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

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Twilight Zone – Gramma (02/14/86)

Posted on by
Reply

There is just not a lot to grab on to here, but that is a reflection on my deficiencies, not the segment’s.  For almost all of the run time, the only character is 11 year old George and he is very good.

The story taps into some shared but seldom discussed fears:  Fear of the otherness of really old people, fear of responsibility, and fear of helplessness.  And all are handled well.  There is some witchery involved, but the human elements are the scariest.

George is left alone with his Gramma while his mother goes to see his brother in the hospital.  The ancient, morbidly obese, intermittently senile old woman is terrifying to George under the best of circumstances.  When he is the temporary man of the house, his anxiety escalates.

I watched it, then watched it two more times with different commentaries, then read the short story.  Both the segment and the story are very good.  The short story really didn’t need to be 28 pages, but that’s typical Stephen King.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

Post-Post:

  • Based on Stephen King’s short story in Skeleton Crew.  I have the hard-back with a cover price of $18.95.  That would be $42 in today’s dollars so I must have bought it hugely discounted at CostCo.  I’m not sure I ever actually read this story since it was the 3rd to last story and I have a habit of bailing before I finish anthologies.
  • There is a toy monkey on the kitchen counter that looks suspiciously like the one on the cover of Skeleton Crew.

Double Check – Thomas Walsh (1933)

Posted on by
Reply

1,154 pages and 2.8 pounds — interesting in concept, but nearly impossible to read.

Devine was a small, slender man, thin-featured and quick of manner.  So it’s not Andy.  Or Divine.

He is a banker who is telling Detective Flaherty about blackmail letters he has been receiving. Unfortunately he lacked the foresight to save the letters for the police.  After getting a phone-call from the extortionists, he called the cops. The only clue is that he heard one of the men use the name Jigger.

Flaherty’s partner Mike Martin knows a Jigger Burns and says, “Jigger is a peter man.” I don’t even want to Google that.  Luckily, we are soon told that means he is a nitro expert.  The only blowing he does is -up safes.  Because Jigger was recently seen talking to Johnny Grecco, they somehow make the leap to question Grecco.  They head to the Esplanade to pick him up.

Grecco is not at the club, but one of his lackeys points out his girlfriend charmingly referred to as “the Polack.”  She is giving dime dances for $.25 so Flaherty hires her for a song.  Martin heads over to Flaherty’s house after he gets another threat about him calling the police.  While Flaherty is waiting for Grecco to show up, Martin calls in to say, “Someone laid a pineapple in Devine’s car.  Him and the chauffeur was blown to hell.”  Maybe it was that peter man.  Because of the nitro, I mean.

Flaherty returns to the club and looks around.  He asks, “Where’s that tall blonde, the Polack girl?”  She called in sick, tired of being the butt of two series of jokes impugning her intelligence [1].  He plays the cop-card, gets her name — Anna Brinski — and her address.  He busts into her apartment and finds her holding a pair tickets to Los Angeles, packing a whistle and a clipboard because the tickets said coach class.  That is enough for Flaherty to haul her downtown, although I’m still not seeing the connection.  A man comes to the door.  After a struggle, Flaherty shoots him.  As he is searching the body, Anna conks him on the head with a brass vase.

Flaherty wakes up half an hour later, but Anna is gone.  He identifies the dead man as Devine’s assistant, but can’t figure out his involvement.  He finds a piece of paper with “1934” written on it.  He staggers down the stairs of her apartment.  In front of Anna’s building, a man tries to shoot him from a passing car.  It would have been much easier to kill Flaherty in Anna’s apartment but the car could never have taken that tight corner at the base of the stairs.

After seeing an explosion in Devine’s bank, Flaherty goes to the only hotel in town tall enough to have a 19th floor.  Oh, and he calls the house dick.  Hehe.  Maybe to catch the peter man.  In room 1934, he finds Anna, Grecco, and the very much alive Devine. Flaherty puts all the pieces together.  The man killed in the explosion was a decoy for the similarly built Jigger. [2]  His pieces were not put together.

“Anna screamed suddenly, seeing the sudden bulge in the banker’s pocket.”

Since it is neither the house dick nor the peter man, it is just a pistol.  Yada yada, a bunch of cash and two honest cops.

Post-Post:

  • [1] How does she find her way to work in the morning?  Wakes up, goes home . . .
  • [2] Hey, the plot to Fletch!
  • First published in Black Mask in July 1933.
  • Born that month:  Joan Rivers & Gene Wilder.
  • The 2nd story in the collection to mention a flivver.

Science Fiction Theatre – Hour of Nightmare (06/25/55)

Posted on by
Reply

Note: The video quality is so poor, it is not worth grabbing any pictures.

Editor Ed Tratnor assigns his two best photographers Mel & Verda Wingate to get pictures of a UFO.  The married couple is exploring mysteries just like Ed & Lorraine Warren only less fictional.  There have been reports of strange lights from airline pilots in southwestern New Mexico.  Mel shows he has no future in paranormal research by asking a perfectly reasonable question, “How far are the sightings from the White Sands Testing Facility?”  Ed says the military assured him there was no testing in that area; but they said the same thing about the ocean off New York on July 17, 1996 so who knows.

Editor Ed is willing to finance this trip because up to now “most pictures of UFOs have been taken by amateurs and other handicaps.”  What?  Ed Ed hopes they can get some professional shots that experts can actually analyze.  I hope he didn’t book their return flight because we’ve been waiting 60 years for these pictures.  While there, they are also supposed to look into the disappearance of some people from a Mexican village near the US border.  Yeah, there’s a mystery; where ever could they have gone?

Ed Ed suggests they look into reports of a spacecraft in the mountains and turn that into a “picture story” about the “birth of a rumor”.  Mel understands, “I get it — optical illusions, a little superstition, and jumping to conclusions.”  I’m all for skepticism, but why even take the trip if the story is already written?  The Dewey Beats Truman headline was only 7 years earlier; did journalists learn nothing?  Clearly not.

The Wingates take a plane to Los Cruces, then rent a car to go south of the border. They visit the Commandancia de la Policia and ask the about the reported disappearance of several villages, but the chief replies that the stories are exaggerations.  Only one man has disappeared, and that was probably due to a flash-flood. They ask if the chief can recommend a guide, and he sends them to Ramon Sanchez.

They arrive at Sanchez’s desert shack which is the same shack from Stranger in the Desert.  Despite being dissed by Mel calling him “Raymond”, Ramon Sanchez agrees to lead them into the mountains for $5 per day.  While stopped to photograph a mountain lion, they see a flying saucer, but it quickly disappears.  That night they actually do get some pictures of lights in the sky.

The next day, Sanchez finds a rifle with his brother’s initials on it.  He was the man who went missing.  Sanchez believes the lights in the sky killed his brother.  Later the horses refuse to go on.  Looking for what might have spooked them . . . a snake, a cougar, an Elmer’s Glue factory, Mel spots a bleeping dead alien.  Where to start?

  • For the first time, Mel pulls out the video camera.  So to recap: It is still pictures for moving spacecraft and motion picture film for a dead alien.
  • Mel refuses to allow Verda to see the alien.  He twice warns her to stay back.
  • The viewers also never see the alien as it is hidden behind a boulder.
  • It might have died from a shot that idiot Mel blindly fired into the brush that day. Did they learn nothing from Trial by Fire?

Sanchez suggests maybe it is time to head back home.  Mel agrees, but says they are taking the alien with them.  Sanchez is worried the aliens (which he calls caballeros [1]) might come back looking for their amigo.  He is so scared that he pulls a gun on the Wingates and begins unloading the alien from the horse.  The aliens shoot a laser frying him like a . . . hmmm, any food I mention will be deemed racist.  Let’s just go with juevo — I mean egg.  A fried egg.

The Wingates make it back to their hotel.  While Mel develops the pictures, Verda calls Ed.  Mel discovers every one of the pictures is ruined, destroyed by radiation.  The Commandante shows up looking for Sanchez and Mel tells him that, like his brother, Ramon was killed in a flash-flood.  When they finally reach Ed, Mel tells him it was all rumors.

  • So Mel killed an alien, possibly triggering a galactic war resulting in the destruction of Earth and the enslavement of humanity.
  • He doesn’t bust the Commandante for not telling him Ramon was the dead man’s brother.
  • Mel lies to his editor for no good reason when the destruction of the film is still a better story than the rumor-angle.[2]  Not to mention, who could question two eyewitness accounts bearing the credibility of the journalistic profession?
  • The Wingates will soon be dead from radiation poisoning.

More junk.

Post-Post:

  • [1] My high school Spanish was German, but Google tells me this means a Mexican gentleman or a horseman, neither of which make sense.  I could understand a basic Hombre, but why elevate the aliens to gentlemen?
  • [2] The alternate interpretation is that they made up the flash-flood story to satisfy the Commandante who was overhearing the call.  It would even be a nice winking non-admission to the Commandante.  Sadly, I don’t think SFT has the level of sophistication necessary for that to be likely.
  • Title Analysis:  No idea what they were going for.  The time period of one hour was not significant.  The only thing nightmarish was Ramon and the horse getting blown up, but that’s not really the main thrust of the story.
  • Unless the horse was a Pinto.

Outer Limits – New Lease (03/21/97)

Posted on by
3

Oscar Reynolds collapsed on the tennis court committing not only a foot fault but an asphalt.  I guess he had picked up a few bucks when still alive by selling his body to medical science.  Ergo, 12 hours later his frozen corpse is being delivered to a lab.  The doctors run him through the microwave and are able to bring him back to life.

He is understandably skeptical, but finally accepts that he is back from the dead.  Unfortunately, the doctors tell him that he will die again in a couple of days.  They just haven’t worked out all the bugs yet.  In an unusual departure for Outer Limits, this miraculous scientific breakthrough is made by two guys working in a dark lab rather than one guy working alone in a dark lab.

After 13 hours, Dr. McCamber is ready to pull the plug.  Dr. Houghton correctly points out there is no plug — the guy is alive.  McCamber counters out that the life he has was forced on him.  Well, welcome to the club, pal!

Oscar just wants to die.  When Houghton points out that Oscar will go down in history, Oscar busts him for being more concerned about his own reputation.  When Oscar has a seizure, McCamber implores him to just let the guy go.  Oscar does indeed die despite Houghton’s efforts.

Houghton is mugged in the parking lot.  After a struggle, he is shot. McCamber wastes no time dragging his dead ass back into the lab where he can be resurrected. When he awakens, his first thought is that he will soon re-die like Oscar did. McCamber drives him home where he hopes he can make up for years of neglect.  The next day, instead of buying millions of dollars of life insurance, he takes his wife and daughter to the park.  They then go out for a nice lunch.  Out the window, Houghton sees the man that killed him.

That night he tracks the man down and kills him although I never understood that sort of brutal vengeance.  Kneecaps . . . shoot him in the kneecaps!  Because everyone dies thinking they didn’t spend enough time at the office, he goes back to the lab that night. McCamber tells him the previous revivals all failed because they were working on frozen stiffs.  Houghton was fresh dead so he is actually recovering.  So, good call on skipping the insurance premiums; not so much on murdering a man in front of witnesses.

He has a loving reunion with his wife for about two minutes.  In an ending more like the 1960s Twilight Zone, the police show up and haul Houghton away.  They tell him he could spend the rest of his life in jail.

It was a good story with a great premise mostly supported by the usual Outer Limits quality production.  It felt like a little bit of a slog at times, though.  The most interesting thing was seeing Stephen Lang much younger than he was in Avatar and much, much younger than he was in Don’t Breathe.

Post-Post: