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One Step Beyond – The Riddle (06/16/59)

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Yet another OSB episode set outside the US.  However, they have taken away one of my usual jibes by finally going to Asia.  Americans Leonard and Betty Barrett are taking a train through India.  And one of the fancy ones, where you ride on the inside.  They have just come from the Taj Mahal and after a few days in India, the attraction they most want to see next is a McDonald’s.  

Leonard is a typical ugly American, although for paranormal reasons that will be explained later.  His wife is an atypical beautiful American played by Bethel Leslie [1] who made such an impression in AHP’s The Man with Two Faces.  Leonard is ranting about the heat, passports, cholera shots, and customs.  He would rather have gone to Paris or London, but Betty insisted on India.

As he is jabbering, an old Indian man holding a chicken opens the door of their private compartment.  Leonard becomes enraged because he ordered the fish.  He screams at the man to get out or at least bring some gulab jamum.  He even breaks a bottle and charges at the old man.  Luckily, the conductor happens by and hustles the old man out to safety.

Even after the conductor leaves, Leonard is still hostile.  He says he did not like the old man’s face — it had a murderous expression!  And that if they had been asleep, he would have cut their throats!  Finally, he calms down.  When he becomes lucid enough to see the bottle in his hand, he does not know how it got there.  I feel your pain, pal.

The train stops in a small town.  He sees the old man has gotten off the train.  Seeing the old man on the platform enrages him again.  He says, “If he tries anything, I’ll kill him!”  Their eyes meet, and Leonard takes off after him.  Betty then chases Leonard through the streets of Narainpur.  She catches up to him, which is easy, because he is collapsed on the ground, surrounded by Indians.  Betty pleads to the crowd, “Is anyone a doctor?”  None of them are, so I guess this was not filmed in America.

An American steps  forward and says he is a medical missionary (?).  They go back to the man’s home which looks pretty doctory.  Leonard is baffled by his own behavior.  He says he doesn’t even really dislike anyone, but he hated this man. He felt like,  “If I didn’t kill him, he was going to kill me!”  The Constable knows the old man as Kumar. He tries to get Leonard on the next train out, but he opts to get some rest first.

The rest consists of a few minutes of sleep, then an escape out the window to find Kumar. I have no idea how, but Leonard tracks down the old man at his home in this small Indian village of 200 million people.  He breaks a window and jumps in.  In keeping with 1950’s TV standards, Kumar and his wife sleep on separate straw mats. [2] In keeping with my standards, Kumar jumps up, grabs a rifle, and points it at Leonard.

Leonard is not cowed — er, poor choice  of words — is not intimidated by the rifle.  He advances on the old man with his hands out to strangle him.  WTF!  Kumar shoots him!  I did not see that coming.  The constable shows up immediately.  The old man is arrested, and Leonard is taken back to the missionary’s home to be treated.  WTF again!  Leonard dies!

The constable explains that many years ago Kumar and another man named Ranjit were in love with the same woman.  She chose Kumar.  Ranjit tried to kill Kumar, but Kumar shot him.  The constable noticed that Leonard’s birth date on his passport was the exact date Ranjit died, so obviously his soul migrated at that moment.  I  guess Ranjit guided Leonard to Kumar’s home tonight.  Luckily, he had not moved in 40 years.

Two things you can count on with OSB:  They don’t deviate much from their narrow slice of the genre pie, and the episode will look awesome.  One unfortunate new theme has arisen, though.  This reminded me of Echo two weeks ago.  In that episode, an innocent man was killed because of a paranormal event that had nothing to do with him.  The same thing happens here.  Leonard was possessed by Ranjit.  He had no free will when he attacked Kumar and was shot.  I miss the more standard template where the victim is getting a cosmic come-uppance, i.e. had it coming

It is also miraculous that Leonard ever had the opportunity to confront Ranjit’s killer.  It’s not like he had this mysterious desire to visit India all his life, as if it were calling to him.  He wanted to go to France or Italy, but Betty dragged him here.  What were the odds he would end up in India?  It’s not like Ranjit just possessed some random dude to get at Kumar.  He has been in Leonard since birth, linked by their death and birth dates.  It had to be him.

I guess I can’t complain about sameness when they try to mix things up.  At least they still have those great production values.  Sometimes, as in this episode, the scoring is very effective.  I also enjoyed seeing Bethel Leslie again.  Sadly, I don’t feel like I captured her beauty in these shots.  So, as usual, OSB wins me over through sheer professionalism.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  Bethel really is an awful name for such a beauty.  I hope she at least pronounced it Beth-EL or Heather.
  • [2]  Upon further examination, it appears Kumar is sleeping on a cot and his wife is sleeping on the floor (see below).  Maybe she should have married Ranjit.
  • Title Analysis: No idea.  Yes, there is a question about what is happening, but that’s every episode. 
  • Still no paranormal activity in Africa.

Suspense – Dead Ernest (05/03/49)

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The titular Ernest takes his gal Margaret to the movies.  And I mean takes her and leaves her — to see “a news-reel, a sports-short, a travelogue, Bugs Bunny, and a double-feature.” [1]  They figure that will time out about the same as the double-header he is going to see at Ebbets Field.  Unless both movies are The Ten Commandments, I think she should count on him being late. [2]

She makes sure that Ernest is wearing his medical alert bracelet and has his please-for-the-love-of-God-DO-resuscitate letter.  She puts it in the pocket of his Joe Mannix sports-coat and tells him not to take it off at the ball-game.

Skipping ahead to the Fran portion of the program.

As she enters the theater, he crosses the street and is almost clipped by a car.  This triggers his catalepsy — an affliction that makes it appear that he is dead.  It even imitates the early stages of rigor-mortis.  If this had happened after sitting in the sun in his jacket & tie for a double-header at Ebbets, he probably would have smelled dead, too.  Officer Chauncy Lindell takes off the jacket and makes a pillow for Ernest’s head.  His medical bracelet is kicked down a sewer grate.

An opportunistic haberdasher sees the coat just sitting there after the ambulance carts Ernest away.  So he takes it back to his shop and puts a price tag on it.  Writer Fran and her actor husband Henry enter looking for a sports jacket.  Inexplicably, the proprietor tells them to try Abercrombie & Fitch.  Fran says they are too expensive.  She sees Ernest’s jacket on the counter and says, “Hey, is that a Joe Mannix?”  Because of, or despite, some blood stains, they are able to buy the jacket for $5.

While Fran is scrubbing out the stains, she finds the letter.  She reads it aloud:

I carry this wherever I go.  It is to advise responsible parties that I am a cataleptic.  My body must not be molested for a period of 72 hours, neither by autopsy nor embalming.  The maximum period of my attacks rarely exceed 4 hours.  Please call my wife or doctor.  This is of vital importance.  It may mean my life.

Fran asks Henry what a cataleptic is.  He says, “Don’t ask me.  I went to a drama school, not Johns Hopkins.”  Wait, an actor not presenting himself as an expert in medicine, science, and politics?  This guy will never get hired!  They look it up in a dictionary — the old kind that can’t be instantly changed online to suit some 23 year old’s fascist political whims.

Credit where due:  Fran and Henry have a good, logical conversation deducing how the bloody jacket came to be at the shop, the timing of the event, and the condition the owner might be in.

We cut to a couple of yahoos in the morgue listening to a ballgame on the radio.  The announcer says Jackie Robinson has just stolen a base, “That boy can really run.”  Okaaaaay.  There is a refreshing flash of creativity as Ernest is wheeled into the morgue, toe-tag first.  He appears dead except, unseen by the attendants, one hand is opening and closing.

Henry, and especially Fran, prove to be pretty good detectives as they try to piece together what happened.  There is even a nice attempt at the titular suspense as they need to use a payphone and some woman is hogging it.  Fran tries to call Mrs. Bowers, but she is still at the theater on about Commandment #7.

So they go back to the clothing shop.  The owner is reluctant to admit he picked up the jacket off the street after being used to prop up a dead guy’s noggin.  He finally fesses up.  His description of the event convinces Fran and Henry that the jacket’s owner is in danger of being embalmed at the morgue.  They try to call, but the two yahoos don’t answer the phone.

As the two morgue monkeys assemble their needles and scalpels, the organ really starts in.  One of them has a problem with his glasses fogging up when he leans over the corpse’s face.  There is a nice fuzzy POV shot of Ernest through the steamy glasses — unfortunately, it is from the camera’s POV, on the other side of the body from the coroner.

Finally, they answer the phone.  In the 2nd of back-to-back errors, he answers the phone without it ringing — which is the opposite of what I do.  He says, “It is some dame babbling about a guy with no coat that may not be dead.”  His blurry-eyed partner comes to the same conclusion. [4]

Finally Ernest opens his eyes.

There was some good stuff here.  The title is awesomely grim for 1949.  The scenario has suspense baked in.  There was some intelligent dialogue as Fran and Henry pursued the mystery.  They manufactured suspense with the phone calls and Ernest’s imminent embalming.  Margaret Phillips was delightful as Fran.  She was smart, sexy, and had an awesome Mid-Atlantic accent that sounded like Katherine Hepburn, but less like a car-starting. [3]

On the down side . . . well, you have to just accept that it was made in 1949 for no budget.  I guess Auto-Lite did not cough up the big bucks like Alcoa on One Step Beyond.  They played the telephone card too much here, but again, you are dealing with those limitations, plus a short running time.  The main criticism, as in previous episodes, is the obnoxious organ music.  You could say that’s just how things were done at the time, but it doesn’t make it right.  Just ask Jackie Robinson.

Other Stuff:

  • [1]  All for the low, low price of 35 cents.
  • [2]  When Googling Ten Commandments, the first suggestion is the movie not the, ya know, actual Ten Commandments.  Just sayin’.
  • [3]  I would give attribution for that great analogy, but I can’t remember where I heard it.  Actually Margaret was born in the UK, so I’m sure some of that is in there too.  She was last seen as a naughty, naughty girl in ToT’s The Evil Within.
  • [4] There was another goof in the lab earlier.  One of the guys commented on Ernest being brought in with no clothes, then corrects himself to say no jacket.
  • Suspiciously similar to Breakdown on AHP.  Catalepsy and a Get Out of Morgue Free Card also play roles in another AHP episode, One Grave Too Many.
  • The first writing credit for Seeleg Lester.  That might mean nothing to you, but it means nothing to anyone else either.  He did have a yuge career, though.
  • Not that anyone else cares, but it really bugs me that the top photo is not the Joe Mannix jacket.  He wouldn’t have been caught dead in that thing.  I think that was a Herb Tarlek.  It was just too tough to find any other shots of Margaret smiling.

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.