The screaming!  My God, the screaming!

The very first words of the episode are screams from Carl Archer in his hotel room.  “SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!  IT WAS NO HALLUCINATION!”  Another man tries to reason with him, but Carl continues shouting, “YOU WANT TO HEAR IT AGAIN?  I’LL TELL IT  THOUSAND TIMES!” It comes as no shock when we learn the other man is a psychiatrist, Dr. Sanders.  Or that Carl just got out of rehab six weeks ago.  Flashback . . .

Carl goes to Nevada to find his wife who has filed for divorce.  He enters the hotel lobby and sees his 10 year old son Steve.  The boy seems a little hesitant, so Carl says, “I’m not drunk, if that’s what you’re wondering.”  Does that ring true?  I have little intimate experience with alcoholics, and no intimate experience with 10 year old boys.  Would a father say that?  Even more incredibly, Steve says that his mother sent him down to the lobby to find out if his dad was drunk.  I’m pretty confident I can say that would never happen.

The latest in spelunking gear

Carl tells his young son he will never have to worry about his ol’ Dad being drunk again.  Before he can discuss his financial issues or the time he went to a prostitute during the war with the boy, they go to Helen Archer’s hotel room.  She avoids Carl’s hug, then sends Stevie out to put something in the car, and pick up a carton of Luckys while she and Carl talk.

Carl sees that she got the flowers he sent but that she didn’t read the note.  She tells him he was always sweet and thoughtful.  He adds, “except when I was drunk and looking for somebody to punch?”  Whoa, is that the titular one step beyond?  This is getting pretty heavy for a 1950s TV show about ghosts.  She asks why he came all the way out here.  She says, “The answer is no.”  She always used to think he could change, but has given up.  She recalls “the last time you were drunk, shouting and fighting, and the way those two policemen looked at me!  I’ve forgiven and forgotten so many times that it’s just all gone out of me!”

Carl says, “We both need to remember how horrible it was.  That’s what will stop it from happening again” which simultaneously sounds like the best and worst advice ever.  She starts crying and says, “I can’t go through this again!  I can’t!”  He tells her he was angry at her for having him committed to that awful place, but is now grateful because it made him want to sober up. Anyhoo, he asks to be taken back, she says she’ll think about it, then she takes Stevie to see an abandoned mineshaft.

What’s that, girl? Trouble at the old mine?

They go into the old silver mine which fortunately is one of them mines with natural lighting and no rats or methane.  Helen has chosen to explore this mineshaft in a white dress that comes down to her mid-calfs, so maybe she’s hitting the sauce too.  I must say, though, she looks pretty hot in that slim little dress.  As the Germans say, “She can explore mein shaft anytime” although I’m not clear on why they say half of it in English.

After Stevie talks about his father several times, Helen decides to give Carl another chance.  Steve runs ahead and crawls up onto one of the support trusses and starts hammering away at it.  There is a cave-in on both of them.

Carl is passed out drunk on the sofa in Helen’s hotel room; no wait, he’s just sleeping, but it was a reasonable mistake.  Helen bursts in, her white dress filthy, and begins screaming, “HE’S TRAPPED!  HE’S TRAPPED!  HE’S TRAPPED IN THE MINE!”  They speed back to the mine.

Inside the mine, Carl sends Helen to find more help and begins digging through the rubble to find Stevie.  He struggles with the large rocks and beams.  Luckily 2 guys heard Helen’s screams and come to help.  They finally find Stevie and he is OK.  Then he starts shrieking, “MOM!  MOM!  MOM!  MOMMY!” and runs back into cave-in area.  He starts digging in the rubble, far more effectively than his father had BTW.  He uncovers Helen’s lifeless hand sticking out from under a heavy beam.  Stevie starts shrieking, “DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!  DADDY!”  Seriously, 16 consecutive times in the same ear-splitting, high-pitched shriek.  This could have been a very effective moment if the kid had been better directed, or gagged.  While Stevie is screaming, Carl begins digging Helen out.

When he clears enough rubble to confirm that it Helen’s cold smokin’ hot body, he screams, “OH GOD!” and runs from the area; leaving Stevie in the cave-in site, BTW.  When he gets past the other men, he just wails incoherently and belts out the most deranged screams I’ve ever heard from a human who was not governor of Vermont.  He runs through the mine screaming, his arms flailing about.  This is a brutal situation for a man to be in, but it was hard not to laugh at his hysterics.

He stands silently outside the adit ^[1] for a moment, appearing to be dazed.  Then he suddenly starts shrieking again.  I see where Stevie gets it.  One of the good samaritans holds him back from returning to the mine.

We end up in the hotel room where we started.  Carl is telling the story to Dr. Sanders.  The doctor explains that Helen was killed instantly in the cave-in.  She appeared at the hotel, but her car never left the mine.  He says Carl was fatigued from a long drive, and under great emotional distress.  When Helen and Stevie were gone longer than expected, maybe he feared they would never come back.  Ergo:  Hallucination.

Carl screams, “I SAW HER!  SHE WAS STANDING RIGHT HERE!”  Sanders reminds him that as a chronic alcoholic, he has had hallucinations before.  Actually there is some serious dialogue here, deeper than I would have expected from William Schallert.  One of the men who helped dig out Stevie comes by the room and says it was a woman’s scream that brought them to the cave.  Carl feels vindicated and walks Stevie out of the hotel.

This episode was a little like yesterday’s TFTC in that it seemed to jump genres.  We learn in the beginning that something strange happened.  Then we get pure Lost Weekend melodrama for almost 10 minutes. Then we get the action portion of the tonight’s broadcast, followed by another extended melodramatic scene.

It is all well-done.  Charles Aidman (Carl) was more unhinged than I have ever seen him.  I usually think of him playing calm, rational characters.  He could have used some of this anger to give his 1980s Twilight Zone narration some edge.  William Schallert also surprised me.  I think of him as a comedic actor, but he was spectacular as the psychiatrist.  The mine set was nice, and the cave-in was believable.

But that screaming!  Charles Aidman gets us off to a bad start with his loud shouts.  Stevie is just unbearable as he screams continuously in the mine.  I know his mother was just killed, but his performance is just brutal.  Aidman’s screams as he runs out of the mine are nothing short of histerical and hylarious.  We even get a replay of the opening scream in the closing scene. ^[2]  So, a good episode, undermined by some over-emoting.

Other Stuff:

• [1] Throwing a bone to crossword puzzlers.
• [2] Like Pulp Fiction, the wrap around scene is a little different in the beginning than the end.  I understand screwing up a word, but a bellhop delivered an envelope in the opening, but was never seen in the closing.  That’s a pretty hig miss.
• And that’s 1,000.

It takes so little to entertain me.  John Newland opened the episode this week standing in the rain with an umbrella.  Never saw Rod Serling do that.  And it was real rain, or at least real fake rain.  Not the usual screen of drizzle between the camera and the actor where he miraculously doesn’t get a drop on him.  Like the glimpse of the French Street in the previous episode, the little things in this series really ground it for me.

It’s a good thing this started out on a pleasant note.  We are immediately introduced to Will and Carol Jansen who are just as repulsive as Larry and Angie from last week’s AHP.  Will accuses his wife of purposely wearing a low-cut dress and flirting with the other men at the party.  Carol accuses him of . . . well, I’m not sure what he did wrong, but I’m sure it was bad because she is pissed.  Oddly, the final straw is when he insults the awful hat she wearing.  Seriously, that brings her to tears.

The bickering continues when they get home.  Carol starts in on him about not being a good lawyer and not making enough money.  He then berates her for . . . well actually he doesn’t do anything.  He calmly pays the babysitter.  Eventually Carol literally smacks him because he monstrously . . . well, was just there mostly.  I don’t think her character is intended to be a shrew; I think we are supposed to see them as equally at fault.  But as a man it is hard for me not to get a feeling of irrationality, a feeling of emotion, a feeling of deja vu.  Will has had enough and walks out of the house.

He drives aimlessly through a laughably spotty rain storm, and finally stops at the edge of a cliff.  He angily talks to himself, mocking his wife’s words, such as when she accused him of being a lousy lawyer.  Seeing her dopey hat on the seat just makes him angrier.  He rolls down the car window using some sort of hand-powered crank mechanism — WTF? — and tosses it out into the rain.  I hope some innocent child doesn’t find that and put it on.

We get a nice shot of the cliff he is on beginning to crumble.  Of course, it is a model, but it is quick and effective — this John Newland has a future in the business.^[1]  Will begins to chide himself for getting mad at Carol.  He is all ready to drive back and slip into the bed beside her.  I literally mean the bed by her side — in 1950’s TV fashion, they have separate twin beds.  The cliff begins to completely give way and Will’s car topples off the edge.  As the car falls, Will screams Carol’s name but his last thoughts were probably “I should have nailed the babysitterrrrrr”.^[2]

He is thrown from the car and pinned beneath it.  As he screams for help, back at the house, Carol can sense he is in danger.  Not only is his leg pinned under the car, but it is pouring rain, and he could drown in a puddle.  Even Ted Kennedy couldn’t have run away from this waterlogged wreck.

Carol sensed his life was in danger, but that didn’t stop her from turning out the light and going to sleep.  At the same time, he was passing out from the pain as the rain continued soaking him.  The next morning, Carol sees that Will didn’t come home, and is visibly angry about it.  He regains consciousness and calls Carol’s name.  Again, she thinks she hears his voice at the house and actually starts to get concerned.   BTW, it is still pouring rain.

Carol continues hearing his voice, and begins receiving sensations from him such as bumping his noggin, or hearing a plane overhead.  Carol begins to think the worst — that she might have to find another man who would put up with her shit.  She lays on Will’s bed in despair and hears him calling again.  She is now very concerned for his safety.

Carol goes to the police to report Will missing.  Of course, under TV-Law the police won’t do anything for 24 hours.  She senses a sign that Will sees that says “Landmark”.  The detective drives her to Landmark Cafe.  Turns out it has been closed for a while.  On the way back to the station, Carol again receives a broadcast from Will.  She jumps out of the car and runs to the side of the cliff.  She finds her hat, and decides she might as well also look for Will while she’s there.

They spot Will and his car at the bottom of the cliff.  Carol and the detective do some cool minor stunt work sliding down to the bottom.  Carol takes him in her arms, and the detective calls for back-up.

There was a lot to really like here, but some weaknesses that make it one of the worst episodes so far.  On, the plus side, there were some great locations and models, there were some clever callbacks in the writing, and I still dig that rain.

The general criticism is that some OSB episodes are just a straight line from beginning to end.  No matter how well done some elements might be, you see the ending coming from far far away.  That’s not necessarily bad, but it is hard to achieve greatness when stories are so predictable.  This episode in particular did not work for me because both Will and Carol were poorly cast.^[3]  Watch almost any episode from this era (Science Fiction Theatre or Alfred Hitchcock, for example) and you will see an actor you think would have been a better Will.  To be fair, Carol wasn’t as bad as I made her out, and Will was not faultless.  However, the scales were not balanced and the lack of chemistry between them forced me on to Team Will out of solidarity.  I did not even mention their daughter who horribly shouted her lines.

One minor issue:  Carol describes the strange events to someone on the phone, “You know how I always felt I knew Will was thinking?”  This is so wrong for the story and the theme of the show.  Her telepathic connection from Will should have been a one-time thing brought on by the danger to his life.

Other Stuff:

• [1]  Indeed, he seemed to work on every iconic drama of the 1960s.  But why do I see so many directors with, for example, one Man from Uncle, one Star Trek, one Naked City, etc?  If he did a good job, why would he not be back?  If he was a hack, surely word would spread and he would not get so much work.
• [2]  No, this was no underage girl.  In fact she was born only 31 years after the Civil War.  Ya know, forget I said anything.
• [3]  Both had huge careers, so it must have been the casting.
• Title Analysis:  Why 12 hours?

John Newland is growing on me.  He doesn’t have Rod Serling’s gravitas or sinister demeanor, but he does have his own unique personality.  Whereas the writer Serling made sure every word was polished, I assume Newland as director took the same care to make his series visually interesting.  We’ve seen great location shots, and great use of movie footage that really enhanced the ride for the viewer.

Most of tonight’s episode takes place in a French apartment, but Newland at least gives it a little flair at the opening.  He points out the apartment in which the episode will take place.  He then walks down a tall set of steps.  I don’t recall Serling ever moving, and certainly don’t recall Alfred Hitchcock ever doing a tour de stoop.  The camera pans to to show a street which actually looks like it could be in France, even though there is no mime.  Tonight’s protagonist shows up in the smallest car I’ve ever seen.

The landlord shows her new tenant Rita Wallace (Cloris Leachman) around the apartment.  She promises it will be quiet as one neighbor is a 36 year old virgin who works at WJM, and the other has such self-esteem issues that she doesn’t realize she is just as hot as the virgin.  Rita is happy to find a small room that she can use as a darkroom.  She is a photographer in France to work on a book of photos of people with interesting faces.  The landlord agrees to send someone over.

Rita is returning home from the grocery store — with a baguette, BTW.  Hey, you can get baguettes in this country, you know!  Big baguettes, the best baguettes.  Why does every show in France have people buying a baguette?  Anyhoo, as she is putting away the groceries, she notices a shadow on the wall.  She is startled to see it is cast by a stranger in her living room with an interesting face and an even more interesting concept of people’s personal space.

She asks what he wants and he is silent for a few seconds before saying, “I was sent for.”  Rita takes that to mean her landlord sent him over for her to photograph.  She takes several pictures of the man.  The Frenchman seems to have never seen a modern camera, and is equally perplexed by the shower.  When Rita turns her back to get a glass of water, the man is suddenly no longer there.

When the landlord stops by, Rita thanks her for sending the man.  Of course, the landlord did not send him.  They had another photo session planned for that night.  The man again appears suddenly in her living room without knocking.  As Rita is taking pictures, he begins calling her Cecile and accusing her of being unfaithful.  He chases her around the apartment, but she is able to escape into the darkroom.

Her landlord and a cop show up, but the man is gone.  The police say there is not much they can do; it could be anyone.  They say gee, if only there were some way to show us what the man looked like.  Finally, Rita remembers, oh yeah, I have those 200 pictures I took of his face!  She develops the pictures and finds the man is not in any of them!

The detective, brought in because of his photographic memory, somehow recognizes the man despite him appearing in no photographs.  He takes Rita to a nearby cemetery and leads her to a particular tombstone.  The marker has a photo of the man she saw in her apartment — I don’t know, maybe that’s a French thing.  The man died in 1926, executed for killing his wife Cecile in Rita’s apartment.

As feared, there is a certain sameness to the OSB episodes so far.  However, they are so well done that it is still interesting to watch variations on a limited number of themes.  Newland finds interesting ways to present the story, including smoothly incorporating footage from other sources.  Tonight’s episode was not a great story, but those opening shots and an excellent performance by Cloris Leachman brought it to life.  It doesn’t quite achieve the consistent quality of AHP, but it is one of the better series I’ve watched.

Other Stuff:

• Yeah, a dead guy appearing in Cloris Leachman’s apartment is weird.  But those clingy dresses, those were unbelievable!  Just like TFTC was always better with a beautiful blonde killer, John Newland seems to be the king of slim hot babes in skin-tight clothes.

Ellen Larabee, not only telling the future, but balancing a tray of cookies on her head at the same time.  C’mon, Newland, just because Hitchcock never looked through the camera doesn’t mean you can get away with it.

Like thousands of other couples in New York City, Jim and Betty Hennessey are giving a cocktail party . . .

The guests are trying to get Ellen Larabee to make some of her famous predictions.  Like the time she told Marie Cooper her house was going to burn down 3 days before it happened.  Or how she predicted Betty and Jim would get married.  Arthur is skeptical of her ability to foresee such catastrophes.  After much prodding from her friends, she agrees to tell Arthur’s future.

Ellen goes into a trance and describes Arthur’s upcoming train trip.  He is immediately skeptical as he has a reservation to take a plane that night.  However, it is a Delta flight so this one could easily come true.  She drops several other tidbits before she finally “sees” Arthur with a woman holding a knife.  This kind of kills the party.

That night, Arthur comes back to the Hennessey’s apartment.  He says Idlewild is fogged in and he is going to take a train.  I guess he doesn’t want to wait for a flight the next morning, so he’s taking a 2 am train?  Nice of him to drop by the Hennessey’s and tell them.

When Arthur gets to the train station, the cabbie tells him he dropped his keys, just as Ellen predicted.  Then the conductor tries to give him room 102B just as Ellen predicted.  He breaks the cycle by insisting on a different room.  Minutes after settling in, the conductor says this room was actually booked and he will have to move to 102B.  After some argument, he relinquishes the room to the woman who had booked it.

They meet up in the club car and both order a scotch (presumably Canadian Club) and club soda and a club sandwich.  Several more of Ellen’s predictions come true.  Arthur has a great opportunity when he realizes Ellen foresaw the inscription inside a ring the woman is wearing:  To thee for whose love I rise and fall. ^[1]  Man, if he had played his cards right, maybe he would not have been sleeping in 102B after all.  But no, he blows it and lets her read it to him.

Arthur then panics and angrily demands to know if the woman knows him or Ellen.  She — by the way, Ms. Big Shot psychic predicted every stitch and accessory this woman was wearing, but did not mention her name — insists that she does not.  Arthur bolts out of the club car.  Inexplicably, the woman runs after him; maybe he didn’t pay for the drinks.  After a chase through several cars, she closes in on him.  In a panic, he pulls the Emergency Stop cable.

He wakes up with his head bandaged and the woman holding a knife.  Seems that by pulling the Emergency Stop, Arthur prevented the train from slamming into a stalled freighter.  She says she is a nurse, but that doesn’t really explain the knife.  She also asks how he knew to stop the train when it was clear that this sweaty maniac running through the halls really had no idea what he was doing.

Also, cool as it was to know the mystery lady would be wearing a fur collar and a snake ring, maybe Ellen could have also let someone know that a passenger train was going to slam into a freight train that night and possibly kill dozens.

There is not a lot of story here.  The dominoes are set up one by one, then they are knocked down one by one (not even in one of those mass falls).  The predictions weren’t particularly cryptic which might make you wonder how they could possibly occur.  The final one with the knife is dismissed anticlimactically.  Still, I appreciated the things that were well-done.

So, another quality episode, but there is a certain sameness to all of them so far.  And a certain sameness to me saying that every week.

Other Stuff:

• [1] That’s pretty salacious when you think about it.

Host John Newland tells us he is in April 1912.  He pulls a book off the shelf and mysteriously says “We will return to it later.”  Like me with that 1,000 page LBJ biography.

Grace Montgomery wakes up from a nightmare.  She screams for her mother despite not being six.  In fact, she is a beautiful woman.  Her mother does rush to her room.  She frantically says, “It was water, dark water.  I was drowning.  I couldn’t swim anymore, I was drowning.”  Her mother blames pre-wedding jitters.  “In four days, you’ll be on your honeymoon in Switzerland, and you can’t drown in Switzerland.”  You know, unless ya falls into one of those big vats of chocolate.

The next morning, her fiancee Eric Farley comes by the house to see “how the future Mrs. Farley looks in the morning.”  After his terror when her mother answers the door, they sit down for tea.  Eric surprises her by saying they are not going to Switzerland; they are going to America! ^[1]  He giddily asks her how she thinks they will get there, but in 1912, that’s not a big f***ing mystery.  It is by boat, specifically The Titanic.  Even more specifically, they are in cabin 111B right next door to John Jacob Astor. ^[2]  Thanks to Astor’s 29-years younger wife, April 14th won’t be the first night the Farlings have trouble sleeping.

She acts excited, but is worried because of her nightmare.  Her mother reads from the paper that The RMS Titanic is the world’s largest and most luxurious liner.  “By virtue of her five watertight compartments, she’s being hailed in marine engineering circles as the unsinkable ship.”

That night, Grace has another nightmare.  People in the water!  A huge ship going down!  She says she could even read the name Titanic on the lifeboats in her dream.  The next day, she and Eric discuss her dream.  He racistly says, “You don’t believe what you see in your sleep unless you’re a gypsy.”

Surprisingly, the next scene is on Titanic.  Other passengers have also had premonitions, bad feelings, heebies, and jeebies.  More surprisingly, the next next scene is in New York City, although not as surprising as if Grace and Eric were there.  Artist Harry Teller has hypnotically drawn a picture that his wife calls “awful, but his best work.”  To be fair, it is pretty awesome.

That night, Titanic hits the iceberg.  Even after being ordered to the lifeboats, Eric is cheerfully reminding Grace that the ship is unsinkable.  He puts her on lifeboat 4, but he goes down on the ship, and possibly one of the stewards.  Hey, why keep pretending?

Host John Newland returns, as promised, to the book.  It was published in 1898 and tells the story of The Titan, a ship whose dimensions and fate are the same as The Titanic.  It is a familiar story of hubris, arrogance, and the resulting loss of thousands of lives, so even more like that LBJ bio than I thought.

The second episode is as well-crafted as the first.  The production was enhanced by using footage from old Titanic movies.  Still, there is a certain sameness that I fear will creep into every episode.  Is this just going to be the premonition/reincarnation of the week?

Other Stuff:

• [1] They could have ended the episode right there; like the Twilight Zone that ended with the characters fleeing to Earth rather than from it.  It did not register with me that this was set in England.  I guess the elegance and manners seemed possible to me in this country 112 years ago.
• [2] The Astors were actually in rooms C62 and C64, which frankly ruined this episode for me.