The Hitchhiker – Cabin Fever (05/12/87)

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In a purely perfunctory opening, a man comes out of his beach-front home and goes running with his dog. Scoundrel Rick Hinton enters the unlocked house and goes through his desk.  He finds an envelope full of cash, but only takes some of it.  He goes into the bathroom where the man’s wife was clearly expecting him.  They have the sex. Elapsed time:  2 minutes (including the sex).

I understand they used this opening to establish Hinton as a playa on the playa.  It is just so disconnected and laughably condensed that it leaves you thinking it should have more meaning.  Strangely, though, it takes the extra time to establish him as a thief, which plays absolutely no part in the rest of the episode.  He’s not even a very good thief — he takes enough money that its absence will be noticed, but he doesn’t take it all so it might be thought misplaced.

Next, at a marina, he spots a woman struggling with the sails on her boat.  Again, the narrative is so compressed it is just crazy.  From stranger on the dock, through flirtation, to him being hired takes literally 35 seconds.  Her husband Cameron pops up through a hatch.  She says she hired the stranger to help on the island. Her husband refers to him as a “cabin boy” and says, “Welcome aboard, young man” to the 30 year old.

On the island, Hinton sees Cameron chopping up some mushrooms. Cameron spears a mushroom and holds it up, proclaiming it morcellus esculente, but I think he means morchella esculente.  He also calls it “the ambrosia of mushrooms”, but I’m not sure there really would be a fungus of the gods — wouldn’t they kinda be above that?  In any case, people who make such a fuss over mushrooms are even more insufferable than wine snobs.  And WTF uses that Olive Bar at Fresh Market?  But I digress . . . Miranda pops in to assure Hinton that the mushrooms are safe; Cameron grows them in the basement. He says, “Mushrooms are admirable creatures.  So much more reliable than people.”

Hinton learns that Cameron is a movie director.  He asks if Cameron has directed any thing he’s seen and Cameron zings both Hinton and himself pretty good, “Unfortunately, just the sort of thing you would see.”  Miranda reels off his oeuvre, Sister of Dracula, House of Cadavers, Beach Blanket Bloodbath.  Hinton has seen that last epic, but says, “It was a little opaque.”  As usual, The Hitchhiker doesn’t know a funny line when they have one.  However, it does give Cameron another opportunity to demean Hinton as a “house-boy.”

He grabs a bottle of tequila and takes a swig before unsanitarily offering it to Hinton. Cameron proclaims — again with the proclaiming! — it, “The only proper drink, really.  You know, the Mexicans sometimes put a little worm in the bottom of the bottle.  That’s how you can tell the best tequila.”  Actually, you find a worm at the bottom of a bottle of mescal, not tequila.  Except that you don’t usually find one there, either.  And it isn’t a sign of quality.  And it’s a moth larvae, not a worm.  Other than that, he is spot-on.

Hinton deftly accuses Cameron of emulating the worm — soaked to the gills, seeing life through the bottom of a booze bottle.  The drifter working as a cabin boy then tells the guy who owns the yacht and island getaway, “I know a has-been when I see one.” Cameron harrumphs and goes out to “check the traps.”

After Hinton gives Miranda a few smooches down below — in the basement, I mean — she is ready to dump Cameron.  The scene also informs us that Hinton is claustrophobic and that the basement door will slam shut by itself and lock you in.  Fortunately Miranda keeps a spare key in a jar.  She later shows Hinton a pistol and tells him Cameron sometimes hits her.

They start kissing, but Cameron gets back from his trap-checking.  She runs out to meet him and Hinton goes to the basement.  For no reason that I can figure, he takes the basement key out of the jar where it is usually kept and transfers it to a bottle of tequila. He is planning to lock Cameron down there?  That’s a pretty lousy hiding place.  Why leave it there at all?  Is it some kind of metaphor for the tequila worm?  I don’t get it.

That night, Cameron orders Hinton around as “house-boy” to fetch some booze.  Hinton suggests champagne and invites him downstairs to pick out a good vintage (ahhhh). Cameron instead sends Miranda downstairs to get the champagne saying, “Nothing but the best for our servant.”  After she leaves, Cameron calls an audible [1] and decides on martinis.  Cameron again demonstrates his knowledge of mixology by making martinis with no vermouth, no olives and no onions, which sounds a lot like straight gin.  Miranda couldn’t find the champagne, so returns with tequila.  Cameron says they are celebrating his new production.

He rambles on about a prince and a princess and a troll as a metaphor for their triangle. Cameron pulls a knife, but Hinton pulls a gun.  Hinton accidentally shoots him.  Miranda brains Hinton with a tequila bottle.  I must say she does it with such force that it is my favorite shot of the episode.

Blah, blah . . . the shooting was staged.  Miranda and Cameron drag Hinton to the basement.  When he wakes up, through the door, they tell him it was all in good fun and that he can catch the ferry at 9 am.  It seems like a prank they have played before.  He scrambles to get the key, but it was in the bottle of tequila Miranda took upstairs the previous night.  Hmmm . . . there are two possible scenarios:

  1. Miranda showed Hinton where the key was kept, so she believes he will get out safely.  In that case, while she and Cameron are yukking it up over their little charade, isn’t she worried he will unlock the door and kick their asses?
  2. Miranda is aware that Hinton moved the key and purposely chose that bottle to take upstairs.  Unfortunately, there is zero suggestion off that.  Why would she leave the bottle with the key in it in plain sight upstairs?  She and Cameron seem to honestly be in love and think this was all a hoot.

And once again, what kind of place is a liquor bottle to hide a key?  Everyone knows, the have to finish a bottle of booze after you open it or it will go bad.  Did Lucille Bluth teach us nothing?

While the pacing was choppy in the beginning, I do appreciate that they didn’t pad out the episode . . . boy, do I appreciate it!  At its most basic level, I did like the story and the twist — just the details were a little loopy.  Thank God they had Jerry Orbach as Cameron to carry the episode.  His energy helped distract from Michael Wood’s dreadful performance as Hinton.  He has had a long career, so maybe this was just an early misstep.  Season Hubley was entirely adequate as Miranda.

Other Stuff:

  • [1] This might not be used correctly.  Football bores me just as much as wine.
  • Director Clyde Monroe is a one-credit oneder.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Arthur (09/27/59)

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The titular Arthur addresses the camera while stroking his c**k.  Oh come, it’s a chicken!  He is quite proud of his New Zealand chicken farm which he operates solo, and the fact that he got away with a murder.  In fact, he chokes his chicken — oh, grow up! — right on camera, committing another murder most fowl.  “Yes, that’s right,” he says a little too chipperly, “I am a murderer.” [1]

We cut to Arthur taking a roast chicken out of the oven, but I don’t think that was the corpus delishti he was talking about.  Even after making this gourmet dinner for one, his tie is still tight and his white apron is neat, form-fitting, and spotless.  I get more stains than that making reservations.  I thought he was done addressing the audience, but this guy won’t shut up.  He continues jabbering as he carves the bird.  He goes on about his fiancee Helen to the point where I’m begging for a flashback.  Oh . . . .

Helen drops by one evening and tells Arthur that she can’t marry him.  She is going to marry gambler Stanley Brathwaite.  She is not happy cooped up on the chicken farm with Arthur — ha, get it?  Cooped up?  She wants to travel the world with Stanley.  She says she only agreed to marry Arthur because she wasn’t sure anything better would come along.  Oh sh*t!  Did she not watch Fargo (Season 1)?

“Well, that’s the end of these shoes.”

A year after that carnage, a couple of government workers stop by.  Fortunately it is the Police and not the Health Department.  He proudly shows Sgt. Theron his high-tech gadgets which enable him to murder so many chickens single-handedly.  For instance that feed grinder, which is big enough to put a woman into.  He tells Theron he’ll meet him at the pub for chess and goes into the farmhouse.  Helen is there.

She has come crawling back from Stanley.  This being 1959, she doesn’t move in, but she does take over.  She cooks meals, but leaves the dishes stacked up.  She fills the ashtrays with butts.  Arthur likes being on his own and tells her so.  She is so upset that she knocks a coffee pot over on the carpet.  He asks her if she would be miserable if he threw her out.  Having never seen AHP, she says, “I’d rather be dead.”  He strangles her and she makes the same hilarious sound as the chicken — I mean, literally the same sound clip.   Well-played!

Three weeks later, Sgt Theron drops by again.  Seems Helen is missing.  Theron and an Inspector take a look around, but don’t find anything.  They leave, but have an officer keeping an eye on the place.

For reasons I can’t figure out, Arthur strategically decides to disappear for three days.  As he leaves, he tells us he wants them to believe he is making Crippen’s mistake. [2]  Arthur hides out in a cave for three days, then returns home.  A cave would seem to be the last place this fastidious, anal-retentive twerp would hang out.  It is also strange that they serve up this blatant resurrection reference but do nothing with it.

Arthur returns to find the police tearing up his farm looking for Helen.  They even try to dupe him by saying they found a body in the barn.  While I fully support tricking murderers into confessions, this is a stupidly specific way to do it.

Yada, yada, after the police fail to implicate Arthur, he sends Theron a nice chicken dinner to show there are no hard feelings.  Theron also raises chickens and asks Arthur what feed mixture produced these fabulous birds.  Arthur gives him all the ingredients except one.

Less than the sum of its mixed parts.  You better like Laurence Harvey because you’re going to get a lot of him.  I liked the farm which was probably just a backdrop after the first building.  However, it worked because it was well-crafted and also seemed like just the kind of perfectly clean operation Arthur would run.  The scenes inside the coop are great, although probably not so great for the chickens.  On the other hand, the scene we see is probably practically free-range compared to the industrial torture chambers chickens live in now.

Post-Post:

  • [1] The sound the chicken makes as Arthur snaps its neck is laughably human.
  • [2] The story at the link is pretty interesting; but I don’t know who would have ever gotten that reference before Google was invented.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  Tragically, no survivors in this cast of thousands.
  • AHP is getting pretty edgy — after the indirect incest of Touché, this episode features indirect cannibalism.
  • The lead character is named Arthur Williams.  The story is credited to Arthur Williams.  The title of the episode is Arthur.  Get over yourself!
  • Alternate title:  The Murders in the Perdue Morgue.
  • Strangely, Hulu calls this episode 37 of Season 4, but IMDb calls it episode 1 of Season 5.  The opening theme has a new arrangement.  The change, like all change, is for the worse.

Twilight Zone – Shadow Play (04/04/86)

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Adam Grant is sentenced to “hang by the neck until dead” and he laughs.  See, that’s the problem.  My idea is to hang criminals, but give them just enough air so they hang there until they starve to death.[1]

He tells the judge, “all of this and all of you are a dream.”  He is hauled out of the courtroom under Charles Aidman’s narration of the exact same intro Rod Serling used 25 years earlier.  Using the same words, this is the perfect example of how Aidman’s avuncular voice undermines the show whereas Serling’s menacing tone gave it gravitas.

He tells the other inmates that this is just a dream that he lives over and over.  He describes in detail each step of walking the last mile, getting your feet bound, and having the hood placed over your head.  Then the noose.  He describes how they all nod at each other and a red light comes on, but given that he is already wearing the hood by that point, that must be speculation.  Then the switch is thrown and he hangs by the neck until he wakes up.

Grant’s attorney goes to see the D.A.  She is starting to believe Grant’s story that this is all a dream even though she is not wearing stilettos and a push-up bra.  She points out to the DA how weird it was that there were no spectators in the courtroom, and no Hollywood actors were coming to Grant’s defense in the media.  Although, to be fair, I don’t remember if he was in jail for killing a cop.

The DA goes to death row where apparently executions are carried out on the day of sentencing — hey that’s my dream!  Grant points out several inconsistencies in this world that make the DA question his reality, like why Girls lasted six seasons and Arrested Development only lasted three.

With a slight twist, Grant is executed, then we and he find ourselves at the beginning of the episode.  However, the players are recast.  A prisoner is now his attorney, his attorney is now the judge, the priest is now a juror, etc.

I see some reviews suggesting this version is better than the original, but I don’t get it.  As good as Peter Coyote always is, it is hard to top Dennis Weaver and the B&W cinematography.  Also, the original had a classic cut (T-bone, I think) from Grant’s description of the electric chair to a sizzling steak.  Frankly, both episodes are undermined by the small stakes here — it’s just a dream.  Take some Ambien for crying out loud.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Adam Grant is electrocuted in the 1961 version.  In that case, my penal reform would be the electric couch for maximum taxpayer savings. Heh, heh, penal.
  • Classic TZ Connection:  Duh. Also, William Schallert (the Priest) was in an episode and the movie.
  • Skipped segment:  Grace Note.  Notable only because it contains the same Marriage of Figaro opening as Trading Places.

Murder Picture – George Herman Coxe (1935)

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1.

Flash Casey, ace photographer for the Globe, is ticked off at the cops.  He just returned from a raid on the horse-track with a great picture. However, like Lee Harvey Oswald, his second shot was even better.  It was so good the police seized the plate at the scene.

His day gets even worse as his editor Blaine refuses to print the picture he got away with. The new owner’s son Lee Fessenden is in the background sewing some wild oats at the horse-track, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem.  Police Chief Judson himself called the newspaper owner and demanded that the second plate be handed over or else the press would not be allowed in the police station for a month.

2.

When Casey gets back to his desk, his pal Tom Wade is on the phone with local tramp Alma Henderson.  Well, tramp according to Casey, trump according to Wade.  Alma works at Blue Grass Products which shares an air-duct with the horse-track.  Casey had used this conduit to sneak in to get his second stolen photo.  Well, his first photo stolen, but the second one taken.  Well, the first one taken from him, but . . . screw it, WTF shares an air-duct with a horse-track anyway?

Alma is of questionable morals because her boss Moe Nyberg, owner of Blue Grass, is a pretty shady customer.  He is described as “. . . a cheap tout, a first class thug. Everything he touches stinks” but that might just be the breeze from the stables.  Alma is no angel either as Wade reveals she escaped from prison.  Wade goes to meet Alma while Casey goes to meet detective Logan at Blue Grass.

Logan is at BGP with two other officers.  They want to know what Casey knows about the dead man on the floor of the closet — a private dick named Grady.  Casey immediately realizes that Alma must have known the man and fears for Wade’s safety.

3.

Casey describes how he and Wade went to Blue Grass Products.  He somehow knew there was an air shaft in the building and deduced it was in BGP.  He describes slipping through to get the picture.  We learn that the air shaft actually connected to the men’s room at the horse-track, which I’m not sure is better.  When he got back, Alma had closed BGP early fearing Nyberg would be upset at the intrusion, or maybe because it was Taco Tuesday at the track.

Logan explains that his crew is at BGP based on that advanced-criminological theory of killers returning to the scene of a crime.  There’s an extra fiver in it for him if it is a butler.  The dead man Grady had actually tipped the cops off that there would be a show-down here involving a horse dropping doping ring.  They think Alma was in on it and that is why she hustled Wade downstairs, then she took off with some “bad eggs”.

Casey surmises that his picture was seized because he accidentally got a shot of the real killer coming out of the men’s room with toilet paper on his shoe.  Casey jumps up to go save Wade from Nyberg’s goons.  Logan goes with him to Alma’s apartment and finds she has been killed.  Then a couple of bad hombres pull guns on them.

4.

Casey and Logan manage to jump the bad guys.  Casey even manages to take one’s gun and put a slug in his melon.  Casey, asks the one still breathing, “What did you do with Wade?”  Not getting a fast enough response, Casey belts him.  He asks again with no response, and belts him again.  Rinse, repeat.  Logan finally remembers he’s a cop and stops Casey . . . after his forth punch knocks the guy out.  Casey goes back to the Globe and has a duplicate made of his photo, then a couple of wallet-size.

5.

A cab-driver shows up at the Globe and tells Casey that Wade sent him and told him Flash Casey would pay the fare.  Fearing the next visitor will be from Domino’s with 30 pizzas, Casey races to the address where the driver dropped Wade off.  Before he can get out the door he gets a call.  The caller says to bring him the photo in exchange for Wade.

Blah, blah, blah.  There’s nothing wrong with this one that I can put my finger on.  It just seems to go on forever.  It took me three weeks to get through, and that ain’t a good sign for a 25 page story.

Post-Post:

  • First published in Black Mask, January 1935.
  • Also that month:  Amelia Earhart flies from Honolulu to California; gets cocky.

Science Fiction Theatre – The Lost Heartbeat (08/13/55)

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Dr. Richard Marshall gets a strange 2 AM visit from Dr. John Crane.  He has just read an article Marshall published and wants to discuss it. Marshall begins telling him about replacing an aorta in an orangutan. Crane decides they need to move the discussion to Marshall’s lab.

Crane:  “You’re still not a true scientist, Richard.”

Marshall introduces Crane to Alice the Orangutan.  He says, “Alice is 16 years old.  Her heart was worn out — a typical case of old age.”  It’s easy to take cheap shots at writers who did not have access to Google or even Ask Jeeves, but the life expectancy of an Orangutan is 35-40 years in the wild and in the 50s in captivity where they can ride bicycles with helmets.  So cut the writer some slack and use the time to marvel at how far Dr. Zaius got in life at such a young age.

Alice was the subject of the transplant Marshall performed.  Crane criticizes him for his half-red-orangutan-assed accomplishment.  He says Marshall should try implanting an entire mechanical heart.  Marshall asks, even if such a procedure is possible, what energy source could keep it running?  Crane’s interest is self-serving as he shows Marshall an X-Ray that indicates he has about 6 months to live.

Like every aged scientist on SFT, Dr. Crane has a hot daughter — the sole redeeming feature of this series. Are these guys all killing their wives like AHP?  Joan Crane comes up to Marshall’s lab.  She asks that Marshall get the old man to take it easy.  Within seconds, Dr. Crane arrives and she is hustled out the back exit.  Crane wants him to place an artificial heart in his chest, but Marshall says it is too risky.

Crane:  You’re not a scientist!  You’re a coward!”

Crane doubles his efforts to improve the artificial heart.  Somehow this requires Alice to flap her arms like a bird, but I ain’t no doctor.  As he is finishing up with Alice, a mysterious package arrives containing a clock.  It has lights, but no electrical plug, no wind-up mechanism, and is completely sealed, so maybe it is from the Apple Store. Three days later, Marshall notices the clock is still working.  Curious about what is fueling it, he takes an X-Ray.  He discovers a solar battery powered by the rays of the sun.  But one o’ them solar batteries what doesn’t need to be exposed to the sun, I guess.

Only one person could have sent it — he goes to see Dr. Crane.  He says to Marshall, “I knew sooner or later your scientific curiosity would bring you here.”  That’s a pretty cavalier use of time for a guy who was given six months to live.  Crane wants him to use the battery to fuel the artificial heart, but there are still many hurdles.

Marshall tells Crane his heart can only be stopped for 45 seconds without damage.  The operation must take place in that time-frame.  So far, he has the procedure down to 59 seconds and the billing down to six hours. While further researching, Crane has a heart attack. Fortuitously, Marshall is far enough along on his research that he can’t do any harm.  They slice that fat bastard up.

Marshall is able to install the artificial heart in exactly 45 seconds.  Crane’s heart begins beating again.  Marshall goes out to tell Joan her father could last a few hours or a year. The end.  Really, that’s it.

That’s all we get for our seems-like 2 hours?  A non-committal maybe it worked?  Well it is up to SFT’s standards, which is to say dreadful.  Crane is just a nasty curmudgeon hardly worth the effort to keep alive.  Marshall is one of those actors so old timey that he seems to have a British accent.  Joan is beautiful, but is given nothing to do. Literally, her big scene is interrupting Marshal when he is trying to trim seconds off the procedure.

Just a waste of time, and I’m only 17/39ths through the season.

Post-Post:

  • Title Analysis:  No idea what they were going for.