Big Video Thursday - Forms of Things Unknown

Sorry, my work schedule makes updating a little more hectic than it used to be, so I apologize for making you wait for this new edition of Big Video Wednesday, Now on Thursday for Extra Value!

Today we continue The Outer Limits with this, the last episode of the first season:


If I may wax pretentious for a moment, we as creators are all products of our influences. And at times, when we find something that particularly excites us, we may wear those influences on our sleeves a bit. This episode, written by (once again) Joseph Stefano and directed by Gerd Oswald, is so festooned with influences that it collapses under their weight.

The episode opens without the usual narration. Instead, we see a car careening down a winding road. At the wheel, a laughing dude who decides, for some inexplicable reason, to make out with Vera Miles. The speeding car, the lovers, the man laughing at danger, the jumpy editing: I'm reminded of Godard's "Breathless," which had come out just a couple of years before, The car goes into a skid and there's a freeze frame. Did the car wreck? Did everyone die? Will the rest of the episode be simply one of those extended dream sequences where the stars are actually dead, a la "Carnival of Souls?"

I wish it made that much sense.

So when we next see Laughing Dude, he's in his swimsuit by a lake. He saunters down into the water and calls for Kasha (Vera Miles) and Leonora. Who? Oh, there's another woman with them, played by Barbara Rush (known to science fiction fans for her roles in "When Worlds Collide" and "It Came From Outer Space"). Leonora grabs a leaf off of a bush, and Kasha drops it into a drink she's mixing. She hands the leaf back to Leanora, who drops it on the ground and grinds it under her foot like she's putting out a cigarette. Kasha warns her not to chew her nails; she might poison herself.

Laughing Dude, whose name is Andre, calls for the girls to bring him his drink in the lake.


"Kasha will pour," he says, in a sadly typical passage of dialogue, "And Leonora will serve. And then we'll go to London and pay a dark call on Leonora's rich and respected father. And when we've extorted him, we'll leave London, not very respected, but very rich."

Then he drinks his drink, and is poisoned + drowned. Kasha's very cold about it all, but Leonora's freaked, and it's starting to feel more like "Diabolique" now. For some insane reason, Kasha decides to put Andre's body in the trunk of their car and take him with them (she explains it later, but it still doesn't make sense). As they drive, they stop to allow an odd funeral party to pass, and suddenly, we've slipped from "Diabolique" to "The Seventh Seal."


As they drive through a rainstorm, Leonora sees the trunk lid open and screams that Andre is still alive. Kasha stops to check, and Leonora freaks out and runs through the stormy forest, mincing along slowly in her high heels. When Kasha tries to convince her that Andre is actually dead, Leonora says that Andre has changed position in the trunk. "My soul photographed it," she explains. Then she sees a shadowy figure and runs back to the car, where she sees that Andre's body is gone. Waah!

The car won't start, so they walk to a nearby mansion to ask for help. Sir Cedric Hardwicke answers the door, playing a pretentious blind manservant who looks like Uncle Fester.


Then in walks Ilya Kuryakin, and Leonora faints. Turns out, the man she saw in the forest is an inventor named Tone who has stolen Andre's body from their trunk and plans to return him to life using his special "time tilting" device, which consists of a bunch of clocks connected by wires. Seriously.


During the conversation in which this comes up, Leonora talks about how they poisoned Andre with a leaf from a "Thanatos tree" which killed him like "a crushed clown" and I seriously have no idea where that came from or what it means.

Tone takes Leonora up to see his device, and we see the scene which played as the teaser before the credits, with Leonora giving the fakest scream of all time...


And then mincing down the hallway in her high heels.


Meanwhile Andre has come back to life and is vastly amused by his former death. He makes out with Kasha some more and wants to go to London straightaway to extort Leonora's father. We get another Bergmanesque scene...


as Tone repents to the butler (who isn't the butler, actually) of having used his power over time to "resurrect an evil clown. Man, this just keeps getting stupider.

Tone decides to kill Andre, so while Andre watches, Tone pulls a cute little pistol out of a desk drawer and loads one bullet into it, all the while flaunting his crazy eyes.


But then he gets hypnotized by a toy on a table (?), so Andre takes it from him and shoots a chair (??). Then Andre takes off with Kasha while Tone announces his intention to use the Time-Tilter to kill Andre off again.

Then Andre dies in a car crash(????), and Tone decides to use the Time-Tilter to kill himself, which he does.

The End.

Really. There's not even one line of dialogue to wrap up the story after Tone disappears. Wikipedia states that this was shot as a pilot for a series titled The Unknown, and that the original pilot had narration at the beginning and end, although the text of the narration doesn't make the plot make any more sense.

What's pretty obvious here is that Stefano and Oswald were trying to make a European art-house movie for American television but failed. Because as senseless as it is, the episode is simply too coherent to be a European art-house film.

ETA: Silly me. I forgot to embed the link to the show. Here you go:

Big Video Wednesday - The Zanti Misfits

I got a little burned out on low-budget, poorly written live 50's sci-fi, so decided to move on to an acclaimed series from the early 60's, The Outer Limits.


"The Zanti Misfits" was broadcast in 1963 and is mainly notable for some rare stop-motion effects by future animation wizard Jim Danforth, along with his Project Unlimited colleagues.

The episode opens with aliens telling a general over the radio that they are ready to land their ship, and will kill anyone who intrudes on their landing area. Then we see a black sedan crash through a gate, killing a military guard, and drive along a desert road as the alien spaceship descends above it.

Title sequence. "Do not adjust your set...." One of the most inspired title sequences of all time, I think, in concept if not in execution.

When the program resumes, we see the black sedan drive through a ghost town (ironically named Morgue) and pull to a stop in front of a building with a curiously modern door. A man gets out carrying a typewriter case, along with a soldier (okay, technically, he's not a soldier, he's an airman). What the?

As the program continues, the man, a historian named Grave, meets the Air Force general and they talk about the historic alien landing. Apparently, the aliens want to use Earth as Australia, a place to dump their criminals and undesirables, and the U.S. has gone along with the scheme to avoid pissing the aliens off and starting a war we would lose. But no mention is made of the dead guard, and by the end of the first act, we find out why. That's a different black sedan, and the sequence before the credits had been a scene from later in the show. Confusing.

So the car stops with steam billowing out of the hood. Inside are Olive Deering as some slutty chick who has ditched her husband, taking along her fur coat and a bunch of cash, to run away with this guy.


Bruce Dern, who only gives hints of the crazy that will be his hallmark later in his career, although he does do the bunny face a bit.


He spots the alien ship sitting among some very familiar rocks.


Unfortunately, he does not run into either Captain Kirk or a Gorn.


This formation, by the way, is known as the Vasquez Rocks, and you've seen it a lot, I'm sure.

So he climbs up to take a closer look, splitting his pants along the way. On a TV schedule and budget, there was no chance to reshoot.


As he examines the ship, a door pops open and out crawls a six-inch-long ant with a humanoid face.


These are the Zanti. They are a little creepy in close-up, because of the stop-motion and because they're just out of focus, but they never really do much. Bruce Dern jumps back, slides down some rocks, and then the Zanti crawls on him and he screams.

Meanwhile, the military folks are trying to assure the Zanti that the human intruders are there by accident, not a double-cross. They send Grave the historian out to negotiate.

As Grave is on his way, Ms. Slutty McFloozy climbs up the rocks to see what's taking Bruce Dern so long, taking off her high heels to help her with the climb. When she sees the Zanti, she freaks out and runs away, down the slope to ground level, where she's so tired, she has to lie down.


She hides in the car, but the Zanti leers at her through the windshield, so she runs away again, mincing along on her bare feet. She finally encounters Grave, who shouts at her to come to him, but she acts like she can't see him, even though he's only like 30 feet away in broad daylight. She runs the other way, then stops for another quick lie down.


Grave catches up to her, but she refuses to come along with him, giving some dopey melodramatic monologue about how she's wasted her life and just wants to die (which is why she's been running away from this thing for half the episode, natch). The Zanti appears, and Grave is the only guy in the whole show who acts like he's got a pair (including all the military men). He doesn't freak out at how big the ant is, he just grabs a rock and squishes it.

Then he grabs Slutty and drags her back to his jeep.

Meanwhile, we learn from a radio broadcast that the Zanti who has just been killed was like the prison guard on the ship and the bugs are making a break for it. They take off in the spaceship.

Grave takes Slutty to the ghost town HQ, where she has miraculously regenerated her high heels. The general is freaking out, because he's sure the Zanti will go to war over this affront. The escaped Zanti prisoners demonstrate that they're not too bright at this point, because instead of going to Vegas, they just land on the HQ's roof and attack the soldiers.

Hmmm, six-inch ants versus men armed with rifles and hand grenades. Who will win? I mean seriously, you don't really need rifles so much, just shoes.

Anyway, the soldiers kill the ants, and then they get a call from the Zanti homeworld stating there will be no war. The Zanti wanted the prisoners executed, turns out. They just didn't have the stomach to do it themselves and they knew we wouldn't be able to resist doing it, as long as we didn't know we were expected to. Humans are dumb and violent, you see.

Anyway, it's a decent enough episode, I guess, but far from the kind of brilliant jewel most old-school fans proclaim it to be. I've seen several episodes over the years, but the one I liked most and most want to see again is not available on Hulu. It's the episode "Demon With a Glass Hand," written by Harlan Ellison and starring Robert Culp.

Meanwhile, if you want to see the entire Zanti Misfits episode, here it is.

Big Video Wednesday - Ghost Writer

Yes, still with the 50's TV. "Ghost Writer" is from later in the series, and I noticed that the credits no longer mention the Science Fiction League of America, which may be a reason why the writing on this episode is so bad. The episode stars Leslie Nielsen, three years before his star turn on "Forbidden Planet." Actually, Nielsen was apparently a favorite of the show. He appeared in six episodes.

In "Ghost Writer," Nielsen plays Bert, a former ad agency man who has given up corporate life to try to be a writer. He's in the middle of a big novel that he is beginning to despair about ever finishing or whether it will be any good when he does (been there). He's worried about going broke while chasing his dream. His wife Joan tries to cheer him up, but there's a whiny quality to her voice that makes her sound insincere even when she means it. But then, she may be repressing. Maybe she's got her hands in her pockets to keep herself from strangling her husband.


Also, a fashion note: Joan has this weird (to me) thing she does with her pearls. Instead of wearing them like a normal necklace, she ties the string around her neck. She wants a pearl necktie!


Bert has answered an ad seeking a writer and gets a reply from one Lee Morton, an author who's seeking a collaborator. Joan doesn't think Bert should dilute his talent by working with someone else. She makes him promise not to work with Morton, then heads back to her job. Before she leaves, she gives him some money so he can buy something nice for himself. Bert, frustrated at being just a trophy husband, decides to visit Morton and make his own money.

When we see Lee Morton's home, the Ominous Mobile of Doom signals us that all is not well in Chez Morton.


Morton himself is even more ominous. You can tell he's up to no good, because he's got the Crazy Eyes.



The rest of the story is some nonsense where Morton turns out to be the Devil or Death or something. He pays Bert $500 per story to end stories for him. Bert does two stories and giddily shows his wife the $1000 he earned. She's upset that he went to Morton when he said he wouldn't and insists he give the money back. Because she's apparently making so much money at her job, which is hard to figure out. Nielsen says something about her working behind a cigar counter, but when we see the place, it looks more like a newsstand. Except that they also sell shirts. On the plus side, every shirt gets its own titty rub.


Seriously, if Dillard's had women doing this to every shirt they sell in Men's Clothing, they wouldn't be having to close so many stores. Especially if the women looked like, say, Sherilyn Fenn. Men would never shop anywhere else.


So anyway, blah-blah-blah, the stories Bert writes gruesome endings to come true in real life, Joan makes him promise to return the money, but Morton convinces him to do just one more, Joan finds out Bert has reneged on his promise and decides to go home to her parents in a cab which crashes, thereby making Bert's newest ending about a distraught wife dying in a car crash come true. Irony!

The story was pretty bad and made no sense in about twenty different ways. In fact, the most interesting thing about it, for me, was this.


That's a picture of big band leader Paul Whiteman, in a promo for his Saturday night show, TV Teen Club. But what's with the eagle?

Turns out that was ABC's logo at the time.


I'm guessing the eagle was to put the American in American Broadcasting Company. But I think it's kind of creepy and martial for a corporate logo, especially for the network that would someday give us Happy Days and Donny & Marie.

Here's the whole episode, if you want to watch.

Big Video Wednesday - Frankenstein

Continuing to revisit 50's live sci-fi TV. But before that, I have been planning for quite some time to do the old Batman serials for Movie Monday, only to find out today that damn Lileks beat me to it. Oh well, I'll do my own version in more depth later.

So today's Tales of Tomorrow episode is "Frankenstein," yet another twist on the classic tale starring Lon Chaney Jr. and John Newland (no idea if he is related to Marv Newland), and another illustration of the perils of live TV.

The story opens in Frankenstein's castle, or I should say, the castle Frankenstein is using for his experiments. He apparently doesn't have an ancestral castle of his own, so he's using a summer rental or something. The set isn't bad, and makes good use of the soundstage space, although it's obvious that the stone textures are painted on, especially the flagstones that are only drawn in outlines on the floor. There's one corridor that looks pretty impressive on first sight, but that's mainly due to a forced perspective mural that doesn't look nearly as good when they shoot it later from the wrong angle.

Frankenstein is having dinner with fiancee Elizabeth and her father, as well as his young "cousin" William. Frankenstein talks about how the man of the future will be gigantic and strong and blah-blah-blah-mad-scientist-cakes. Meanwhile, young William has constructed his own monstrosity from the fruit bowl.

Ooh, foreshadowing! And also maybe symbolism (what would a fruity man signify in the 50's?)! High school English FTW!

So Elizabeth and her father leave, and Frankenstein heads down to his lab where he has already built a monster. He turns on his machinery and brings the creature to life. Yow, it's Larry Talbot!

It's not a bad make-up, and for some reason, his eyes gleam really strangely at his initial appearance. The creature freaks out, but Frankenstein calms him down and straps him to the table again. But the moment he leaves, the creature breaks free and roams the castle.

The old butler and maid speculate about Frankenstein's experiments, then flirt and giggle when suddenly the creature appears. The butler tries to fend him off with a chair, but the monster takes it away from him.

In fact, this episode has a legendary behind the scenes story. Apparently, Chaney was an alcoholic and had gotten pretty sauced before the episode was performed. In fact, so the story goes, he was so out of it that he didn't realize they were live and thought they were only in another dress rehearsal. So for instance, in this scene, his blocking is rather tentative and he mugs the camera a couple of times. When the butler comes at him with a chair, Chaney takes it from him, then sets it down on the floor while looking at the camera and muttering something (which may be a reminder to himself to break the chair when they shoot the "actual episode").

The monster stumbles through the halls until he runs across little William's room. William is riding his rocking horse while playing with a wooden sword. The kid playing William, alone among the cast, has a really thick New York accent. "Up an' at 'em and show 'em no quatta!"

The monster wants to play at first, but William, like all young Frankensteins since the book was written, is a little asshole and says, "Let go, yer dumb an' ugly! Yeah, that's what ya are, yer ugly!" The monster looks in the mirror and realizes the kid was right in an orgy of emoting. Then he runs away.

The maid is happily dusting, apparently having forgotten her encounter with the monster all of three minutes ago, when the monster reappears. And once again, Chaney didn't know they were live. He picks up the chair...

sets it down...

mimes picking it up...

then mimes smashing it.

The maid has no idea how to react to this shit on live TV.

The monster kills her before she can blab to anyone how he fucked up this scene.

Cutaway to commercial, during which somebody apparently tells Chaney they're live, because he doesn't do this crap in the second half of the episode (the mid-show commercial segment has apparently been cut out of the Hulu version).

When we return, Frankenstein and the butler kneel over the corpse of the dead maid. In a bit of unconscious expression, Frankenstein absentmindedly points his rifle at his own head. Probably wishing he could kill himself so he could get off this damn show.

Frankenstein vows to kill the monster, but before he can hunt the monster down, it attacks. Frankenstein holds the monster off with a scrap of burning paper and exhorts the butler to shoot the monster "in the chest." Shots ring out, but we never see who fires them. Then the monster rips the bars off a large window to use for a weapon, but it's too late.

Umm, that's not his chest, dude. The monster cries out in humiliation at having his balls shot off and falls through the window. But even though the dialogue refers to a 200-foot fall to the water below, we clearly see Chaney hit a curtain just outside the window, then fall to the floor, where his feet kick up.

But he's not dead. No, it's far from over. Elizabeth and her father have returned, and Victor confesses all to her. But their discussion is interrupted by the screams of the creature returning. Frankenstein figures out that the only thing that can kill the monster is the electricity that brought him to life. So he concocts a brilliant plan.

The plan is this: women and children first. First to meet the monster, that is. He sends Elizabeth and William to lure the monster to the lab, while he and the other men beat feet to safety.

Very brave, guys.

So the monster is electrocuted and all is well.

Okay, not all. Because when the camera cuts away to the announcer, we see the director's hand in the shot for a moment, then hear random bashing and crashing off-camera. But finally it's over.

If you want to see the whole thing for yourself, here it is.

Big Video Wednesday - Verdict From Space

Okay, for this episode (the first), "Verdict From Space," they don't use the above title card. In fact, the entire title sequence with the gloved hand throwing the Switch of Doom had apparently not been conceived yet. There's just a bare title card, followed by an immediate pitch for Kreisler watch bands.

Wait, let me back up. I said last week that the Science Fiction League of America seemed to have something to do with noted science-fiction author Theodore Sturgeon. Well, I figured if that was true, they'd lead off with the big name, and sure enough...

There are no credits on the show. With the exception of the "star," Lon McCallister, no one is credited at all. It makes you realize just how much you take the conventions for granted when they're gone.

So yeah, no cool opening, no credits. However, imdb does credit Theodore Sturgeon as writing this episode, so I guess I'll believe it.


The story itself is not great, but better than some later episodes I saw. Lon McCallister plays a basement inventor who has built a special supercharged blowtorch. He is on trial for the murder of a noted professor of archaeology. As McCallister flashes back on the story, the scientist comes to him asking for help. He needs the super-blowtorch to open a metal door to a certain cave, which contains a machine that is over a million years old. McCallister agrees to go, and they head off for Painted Rock National Park.


I'm not making fun of the show's production values. It was low budget and performed live on a soundstage. At this point in TV's history, it was half radio and half live theater, so why not use painted flats for rocks if the audience would accept it?

So McCallister and the scientist find the cave, break in, and find the machine. The scientist has somehow figured out that the machine's function is to record seismic events on a wire somehow, and he can read the markings with a magnifying glass. He then demonstrates by showing McCallister the marks for the destruction of Pompeii, the San Francisco earthquake, and the detonation of the first atomic bomb, as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. God, I know this is the crucial scene to understanding the entire story, but it doesn't work on so many levels that it makes my head spin.

McCallister notices a second machine in the cave that he thinks is a transmitter of some kind, but the "brilliant" scientist tells him it doesn't matter, only the recording machine matters. Dope. Suddenly, the machine records a new event, like an atomic explosion but bigger. The transmitter suddenly comes to life, then both machines self-destruct. McCallister manages to make it out with the professor, but unfortunately, the professor has come down with a severe case of shoe polish on his face and dies.


Back in the courtroom, McCallister is found guilty, then gives an impassioned speech where he finally reveals that the machine must have been put here by aliens to signal them when a particular event happens, that event being the detonation of a hydrogen bomb, a "super-atomic" explosion. Since having the H-bomb means that fusion-powered spaceships are just around the corner, the aliens put their version of a smoke detector on Earth to let them know when they needed to destroy us. "They're coming! I don't know when they're coming, but they're coming!" McCallister says in a rambling monologue that seems half-improv, half-scripted on cue cards as the judge and lawyers look up at a strange noise. McCallister runs to the window and shouts, "Look! Up there in the sky!"


Alas, it's neither bird nor plane nor even frog. It's thousands of spaceships, conveniently arriving at the end of McCallister's monologue.

And now comes a moment of unscripted brilliance. As everyone in the courtroom runs to the window to see the aliens coming to blow them up real good, McCallister walks back into the courtroom. And maybe it's just me, but as the camera is pulling in for a close-up, I could swear a devious little smile flickers across his face for a couple of moments.


Because he set this all up. How do you get away with murder? By concocting a cock-and-bull story about some self-destructing alien machine killing your victim, and you make it convincing by arranging the invasion of Earth by thousands of flying saucers. Oh my God, the man is Keyser Soze crossed with Captain Sternn. I can just see him telling his lawyer, "Take it easy, Charlie. I've got an angle."

But all he says is "The sky is full of ships" and then we fade out. After a final pitch for Kreisler, we get another classic example of early TV half-improv:

Next week, our Tales of Tomorrow show is called "Blunder." A great blunder, where there is a scientist who is working on a blunder which may bring death to us all.

And the really bad thing about this one, he's the announcer. He's off camera. He should be working from a script. It's not as if this was new; they'd been working from scripts in radio for years. Srsly.

If you want to watch the full episode, here it is.



Oh, and one more thing before I forget: in the Kreisler ads, we're told that the price includes federal tax.


Was there a federal sales tax back then, or is this something else?