Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Deathmate (04/18/61)

Posted on by
2

Handsome young Ben Conan is playing cards with Peter Talbot who puts the old into cuckold.  Ben wins again, as usual.  Peter’s wife Lisa reminds him that Ben has beaten him at cards, billiards, and golf — and that Peter still owes him $50.  Ben says Peter can pay off the debt by watching as Ben plows Lisa like the North 40.  No, wait, that’s a short film I saw earlier tonight two and a half times.  Peter chugs some booze — inexplicably a penalty for losing — and passes out.

Lisa asks Ben how a man could change so much in just 2 years, “He seemed so strong, so capable.”  To be fair, Peter is now 23 years older than his wife.  When they married he was . . . oh yeah.

Lisa tells Ben, “You are kind, steady, dependable.  Just the way a man should be.”  Then they kiss.  In some of the most boring exposition in this series, Ben tells Lisa that he never married because managing his silver mine keeps him busy, and Lisa tells him she inherited a business from her father which Peter is running into the ground (which might be OK if it were a mine).  

In the building’s lobby, Ben is stopped by a man who knows him as Ben Conan aka Fred Sheldon aka Terry Lord.  Let me pause here for a shout-out, and not just to wake myself up.  The man is Private Investigator Alvin Moss, played by Russell Collins.  

Collins might be the greatest actor of all time.  When I see Jack Nicholson in a movie, come on, he’s never not Jack Nicholson.[2] De Niro is such a drooling imbecile, it is impossible to take him seriously.  But every time I see Russell Collins, I never know what to expect.  We’ve seen him play a prisoner, a bum, a used car lot owner, a bitter old geezer, a nice old guy, and now a confident — and for a change — well-groomed, energetic, smiling PI.  The only constant is that his characters are old; but he was born in 1897 and didn’t start showing up on TV until he was 50.   Whaddaya gonna do?  Only 5 people had more appearances on AHP and two of them were named Hitchcock.  

Moss says Fred Sheldon is wanted for bigamy in Miami.  He “bleeds widows, blackmails married dames.”   Moss says some of them take sleeping pills, or watch this episode.  He tells “Ben” his client is paying him a cool $40/day to keep an eye on him.  So I guess the emphasis is on Investigator, not Private.

Despite being adults, they take the car out for a make-out session which seems to be on the planet Vulcan.  Ben breaks the mood when he says he needs $10,000 to meet the payroll at his silver mine which is no gold mine.  They decide to fly to Phoenix together.  Ben says he is going to pay Peter a visit tomorrow.  

Peter is drunk when Ben shows up.  Ben suggests that Peter just married Lisa for her money.  Peter says he must be joking (when actually he is foreshadowing).  He accuses Ben of being a conman.  Ben knocks him out with a single punch to the kisser.  He then undresses Peter and drags him into the bathtub.  He turns on the water and drowns the limp Peter unconscious Peter.  There is a little episode-padding as he dawdles around and spends more time in that bathroom than I would if it were Charlize Theron in the tub.

Finally he emerges, but leaves the water running.  Why?  There was already enough water to drown Peter.  Ah, you say, if Peter had a heart attack as Ben wants the police to believe, then the tub would have to be full because Peter could not turn off the faucet after his heart attack — so Ben is just allowing the tub to fill.  But wait, why then does Ben close the bathroom doors and bedroom doors if he is just going to go back in and turn off the water?  Ah, you say, he is going to leave the water running until it overflows and his downstairs neighbor calls the cops.  Really?  Unnecessarily ruining the carpet, causing thousands of dollars of structural damage, and pissing off his neighbors?  Ah, you say . . . shut up, I say.  I’ve had enough of you.  And BTW, what sumptuous Taj Mahal spotlighted in Architectural Architectual Architectural Digest has giant double doors like these on the shitter?

Seriously, these are the bathroom doors.

Blah blah blog . . . Moss drops by.  Ben says Peter is not here.  Moss asks how he got in . . . 3 seconds after he himself just entered the same unlocked door.  Then he asks about the running water.  He accuses Ben of killing Peter.  Ben says it was a heart attack — after all, Lisa said he had a bum ticker.  Moss says Peter was perfectly healthy and also very wealthy aside from Lisa’s dough.  

Ben takes a swing at Moss, but Moss conks him on the noggin with his pistol.  Moss says he is going to call his client — Lisa.  This is supposed to be the zinger.  Yes it is a twist, but I’m not sure why it matters.  Ben is already busted and will go to jail.  Ah, you say — starting your “Ah” shit again — but he just learned Lisa betrayed him!  Hello, McFly, Ben was a con-man!  He was just using her! [4]

This was a rare AHP exercise in tedium.  The leads were not very interesting, the story was very simple, the backgrounds of the ocean and desert were laughable, and the twist was underwhelming.  But, hey, that Russell Collins was great! [1]

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Great, but maybe not good enough for a picture.  This is the guy.  He shows up one more time in season 7, which I should get to in about 2035.
  • [2]  I just inexplicably watched him in Something’s Got to Give.  OK, it was not in his peak-Jack heyday, and the picture didn’t sweep the Oscars (although, who would know?). [3] But, wow, what an embarrassing performance.
  • [3]  Tomorrow I will include a link that the Oscars tonight achieved another record low viewership.
  • [4]  There’s an out here, but I’m in a bitchy mood.
  • Title Analysis:  Fail.  I assume this is a play on checkmate.  The coined word does not have a good ring to it.  Besides, this was a simple — to the point of tedium — story.  It did not require a lot of strategery.
  • Sadly, Gia Scala (Lisa) died at 38 years old.
  • As always, thorough coverage of the episode and source material can be found at bare*bones e-zine.  

One Step Beyond – The Riddle (06/16/59)

Posted on by
1

Yet another OSB episode set outside the US.  However, they have taken away one of my usual jibes by finally going to Asia.  Americans Leonard and Betty Barrett are taking a train through India.  And one of the fancy ones, where you ride on the inside.  They have just come from the Taj Mahal and after a few days in India, the attraction they most want to see next is a McDonald’s.  

Leonard is a typical ugly American, although for paranormal reasons that will be explained later.  His wife is an atypical beautiful American played by Bethel Leslie [1] who made such an impression in AHP’s The Man with Two Faces.  Leonard is ranting about the heat, passports, cholera shots, and customs.  He would rather have gone to Paris or London, but Betty insisted on India.

As he is jabbering, an old Indian man holding a chicken opens the door of their private compartment.  Leonard becomes enraged because he ordered the fish.  He screams at the man to get out or at least bring some gulab jamum.  He even breaks a bottle and charges at the old man.  Luckily, the conductor happens by and hustles the old man out to safety.

Even after the conductor leaves, Leonard is still hostile.  He says he did not like the old man’s face — it had a murderous expression!  And that if they had been asleep, he would have cut their throats!  Finally, he calms down.  When he becomes lucid enough to see the bottle in his hand, he does not know how it got there.  I feel your pain, pal.

The train stops in a small town.  He sees the old man has gotten off the train.  Seeing the old man on the platform enrages him again.  He says, “If he tries anything, I’ll kill him!”  Their eyes meet, and Leonard takes off after him.  Betty then chases Leonard through the streets of Narainpur.  She catches up to him, which is easy, because he is collapsed on the ground, surrounded by Indians.  Betty pleads to the crowd, “Is anyone a doctor?”  None of them are, so I guess this was not filmed in America.

An American steps  forward and says he is a medical missionary (?).  They go back to the man’s home which looks pretty doctory.  Leonard is baffled by his own behavior.  He says he doesn’t even really dislike anyone, but he hated this man. He felt like,  “If I didn’t kill him, he was going to kill me!”  The Constable knows the old man as Kumar. He tries to get Leonard on the next train out, but he opts to get some rest first.

The rest consists of a few minutes of sleep, then an escape out the window to find Kumar. I have no idea how, but Leonard tracks down the old man at his home in this small Indian village of 200 million people.  He breaks a window and jumps in.  In keeping with 1950’s TV standards, Kumar and his wife sleep on separate straw mats. [2] In keeping with my standards, Kumar jumps up, grabs a rifle, and points it at Leonard.

Leonard is not cowed — er, poor choice  of words — is not intimidated by the rifle.  He advances on the old man with his hands out to strangle him.  WTF!  Kumar shoots him!  I did not see that coming.  The constable shows up immediately.  The old man is arrested, and Leonard is taken back to the missionary’s home to be treated.  WTF again!  Leonard dies!

The constable explains that many years ago Kumar and another man named Ranjit were in love with the same woman.  She chose Kumar.  Ranjit tried to kill Kumar, but Kumar shot him.  The constable noticed that Leonard’s birth date on his passport was the exact date Ranjit died, so obviously his soul migrated at that moment.  I  guess Ranjit guided Leonard to Kumar’s home tonight.  Luckily, he had not moved in 40 years.

Two things you can count on with OSB:  They don’t deviate much from their narrow slice of the genre pie, and the episode will look awesome.  One unfortunate new theme has arisen, though.  This reminded me of Echo two weeks ago.  In that episode, an innocent man was killed because of a paranormal event that had nothing to do with him.  The same thing happens here.  Leonard was possessed by Ranjit.  He had no free will when he attacked Kumar and was shot.  I miss the more standard template where the victim is getting a cosmic come-uppance, i.e. had it coming

It is also miraculous that Leonard ever had the opportunity to confront Ranjit’s killer.  It’s not like he had this mysterious desire to visit India all his life, as if it were calling to him.  He wanted to go to France or Italy, but Betty dragged him here.  What were the odds he would end up in India?  It’s not like Ranjit just possessed some random dude to get at Kumar.  He has been in Leonard since birth, linked by their death and birth dates.  It had to be him.

I guess I can’t complain about sameness when they try to mix things up.  At least they still have those great production values.  Sometimes, as in this episode, the scoring is very effective.  I also enjoyed seeing Bethel Leslie again.  Sadly, I don’t feel like I captured her beauty in these shots.  So, as usual, OSB wins me over through sheer professionalism.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Bethel really is an awful name for such a beauty.  I hope she at least pronounced it Beth-EL or Heather.
  • [2]  Upon further examination, it appears Kumar is sleeping on a cot and his wife is sleeping on the floor (see below).  Maybe she should have married Ranjit.
  • Title Analysis: No idea.  Yes, there is a question about what is happening, but that’s every episode. 
  • Still no paranormal activity in Africa.

Suspense – Dead Ernest (05/03/49)

Posted on by
2

The titular Ernest takes his gal Margaret to the movies.  And I mean takes her and leaves her — to see “a news-reel, a sports-short, a travelogue, Bugs Bunny, and a double-feature.” [1]  They figure that will time out about the same as the double-header he is going to see at Ebbets Field.  Unless both movies are The Ten Commandments, I think she should count on him being late. [2]

She makes sure that Ernest is wearing his medical alert bracelet and has his please-for-the-love-of-God-DO-resuscitate letter.  She puts it in the pocket of his Joe Mannix sports-coat and tells him not to take it off at the ball-game.

Skipping ahead to the Fran portion of the program.

As she enters the theater, he crosses the street and is almost clipped by a car.  This triggers his catalepsy — an affliction that makes it appear that he is dead.  It even imitates the early stages of rigor-mortis.  If this had happened after sitting in the sun in his jacket & tie for a double-header at Ebbets, he probably would have smelled dead, too.  Officer Chauncy Lindell takes off the jacket and makes a pillow for Ernest’s head.  His medical bracelet is kicked down a sewer grate.

An opportunistic haberdasher sees the coat just sitting there after the ambulance carts Ernest away.  So he takes it back to his shop and puts a price tag on it.  Writer Fran and her actor husband Henry enter looking for a sports jacket.  Inexplicably, the proprietor tells them to try Abercrombie & Fitch.  Fran says they are too expensive.  She sees Ernest’s jacket on the counter and says, “Hey, is that a Joe Mannix?”  Because of, or despite, some blood stains, they are able to buy the jacket for $5.

While Fran is scrubbing out the stains, she finds the letter.  She reads it aloud:

I carry this wherever I go.  It is to advise responsible parties that I am a cataleptic.  My body must not be molested for a period of 72 hours, neither by autopsy nor embalming.  The maximum period of my attacks rarely exceed 4 hours.  Please call my wife or doctor.  This is of vital importance.  It may mean my life.

Fran asks Henry what a cataleptic is.  He says, “Don’t ask me.  I went to a drama school, not Johns Hopkins.”  Wait, an actor not presenting himself as an expert in medicine, science, and politics?  This guy will never get hired!  They look it up in a dictionary — the old kind that can’t be instantly changed online to suit some 23 year old’s fascist political whims.

Credit where due:  Fran and Henry have a good, logical conversation deducing how the bloody jacket came to be at the shop, the timing of the event, and the condition the owner might be in.

We cut to a couple of yahoos in the morgue listening to a ballgame on the radio.  The announcer says Jackie Robinson has just stolen a base, “That boy can really run.”  Okaaaaay.  There is a refreshing flash of creativity as Ernest is wheeled into the morgue, toe-tag first.  He appears dead except, unseen by the attendants, one hand is opening and closing.

Henry, and especially Fran, prove to be pretty good detectives as they try to piece together what happened.  There is even a nice attempt at the titular suspense as they need to use a payphone and some woman is hogging it.  Fran tries to call Mrs. Bowers, but she is still at the theater on about Commandment #7.

So they go back to the clothing shop.  The owner is reluctant to admit he picked up the jacket off the street after being used to prop up a dead guy’s noggin.  He finally fesses up.  His description of the event convinces Fran and Henry that the jacket’s owner is in danger of being embalmed at the morgue.  They try to call, but the two yahoos don’t answer the phone.

As the two morgue monkeys assemble their needles and scalpels, the organ really starts in.  One of them has a problem with his glasses fogging up when he leans over the corpse’s face.  There is a nice fuzzy POV shot of Ernest through the steamy glasses — unfortunately, it is from the camera’s POV, on the other side of the body from the coroner.

Finally, they answer the phone.  In the 2nd of back-to-back errors, he answers the phone without it ringing — which is the opposite of what I do.  He says, “It is some dame babbling about a guy with no coat that may not be dead.”  His blurry-eyed partner comes to the same conclusion. [4]

Finally Ernest opens his eyes.

There was some good stuff here.  The title is awesomely grim for 1949.  The scenario has suspense baked in.  There was some intelligent dialogue as Fran and Henry pursued the mystery.  They manufactured suspense with the phone calls and Ernest’s imminent embalming.  Margaret Phillips was delightful as Fran.  She was smart, sexy, and had an awesome Mid-Atlantic accent that sounded like Katherine Hepburn, but less like a car-starting. [3]

On the down side . . . well, you have to just accept that it was made in 1949 for no budget.  I guess Auto-Lite did not cough up the big bucks like Alcoa on One Step Beyond.  They played the telephone card too much here, but again, you are dealing with those limitations, plus a short running time.  The main criticism, as in previous episodes, is the obnoxious organ music.  You could say that’s just how things were done at the time, but it doesn’t make it right.  Just ask Jackie Robinson.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  All for the low, low price of 35 cents.
  • [2]  When Googling Ten Commandments, the first suggestion is the movie not the, ya know, actual Ten Commandments.  Just sayin’.
  • [3]  I would give attribution for that great analogy, but I can’t remember where I heard it.  Actually Margaret was born in the UK, so I’m sure some of that is in there too.  She was last seen as a naughty, naughty girl in ToT’s The Evil Within.
  • [4] There was another goof in the lab earlier.  One of the guys commented on Ernest being brought in with no clothes, then corrects himself to say no jacket.
  • Suspiciously similar to Breakdown on AHP.  Catalepsy and a Get Out of Morgue Free Card also play roles in another AHP episode, One Grave Too Many.
  • The first writing credit for Seeleg Lester.  That might mean nothing to you, but it means nothing to anyone else either.  He did have a yuge career, though.
  • Not that anyone else cares, but it really bugs me that the top photo is not the Joe Mannix jacket.  He wouldn’t have been caught dead in that thing.  I think that was a Herb Tarlek.  It was just too tough to find any other shots of Margaret smiling.

Tales of the Unexpected – Galloping Foxley (03/15/80)

Posted on by
4

Roald Dahl’s Intro:  This time he tells us everything in tonight’s episode is true.

William Perkins recalls taking the 8:12 train into work five days a week for 36 years.  He is a meticulous chap in his bowler and 3-piece grey suit.  He actually likes the process of commuting.  He and the other upper class twits even have a specific order in which they wait on the platform.

Hey, you in the middle — get a hat!

Dahl continues, “One of his special pleasures is to have his own particular seat, in the same compartment, with the same good solid people sitting in their right places with the right umbrellas and hats and ties and newspapers.”

One morning he is startled to see another man standing in his spot on the platform.  I’m sure the man’s billowing powder blue trousers had nothing to do with his discomfort.  However the man’s stylish grey hair, stylish neatly trimmed beard, stylish suede overcoat, and stylish walking stick do set this dandy apart from the other gents.

The man sits in Perkins’ non-assigned, unreserved, publicly available seat — the effrontery!  He then begins smoking in this, the designated smoking car — the nerve!  Most egregiously, he breaks the silence the men have enjoyed for 36 years  — to ask permission for his totally appropriate smoking, “as a matter of form”.  This guy is an monster!  He is even a different breed of cat with his reading material which seems more tabloid than the stodgy broadsheets the other chaps are reading. [1]

He shows up for a third day wearing another powder blue leisure suit.  Perkins recognizes him as Galloping Foxley!  This is narrated with the same expectation of awe as the “MY NAME IS KHAN” line that drew blank stares in the Kelvin Timeline, and eye-rolls in ours.

Perkins remembers being dropped off at St. Wilfred’s School in 1907.  From the first day, Foxley was a prick.  He bumped into Perkins’ father and continued on without an apology.  Mr. Perkins’ busted him to the headmaster, sealing his son’s fate.  Foxley tells 10-year old Perkins, “You are my personal servant, valet, bed-maker, dogsbody, washer-upper, boot-cleaner — you’re my slave, Perkins.”

The next morning, Foxley tells Perkins, “You’d better get down to the bogs, the lavatories, the water closets, the latrines, le petit quan (?), the places of easement.”  Not only is he to clean them, he is to warm the seat for Foxley.  “If it is not warm enough, I’ll warm yours.”  Back in the train, Perkins fantasizes over exposing Foxley’s cruelty.

For some unseen infraction, Foxley announces he is going to give the 10-year old boy a caning.  We were told earlier that punishments were usually a number of whacks with the dressing gown on, or a lesser number with the dressing gown off.  To no one’s surprise, Foxley says today Perkins gets no choice — the dressing gown will be off.

Foxley gets a good running — galloping, hence the name — start at applying the punishment.  That night as Perkins is crying, the other boys admire the scars on on his butt.  Rrrrright . . . the scars.

It goes on and is perfectly fine, but tedious to recap.  Ironically (probably not really ironic), Perkin’s proper English reserve undermines the ending.  He gives a speech about his days being tortured by Foxley before accusing the stranger of being the titular Foxley.  Then the stranger introduces himself with a different name.  However, since Perkins did not really work up a good head of steam and make a scene, the denial did not result in the humiliation it should have.  Oh, we can see on his face that he is squirming inside.  It might well have been humiliating to this repressed bloke, but it is hard for the audience to relate to.

Also, even though we don’t see it, I got the sense that this treatment of a “new boy” was not that unusual at such a school.  And that’s why all the men in old Perkin’s cohort were button-down, conformist types.

So while I really liked all the performers, it needed to be tightened up a little to be truly effective.

Other Stuff:

  • WTF?  Young Perkins is 5 years younger than Foxley, but Old Perkins is 12 years older that the man on the train.  Both actors do a great job, but if we are supposed to believe the man could be Foxley, they should have cast age-appropriate actors.
  • Reminiscent of RBT’s By the Numbers.
  • John Mills plays both adult Perkins and Perkins’ father in the flashback.
  • [1]  He even flashes the Page 3 Girl to the other gents.  Those unfamiliar with that last gasp of journalistic integrity should checkout the Wiki article.  Trigger Warning:  The more woke might have their head explode that this was a real thing not that long ago on planet earth.  Unsurprisingly, you have to go elsewhere for pictures.

Science Fiction Theatre – Killer Tree (01/04/57)

Posted on by
1

Now there’s a title with potential.

My, Barbara Cameron is quite the chatty one.  She appears out of nowhere yammering to her husband Paul about a local ghost story.  Then she moves on to the titular killer tree.  Supposedly there is a treasure buried under it.  But if anyone comes looking for the treasure, they die.  Paul has no interest in her folk tales.  He and Clyde Bishop need to run some tests in the desert.  The trio zoom away in the jeep with Barbara yapping away.

Hey, wait a minute.  I’m getting a Sun Gold vibe here (the SFT episode, not the Medical Marijuana).  The drive-away and fade with her still talking was a deliberate, well-constructed gag.  I can spot one a mile away; usually a mile away from here.  I see Sun Gold’s director Eddie Davis also directed this episode. According to the book whose title is too long to type here, but is now shorter than if I had just gone ahead and typed it, both episodes were filmed concurrently to make use of the desert location and port-a-potty.  

While running their tests, they see an old man collapse from heat prostration. [2] He says his partner Frank is dead and a killer tree did it!  He tells the same story after he is rehydrated and on his feet, but from about 5 feet higher.  Barbara wants to know where the tree is, but Paul says they have to go finish their testing.  

Paul gives in when she says they shouldn’t leave the old guy stranded in the desert.  They don’t seem to care much about leaving his mule, though.  So he (not the mule) takes the fourth seat in the jeep, although strangely three of the seats are in the front, and directs them to the tree.  

They find it and Barbara takes some pictures.  She is startled when she sees a skeleton near the base of the tree.  She calls her husband and Clyde over to see the skeleton. The old man even wanders over.  Have a f***ing picnic, why don’t ya!  They know this is the killer tree, right?

They all walk away, but in a bizarre edit, Paul is suddenly unconscious on the ground.   Again, Barbara calls Clyde and the geezer over into the circle of death.  They are able to drag Paul to safety.  

However, once Paul is back on his feet, they again go into the perimeter of doom.  They observe that insects that fly seem to be ok, but insects that crawl on the ground are subject to the killer tree.  They determine it is Carbon Dioxide, rising from a petroleum reserve below the tree. 

It goes on with the old guy staking a claim, then being killed by the tree.  Our heroes bring in fancy equipment and discover that the tree sits on top of an active volcano, so I guess they were wrong about the oil.  They lower cameras into the ground on a “coaxial cable” and are able to see magma and Cinemax.  They hail this as a breakthrough in the study of seismology and simulated sex that will save thousands of lives.  [2]

The episode ended up being a let down, if such a thing is possible with SFT.  It started well and had a good pedigree.  However, it did not warm my heart like Sun Gold (the Medical Marijuana, not the SFT episode). There was a ‘splosion, but not the sense of mystery or adventure. The lead actress was another spunky, short-haired blonde but . . . let me check — yeah, she’s dead . . . a lesser knock-off of her Sun Gold counterpart.  Once the mystery is solved, there is really no point in continuing, but it does for another 8 minutes. 

You know, once you’ve opened the Ark — just shove it in a warehouse. 

Once you have the Sankara Stone — just put it back in the igneous trophy case. 

Once you find the Holy Grail — just ride off into the sunset. 

Once you return the Crystal Skull to the improbably narrow shoulders of an alien — just flee from the temple losing your greedy idiot turncoat pal who was the worst character in the series and watch a terrible CGI rendering of a UFO that should never been part of this movie and go to a wedding of a couple who haven’t seen each other in 20 years and where the bride was probably abused as a child by the groom and suffer through the nauseating threat that Shia LeBeouf is going to be the new Indiana Jones. [3]

Notes:

  • [1]  Hey, it’s TVs Fred Ziffel, from Green Acres!
  • One of the gang says the Carbon Dioxide is “penetrating a strata of rock.”  C’mon, you’re a scientist!  Fred Ziffel would have known strata is plural!
  • [2]  Sadly, Skinemax seems to no longer be a thing.
  • [3]  Going on a 10 year old memory, so it might have been very, very diff worse.
  • Note to self:  Register Sun Gold as name for new Medical Marijuana brand.  Step 2: Partner with Rold Gold.