Twilight Zone – Shelter Skelter (05/21/87)

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Sally Dobbs and her daughter Deidre are lugging luggage out to the car.  The men-folk — Harry and his young son Jason — are downstairs practicing on the family pistol range.  Sally calls Harry on an intercom to send Jason up.  He tells her to send down another beer . . . his third . . . to the pistol range.

Sally (Joan Allen) dutifully brings the beer down to the titular shelter.  Harry (Joe Montagna) is teaching Jason to shoot, including the importance of ear-protection (although he clearly considers eye-protection to be for pussies).  She sends Jason upstairs and hands Harry the beer.  He opens it, carelessly spraying her with fizz.  She thinks Jason is too young to train with guns.  Harry says he wants his family to be safe.  I know he is being set up as the bad guy, but I’m not seeing it so far.

He goes upstairs to see his family off to visit Sally’s sister.  Sally is surprised he will notice their absence at all because he spends so much time in the shelter.  Harry grabs her arm and warns her to not tell her sister about the shelter.  “It’s just for the four of us.  Don’t you ever forget that!”  So he wants to limit the occupancy to fit the provisions he has on hand to safely assure his family’s survival; just pure evil.  C’mon, he’s a little crude, but he is protective, spends time with the kids, surprisingly has no beer gut, and they have a very nice home.

Harry’s pal Nick stops by.  He mentions the news saying things are heating up in the Middle East.  Wow, so that area was a powder keg even 30 whole years ago! [1] A 1980s linebacker-shouldered, big-haired reporterette says the President and First Lady have been taken to a secure location.  Nick says Harry is right that “the whole world is going straight down the toilet.”  Harry says we’re already there, “drugs, terrorism, pornography!”  He thinks a bomb would set a lot of things right again.  He says he and Nick don’t belong in a world of degenerate rock stars, hair-dressers and bureaucrats.  He dreams of raising his son in a world with “all the scum burned off.”  Uh, dude, you do remember Nick is not on the guest-list, right?  Awkward!

After a few beers, he breaks his own rule and gives Nick a tour of the shelter.  He tells Nick there is room for five and he is invited to join them.  He just better hope there is a nuclear holocaust before the Dobbs have a third kid.  Luckily for him, I think Sally would prefer that to having sex with Harry again.  Harry show off his communications system, filtration system, food stock, water.  He figures five people can survive down here for five months.

While demonstrating his antenna system, they see a news report that all hell is breaking loose.  Harry calls Sally and tells her to come back immediately.  Her sister calls him Godzilla, and Sally mocks him before hanging up.  Then the big one hits.  Harry and Nick are in the shelter, but the antenna has been destroyed so they have no contact with the outside.  Nick wants to leave to find his parents, but Harry physically restrains him and shows him the lethal radiation level, saving his life.  Yeah, Harry is practically Hitler.

Six weeks later, they seem to be holding up well.  Both have beards, Nick is playing solitaire, Harry is doing a little ironing.  The place seems clean and orderly; although, I suspect Harry is now regretting his stand against pornography.  They hear noises above.  Nick thinks someone is coming to rescue them.  Harry sees the radiation level and says “they would be the walking dead.”  Nick tries to yell for them, but Harry silences him lest they be subjected to that godawful last season.

After ten months, the radiation has not lessened.  Nick goes for a walk outside. When he returns, Harry won’t let him in, and rightly so.  Through the door, Nick says the city is in ruins and it is perpetual night.

What happens next is a cheat, but like so much of Joy Ride, it is a good enough episode that I can overlook the flaws.  It turns out, the blast was not global Armageddon, but an oopsy at the local Air Force Base.  Somehow, within 10 months, the debris has been cleaned up, the radiation is gone, and parks are green, leafy and sunny, and the Women’s Olympic volleyball team practices there.  All of the radioactive ruins have been bull-dozed into a heap, and a giant concrete dome built over them.  It’s not quite as crazy as it sounds.

While I like the image of moving from the dark confined shelter to the sunny park, a few things irk me.  Harry didn’t really deserve this fate.  Cruel undeserved fate is always welcome in the TZ, but they were trying to make him deserving of this and failed.  Also, Sally seems way too happy that her husband, the father of her children is buried under this dome.  She has to suspect he survived the blast in the shelter, but she didn’t speak up when it was being built?

And what was up with that dog-POV shot?  Right after the camera moves outside, we get a shaky-cam at a low level racing along the grass.  There is a dog seen later, but this isn’t his POV:  1) There was no establishing shot of him, and 2) the shot actually begins at human-eye level.  The shot ends with an atrocious portrayal of another reporterette.

But all that can be overlooked.  The great story, combined with an atypically appropriate score make this one a winner.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Boy, I was way off!  This conflict has been going on for thousands of years!
  • Classic TZ Connection:  The Shelter.  But mostly just because they both feature a fall-out shelter.
  • Title Analysis:  Would also have accepted Helter Shelter.
  • Skipped Segment:  Private Channels — An obnoxious punk’s Walkman allows him to hear other people’s thoughts.  With his Watchman, he can see their underwear.
  • I don’t think the Sony Watchman portable TV ever really caught on.  Maybe if they could have added a phone to it.  Also a pretty good segment; but seriously, that kid is annoying.

Twilight Zone – Joy Ride (05/21/87)

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Not to nitpick, but Robert Knepper has a very distinctive voice, plus he is Greg’s brother. You’re telling me Greg would not have seen through this in a split second?

Deena and Greg are walking down a suburban street at night.  Greg is trying to lure her into some kind of delinquency.  From the shadows, they get a gun stuck in their faces.  After demanding their cash, his wacky brother Alonzo steps out to say it was a funny comedy joke.  They all share a good laugh.  Alonzo admits it is just a starter pistol, the kind they give to li’l criminals just starting out.[1]  He fires it into the air.  A porch light comes on and they take off running.

Alonzo wants to show them something.  He leads them to the late old man Taylor’s driveway, on top of which sits a pristine ’57 Chevy.  I can’t tell them apart, so all old cars are ’57 Chevys.  Alonzo’s girl Adrienne needs some dialogue, so she says, “I wonder what the inside is like.”  Fortuitously, Alonzo also has a starter car thief tool with him.  They are amazed at how spacious the interior is.  Alonzo wants to take it for a spin.  Greg has some car thief skillz too. He pops the hood and flips that big ON/OFF switch that all other guys seem to know about.  Alonzo starts the engine.

They shoot out of the driveway with Alonzo at the wheel.  When he makes a sharp turn, a pistol slides out from under the seat.  He says, “Charlie Taylor must have been some crazy guy!”  Yeah, he was such a fascinating character that they cut his backstory completely out of the segment.

The gang does not recognize the street they are on.  Then, they notice all of the cars are ’57 Chevys, although of various years, makes and models.  Alonzo tells Adrienne to get him a cigarette from the glove box.[2]  She asks how he knew they would be in there.  Greg tells him to pull over because “Something weird’s going on.”  Just then a police car pulls up behind them.

Alonzo pulls the stolen car over.  The cop says there was a robbery at the Five and Dime Store.  Greg remembers it was torn down years ago.  Alonzo pulls out Charlie Taylor’s pistol and shoots the cop.  The cop goes down, but as Alonzo drives away, a cop is shooting at him.  Was this the cop’s previously unseen partner?  Why didn’t he tend to his fallen partner?  Or maybe Alonzo had only used his starter pistol which he hallucinated as Taylor’s gun?  However the cigarettes were real, so why would the gun . . . . forget it.

In any case, the cop is using a real gun.  He starts firing at the car as it pulls away.  Somehow, in a shot even the Warren Commission wouldn’t believe, from behind the car the cop manages to shoot Adrienne who is sitting in front of Deena in the passenger seat of the enclosed sedan.  With the cops in pursuit, Greg and Deena beg Alonzo to take Adrienne to the hospital.  He does the next best thing — he pulls off the road, and shoves her out of the moving car onto the ground.

I am just baffled by much of the editing in this episode.  It is seems likely that this was a much longer segment which had to be edited down for time.  That would explain Charlie Taylor non-sequitur, and the mysterious identity of the cop shooting at them.  However, this last scene is inexplicable.  Alonzo’s struggle to open Adrienne’s door seems to have some significance, but what?  Whether he was Alonzo or possessed by Charlie, I think both know how to operate a door.  Besides, a) Alonzo would not ditch his wounded girlfriend, b) Charlie would know how to operate his own car.  Here are the shots that baffle me:

  1. Alonzo struggles with the latch.
  2. He gives up and sits up straight in his seat.
  3. He presses the accelerator, the car starts moving.
  4. From outside, we see the door open.
  5. He pushes Adrienne out the door.

Why did Alonzo have such trouble with the latch?  When he sat back straight, had he opened the door and we just didn’t see that shot because it was cut for time?  Then why do we have two separate shots of him struggling with it?  Why does he start driving before he pushes Adrienne out?  Forget it Jake, it’s TZ.

As they drive off, Greg notices Adrienne is not behind them.  Most people would think she’s being dragged under the car.  But to be fair, “sucked into time portal” would be most people’s second explanation.  The cops continue chasing them.  Greg and Deena complain so much that Alonzo pulls over again and tells them to get out.  Alonzo is somehow able to reach from the driver’s seat to the rear passenger seat door and push Deena out.  I’ll give him credit for flooring it only after Deena hit the dirt.  Greg looks out the window and, like Adrienne, Deena has disappeared.

Greg climbs into the front seat while the police are still on their tail.  Although they should be safe — these are the worst cops on earth.  Alonzo has stopped twice and they didn’t catch up.  He could stop off for a bucket of chicken and still get away.  Alonzo refuses to stop again because he knows they will be peeved at him shooting a cop.  Greg jumps from the car while it is going about 40 MPH.

He finds himself back in the driveway where they stole the car.  Hey, there’s Deena and Adrienne!  Greg sees the car is still parked in the driveway.  EMTs are trying to get into the car.  A cop on the scene says he doesn’t know what’s going on, “but that car was used in a robbery 30 years ago.  A cop was killed.”  They are able to crowbar the door open.  The interior is filled with fog, green light, and lots and lots of chrome.  A fireman is held by the waist as he leans into the car to pull Alonzo out.  Of course, Alonzo / Charlie thinks he is still leading a high speed chase.

The fireman is able to pull Alonzo completely out of the car.  Not having an attorney present, he blurts out, “I killed a cop!  With this gun!”  The cop examines the gun and says it has not been fired in 30 years.  Greg tells Alonzo, “It was old man Taylor.  After all these years, he was trying to confess.  I guess this was his way.”  Confess to what?  It sounds like the cops already knew he had killed the cop; OK, technically, they knew his car was involved.  And how exactly was a confession being communicated in this scenario?  Cue the — as usual on TZ — entirely incongruous music that sounds like the closing theme to a 1980s sit-com.  I’m surprised they didn’t have the kids jump into the air and freeze the frame.

The episode succeeds in spite of itself.  It accomplished everything I described in an economical 11 minutes.  Unfortunately, paring it down that much caused a few problems.  I’ve said many times that these minor issues don’t matter in a good episode, and this is a good episode.  It took a great high-concept, added some simple set direction in the form of old cars, and came to a suspenseful ending.  Normally, I would not have even posted about an 11 minute segment, but this is worth a viewing.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Correction, after further research, a starter pistol is used to start races.
  • [2] It was a glove compartment where I came from, and I’m sticking with that.  Apparently in Idaho, they call it a jockey box.
  • Classic TZ connection #1:  You Drive — A car takes on a mind of its own, returns to the scene of a crime, and delivers the criminal to the police.
  • Classic TZ connection #2:  Little Girl Lost — A man is anchored in our world as he leans half-way into another dimension to pull someone back to our reality.  It’s a minor point, but I love this trope.
  • The cast was unexceptional, but Robert Knepper (Alonzo) would go on to create one of the most interesting characters in TV history — T-Bag on Prison Break.
  • I can’t emphasize enough how terrible the score is for this episode.

Pastorale – James M. Cain (1938)

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1.

It looks like Burbie is about to be hung for thinking himself “so damn smart.”  And this was the year before Gone With the Wind, when damn meant something.

When Burbie was 16, he ran away with a travelling show.  Ten years later, he returned with all his fingers so thought he knew it all.

Lida was just like him.  She made her living “selling dry goods to the men” and fortunately was not a prostitute.  She married an older fella about a year before Burbie returned.  He starts meeting her in the cornfield to play hide the cob after her husband goes to bed each night.  Eventually they decide they will have to kill him.

Burbie enlists another ex-con, Hutch, to help him do the deed.  He tells Hutch there is a literal pot of money just awaitin’ to be stolen.  While Lida is at the store, they go to the house and kill the old man.

2.

Hutch gets angry when he discovers the pot of money contains only $23 in pennies, nickels, and dimes, and a couple of those are Canadian.  Burbie claims he thought there was $1,000 in the pot.  He magnanimously volunteers to let Hutch have the whole thing even though neither of them knows that word.  When some visitors drive up, they replace the empty pot and take the old man’s body with them as they sneak out the back way.  They pick up some tools and drive out to the woods.  Finally, one of the stories I post about gets it right:

So Burbie dug the grave.  He dug for two hours, until he got so tired he couldn’t hardly stand.  But he ain’t hardly made no hole at all.

The excuse here is that the ground is frozen.  But for most dudes, that’s probably about right pace at any time of year.  They throw the body into the shallow grave.  When the head is still sticking out, Hutch beats it down with a shovel.  LOL.

On the way back, Burbie admits that he has been plowing Lida’s crop circle, Hutch turns the truck around.  He forces Burbie to cut off the old guy’s head so they can take it to Lida.  He plans to put the head in a box with a ribbon and surprise Lida when she opens it.

3.

Burbie is not thrilled at this idea.  The first chance he gets, he tosses the severed head out of the truck.  The bad luck continues as it lands on the frozen ice of a river.  The crack of the ice — the old guy must have had one of them Ted Kennedy 50-pounders — alerts Hutch.  He tries to kill Burbie, but he literally runs home, and hides beneath the covers of his bed.

The next day, a gruesome sight is found at the river.  There is still a human head sitting out on the ice, Hutch’s horse [1] is”damn near froze to death” and Hutch himself is at the bottom of the river “stiff as a board.”  I guess he had the $23 of change in his pockets.  The head ties Hutch to the murder, but Burbie gets away with it.

Some time later, however, he feels compelled to tell his life story to a group of people, including the constable.  He was so proud of all the women, all the liquor, Lida, and Hitch alone being nailed for the murder that he just couldn’t hold it in.

A short, fun romp.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] OK, they were in a horse-drawn carriage.  But truck was so much easier to type.
  • First published in the March 1938 issue of The American Mercury.

Ray Bradbury Theater – Banshee (02/22/86)

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Screenwriter Douglas Rogers is taking a cab to meet with renowned Irish director John Hampton.  The cabbie says that Hampton left one wife to take another.  He continues,  “We know all about him, and can tell far more than we know.”  What?  Is this a joke?  A mistake?  An Irish colloquialism?  I am too fatigued with RBT to care at this point.  This is the last episode I need to watch, and son-of-a-bitch if I don’t have to read the short story too.

Hampton greets Rogers at the door.  He immediately begins pulling pages from the file, glancing at them, and dropping them to the floor.  After skimming, skipping, and discarding pages, he pronounces, “Damn you, it’s good!”  Hampton is distracted by a sound outside.  He says it is the titular banshee, “The spirits of women who roam the woods the night someone is to die.”

Hampton challenges Rogers to go outside and have a look.  He humors the old drunk and walks into the woods.  And walks and walks.  He sees nothing for 2 1/2 minutes which, in TV time, is enough to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.  Then he sees the woman in white.  She gazes past Rogers to the house.  “Is he in there now,” she asks.  “The great animal who walks on two legs.  He stays, all others go.  Girls are his napkins, women his midnight feast.”

I started transcribing, thinking it would eventually pay off.  She droned on for 5 minutes which, in TV time, is enough to hike the Pacific Crest Trail twice.  She tells Rogers to go back to the house and send Hampton out.

Blah blah blah.

There is just nothing interesting here to grab onto.  The performances were fine.  If you want to see a foppish Peter O’Toole chewing the scenery in pair of knickers, this is your lucky day.  Me, I just found him annoying.  Charles Martin Smith is solid as always.  He has shown up on Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, and Outer Limits and always delivered.

I could even imagine the story working on film, but it just was not well-adapted.  The long walk into the woods and the long scene with the banshee were excruciating.    There were some mind games between the two men which could have been a fun duel, but that too is painful to watch.  Finally the last scene is just squandered.  An unknown entity rattling the doorknob, if properly set up, is a classic.  To be fair, that did create a tiny bit of suspense.  However, Rogers fleeing up the stairs for a freeze frame and fade to black was just an utter nothing.  It could have been worse — in the short story, Rogers literally jumps into bed and pills the covers over his head.

Other Stuff:

  • Nothing to see here.
  • Thus endeth RBT.

Outer Limits – Rite of Passage (03/13/98)

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In a small forest commune, people, goats and chickens are doing their thing.  Brav is carving a big-bellied fertility statue, other people are working in a garden that should sustain the community for about three days, a young couple is making out on the stairs.

Brav’s wife Shal begins screaming.  He shouts, “Come to her, Mother!” and runs to Shal.  The community, including the cloaked Mother, surround Shal.  The people don’t understand what is happening as Mother delivers a baby; although not understanding why Mother was exposing Shal’s lady parts in the town square was probably equally disconcerting to them.  Mother holds the human baby up to her face which we see is alien Vorak, somewhat like a Cardassian. [1]

Some time later, Mother sees Brav carving the wooden statue.  She says, “It is a good likeness, but of a form she no longer has.”  Brav starts whittling away the belly to be more accurate, but optimistically leaves the boobs.  He asks when Shal will be returned since Mother took her away to The Obelisk to care for her.  She says it is far too far and far too dangerous for him to visit.  Mother also has to assure him that the baby will grow up to look like he and Shal.  This confuses him since they don’t look like Mother.

Mother has brought a human girl named K’ren to be his new companion until Shal eventually returns someday far in the future.  Brav is not interested despite Mother stripping K’ren naked to entice him.  K’ren begins making out with him, but he bails.

The next day, K’ren gives him the stink-eye out in the woods.  One of the other guys is playing with the community dog and accidentally runs through the barrier surrounding the community.  He stumbles back through, writhing in pain.  Brav is going to help him when he sees two Voraks returning Shal to the community.  Wait, so Mother waited some indeterminate stretch of time to whore K’ren out to Brav the night before Shal was being returned?

Shal says the Voraks want to keep the baby at the Obelisk.  She is just back for a visit, but has a plan to break out of the community and get their baby.  They break into Mother’s house to steal a tool to remove the ankle-bracelets which are on their wrist (this is sci-fi, after all).  Shal also sees a book with pictures [3] of other people, but Mother had told them there were no other people.  They remove their bracelets and escape through the barrier.

As they are walking through the woods to the Obelisk, Shal is attacked by a snake thing.  The bite leaves an organism in her leg which begins crawling up her thigh under her skin (this is sci-fi, after all).  Wait, isn’t this earth?  Where did the snake thing come from?  Did the Voraks bring them?  WTF would they do that?

They find a structure which clearly was not built by the aliens.  It is a large concrete building, dirty, crumbling apart, with no signs of life, like a Sears.  They find a couple of skeletons holding a baby skeleton.  Shal suggests, maybe these are their ancestors, not the Voraks.

After an encounter with some more snake things, they reach the Obelisk.  It is actually a lovely lighthouse, although what the hell it is doing on the bank of a river is a little baffling. [2]  It also seems to be in pristine condition with a fresh red & white paint job.  After the ruins and grown-over bridges we have seen, I guess the Voraks are real handy-men; maybe four-handy-men, like the dudes on Barsoom.  And nice of them to have the humans living in Camp Crystal Lake cabins while they live in a hipster Architectural Digest showplace.

They enter the lighthouse and snatch the baby.  When they are discovered by a Vorak, the racist Shal shouts that the baby belongs with its own kind.  Brav says they saw what the Voraks did to their parents.  The Vorak says they did nothing.  When he tries to stop them from taking the baby, Brav stabs him, but gets blasted.  Shal runs off with the baby.  She goes back to the Sears, but is surrounded by snake things in the Automotive Department.  Mother and the other Vorak kill all the snake-things and rescue her — luckily the baby had an ankle-bracelet tracker that looks as stoopid-big as an Apple Watch on its tiny wrist.

The blaster was only on stun, so Brav is able to reunite with Shal.  Mother gives their baby back, but says the Vorak will continue to watch over them.  The earth’s population died out hundreds of years before the Voraks arrove, for reasons unknown.  The humans in the community were cloned from bodies they found in the ice.  This is the first baby to be born old-school.

Brav asks what they were like.  Like every snotty Star Trek alien, the first thing Mother comes up with is not love or laughter or curiosity.  She says, “They had to be taught the value of lifeforms different in appearance from themselves.”  However, the Voraks appreciate that humans saw the error of their ways.  They respect that humans even tried to restore some species it drove to extinction, although they might have just mistaken an old Jurassic Park DVD for a documentary.  “We believe any species capable of correcting such a terrible flaw, and finally appreciating the beauty that lies in diversity deserves a second chance.”

So the Voraks demonstrated their commitment to diversity by giving the human race a second chance by creating a sheltered safe-space; a cloned community with a smokin’ hot population of young white models of diverse height and hair styles.

Good episode, as usual.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t work in a Kardashian reference.
  • [2] I now see river lighthouses do exist, but it still bugs me.
  • [3] The pictures are referred to as reflections.  Why wouldn’t they just be called pictures?  The Voraks know every other English word.
  • It’s like the Star Trek aliens who called the crew giant-bags-of-mostly-water.  They knew the meaning of giant, bags, of, mostly, and water but didn’t know humans?  And what happened to that fancy Universal Translator?  Isn’t this the kind of colloquialism it is supposed to smooth over?