Once again, I have to applaud Tales of Tomorrow for going for the long ball.  In the first 2 episodes, they destroyed the earth twice.  This week, they are presenting a novel (or, at least, a novella) in a 25 minute episode, inviting comparisons to a classic adaptation, and working without the copyrighted make-up that everyone associates with the monster.

A group is sitting around a dinner table discussing the perfect human being.  I assumed that this was going to be the alleged party where Mary Shelley came up with the idea for her book.  But the time allowed allows no time for almost anything in the book, never-mind outside the book.  Elizabeth suggests, “The perfect human being should be giant in size, strong as a gorilla, disease-proof, durable and quick to learn.”  Victor Frankenstein opines that not only should Mr. Perfect be those things, he will be all those things.

Unbeknownst to Elizabeth, Victor is working on such a dreamboat.  Much is made over Dr. F. throwing a few switches and hovering over a sheet draped over a figure on the slab.  It’s amazing how much padding is required when shrinking a 166 page book down to 25 minutes.  The shape begins moving and a grotesque figure arises.

The brute gets up off the slab and bounds around the laboratory.  Despite Victor and Elizabeth’s predictions, he seems to be about 4 inches shorter than Victor.  Vic ties him down, but naturally that doesn’t last long.  The brute finds his way to the dining room, sending the help into hysterics.

A little boy handles his appearance a little better, but makes the mistake of saying he’s ugly.  He finds a mirror and sees the kid is right.  In his rage, the brute picks up a chair like he’s going to smash it, then gently places it back on the floor.  This is actually the 3rd time this move has been used with a chair.  I assume it’s because busting chairs was not in the budget, and they had to get them back to the Ozzie & Harriett set before sunrise^[1].

After the commercial, the brute breaks into the lab where Victor and his butler are waiting.  Victor shoots him several times, inexplicably, in the dick.  He falls out the window, 200 feet into the water.  Naturally, he comes back Jason-style.  Victor is able to kill him with electricity.

Well, what did I expect?  It just wasn’t possible to do much justice to the great novella in 25 minutes.  The whole episode is really nothing but the brute ambling around and people screaming.

At least it was a lesson well-learned by the Tales of Tomorrow producers. You just can’t adapt a book into a 25-minute episode.  Next week:  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . . . oh, crap.^[2]

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Further reading suggests that Chaney’s delicate handling of the chairs was due to his being drunk and not realizing this was the live performance rather than a rehearsal.
• ^[2] The next episode to air was indeed 20k Leagues < the C, but sadly it is not included in the collection I am watching.
• John Newland (Victor Frankenstein) was the host of another genre series, The Next Step Beyond.
• The brute was played by Lon Chaney Jr. who played The Wolf Man.
• Not sure why I latched onto the word “brute.”  It does appear in the original Frankenstein, but only once.

The first thing that registered as I wrote down the title was, Hey this aired 10 years to the day after Pearl Harbor!  Amazingly, for a medium that managed to show 5 seasons of Gomer Pyle without mentioning Viet Nam, the episode actually starts with, “Can Pearl Harbor happen again?  Tonight we present Sneak Attack.”  But then, people back then weren’t complete pussies.

The action begins “in 1960, in a hospital room somewhere on foreign soil.”  Major Ray Clinton is the patient, having just had 5 slugs removed from his legs — the lead kind, not the mushy kind.  His doctor seems to think that Clinton is actually a plant sent by their own government to spy on them.

That night, the doctor comes back to his room to try and figure out who he is.  She believes that if he were really an American, the military would have killed him rather than bring him to a hospital.  And she is suspicious that he survived a close-range machine gun blast with only 2 superficial leg wounds.  Clearly this is before movies where sustained machine gun blasts at close range generally result in zero wounds for the hero.  He tells him that he, in fact, is able to walk.

Clinton gets dressed.  She tells him there is a secret weapon being designed in this very hospital for a sneak attack on the USA.  He is baffled why she would tell him this.  When another doctor enters the room, she takes his temperature with her tongue (orally, I hasten to add).  So apparently getting caught talking to a spy is bad; swapping spit with him is dandy.

A stentorian voice-over tells us that in New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and 20 other cities, the skies were darkened by planes bearing America markings.  The pilot-less planes landed for reasons unknown.  While the politicians are yakking in the White House, the plane in Denver blows up and destroys the entire city.  This is more like it!  After destroying the earth in the first 2 episodes, Tales of Tomorrow had gotten a little squishy.

We get some shot of the carnage which I assume is from the war, ended only 6 years earlier.  We are told there are 46,000 dead in Denver.

I appreciate the little runway model, but this airport design is just a recipe for disaster.

Now that we’re in the mood, we cut back to Clinton and his doctor.  The other doctor who caught them doesn’t care that they were kissing. As he leaves the room, he even turns off the light.  That must have been fairly scandalous in 1951.

When Clinton learns about the sneak attack, he demands to be given his clothes; especially his right shoe.  His doctor retreives it and Clinton is able to send a message to the White House telling them he can stop the bombs.

He has his doctor pretend to take him  to the bombs at gunpoint.  When they reach the guards, he wrestles with one, leaving his female doctor to wrestle with the other. Somehow, and I have absolutely no idea how, this results in the control room blowing up.

When the deadline passes without the country being destroyed, the sanctimonious president says that the enemy just can’t understand that we’ve had “a taste of Liberty” — a mere 184 year sip at that point — and “prefer death to life on our knees.  When will they realize that we want only peace and freedom.”

Well, OK but they better bomb the shit out of that other country if they expect to get re-elected.

Post-Post:

• Sponsored again by Jacques Kreisler Watchbands.  My favorite feature is that they demonstrate how the women’s band easily slides up the arm so she can do the dishes.
• Added bonus:  the announcer clearing his throat during the credits.

After a brief diversion to CARE last week, we are back to being sponsored by wrist-band king Jacques Kreisler.  Featured this week, the men’s Monte Cristo which is packaged in the barrel of a gun, perfect for air travel (and fabulous served with red currant jelly).  For the ladies, they feature the Flirtation — styled “from the times of Madame Pompadour” so you too can look like an 18th century French whore.

CEO Wayne Crowder is arguing with company controller Davis about his expensive plan to build a spaceship.  He shows this detailed map of his route to Davis and displays a Sharptonesque grasp of the written word, “what we’ll do on the first test flight, break out of the . . . the . . . this . . . into the stratosphere.”  Really, he couldn’t have just guessed either “troh-po” or “trop-po”?  Or showed up sober for rehearsal?

Eager to show off how how much better his SAT math score was than his verbal, he pulls out another chart that maps his planned Velocity per Second versus Light Years.  The trip to Mars is is about 34,000,000 miles, and one light year is 36,000,000,000,000 miles.  I’m no Norman Einstein, but I’m not sure why he has scaled the chart to 11 Light Years.  And how that would only take 7 seconds.

His chief engineer tells him the initial costs for the rocket will be over $500 million.  And this is in 1952 when $500 million meant something. We get stock footage of production, scrap metal being salvaged, trains running.  Crowder places an ad in the paper:  “$100,000 for man to fly me into space.”

After $20M is spent and he still doesn’t have an engine for his rocket, Davis tells him that he should think what will happen to the smaller stockholders.  Crowder gives his detailed plan of how he will pull off this amazing feat of engineering: “I’ve never failed and I won’t start now.”  This guy should be running for president.

The engineer then brings in Mr. Wilkins, a man who can design the engine for his rocket.  Wilkins has brought no blueprints or designs.  He says his concept will use magnets.  Opposite poles attract, similar poles repel.  The Roarkian designer is less interested in being paid than being able to build the spaceship.  He does however insist on a few things.  There will be no questioning of his design, and he gets to be on the flight.

As Crowder builds his rocket, the press labels it Crowder’s Folly and his company’s board tries to stop the project.  When Wilkins tells Crowder that he will need $100M of Mercurium to fuel the ship, Crowder vows to get it.

Eventually, the ship is completed.  On the day it is to lift off, the newspaper headline is WALL STREET LABELS ROCKET “CROWDER’S FOLLY” which is exactly the same headline it had months before.  Or maybe the paper has just been laying around for a few months.  Crowder admits that to fund his folly he fraudulently “over-subscribed the stock” and stupidly paid with a credit card so the subscription automatically renewed.

Wilkins and Crowder board the ship and strap into chairs in the absurdly cavernous cockpit — the engineer in Alien had a tighter capsule.  Once they are in the stratosphere (having passed that other sphere) Wilkins gives the OK to unfasten the safety belts and move freely about the cavern.  This was, after all, only the titular test flight.  Crowder proclaims it a success and tells Wilkins to head back to Earth so he can start work on another $500M ship capable of reaching Mars even though he has committed stock fraud, and pissed away more of other people’s investments than the Clinton Foundation.  Wilkins informs him that this ship is going to Mars.

Crowder overpowers Wilkins and tries to change course.  Wilkins has frozen the controls and says that he is “going home to Mars.”  Crowder wanted to build an empire on Mars, Wilkins just wanted to go home.  As Crowder watches, Wilkins transforms into an alien.  Well, technically he was an alien the entire time; now he no longer species-identifies as a human.

A little disappointing as the world was not destroyed as it was in the first 2 episodes.  Still, for all the hammy acting, live TV mishaps, cheap sets, and cheesy organ music it is very enjoyable.

Test Flight is a success.

Post-Post:

• Lee J. Cobb was #3 of the titular 12 Angry Men.  I’d like to see a sequel called 1 Happy as Shit Man starring the clearly guilty psychopath that Henry Fonda is responsible for setting free to terrorize his neighborhood and those who testified against him.  Snitches get stitches, bitches.
• I’m not sure if Mercurium is a real thing.  The only other reference is in Star Trek Voyager, also as a spaceship fuel.

The episode starts out with scenes of actual refugees displaced in WWII-ravaged Europe, wandering aimlessly, digging through garbage cans for food, sleeping in ruins.  I thought this was a pretty cavalier appropriation of reality for a hokey 1950’s sci-fi show.  Then the announcer revealed that this was an ad for CARE.^[1]

In a primitive installation in the Arctic, Carl Evenson and his amazingly good sport of a wife are anxiously awaiting 9 pm when his life’s work will be put to the test.  He assures her that his Bismuth Fission experiment — a real thing, by the way — has only a 1 in 100 chance of triggering planetary Armageddon (although, on the bright side, at least Ben Affleck is not part of this one).

Evenson gets a call from some people who think maybe the odds might be a little too dicey just to supply Scandinavia with electricity.  Back in London, a couple of scientists are discussing newly declassified information that the experiment will set off an oxygen reaction, setting the entire planet on fire.   A colleague at an unnamed university in Princeton NJ  places the odds as only 1 in 200 . . . but the opposite way — a .5% chance that Evenson will NOT destroy the world.

Scientists all over the world try to reach Evenson to tell him the experiment will blow up in everyone’s face.  A faux-POW, if you will ^[2].  He refuses to take their calls.

A couple of them get together and fly to Scandinavia to try to reach him via his former co-workers.  When this doesn’t work, they fly to Antarctica.  As the episode begins just a few minutes before 9 pm according to the literally old clock on the literal wall, getting there by 9 pm was quite a feat of aviation; and driving to the airport.  Evenson might have better served science by checking out that airplane.

Finally it is 9 pm — why did they have to twiddle their thumbs to wait for that particular time?  Evenson walks over to a gigantic switch like the on/off switch I always hope to find under the hood of my car when it fails to proceed.  Then he presses down a plunger like the ones Bugs Bunny always uses to blow up Yosemite Sam (making him the first rabbit anti-yosemite) ^[3].

Cut to stock footage of an A-bomb mushroom cloud . . . and unintended laughter.  So massive is this blast that it is felt immediately in New Jersey.  I’ll say this for Tales of Tomorrow — it takes no prisoners. Two episodes, and two times earth has been destroyed.

So, it’s kinda like Fail-Safe only without the great performances and suspense.  Evenson’s motivations aren’t even clear.  It is so cheap and well-intentioned, though, that I have to like it.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] The episode aired only 6 years after WWII, and 3 years into the Marshall Plan.  I didn’t know that the plan was also offered to the Soviets.  They refused the hand-out from our government and strongly suggested their allies do the same.  I have new-found respect for the Soviets; even higher than when Ukrainian girls started appearing on the internet.  Sure, they are Commies, but still morally superior to some banks and car companies I could name.
• ^[2] Son of a bitch!  Another example of how it is bloody impossible to come up with something new.
• ^[3] Son of a son of a bitch!  At least life before Google let you feel original even if it wasn’t true.
• Antarctica was literally named for being the er, polar opposite of the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic was named for a bear.  Antarctica should have been named for the penguin.
• Available on YouTube.

Now that I’ve finished Thriller, or at least the “Fan Favorites,” it’s time to get back to the regularly scheduled Outer Limits.  But no, Hulu still has them behind the paywall; commercials aren’t enough. Oh, I know they have a commercial-free option now (yet another cash-grab), but I was ready to swallow my pride.

However, when I went to sign up, I was stopped dead. They are just a little too cozy with the fascist Facebook.  It wasn’t clear on the registration screen that you were not also signing up for Facebook as you enrolled in Hulu.  So fuck ^[1] Hulu.

And come on, America — why isn’t there a USA release of Outer Limits?  There are Canadian releases on Amazon, but they are absurdly expensive.  I ponied up for season 2 just because of Trial by Fire.  I would probably even spring for season 3 which cost more for fewer episodes, but I have read that they are censored.  Big Brotherish shielding of the delicate eyes of consenting adults from a little bit of constitutionally-protected skin like they are children?  Hey, that’s our thing, Canada!  You speak French, for God’s sake!

So now the coveted slot goes to Tales of Tomorrow.  Yeah, I never heard of it either, but I’m not really in the mood to start Amazing Stories yet.  Tales of Tomorrow ran only 2 seasons (1951 – 1953), but managed to rack up an astounding 86 episodes.  Of course this was an era when actors actually worked instead of spending their time worshiping the president, mocking the country that made them rich, insulting their fans, and trying to ban guns while flanked by their armed bodyguards.

Now on to Verdict from Spaaaaaace!

Oh, ach du lieber, we start out with a commercial — I’m getting Hulu flashbacks.  At least these are the original 60 year old commercials, so they might be interesting. Tonight’s episode is brought to you by Jacques Kreisler Watchbands.  Note to research Dept:  I wonder if Apple lets you replace a watchband or do you have to buy another useless Apple watch?

Now on to Verdict from Spaaaaaace!

Gordon Kent has a problem.  Actually, he has two problems: He is on trial for murder and he has an enormous head.  Seriously, he’s built like Steve Rogers before he became Captain America.  So he might go to prison, but on the plus side, his trim little body will make him very popular.  That’s good in prison, right?

He is being grilled on the witness stand about $5,000 that was stolen from the corpse of a Professor Sykes and a $5,000 deposit coincidentally then made into his own account. Also by coincidence that is just the sum he needed to start production on a new type of blowtorch he has invented which does not blow and has no torch.

As the jury goes out to deliberate, he sees that his lawyer has been playing tic-tac-toe. Who was he playing with?  There were just the two of them at the table.  No one expects a lawyer to give a damn about justice, but Kent is facing the death penalty, and back when it actually meant something (namely, death) — so I can’t imagine he was in a gaming mood with his rather bulbous head on the chopping block.  He takes this time to reflect on how he got here.

While tinkering in his mother’s basement (blogging having not yet been invented), Kent receives an unexpected visit from Sykes, an archaeologist.  He says he has found “the key to the past” and he needs Kent’s new blowtorch to open a secret door.  In a cave, he has found a remarkable machine that has recorded every storm, earthquake and tidal wave for the past million years.

OK, finding a million-year-old computer is an amazing scientific find.  But couldn’t it have done something a little more interesting?  Maybe predict future storms? That technology still eludes us.  I’m lookin’ at you, Yahoo Weather!

Sykes insists they go to the cave that very night.  After entering the cave, Sykes is unable to locate the door and Kent becomes skeptical.  Could it be just coincidence or is it the first recorded case of product placement when both their watches stop and we are treated to a closeup of Sykes’ watch — banded, no doubt by Jacques Kreisler.  A watchband was never this prominent again until Die Hard.

This and the eerie score tell them they are in the right cave.  After an extensive search of about 12 feet — literally, you can see Kent and the door in the same initial shot — Sykes locates the door.  It is large and rectangular like the 2001 monolith. Kent takes his new blowtorch to it, which means a little light bulb illuminates on the end.  It seems to Kent and Sykes to be doing nothing (also the audience).  Amusingly, as Kent turns it towards Sykes to comment, the sound effect for the blowtorch continues on.

Then they hear a mechanism inside the door.  Kent declares that the door has “a heat lock — heat alone will open it.”  They might have spaceships and weather machines, but we’re light years ahead of them in security systems.  So he lights the little bulb again, and they are able to enter.  Sykes shows Kent the markings on a wire of historic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.  The first mark on the wire is the test of the atomic bomb in 1945 (so that previous 999,994 years must have been pretty quiet on earth ^[2]).

The machine begins beeping and Sykes announces that an event larger than an Atomic Bomb has just occurred somewhere on earth.  It is later revealed that this was the blast of a Hydrogen Bomb (which, in reality, wouldn’t occur until a year after this aired).  In an utterly pointless argument and tussle, the machine is damaged.  The ground begins shaking and Sykes is killed by falling rocks which are about the size of dandruff.

Three Angry Men

The jury returns and has found Sykes guilty.  The judge agrees and asks if Kent would like to make a statement.  He tells the jury that “somewhere in this universe, someone has been watching us for a million years.”  He declares that whoever is out there in space was just waiting until we discovered the H-bomb, and then might be a threat to them . . . despite being untold light years away.  He pounds the table and says he “doesn’t know when they are coming, but when they do maybe you’ll realize . . .”

As his odd post-verdict closing statement goes on longer than John Galt’s, a strange sound enters the courtroom.  He runs to the window, points and screams, “look up there in the sky!  Spaceships, thousands of spaceships!”  The screen goes black and the destruction audibly begins.

Recorded on video and with a budget that makes The Twilight Zone look like Avatar — also a very poor transfer, or maybe just kinescopes.  The story is certainly hacky by today’s standards and maybe it was even in 1951.  But it was the kind of simple, cornball sci-fi story that I love, so my verdict is a 7.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] Only the 4th time I’ve used that word on this blog; I’m trying to save it for special occasions.
• ^[2] Kind of a “holy crap” moment to realize this episode aired only 6 years after we A-bombed Japan (give or take 3 days!).  Actually Pompeii and the San Francisco earthquake are mentioned; I don’t know why the A-Bomb was first.
• So the machine really served the same purpose as the 2001 monolith.
• The ads for the watchbands state “Fed. Tax Included.”  Hunh?  Was there once a national watchband tax that I forgot about?  If so, that would partially explain why no one wears watches anymore.  Way to kill an industry, government!
• These bands were running $50 – $100 in 2015 dollars.
• Written by Theodore Sturgeon, who came up with a couple of classic Star Treks as well as Killdozer.
• Available on YouTube as is as Killdozer.
• Hulu sucks.