RIP James Shigeta; RIP Arlene/Arline Sax/Martel

We lost 2 outstanding Outer Limits performers recently. James Shigeta on July 28th and Arlene Sax/Martel on August 12th.

Jame Shigeta was absolutely amazing in "Nightmare" I thought. He was also in Part 1 of "The Inheritors". We will really miss him.

Arline was also great in "Demon with a Glass Hand".

But what I wanted to say about Arlene Martel (as she is called on her IMDb page) is that, when I discovered she had passed away, I noticed this article on the BBC web site announcing her death ("Spock's wife dies", or something similar). In this article, it mentioned that she had starred in a movie called "The Glass Cage", which I thought was interesting. First, that she had had a starring role in a movie, and second, that there is that "Glass" in the title of something else she had played in. Well, I went to the IMDb page for this movie (The Glass Cage (1964)). And there is this interesting clip from the movie on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azw6jJ6v0Fo , although I was really hoping that they had the whole thing on YouTube, as they do for many other old films. But what I found doubly interesting about "The Glass Cage" is that one of the writers of this old 1964 movie is none other than John Hoyt (he also was one of the producers), someone who appears in 3 different episodes of The Outer Limits ("Don't Open Till Doomsday", "The Bellero Shield", and "I, Robot"). Watching the film clip on YouTube, it does really seem like a weird Outer Limits episode, and that glass thing that falls and shatters reminds me a little bit of the balancing doodad that they had in "The Forms of Things Unknown". Also note that Hoyt's 3 appearances on TOL were all in 1964 (according to IMDb), which is the same year he starred in "The Glass Cage" (at least that's when it was released). But "The Glass Cage" is listed first on Hoyt's IMDb page listing his Filmography. But 2 of the TOL episodes he did, "Don't Open Till Doomsday" and "The Bellero Shield", I see from my "The Outer Limits Companion", that those 2 episodes were produced Nov 26 to Dec 16, 1963. I am just wondering if this "The Glass Cage" might have been influenced by his work on The Outer Limits (obviously, not "I, Robot" since that was season 2 and was produced AFTER "The Glass Cage" was released).

Ok, I really would like to see this movie "The Glass Cage". So I noticed on the main IMDb page, there is an Amazon icon (with label of "Watch now") you can click on to watch it. So I clicked on it just hoping maybe it was free (but of course it wasn't). But it took me to an Amazon page where we find: Rent SD $1.99 or Buy SD $6.99 — God, don't you just love when people (and especially companies) use acronyms whose meaning you haven't a clue about? But anyway it has listed some information, and I see that one of the things they have listed about this offering from Amazon is "Sinister Cinema". Now, I've bought films from this place so I am familiar with it (they sell a whole bunch of old movies on DVDs). So I go to their web site and search for this movie, find this page dedicated to it: http://store.sinistercinema.com/prostores/servlet/Detail?no=16334. But there they want $16.95 for it. Then I see here you can get a DVD from Amazon for $8.99: http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Cage-Sinister-Cinema/dp/B001AD1NCU/

But then after looking at the main IMDb page again I found something triply fascinating about this. I read the first review of this movie on the IMDb page dedicated to it and see that at one point in this movie they have shot a scene in, guess where? The old Bradbury building in Los Angeles, the exact same building they used for the setting of "Demon With a Glass Hand", which Arlene also starred in. Is that weird or what?