Tag Archives: Tubi

One Step Beyond – Front Runner (06/09/59)

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Ronnie Watson is in an oxygen tent in the ICU.  He tells reporter Tim Berryman he has incontrovertible evidence that Joe Kennedy is going to steal the election for JFK next year.  But the journalist really just wants to hear about the ghost story with horsies this woozy guy is telling with his last breath.

Ronnie recalls some years ago when, at 5’10”, he was the world’s tallest jockey (although that fact is not mentioned in the story).  He is having dinner with his pal, fellow jockey Sam Barry (a slightly more reasonable 5’5″) .  Ronnie’s girlfriend joins them.  Sam says tomorrow’s race is his last  He is retiring to open a bar in New Jersey where strangers would be welcome. [3] Oh, and he adds one other thing — he is marrying Ronnie’s galrita.  His what?  Oh his gal, Rita. [2]

Rita is 29 years younger than Sam and towers about 5 inches above him, so the jockey business pays a lot better than I thought.  Or they are drawn to the business because they have something in common with horses.

At the track the next day, Sam and Ronnie are neck and neck.   Later that afternoon, their horses are running even in the race.  Ronnie reaches over and tugs on Sam’s saddle cloth.  That is enough to throw his horse off stride.

Sam complains to the judges.  They are inclined to believe Sam since he is a veteran jockey with a clean record.  However, Ronnie points out that Sam had $10,000 bet on the race.  The judges let the results stand.  Sam socks Ronnie in the kisser and says someday the tables will be turned.

Over the next 10 years, Ronnie goes on to be a rich and famous jockey.  Sam is reduced to working for $10 per race south of the border, down Mexico way.  Ronnie tells his agent he is going to retire.  On the day of his last race, he sees Sam in the line-up.  As they are in the final stretch, Sam cuts Ronnie off and they both finish out of the money. [4]

This time, Ronnie complains to the judges.  They do not believe the story about Sam cutting him off.  Mostly because Sam died in a freak steeplechase accident in Uruguay yesterday, which is how I hope to go.  They even run a film of the race showing that Sam was not there.  In the footage where Sam’s horse veers off from the pack, they are alone.

C’mon, I’ll buy the occasional appearance of a dead colleague, or an image on a wall or in a mirror.  But riding a horse?  Before the race we saw a groom leading it to the gate.  Is the groom dead?  Is the horse dead?  Is the opera dead?  How about a horse-opera?

Cut back to Ronnie today in the ICU.  He is freaking out from the story he just told.  The nurse sedates him.  He asks if the journalist believes him, then dies peacefully.

I’m baffled by this framing device with the journalist.  It seems clunky and unnecessary. I’m not even clear why Ronnie is in the ICU.  He did not take a fall in the race.  Is this supposed to be many, many years later?  He looks like he’s been beat up, but he doesn’t look older.

On the plus side, either Alcoa was shelling out some big coin, or they appropriated some great film of the horse races.

Footnotes:

  • [1]  In comparison, Willie Shoemaker was 4’11’ and Eddie Arcaro was 5’2″.  That is every jockey I can name.
  • [2]  Blatant rip-off of the goonluca gag from Police Squad.
  • [3]  OK, this means nothing to you, but it reminds me of something a friend in college said.  It was hilarious, so clearly this is not the time or place to repeat it.
  • [4]  Link goes to “We’re in the Money” from Gold Diggers of 1933.  Yeah, it might seem corny, but wait for the close up of her singing in Pig Latin around 1:35.  It is impossible to not have thoughts of your great-great-grandmother that even your great-great-grandfather didn’t have.  Sadly, the focus-puller seems to have been pulling something else other than the focus.
  • I was going to mock writer Don Mankiewicz for being the black sheep in a family that included Joseph Mankiewicz and Herman Mankiewicz.  But he actually had a fine career.  Plus no one knows who the hell Joseph Mankiewicz and Herman Mankiewicz were.

Suspense – A Night at an Inn (04/26/49)

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Want to vague that up a little more?

Sadly, what lies ahead is equally murky; an abyss, devoid of humor or purpose.  And that’s just this review.  Heyyoooo!

The maid is going from window to window in the Inn, closing the shutters on each.  Hey, get over yourself, no one is going to be peeking at you!  Well, maybe those four gangstas playing cards in the lobby.  And I mean “lobby” in the same sense that the Kramden’s had a “living room”.

There is a knock, and Boris Karloff instructs her to answer it.  A motorist asks for a room.  The Maid nervously says they are all booked up —  Perry Como [5] is in town and his posse of cardigan-wearing fans have descended on the city in their General Motors sedans and have rented rooms with toilets and showers like civilized people.  Thank God music fans will never degenerate to drifters, slobs and potheads.

She returns to the men and asks if they need anything else tonight.  Boris says for her to leave out 3 meat pies and 2 bottles of Claret [1], and whiskey.  She says, “They’re on the dresser” and quickly pivots to leave.  This raises several questions:

  • Who’s not getting a meat pie?  I don’t spot any likely vegans in the group.
  • Is there a dresser in the lobby?
  • Is the dresser in one of the rooms?
  • Are the guys all staying in one room?
  • Is there any point in continuing this episode?

Dull story short, the crew stole the ruby out of the eye of a statue.  They mention Bombay, but then the writer pointlessly makes up the country of Indostan.[2] So maybe he meant the gin.  Trigger Warning: One says they luckily “gave those dark devils the slip.”  

They go on and on in hammy, overbearing English accents about merchant seamen, not being able to sell the ruby because it was stolen from a temple, escaping Indostan,  betraying Boris, and the gender fluidity of Jo in Little Women.

One by one, 3 men with turbans enter the inn to retrieve the ruby.  I gotta say, I’m kinda on their side.  Boris and his pals did steal the jewel and smuggle a piece of their heritage out of the country like the Elgin Marbles or the Djibouti Jacks.  You can’t really do that and be the good guys without a cool hat and a kick-ass score by John Williams.

You know, soap and water will take care of a lot of that.

Sadly, all 3 of the Indostanleys are killed by Boris’s thugs. [3] However, then the statue itself appears and takes back his ruby eye which was inexplicably left on the windowsill.  It then hypnotizes the men to go outside, where they are killed.  Maybe that should have been Plan A.  The last to be lured out is Boris.  He says, “This, I did not foresee” which is a pretty good callback to an earlier comment by him.  

This was tough going.  As mentioned, the English accents were overwrought and difficult to understand.  The poor transfer did not help.  There was not much story even though is it based on a play.  Boris Karloff just isn’t very interesting unless he has bolts in his neck.  Maybe the worst feature was the intrusive organ [4] that seemed omnipresent.  It really was a parody of horror movie scoring.

So, a very dull outing.  I rate it a Motel 6.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Clatter per the closed captioning.
  • [2]  My guess is the writer didn’t know this was an actual word.  But it ain’t no country.
  • [2]  Upon a, literally, more sober examination, it appears to not be a word.  I think the definition I found earlier was just a rogue lexicographer. It does, however, appear as a place in the parable about elephant and six blind dudes.
  • [3]  Yes, I know.
  • [4]  That’s what she said.
  • [5]  Perry Como was yuge in 1949.  But the top song was Ghost Riders in the Sky by Vaughn Monroe.  Here is the version by Johnny Cash:

 

Tales of the Unexpected – Skin (03/08/80)

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The story begins in 1946 France.  Drioli is a maison-less guy (and that’s about it for my junior high school French).

He scavenges through the garbage cans of French restaurants.  Or as they call them in France, restaurants.  He is disgusted to find snails in the garbage can!  What has happened to my life!  How did those disgusting creatures get there!  Call Le Health Inspector!  The chef chases him away.

In the window of “the finest gallery in Paris” he sees a painting by his old friend Saltine Soutine. [1]

Drioli remembers his friend back in 1913.  Oddly enough, he remembers a conversation he was not present at between Soutine and his model Josie.  No matter, Drioli shows up soon 30 years younger, cleaner, and probably smelling better.  Although, this is France so that’s not a given.

Drioli is happy because he just made a big art sale himself.  Nine, in fact!  Soutine mocks him because he is a tattoo artist.

We learn that Josie is Drioli’s wife.  You’d never know it the way she and Soutine are all over each other.  Dioli even suggests his friend should paint his wife nude.

Josie will have none of this.  She is a nice Christian girl. The two drunken men crudely chase her around the apartment.  The prim and proper Josie flees in horror. She is disgusted by their boorish behavior.  To even think a lovely girl like her would — oh dear, she’s whipped her tits out.

And not it’s not cheap, cropped American broadcast TV nudity.  They actually show one full breast.  She has one of Drioli’s tattoos — a butterfly — above her nipple.  Soutine goes in close for a look because who wouldn’t?  However, he also starts sucking her nipple.

This gives Drioli an idea, and somehow it’s not braining Soutine with a stale baguette.  He wants a picture of Josie that he will always have with him (but will never get to see?).  He asks Soutine to tattoo a picture of Josie on his back.  Drioli goes to get his tattooing tools.  Soutine and Josie start kissing when he leaves.

When Drioli returns, somehow Josie has gone to the hair salon in those 15 minutes and now has crimps in her hair.  Or maybe Soutine just gave her an awesome rogering while her husband was gone.  She poses, and Soutine starts painting the portrait of her.  After an intense session, Soutine finishes on Drioli’s back — coincidentally just as he did earlier to Josie.  Once the painting is done, he tattoos over it. He is so proud of his effort that he signs his name on it, also coincidentally as he did earlier to Josie.

Back in the present (i.e. 1946), the filthy, disheveled rue-person Drioli goes into the gallery to see Soutine’s work.  The hoity-toity art snobs look at him in disgust like he was Norman Rockwell.

As the elite crowd looks on in distaste, the gallery owner hustles him to the door.  He strips and shows the crowd his back, which would have been my reaction, too.   Oh wait, He’s showing them the tattoo.  Drioli says Soutine was his friend and he has a picture by him.

The owner offers Drioli 200,000 francs for the picture.  He will have the finest surgeon in France remove it, and bill it as a carbuncle.  Another man says that would kill Drioli.  However, this man offers him a life of luxury.  He just has to hang out by the pool at the Hotel Bristol in Cannes with his shirt off and keep his back shaved so she doesn’t have hairy ‘pits.

Drioli walks out with the man.  Eighteen months later, the tattoo is in the window of a gallery in Buenos Aires.  A voice-over tells us there is no Hotel Bristol in Cannes.

As usual with TOTU, I was bored by the first viewing.  Going back to fill in some notes, I kind of liked it.  The accents were a challenge since it was full of foreigners, which of course is what did in your League of Nations. [2] But I got used to the French and Russian accents.  Lucy Gutteridge of the vastly underrated Top Secret! is the only performer who really stands out.  Coincidentally, also the only topless woman.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  The painting shown was actually painted by an artist named Chaim Soutine.  Painted in 1925, it is entitled View of Cagnes.  Oh yeah . . . and it is dreadful.
  • [2]  Major Frank Burns circa 1951.
  • Lucy Gutteridge was last seen on The Hitcher.
  • IMDb says she now lives on the Isle of Wight.  More like Isle of Lucy.

One Step Beyond – Echo (06/02/59)

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Paul Marlin appears dazed and confused in the California courtroom where he was just found innocent of murdering his wife.  I saw that same look after the verdict in the OJ Simpson courtroom, except it was on Marcia Clark. [1]

Marlin’s lawyer recommends he get out of town for some rest.  He still wants to know who killed his wife.  Maybe he should have hired Perry Mason.  He would have gotten Marlin off, found the real killer, and manipulated the evidence just to be sure. [2]

In the hallway, they are approached by a journalist named Ferris — the old fashioned kind of reporter that didn’t go to Harvard, leaves the office, wears a felt hat, and reeks of cigarettes and whiskey.  He asks Marlin how he feels about being “let off.”

Marlin says to Ferris, “You’ve gone so far out of your way to twist and distort everything I’ve said since my wife’s death, I see no point in even trying.”  Say, maybe he is a modern journalist.  

Ferris suggests the trial was rushed through, that the victim’s brother was kept from testifying, and that Marlin killed his wife in cold blood for family money that was in her name.  Marlin socks him in the jaw, and it is one of the best screen punches I’ve ever seen.

Marlin takes his lawyer’s advice to get out of town.  He takes a bus, so I guess that family money has not come through yet.  He gets a nice 3rd floor walk-up for $6 per night — coincidentally, the current price of that bottle of water in your room that has sat there for five years because no sane human being will pay $6 for a bottle of water.  Don’t think so?  Ever seen an expiration date on a bottle of water?

That night, Marlin sees a vision in the mirror of a man with an awesome, awesome moustache firing a pistol.  He seems very unnerved by this.  And, regardless of who the man was, and whether he had a gun or a so-so moustache, who wouldn’t be?

He goes to a nearby bar and downs a few shots.  The man from his vision enters.  Strangely, the man asks the bartender for change for the cigarette machine, and hands the bartender change for the change.  This is further emphasized when tries to pay for his scotch with giant bills that have Sauron’s picture on them.  The man apologizes about the currency and says he just got off the plane from New Zealand.  Overhearing about the NZ money, Marlin realizes this is his wife’s brother, Roger!The man thinks he recognizes Marlin and pulls out a photo. [3] He approaches Marlin, who panics and runs out of the bar.  He goes back to his room and discovers his brother-in-law’s luggage there, including a Luger.  

The man returns to Marlin’s room and confronts him.  Marlin is so panicky and sweaty that the man has to be pretty dense not to see what is going on.  Marlin says everyone thinks he killed his wife.  He accuses Roger of coming there to kill him.  And, frankly, that is what the vision showed him.

Marlin breaks down completely.  Drenched in sweat, he admits he killed his wife for her money.  Then he shoots Roger with his own Luger.  Turns out Roger brought a letter that the late Mrs. Marlin had written to him.  She said she had never been happier.  She even planned to transfer her wealth to her husband’s name to show her love.

Well, this one was a mess.  Ross Martin was excellent as the panicky Marlin, but the pieces just don’t come together.  I can’t remember an OSB where the vision turned out to be wrong.  Usually the blast from the past breaks through to our reality to restore harmony or mete out some justice.  In this case, it just got an innocent man killed.

I guess this is supposed to be like The Twilight Zone where a little cosmic justice is beaten into a bad guy.  In this case, Marlin finally admitted he killed his wife.  So he will be punished for his evil act!  One problem in this scenario:  the only person who heard his confession is dead.  All Marlin has to do is get rid of the body.  

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  A more accurate reference would have been OJ’s stooge Robert Kardashian, but who wants to bring that family into it?
  • [2]  At least, that was my takeaway from reading a couple of the books (before realizing they don’t live up to the dames on the covers).  He always seemed to throw in some extra knives or whatever to obfuscate the evidence.  I never saw the TV show, but I assume he was more ethical there.
  • [3] THIS is the picture Roger carries around with him?  It’s from a newspaper, so maybe that wasn’t the first time he decked that reporter.  But why was the story printed in New Zealand?

Suspense – Suspicion (03/15/49)

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Tubi’s thumbnail synopsis which made me laugh

 

Enough of the funny stuff. On with the review . . .

Suspense continues its love of giant fonts, opening with a yuge newspaper headline: FOURTH MURDER VICTIM FOUND, ARSENIC POISONER STILL LOOSE.

We cut to George and Ethel eating breakfast.  There is not much to this scene other than to establish George is married to a much younger, pretty blonde.  She was an actress, but had a nervous breakdown when she saw the Dewey Defeats Truman headline 4 months ago.  Oh, and their housekeeper is Eleanor Roosevelt.  Well it is an easy mistake — she is very tall, er . . . stout, and not a looker. [1]

George takes the morning train work.  There are women talking on the train, but I can barely understand a word they’re saying. I expect that today, but this is 1949 and they are speaking English.  Actually the audio is rough in several sections.

One of them is reading the back of George’s newspaper.   I hear something about Brazilians.  George is irritated and refolds his paper.  The woman sees a picture of a woman named Anderson.  As best I can tell, she was a victim of the Arsenic Killer.

Eleanor is reading the paper when George comes home that night.  He has brought flowers for Ethel who is not feeling well.   Ethel says Eleanor is doing a great job.  George had been worried because she had no references.  Ethel says that is because she had been taking care of a widow’s mother “and couldn’t very well have references”. [4]  If the mother croaked, I don’t see how that prevents the widow from giving a reference.  Unless in 1949, you had to be a man.  Eleanor announces dinner is ready.

That night, Ethel calls 9-1-1, which got off to a slow start on rotary phones. [3]  Eleanor enters and Ethel tells her George is having a severe upset stomach.  A doctor comes, but is unable to find anything wrong with George that would cause the stomach pain or their separate twin beds.

The next morning he is well enough to do some gardening.  While looking for a trowel, he sees a can of Arsenic Weed Killer in the kitchen cabinet.  He has a full day, including going to a bachelor party that night.  He warns Eleanor he won’t be back until midnight. 

When he returns home, kinda tipsy, he finds a thermos of hot cocoa that Eleanor left for him.  He takes a sip, but it must not taste right because he spits it out.  He finds the arsenic can in the cabinet and sees the top has been removed after he replaced it that morning.  Thinking he has caught the Arsenic Killer, he pours a sample into a small jar.  

At breakfast the next morning, he makes excuses to Eleanor about why he is not eating.  He goes to a pharmacy to have the cocoa analyzed.  Busted!  That deranged monster Eleanor gave him instant ! Also, it is laced with arsenic.

He rushes home to make sure Ethel is OK.  Why didn’t he just call her cell?  Oh, yeah.    He is relieved to find her in good health.  Just as he is about to tell her that Eleanor is the killer, Eleanor enters and says the Arsenic Killer has been caught.  Maybe not the most reliable source for that bit of information. [5]

Oh God! I knew marrying an actress I was getting an out-of-touch, brain-dead, arrogant zombie diva who lectures me on things she knows nothing about, but murder?

George realizes it was Ethel who tried to kill him.  He asks why, and she says, “Can’t you eat one piece of toast, can’t you eat one meal without me having to hear you digest it?”  Seriously.  

Ethel seems to have another nervous breakdown [2] as she maniacally confesses to murdering her rival for an acting part.  We hear the police that George had called on Eleanor.  Ethel says, “George, how could you?”  Yeah, how could he?  He obviously had access to a phone to call the police.  Why didn’t he use the phone to warn Ethel?

The “early days of TV” excuse is wearing thin.  Citizen Kane was made 10 years earlier.  The suspense in this one was a little more formulaic than last week, but it did have a twist.  Not very good, but I grant the series another week to get on its feet.  

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Eleanor Roosevelt, Michell Obama, and Melania Trump are tied for tallest First Lady at 5’11”.  Eleanor just looked taller because she often stood next to a guy in a wheelchair.
  • [2]  You never hear about nervous breakdowns anymore.  I think it was replaced by “exhaustion”.  Although just for actors, never for farmers, coal miners, or ditch-diggers.
  • [3]  Even worse, England used 9-9-9.  
  • [4]  That makes so little sense I admit I must have heard it wrong.  But dang if I can make it sound like anything else.
  • [5]  Wait a minute.  Eleanor announces that the killer was caught, which proves to George that she isn’t the killer.  But wouldn’t that same logic also exonerate Ethel?  To be fair, Ethel then gives herself away when George says he had the cocoa analyzed, and she says, “How dare you!”
  • Ernest Truex was in 2 memorable Twilight Zones: Kick the Can and What You Need.  Sylvia Field played Dennis the Menace’s mother.
  • I say again, whoever invented the block system for WordPress should be in Hell