odious Ron Perlman.  What would have been merely a decent outing becomes, relatively, a classic on the order of Trial by Fire. [1]

OL shamelessly tries to have it both ways from the first second.  Even before the picture comes up, over the dark screen we hear, “It’s gone crazy!”  Then we hear, “What did you do to him?”  The patient shows robotic gestures, but then it is referred to as him again.  After a security guard shoots him with no injury, it is clear we are dealing with a robot. [2]  The robot breaks out of the lab and jumps into a car with a woman just pulling into the parking lot.

The Mac 27 forces Cecilia Fairman to drive to an industrial area that is deserted because in 1998 America had not yet been made great again; not even the part in Vancouver.  He drags her into an old building and kudos all around for the head-smack she gives him with a crowbar.  It sounds like a small thing, but it was staged beautifully, following through to Celia’s astonished reaction that it did not harm Mac 27.

He chains Celia by the ankle and tells her she will have to repair him.  Very coolly and fortuitously, he has a repair kit in a secret compartment like the tinker toys they give you to fix a spare tire now.  His repair kit includes a headset that allows him to project visions into her noggin.  It apparently shows the future too — the first vision he shows her is a clip from an episode set hundreds of years in the future.

He exposes his chest, which is more than Celia has done for us.  Four panels slide away to reveal his damaged “flesh” and mechanical innards.  The headset shows her schematics to make the repair, but she says she is just a secretary; although if she used that crazy-ass DOS WordPerfect back then, she had to be sporting a 150 IQ.  Celia accidentally crosses some wires which causes Mac 27 to have a flashback.  Unlike previous clip shows, there is no effort made to fit the clip organically into the narrative.  They literally could have pulled any 2 minutes out of the series.

Back at Innobotics, a pair of incredibly unlikable actors — playing a lab geek and a security thug — detect a signal they can use to locate Mac 27.  It would have been nice if this signal were the result of Celia’s “error”, but there just doesn’t seem to be that much effort put into this last episode of the season.

Celia continues her repair job.  Mac 27 shows hints of emotion, and so does she.  She asks him to show her clips of a simulation where a sexy Virtual Reality companion became emotionally attached to the programmer.  OK, they did make an attempt to justify this one and it has the beautiful Natasha Henstridge in it, so objection overruled.

The security thug and a couple of goons show up.  In no time, Celia grabs the thug’s gun and blows away all three men!  I did not see that coming!  There is a lot of talk about emotions, what is life, and slavery.  Good stuff, though.

Yada Yada, things get twisty from here, and there is a lot more philosophizing.  It is very well done, though.  However, the commenters at IMDb are right — this would have been a better episode without the clips.  But that would have defeated the purpose.  They wanted to fill 42 minutes at a discount, and that’s what they got; in addition to the budget, the quality was discounted..

Despite an excellent performance from Nana Visitor as Celia [3], your time would be better spent watching the episodes the clips were taken from.  Valerie 23 and The Camp were very good.  Bits of Love and Identity Crisis were also stand-outs.  But none of them were Trial by Fire.

PS: I can’t get Nana Visitor’s amazing performance out of my head.  I’m anxious to see her in other projects now.  But not enough to watch Deep Space 9; let’s not get crazy.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Not really — the episode is sadly undermined by its form.
  • [2] When the cops show up it is an it again.
  • [3] Her name is Cecilia, but I know a Cecilia that I always call Celia.  I never asked her if she liked it either.
  • C’mon, in 1998 you named a computer Mac?

Science Fiction Theatre – Beyond Return (12/03/55)

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T. Bradley shortly before beating.

Host Truman Bradley breaks the glass on a fire alarm and pulls the switch.  An alarm begins blaring, and he says, “In a few minutes, 23 fire engines will converge on this place to fight a 3-alarm fire”.  He gives a big laugh.  “Only, there isn’t any fire!  I merely wanted to explain as graphically as possible what happens to a human body overpowered by spreading infection.”

He says when the human body is in danger, “an alarm goes up” and white corpuscles flock to attack the scene of the infection.  Like the 50 pissed-off fireman that will beat the crap out of him about 2 minutes from now.

Dr. Scott and a cat walk into Dr. Bach’s office.  Bach says only one week ago the cat had a broken back.  It was cured by a dose of Scott’s new miracle hormone.  In one of several laughingly bad bits of dialogue, Dr. Bach recalls the drug’s previous success:

“The miraculous cure of a rabid dog and a tubercular guinea pig.”

However, Bach still refuses to allow him to try his new wonder drug on a human.

Well, there is one candidate, a hopeless case.  They go to the room of a patient “in the last stages of tuberculosis.”  I mean the very last — she will die in a few hours.  Kyra Zelas agrees to try the experimental drug.

Over the next few days, she regains her vitality, begins to eat, and sits up in bed.  Scott and Bach examine her x-rays and see that her lungs are entirely clear and shapely.  Kyra doesn’t know what to do with her life now that Dr. Scott has cured her. She says:

“He made a dog well and cured a cat.  Now me.”

Bach assures the grown woman twice that she is a very important girl.  He says, “Why don’t you come stay a few days at my place?”  He gives her an injection of vitamin B and notices that the puncture wound heals immediately.

After work, the doctors go to Bach’s house to check on Kyra.  Bach tells him about the puncture wound healing and says, “this case is not finished.”  Bach’s housekeeper tells him that Kyra never showed up.  They get a call from the police.  Kyra was picked up near the unemployment office a few minutes after they were robbed, with $700 in her pocket.

The doctors go to the police station.  The clerk from the unemployment office is able to give a description of the robber.  “She was skinny, looked sick, had on a blue dress, black stringy hair.”  They bring in a line-up of women for him to make an identification.  Dr. Scott says she is not in the line-up.  Bach, however, recognizes her as the 2nd from the left.  Scott says, “That’s impossible.  That girl is blonde and beautiful.”  However, Bach recognizes . . .

“the same bony structure in the face”

Sadly, at this point, the video’s sound went out.  If they had a sign language interpreter, he would be slapping his knees at some of this dialogue.

Kyra continues to show up throughout the episode with increasingly stylish hairdos and snappy outfits.  Even without sound, it is not hard to follow, though.

Eventually, some creep with a hose in his hand is peeking in her bedroom widow as she goes to sleep, which gives me deja vu.

Hey, wait a minute, I saw this exact same scene in Tales of Tomorrow’s The Miraculous Serum two years ago!  That’s why that’s why the Peeping Tom act feels familiar . . . er, yeah, that’s it.

The guy slips the hose in her window and pumps in CO2 to knock her out.  He knows it is enough when the candle by her bed goes out.  In both episodes, Dr. Bach and Dr. Scott [1] worry that the cured woman has grown too beautiful, too smart, too powerful, and out of their control, ergo must be put back in her place.  This must be a metaphor for something . . . or maybe it is just the thing itself in the 1950s.

Both episodes give a story credit to Stanley G. Weinbam for The Adaptive Ultimate. [2]

Other Stuff:

  • [1] The doctors retain the same names from the story (give or taken an “e”), however the exotic Kyra Zelas was a pedestrian Carol Williams in the version aired 3 years earlier on Tales of Tomorrow.
  • [2] Weinbaum used the pseudonym John Jessel on Science Fiction Theatre.  But after his name appearing on Tales of Tomorrow, who wouldn’t?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Forty Detectives Later (04/24/60)

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We see the doors where Munro Dean has methodically visited every Private Investigator in the city.  Rather than maybe optimizing his time by doing it geographically, he apparently tackled this task alphabetically . . . Acme Detective Agency, Confidential Detective Agency, R.W. Harris Private Investigations, Wilson Detective Agency.  He fears he has tried every agency when he realizes William Tyre Investigations was not a place that fixes flats. [1]

Tyre recognizes Dean’s name due to “something with his wife”.  Dean recounts how his wife was killed in 1948 by a slim dark man with bushy black hair.  He saw the man run out the back door, but the killer was never caught.  He has had the titular 40 private detectives on the case, but they came up with nothing.  Tyre says he would probably do no better and shows Dean the door.  But Dean says he has identified the man; he just needs help proving it.

He randomly saw the man in a bookstore.  “It was one of those run-down shops on the north side of town.  You know the kind of thing.”  The guy was working behind the counter.  Dean wants Tyre to set up a meeting.

Tyre goes to the store and pretends, as all jazz-lovers do, to like jazz.  Otto the owner — the man Dean tracked down — is also a jazz-lover.  He tells Tyre he prefers the new hi-fi recordings to the scratchy old ones.  He has quite a collection, but is inexplicably eager to sell it.  I guess investment is one reason people pretend to like jazz.  Tyre asks Dean if he would bring a few of the records to his hotel room that night, which sounds like the other reason people pretend to like jazz.

Otto says it would take a truck to lug all his records over to the hotel.  Also I suspect most hotels in 1960 did not have a turntable among their amenities of a Coke machine, flypaper, multiple ashtrays, and segregated bathrooms.  The other boarders unwittingly dodge a bullet when Otto invites Tyre over to his house to listen to the dreadful caterwauling. [2]

Tyre later briefs Dean on his progress.  Dean, who had earlier said he just wanted to talk to Otto, tries to give Tyre a pistol.  He offers Tyre $3,000 “to avenge me.”  Tyre declines and Dean keep upping the offer until Tyre says, “Stop before you get to a figure that tempts me!”  which sounds like a joke by that old comedian Winston Churchill.  As Tyre leaves, he warns Dean not to take the law into his own hands.

At Otto’s place, Otto is showing off his hi-fi set, and his girlfriend Gloria is showing off her bongos (hee-hee).  Otto offers the records to Tyre for $250.  Tyre says he doesn’t have that kind of cash on him, and suggests Otto come back to his place the following night for the dough.  They agree and Otto writes down the address of the room where Dean will be waiting for him.

Before Tyre can leave, Otto insists they listen to his stereo recording of 2 trains crashing together.  Otto takes such joy in his records that Tyre regrets having to go through with his assignment.

He returns to Dean and tells him when Otto will be showing up at his door.  Dean pays Tyre, who takes the money but encourages Dean to call the police rather than handling it himself.  Dean tells him to butt out.

Tyre just can’t stay away though.  He barges into Dean’s room just as he shoots Otto, and shoves Dean against the wall.  In an uncharacteristically clumsy exposition:

  • The wounded Otto scrambles to Dean’s dropped gun.
  • Otto Shoots Dean.
  • Otto then shoots at Tyre as “the fingerman”.
  • Tyre hides behind one of those bullet-proof hotel chairs you always hear about.
  • Otto is suddenly stone cold dead.  What?
  • Tyre confirms that Dean is dead.
  • Tyre goes back to Otto who is suddenly not quite dead.

Otto spills his guts, literally and figuratively, to Tyre.  In 1948, Dean had hired Otto to kill his wife.  12 years later, Dean was worried that this happy, chubby, jazz-loving business owner who has a girlfriend with big bongos might implicate himself in a murder for hire cold case.

It just seems a little thin.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Tyre would have made more sense if this were an England-based episode.  But then a guy who fixes flats would be a carpenter.
  • [2] Not all jazz, by any means.  But, if there is coherent moment on Bitch’s Brew, please timestamp it in the comments.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  James Franciscus (Tyre) lived to only 57.  All the other actors have passed away, and bookstores are next.
  • I say this with an unbroken life-long streak of heterosexuality: That James Franciscus was one handsome guy.
  • For an authoritative look at the source material and production, check out bare*bonez ezine.

 

Twilight Zone – Appointment on Route 17 (12/31/88)

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Tom Bennett returns to work after having a heart transplant.  You know he is a prick because he is a CEO in the 1980s; the double-breasted suit and massive hairdo are timeless indicators.  I can’t say enough about that hair.  Literally — I just don’t have the vocabulary.  What is it?  It goes way beyond a mullet.

As he walks in, the staff begins singing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.  One guy is accompanying them on piano.  Or is he?  As Tom tells the gang to get back to work, the guy leaves but we see the keys continue to be depressed and the song continues.  OMG, the piano is haunted!  Wait, it’s just a player piano.  But in a show about the supernatural, the most obvious conclusion was that it as a ghost.  Why set up that distraction?

He immediately gets back to work, criticizing a deal made in his absence.  Then he stops and expresses a sudden desire to buy some boots.  So he goes out with his secretary to buy a pair.  Uncharacteristically, Tom then takes his secretary out for a hot dog, and a walk on the beach.  He sees a woman there who looks familiar, but he can’t remember where he has seen her.

That night, Tom and one of his minions go out to dinner.  He drives around aimlessly until he is suddenly compelled to pull up at a run down diner.  He sees that one of the waitresses is the woman he saw at the beach.  He impulsively asks her out to dinner, admitting that “this is out of nowhere” but she declines.

She tells her co-waitress . . . BTW, the women in this universe seem to have no names. [1]  Her friend tells her Tom looks like a good catch, that she should go.  Or she should go out with Ralph — a guy not even in the story, who still rates a name.  But the waitress says she is just not on the market now.  Her friend helpfully reminds her, “Jim is dead.  You aren’t.”  So, another man not even in the story gets a name.

Some days later, Tom’s secretary barges into his office and says, “OK, agreed we have no claims on each other.  Fine, but I will not be humiliated!”  What?  They have had a couple of scenes together, but there was not the slightest hint of any romance.  The dude just had a heart transplant and he didn’t even get a kiss on the cheek or houseplant from her.   Also she specifically feels humiliated because the other woman is “a waitress in some greasy spoon!”  Elitist!

He tells her he goes to the diner a couple times a week.   She sarcastically asks what brings him back, “the ambiance or the cuisine.”  He says he is comfortable there even though no one likes him, just like when Donald Trump does a press conference.  Mary-Jo refuses to serve him — hey, she has a name!   He questions why he keeps going back.  His secretary says, “Poor baby, all that meatloaf, but no love?”  Hunh?  Yeah, diners serve meatloaf, but what’s the connection?  She should have said, “Don’t let your meat loaf, Tom!”  Yeah, baby!

Once again, Tom is drawn back to the diner.  Mary-Jo ignores him when he says hello.  He asks for pie and she snaps, “I’m getting sick and tired of you hanging around here all the time!  You’re not coming here for the food!  And if you aren’t coming here for the food, there is nothing here for you!”  ZING!  She tells him to get in his fancy car and drive away.  After Mary-Jo walks away, her co-worker explains to Tom about her fiancee dying (although this is inexplicably covered up by insipid 1980’s synths).

The friend makes Mary-Jo at least talk to Tom.  He apologizes now that he knows she was in mourning.  Seeing how devastated she still is, Tom says, “You must have been pretty close.”  Close?  Well, he was her fiancee, dumb-ass.  It’s not like they were already married.

Mary-Jo says her fiancee had an auto accident and even then manged to do a good deed for someone else.  Tom catches on, about 10 minutes after the audience, and asks her fiancee’s name.  She gets on the bus, says, “Jimmy Adler,” and bursts into tears.

Tom’s doctor, in a shocking breach of confidentiality, confirms that the heart he received was from Jimmy Adler.  Tom begins to loosen up.  He is not such a shark at work, [2] buys some jeans, and trades in his Mercedes for a pickup. [3]  He goes back to the diner.  He sits there all day, until he is the last customer.

Finally she sits with him.  He says he is willing to wait for her.  She says Jimmy promised he would always be with her.  Blah, blah, they get together, but Tom never gets around to telling her about receiving Jimmy’s heart.

Yet another TZ boy-gets-the-girl happy ending.  I rate it a Disappointment on Route 17.  Obvious, but it’s about what this episode deserves.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] At IMDb, 2 women get character names:  Elise and Mary-Jo.  But I don’t know who half of them are.  The three other female credited roles are Tom’s Secretary, Tom’s Secretary, and Secretary #2.  I guess one of Tom’s Secretaries is Secretary #1.  But he seems to call one of them Hill (Hillary).  A commenter at IMDb suggests the credits are hosed up on this episode.  I believe it.
  • [2] Sorry staff, no bonuses this year because the boss decided to slack off.
  • [3] So, Mercedes bad / pickup good, suit bad / jeans good, wingtips bad / boots good, fancy restaurant bad / hot dog good.  Who’s the snob now?
  • Title Analysis: Just junk.  Appointment?  Was this supposed to happen?  Was this all God’s masterplan for Mary-Jo to win Tom’s heart?  Well, she had already won it when it was still in Jimmy.