Honest Money – Erle Stanley Gardner (1932)

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Ken Corning, a fighting young lawyer, tries to earn an honest living in a city of graft.

This is the first story in a series following idealistic young lawyer Perry Mason Ken Corning and his assistant Della Street Helen Vail.  They were clearly the prototype for Gardner’s later series, but with less obstruction of justice.  Seriously, I read 3 Perry Mason novels and his primary skill seems to be corrupting the evidence so no jury and few readers could follow it.

Cornings’ first client is Sam Parks.  Rather than simply see the man, the attorney first puts Helen through a ruse where she types pages of nonsense for three minutes and rushes it in to him as if it were 3 hours of billable time.

Sam Parks’ wife has been arrested for running a speakeasy.  Christ, what is this, Prohibition?  Oh.[1]  I like that as the cops busted into his establishment, Parks quickly pretended to be a customer by sitting down at an uncleared table and eating the erstwhile patron’s scraps.  Mrs. Parks, quite a good sport, played along and even collected the bill from him, although that 10% tip will not benefit him later.  She is hauled off to the can, the jug, the slam, the big house, the joint, the hoosegow, the pokey, the clink.

Immediately after Parks leaves, Corning gets a visit from Perkins, the cop who busted the restaurant.  Corning refuses to give him any info on Parks.  He then gets a visit from Carl Dwight.  Lawyers setting up a card table at a bus accident don’t get this much traffic.  Dwight is the local fixer, an operative of the political machine.  He offers Corning a $500 “retainer” to play ball, but Corning throws it back in his face.

After Corning pays a visit to Mrs. Parks at the prison, Mr. Parks calls to say he his coming back into the office.  Unfortunately, Parks is shot twice just outside Corning’s window.  Corning goes down to check things out.[2]  Actually he does show Perry Mason’s proclivity for hindering an investigation.  Among other things, he pockets a newspaper from Parks’ parked car.  There was an article cut out that covered Harry Dike’s appointment as superintendent of the Water Department — presumably no relation to the hairy dykes Mrs. Parks was meeting in prison.

The article said Dike was “firmly opposed to the granting of contracts and concessions to those with political pull, and that in the future the Water Department would be conducted upon a basis of efficiency with all work thrown open to the lowest responsible bidder.”  How was he not the one shot?  There is good reason as this seemingly virtuous Water Department jefe is just another thug.  He had been in a car accident with Mrs. Parks, while he was traveling with Carl Dwight the political fixer he was supposed to oppose.  She made trouble and had to be dealt with.  That’s Chinatown, Jake.

Mason Corning ties it all together and the story wraps up with yet more characters, a meeting in a restaurant, some counterfeiting hijinks, and even Corning getting off a few gunshots.  Despite being written 85 years ago, the writing has a contemporary feel. Gardner is able to make a raft of characters and an intertwining plot simple enough that I only had to read it twice to understand it.

Another good entry, although I miss the titular spiciness of the Spicy Adventure Megapack.

Post-Post:

  • [1] 1920 – 1933.
  • [2] In a sign of the times, he stands out in the crowd because he is hatless.
  • First published in Black Mask in November 1932.
  • Also that month:  FDR first elected.
  • When he died in 1970, Gardner was the best-selling author in history.

Science Fiction Theatre – Conversation with an Ape (06/11/55)

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Dr. Guy Stanton (Beaver’s dad, Hugh Beaumont) brings his new wife back to his home in the Florida Everglades.  He apologizes for it being a dump, saying he is just now seeing it with her eyes.  Did he get her out of a catalog?  How could she never have seen it?  Oh, she mentions she met him at a convention a week ago.

Nancy assures Guy that she is on Cloud 7. [1]   SFT actually comes so close to making a pretty good joke that I’m envious.  Nancy smacks a pillow and an absurd amount of dust flies from it.  She smirks at Guy, “Cloud # 1.”

Still, she is prepared to be the dutiful 1950’s wife and vows to turn the shack into a castle — at least until they hear a truck go by.  Guy sheepishly informs his new wife that it was a prison truck, “There is a penitentiary about 10 miles down the road, just beyond the swamp.  We’re sort of located here in the heart of a swamp.”  This seems to come as a surprise to Nancy.  Was she blind-folded on the trip there?  Alligator Alley is a miraculous achievement, but you only end up in the middle of the Everglades after going through miles of nothing (hence, the ever part).

This is not the titular ape

They go for a kiss, but are interrupted by a screeching noise. Guy leaves the room and returns with his ape Terry.  Then there is another screeching noise — Nancy is horrified! Guy assures her Terry is harmless and is his star pupil.  He tells Terry, “Go on out to the kitchen and have a banana.”  He reminds Nancy he is an Animal Psychologist.  He keeps hundreds of animals.  She becomes hysterical and runs right up to the bedroom in tears even though she has never been in the house before.

Foreshadowing what will happen later that night, Guy pleads with her in the bedroom.  He convinces Nancy to meet the gang.  He has actually been teaching Terry to recognize certain words and he even read a few.  Guy even claims to communicate telepathically — the X-Factor, he calls it.  Nancy is not impressed.  She says this marriage is not going to work.  Guy asks her for just one week to finish up his experiments.  Even though Guy makes a breakthrough with Terry, Nancy packs her bags.  As Guy prepares to drive Nancy back to normal civilization (i.e out of The Everglades Florida), an escaped prisoner barges in with a gun.

This is not the titular ape

He is filthy after crawling through the swamp for 18 hours, and demands food and keys to the car.  He hears a noise and Guy tells him there is a chimpanzee in the kitchen.  The prisoner’s reaction is more like Guy said there was a refrigerator in the kitchen.  They bring Terry out to the living room.  As they are held at gun-point, Guy sends telepathic signals to Terry.

When the humans go into the kitchen, Terry goes upstairs and fetches a pistol as Guy wordlessly commanded.  He gives Guy the pistol and Guy disarms the prisoner.  Now that Terry has saved their lives, Guy asks Nancy if she is still going to leave.  She looks at the chimp and simply says, “Terry?”  Terry puts on her hat, picks up her suitcase and takes it upstairs.  “The X-Factor!” they say in unison, chuckling, until Terry shits in her hat.

This episode got a bit of a boost from the cast.  It was fun seeing Ward Cleaver in a different role.  Barbara Hale was pretty snappy as Nancy, just 2 years before she became Della Street on Perry Mason.[2]  And, of course, apez is funny.  Aside from that, it was the usual tripe.

Terry the ape

Post-Post:

  • [1] This is the second time that phrase has been used in this series.  What happened to Cloud 9?
  • [2] The Perry Mason books have the most misleading covers in publishing.  I got suckered in by The Case of the Long-Legged Models (1958) and The Case of the Foot Loose Doll (1958) before wising up.  I doubt the stories inside were titillating even 60 years ago.  However, I did not take a chance with The Case of the One-Eyed Witness (1950).  
  • For man, woman or ape there just aren’t many more blah names than Terry.  Although, there is the occasional Teri exception.
  • Whether for the censors or the carpet, Terry is wearing a diaper, although it seems to be taped to his butt rather than wrapping around.

 

Outer Limits – Tempests (03/07/97)

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Another grossly inefficient spacecraft. But the floating chair is cool.

John Virgil is in the spaceship Tempest returning from Earth.  He has picked up a serum that he is taking back to his colony.  There have been a few deaths, but his wife and son appear fine on the video they sent.

He is joined by Burt Young.  His character Captain Parker is given no first name.  I assume, like every character Burt has ever played, it is Paulie.[1]  There is also Dr. Vasquez and Governor Mudry. They are preparing to drop out of the matrix, but do so too close to the planet Leviathan and get pulled into its gravity well. They have an immediate argument over who should get to use the emergency escape pod.  Parker and Virgil are pretty selfless unlike a certain roly-poly President I could name.  They want to send the doctor with the serum.  Naturally, the Governor has a gross over-estimation of her value.

Unfortunately, no one gets out before The Tempest crashes.  Everyone is roughed up, but Parker is in the worst shape.  He has a hematoma and a concussion and his brain will soon be too large for his skull, which is never something I expected to say about Burt Young.

Virgil goes outside to check the damage, but is attacked by a giant spider.  Not shelob-giant, but a meaty little package the size of 2.5 small dogs.  Understandably freaked out, he flees into the ship.  He is not too diligent about keeping the beast out, unlike a certain Warrant Officer I could name.  He collapses, then awakens in the hospital at the colony. His wife praises him for saving the colony.  Then — bang — he wakes up back on The Tempest.

The doctor says the 12-hour hallucination is due to a spider-bite. We can judge it for ourselves as the doctor didn’t feel the need to bandage the gaping 4 inch wound on Virgil’s arm.  Another spider got into the ship and found the Governor as scrumptious as she found herself.  It doesn’t have the cocooning skills of an Alien or me on a long weekend, but has webbed itself to her neck and is controlling her autonomic functions such as heart-rate and corruption.  It is an effective shot as she begs to have it removed.

Like Billy Pilgrim’s being unstuck in time, Virgil snaps back to the hospital.  His wife and the doctor tell him about the crash, but get a few details wrong.  He goes to Parker’s room.  Parker screams at Virgil to not leave him with the spiders and Virgil snaps back to The Tempest.  He continues flipping back and forth as we learn more about the condition of the ship.

It comes to the kind of grim, disturbing conclusion that the 1980s Twilight Zone could use more of.  The only downside is that it felt a little padded out.  I wish the producers had not been forced to make every episode the perfect length for future syndication.

Good stuff.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Upon doing 30 seconds of research, I am shocked.  Burt Young only played a character named Paulie in the Rocky movies.  He sure seems like a Paulie in every movie.
  • Title Analysis:  Sure, it is the name of the ship, but I’m not sure what they were going for.  A tempest is a violent windstorm, which does not apply.  Or a violent commotion . . . maybe.  I see no connection to Shakespeare’s play.  And why is it plural?  I guess the spiders are the titular tempests, but why?
  • I initially thought Virgil was a play on Virtual.  Maybe it is — makes more sense than tempests.
  • Them pests!

The Hitchhiker – W.G.O.D. (11/26/85)

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Gary Busey.

That’s it.  Join me tomorrow for The Outer Limits.

Wait, what?  This was 3 years before riding a motorcycle without a helmet made him seem like he had played too much football without a helmet? OK, then.

Seeing the date of his skull-cracking crash, I am stunned.  I thought after his accident, he had immediately become . . . shall we say, erratic.  However, the crash was in 1988.  He still had the relatively subdued performances in Point Break, Under Siege and The Firm ahead of him.  Whatever, like Randy Quaid in Night Visions, it is just nice to see him young and healthy.

Busey plays Reverend Nolan Powers, a radio evangelist.  We join him mid-call with an adulterer who has been sneaking out for nooners at the Airport Ramada Inn.  He tells her he is going to play a song for her, but strangely nothing is done with this. The music seems to be as stock as the first DVD releases of WKRP, so I guess budgetary issues stopped them from doing anything interesting with it.

His takes a call from a shoplifter, and he then has another untrustworthy type in the studio, a network reporter from Weekend LapWatchdog.  His last call of the day is a young man, but his call is distorted with feedback as he requests What a Friend We Have in Jeebus (availabe since it entered Public Domain in the year of our Lord 1206).  After the show, reporter Eric Sato rides with Powers in his Lincoln back to the Reverend’s modest 12,000 square foot parsonage.

We’re still only 5 minutes in, but the direction and set design are already pretty impressive.  We got some nice dizzying aerial shots of the station and tower.  The building has huge letters WGOD on the roof.  Even more amazing are the 10-foot tall letters in front of the building.  If this is where the budget money went, I can listen to some generic hymns.

Sato would like a tour of the house, but Powers does not invite him in.  Powers hears What a Friend We Have in Jesus coming from the attic.  His mother is playing his brother Gerald’s records again.  Even though Gerald ran off, Mom still adores him, living in his old attic bedroom with the college pennants and model airplanes.  Powers rips the record-player’s [1] power cord from the wall, but it continues playing.

The next day, caller #1 is pain-killers, and that is how his callers are designated on his call screen — atheist, mid-life crisis, pain-killers.  The mysterious young man calls again, but without the feedback and distortion.  He tells Powers, “I want to save your soul, or do you want to die a sinner?”  The microphone gives a spark and the caller ominously says, “You’ll be hearing from me.”  Could this be Gerald?

Later, Powers is putting on an anti-abortion show at the local mall.  Once again, this looks great.  It is filmed in a real split-level mall, it has a banner with a logo, the many extras are dressed neatly in a nice mid-western style.  The Armani-clad reporter comes in just in time to hear Powers wonder if maybe “Jesus has already returned and was flushed down an abortionist’s toilet.”  Gotta say if that’s your philosophy, it is a pretty good question.

That night, Powers makes a phone-call and the Gerald-voice answers. He is watching a replay of the rally and his mother thinks she sees Gerald in the crowd.  Powers goes to the garage, grabs a shovel and gets in the Lincoln.  On the radio, he again hears What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  Gerald’s voice comes on the radio and taunts Powers over how he abused Gerald when they were kids, and accused him of being a mama’s boy.

Powers drives back to the station.  You pretty much know what is going to happen, but the specifics are carried out with genuine creativity and style.  It is not a one-man show, but Busey really blows everyone else off the screen.  He does what I have seen many others fail at in the course of this blog — he comes off as a believable voice on the radio. As things fall apart, I see him as a real person breaking down, not a caricature or latter-day Busey.

Great stuff.

Post-Post:

  • [1] For the kids, that is an actual player of records — mono with a jagged needle and scratchy speakers.
  • Other nice little flourishes:  The cross on the phone, in headlights, and as the hood ornament of the Lincoln; the microphone dripping blood.
  • I watched this on You Tube where it has French subtitles.  Over there, the station is D.I.E.U.  Pretty clever, but now that I think of it, why do WGOD and DIEU have periods?  They aren’t abbreviations.
  • Gary Busey will play another evangelist in The Outer Limits.  In Season 6.  God help me.
  • There actually is a WGOD in The Virgin Islands.
  • Fun Fact: I learned from this episode that old CRT computer monitors had a red incandescent bulb in them.  OK, that’s a cheap shot at a good episode, but it is weird how long they lingered on it.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Impossible Dream (04/19/59)

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A couple are is dancing and discussing what a tramp the woman is (by 1959 standards, anyway).  There are 2 gunshots which are effective shocks even though (i.e. because) they are so unrealistically staged.  They are dancing very close and shown from just below the shoulders when the shots are heard.  It is almost comical what a non-sequitur they are. Before the shots, the woman’s arms do not move, so it is as if she was holding the gun between them the whole time.  As we hear the shots, there is absolutely no recoil.

The camera pulls so far back we can see the director — no wait this has been a scene filmed for a movie.  Stage-victim Oliver Matthews picks himself up and heads for his dressing room.  He opens up a bottle of hooch and unloads on his assistant, Miss Hall.  He hates the film, hates that he has been reduced to a small role, and hates having to act beside Myra Robbins.  But he’s not just a h8ter, he does love that booze.  Miss Hall gets him to put down the bottle by offering a sedative.

Her slavish devotion is repaid by Matthews telling her, “You ought to find yourself a man.  You’re drying up,  Pretty soon you’ll have fewer choices.”  He goes on a Serling-esque harangue of self-pity about himself and mockery of Miss Hall.  This a pretty pathetic pair.  Even as Matthews is cruelly taunting Miss Hall on the way out the door to Mexico, she is obsequiously fawning over him.

We are tricked as he actually goes home, not that the director gives us any clue — this could have been a place in Mexico.  However, the wardrobe lady from the film set  who Matthews had earlier pretended not to know walks in and is all smiles.  I was expecting that his previous ass-hattery was an act and that he would be charmingly in love with the lowly wardrobe lady, Grace Dolan.  Well cheers to them for fooling me, but jeers for them subjecting me to another depressing co-dependent train-wreck of a relationship.

In this pairing, Dolan is blackmailing Matthews to keep quiet about his role in her daughter’s murder.  Ya know, most parents might take such evidence to the police.  He insists that he is broke and can’t keep paying.  She nastily demands that he write the check anyway and damn well better find a way to cover it.  As she is leaving, he asks her to stay for a drink which is not at all suspicious.

As she is looking through his record collection, he dumps a bottle of his sedative in her glass and charmingly stirs it with his finger.  As a result of the drug or his grubby finger, Dolan passes out.  She is so disgusting that he isn’t tempted to do anything but kill her.  He loads her in the car, wraps her in chains and gives her a long shove off a short pier.

He returns home and finds Miss Hall there.  She knows what Matthews did, but will not tell the police as long as he will be her boyfriend.

This episode is a victim of its own success.  Franchot Tone is just great as Matthews.  And, by great, I mean repulsive.  Miss Hall is so needy, you go right past empathy into thinking “what’s wrong with this woman?”, and Grace Dolan is just as nasty as Matthews. There is just no one to root for or identify with.

Post-Post:

  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.