Science Fiction Theatre – One Hundred Years Young (07/02/55)

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I get the impression this was the go-to show for scientifically-minded young people in the 1950s, although that is largely based on the endorsement of George McFly.  But it amazes me how they get the simplest ideas wrong.  The host starts a small steam engine which produces pressure in a tank.  He then says he will “increase the speed of the engine by stepping up the pressure.”  The host, the writer, no one on the set saw this was backwards? [1] 

The host tells us “A young lady [Bernice], the brilliant chief of the company’s Research Department, is working on a project.”  Well this is sci-fi.  Just sayin’ in 1955, this had to be shocking to the viewers.  Mr. Lyman, the president of this crazy upside-down company drops in.  They hear a noise next door.  Maybe it’s the real chief of the Research Department tied up.  C’mon Sci-Fi Theatre, stop pulling my leg!

The president of the company apparently packs heat as he guns down the stranger in the supply room.  They recognize the man as employee John Bowers.  However, the man claims not to know them.  He had worked at the company and even retired on good terms with them at age 70.  Strangely, he doesn’t look a day over . . . well he doesn’t look 70, but they should have cast a guy who did not look like 50 year-old death warmed over.  He was looking for an herb in the lab that enabled his supposed youthful appearance.

The police detective has no problem bringing Bernice along to sack Bowers apartment looking for answers.  They find his home looks like one from the 18th century.  They find a letter from a woman to him threatening to leave him for being so secretive, but it is dated in 1816.  They also find a solution that contains more of the herb he was stealing and determine that it contains a poison.

They visit him in his cell.  He wants the solution, saying that he has built up an immunity to the poison.  He grabs the bottle and chugs it.  He reveals that he is over 200 years old.  His parents were killed by the Iroquois and he was adopted by the Mohicans.  A medicine man taught him about the secret herb as thanks for his people’s treatment by the white man.  Wait, what?

He complains that it has been a “hollow life.”  He has outlived all his wives, his friends, and their daughters.  Bernice is excited about what this could mean for humanity, but Bowers feels cursed. He feels even worse when Bernice gets him a job at the lab and Lyman says he can have it “for life.”  He finally confesses to accidentally killing a woman by bungling the dose of his miracle solution.

He and Bernice work unsuccessfully to replicate the formula he has replicated 400 times during his life.  When he sees the detective and Bernice have started dating he gets very depressed.  When he doesn’t show up for work one day, and doesn’t answer his telegraph, they go to his house.

He is dead but left a note.  He envies them for the happiness he can never have. He apologizes for not successfully making the solution, but not for the needless slaughter of 3 dozen guinea pigs.  He says mankind is not ready for this knowledge, which is probably right; certainly the Earth isn’t.  “We must first learn to appreciate the time God gave us.”

Once again, it seems like they had the elements of a good story and just poorly executed it.  I’m sure the awful quality on You Tube contributes to my negative assessment.  Also the stilted acting of the era is just terrible.

I rate it 30 years young.

Post-Post:

  • [1] The point was to show the engine would crash under greater pressure, and that human beings also explode under the increased pressure of modern society.
  • Just to make sure we get it, he tells us, “Man has not changed since he evolved.” So he steps in it again with a tautology — true, man has not changed since he changed.  Maybe they need to go one studio over to Freshman English Theatre.
  • And don’t get me started on that -re on the end of theater.
  • Title Analysis:  Can’t these people get anything right?  He is over 200 years old!
  • For a better take on the same basic idea, check out The Man From Earth.  Ya better like people sitting around talking, though, because that’s the whole movie. It’s still pretty good.

 

Outer Limits – Double Helix (03/28/97)

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Well, we start off with a laugh as Dr. Martin Nodel walks in wearing what appears to be David Byrne’s big suit in charcoal gray.  I can imagine maybe the shoulders were a little padded in 1980s style, but the sleeves end mid-palm, so there was apparently a problem in wardrobe.

He asks his students if they consider themselves Darwinians [1].  There is a priest present among the students wearing his black suit and collar.  I’m not sure why he’s there; you might as well have a fireman sitting there. [2]  Nodel is researching junk DNA which he thinks could contain messages from God.  Others think it might be leftovers from evolutionary dead-ends such as gills or tails, which makes sense.  Nodel thinks it is there for future evolution which makes no sense.  I am on team-evolution, but it is not known for being pro-active as my back can attest.  To prove his theory, he has come up with a way to activate that DNA.

He has done the testing and I haven’t, so maybe he’s right.  He uncloaks an aquarium which contains a big fish with less space than those bowls used to torture beta-fish.  To the shock of the students, the bass lowers four legs and climbs on to a bit of dirt so that it now has less room than those pens used to torture veal.  I must say it was pretty effective, although not as much as if it had started singing Take Me to the River.  And Nodel had just the suit to join in.

Nodel has self-diagnosed himself with the markers of Wilson’s Disease, which I believe is known more colloquially as Soccer Balls.  Nodel injects himself.

He begins team-building stunts with his class.  He has the guys form a circle around a circle of the girls.  The girls then do a trust fall where they tip over backwards and trust the guys not to grab their boobs.  They then do the experiment where six of them lift a classmate using just their fingers, and are really trusting of the guys.  Nodel tells them they are going to be working in close quarters and will have to abandon all modesty.  He reminds them that they had already committed to having not had any surgery or bodily alterations.  The dude with the dopey pierced ears doesn’t seem to understand the question.  Oh yeah, then the professor says they all need to get naked.  Funny this didn’t come up in his doctoral work at the old folks home.

They protest, but he insists he needs to examine them for birthmarks, scars and tattoos. Unsurprisingly, earring guy has a problem with this and bails.  The remaining students strip.  He notes one of the girls has a small tattoo, but upon closer examination, he decides it is tolerable.  He detects an appendectomy scar on another girl and boots her out because she is not a whole person as humans naturally evolved. He found no defects on any of the guys, so maybe he wasn’t checking them out as closely.

At home that night, Nodel worries that he is left with only 6 subjects when he needs eight. He suddenly cringes in pain.  He takes off his shirt and we see his horribly deformed back.  He realizes that the scars are actually a map.

The next day, he tells the students they are officially part of his research project.  He gives them a list of supplies to bring with them the next day.  I hope clean clothes are on the list because they all seem to be wearing the same clothes as yesterday.  WTH was the wardrobe department doing during this episode?

He is still two bodies short.  Fortuitously, his estranged son drops by with his weirdo girlfriend.  Nodel drives them out to the designated meeting place.  As they are exploring the area, they are surrounded by soldiers.

The soldiers lead the group to an underground facility housing a mysterious object.  Like Admiral Yamamoto, it has stayed in the same position since WWII.  Even digging out the ground below it will not cause it to fall.  The army figures it is 60 million years old. The object is too hard for them to even take a sample.  Nodel sees a triangular indentation on the object.  He pulls his glove off to reveal a similar triangular deformity on his palm.  The weird part is that the marking on the object has the point at the top.  When Noel presses his palm to it, his scar has the point at the bottom.  It should have been like a USB connection where he has to reverse it three times to get it to go in.

A blue light shoots out and raises Nodel like Jesus with his arms outstretched.  He speaks in the voice of the aliens.  They spread their their genetic material across the universe like a hotel bedspread to assure the continuation of their race. The object is a vessel to take the group back “home” so the aliens can see how we growed up. NASA can’t keep track of its moon rocks and home movies for 40 years [3], and they’re expecting these aliens to have a welcoming committee after 65 million?

Like Roy Neary, with no regard for their safety, they board the ship and leave behind family, friends and student loans without a thought.

Pretty straightforward, but dang if it didn’t reel me in like it always does.

Post-Post:

  • [1] It is kind of Jesus-fishy that Darwin had a name so ripe for turning into a noun.  Wallacerians would never have taken off.  See also, Alexander Graham Bell.
  • [2] Of course, he is there for shots of him grimacing as Nodel talks about evolution. It is just strange that he appears with the students, and not with the administrators that come in later.
  • [3] Or so they would have us believe.

The Hitchhiker – Why Are You Here? (03/10/87)

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I’ll say this for The Miracle of Alice Ames, at least it wasn’t painful just to watch.  Why Are You Here? is the most visually offensive episode since New Year’s Day.

A limo rolls up in front of a club and an unctuous windbag pops his head out of the sun-roof.  He is “Jerry Rulack, Duke of the Night” on the TV show Night Sight.  I give the episode credit for its prescience in predicting the future of TV.  Not so much for predicting reality shows like The Kardashians, but for predicting how shitty TV in general would be.  The show being filmed in this episode is like every DJ portrayed on TV — they would draw an audience of close to zero.

Jerry gets out of the limo and leads us to “. . . clubs like this.  Currently the hottest or coolest club in town.”  He promises to take us in and ask the question which is apparently the beloved catch-phrase of the series which is sweeping the nation:  “Why are you here?”

We follow him through the crowd in the club.  A mixture of punks, dandies, flashing lights and coke-heads.  Nothing wipes that game-show host smile off his face, though.  And the finger-snapping — what the hell is all that finger-snapping for?  He approaches a woman at the bar who is dressed like the widow at a Corleone funeral and asks her name.  She is the only character I don’t hate so far as she screams “F*** off!” in his smirking face.  Then he springs his A-material, “Why are you here?” and she just scream-screams in his face.  And he never missed a snap with those fingers.

He travels through the club filming more weirdos, punks, coke-snorters, and — the horror! — two gay guys.  The blaring music, flashing lights, frequent camera edits and finger-snapping go on and on and on.  He sees a couple making out and asks his idiotic signature question, “Why are you here?”  The woman shows her boobs and the episode even manages to make that boring.

Jerry interviews some dandy in the coke-room.  He appears to be wearing a blazer over a wife-beater which shows way too much chest hair.  Was there ever a time when this would have been cool?  He also appears to be using a make-up pencil to accentuate his butt-chin.  He leads Jerry and his crew up to a private area to see “the most beautiful, sweetest, sought after, fought over, richest girl” in town.

The girl turns out to be Helen Hunt up in the VIP room surrounded by hanger-ons.  Jerry asks his usual insipid question, “Why are you here?”  She says, “Nowhere else to go,” and he gives her insipid answer a big raspberry, thumbs-down and childish face. Honestly, who would watch this shit? And who would watch this shit?

With the exception of Jerry’s barely-seen crew, every character in this episode is repulsive.  I had hopes that Helen Hunt might elevate the material, but was disappointed.  She has always seemed like a nice person, but she is just grossly miscast in this role.  Maybe her relatability was supposed to be a counterpoint to her bum-exploitation [1] and crack-smoking [2], but it really just made me want to watch Twister again.  Unfortunately Brad Davis, who is on screen nearly every second, is dreadful.

There actually was something here that could have been salvaged.  It was a target-rich environment for satire — the club scene, reality TV, divas — but nothing lands.

Garbage.

Post-Post:

  • [1] In the homeless meaning, not anal.
  • [2] In the drug meaning, not anal.
  • Rated 3rd worst episode of the series in IMDb’s increasingly credible ratings.
  • Also from this director:  The Legendary Billy B.  Despite being born in New Zealand and working down-under during the 1980’s, even Ray Bradbury Theater knew better than to hire him.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Your Witness (05/17/59)

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Attorney Arnold Shawn has his client Kenneth Jerome on the witness stand when his wife Naomi enters the courtroom.  His client has been involved in a auto accident which killed a woman.  Not being a Kennedy, he is looking at hard time.

Naomi is troubled by Arnold saying in court that he is searching for truth when he has been banging other women; and of course, the lawyer thing.  She flashes back to a conversation they had a month ago when she confronted him about the cheating.  Naomi accused him of dismissing it as if it were “a night out with the boys” which would have been a second problem.  Arnold said that after 10 years of marriage, having another woman show him some attention made him feel like “king of the barnyard” which is 1950s for cock of the walk.

Strangely enough her emotional flashback expands to include Al Carmody dropping by with info on the prosecution’s surprise witness Henry Babcock.  He is going to testify that when Jerome hit the woman, he was running a light.  Babcock is a model citizen, but Carmody and Arnold are sure they can dig up some dirt on him in pursuit of, you know, justice.

A month later, back in the courtroom, in what must be the longest hit-and-run trial ever, Arnold calls Babcock to the witness stand.  He testifies that Jerome hit the woman, backed up 50 yards to take a look, then drove off.  Unable to deny the facts, Arnold accuses Babcock of volunteering to testify because he wanted to be famous.

Seeing Arnold once again turn the truth into a lie, Naomi has another flashback.  Soon after the first flashback, Arnold says he was working late.  Naomi accuses him of lying, and has proof he was seeing the woman he had promised not to see again.  He casually continues eating a sandwich, and accuses her of being prudish.  She asks why he married her in the first place.  He answers, “Your father was an extremely influential man a dozen years ago and he had an extremely attractive daughter, also a dozen years ago!”  Oh shit!

Naomi is not so much on the pro-honesty band-wagon at this point.  As if Arnold hasn’t hurt her enough, he continues, “After all, it’s been 10 long years since you were 25!” Wait, she’s over the hill at 35?  That’s just into MILF porn range!  She is certainly no zero, but she seems to be rocking a size-zero dress — and back when that meant something.  This woman is svelte.  Brian Keith always seems like a coiled spring of hostility, and he is really brutal to her.  She is crushed.

Back in the courtroom, Arnold is cross-examining Babcock . . . I guess — I’ve never seen an episode of Law & Order, or Judge Judy.  Arnold brings up a lot of irrelevant facts such as why Babcock did not hear the woman earlier, that he doesn’t make much money, that he is lonely since his wife died, that he’s the janitor at a strip joint [1], that he is color-blind, and that he was fired from his job for having cataracts that impaired 85% of his vision. Well, those last two actually sound pretty relevant.  He is ruled incompetent as a witness and Jerome is found not guilty.

Naomi catches her husband in the hall.  She has the papers for him to sign so they can get divorced.  He thinks the current situation is fine and even suggests she get a little action on the side too. He tells her, “You could still be an attractive woman if you tried.”  See, he can be nice when he wants to.

In the parking lot, Naomi runs his ass down.  Too bad the only witness was just proven by Arnold to be an incompetent witness due to lousy vision.  D’oh!

This one is a little bit of a slog.  Naomi certainly isn’t the hag Arnold makes her out to be, but she is kind of dull.  Arnold is just thoroughly unpleasant with his cruelty and twisting of the law.  Two such presences do not make for a great viewing experience. However, the ending is pleasantly sharp and ironic . . . if you don’t think about it.

We are never told when Babcock had the corrective surgery.  If before Jerome’s accident, he should have spoken up.  If after then Arnold was right to nail him.  Either way, he has had the surgery by he time of the trial, so he could easily testify against Naomi.  But why would he after Arnold humiliated him on the stand?  Well, he was described as a model citizen.  Pffffft — should have stopped thinking while I was ahead.

Post-Post:

  • [1] The Chichi Club, where Arnold tells us young beautiful girls dance.  Sure, he shows a picture of the intersection, but we’re supposed to take his word about the girls?
  • And what cruel bastard hires an 85% blind man to work in a strip club?
  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.

Twilight Zone – Personal Demons (02/14/86)

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TZ goes mega-meta with an episode where the main character is TZ Story Editor and segment writer Rockne S. O’Bannon.  Strangely, however, they cast Martin Balsam who is 36 years older than the real O’Bannon.  The camera pans over the covers of several scripts written by the fictional O’Bannon:  Gunsmoke, The Mod Squad, SWAT, Dukes of Hazzard.

He is pecking away at a new script on a manual typewriter when his pal Harry bursts in.  It is rough going because he is determined to come up with an original idea.  He says for the last 20 years, or since everyone else stopped using manual typewriters, he has been doing rehashes of plots and recycled characters.  He is determined to come up with one fresh idea before he retires.

That day on the street, he sees a group of kids and standing behind them is a black-robed demon.  It begins to laugh and run at him.  Rockne gets into his car.  The demon claws at the window, leaving some serious scratches.

At a screening for one of his episodes, he tells Harry about the demon, but Harry is understandably skeptical.  Fortuitously, Rockne looks out the window and sees 3 of the little demons tearing up his car.  He calls Harry over, but Harry can’t see them.  The rest of the guests gather around the window, but they also do not see the creatures  The party follows Rockne outside.  The creatures are gone, however, the guests are able to see the damage done to his car.

That night he hears noises in the living room.  When he investigates, there is a whole gang of the demons tearing up his furniture.  When they spot him, he retreats to the bedroom.

The next day, Rockne has a business lunch with his agent.  he sees the demons flock into the restaurant and swirl around the other patrons who take no notice.  When they spot him, he runs out of the restaurant.

We next see Rockne in his house.  He has boarded up the windows, but took no time to clean up the debris from the demon’s shenanigans.  The phone rings, and he hears one of their cackles.  Then they start tearing through the boards to get in.  Rockne asks what they want.  One of the demons tells him, “to write about us and you’ll never see us again.”  As he types, the demons begin disappearing.

I’m not sure what to make of this.  I guess the most literal interpretation is that you can slay your personal demons by confronting them; for a writer, that means writing about them.  But we were never shown any of Rockne’s personal demons.  The desire to be a better writer is laudable not a character flaw, although that would explain a lot of TV.

This also seems a strange segment for a writer to write himself into.  As mentioned, his namesake is old enough to be his father.  He also pretty much describes himself as a hack.  Maybe having the character not resemble him was intentional, just to get some distance from Rockne Prime.

Ultimately, though, I was very entertained.  The demons ranged from truly menacing to amusing. The first one sighted actually gave me a bit of a chill and reminded me of Kim Darby spotting a li’l monster in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark.  When they start marauding through his house, though, it is just a hoot.  Amazingly, within the same segment, both representations work.

Fun stuff.

Post-Post:

  • Classic TZ Legacy:  Martin Balsam was in The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine and The New Exhibit.  There was also a man on the wing of the plane vibe.
  • Skipped segment:  Cold Reading is actually a better, more ambitious segment than Personal Demons.  First, the insufferable Dick Shawn drags it down for me. Second, it is just one damn thing after another.  While that was great for the episode, not so much for writing about it.  Events in a radio script begin physically manifesting in the studio.  Very enjoyable — more fun stuff.