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telegonus's Replies
Dead Man's Shoes plays well for me. Not a great story, it's at least well done. Or do you mean the worst episode? As I think about it, they're really two different things. I think that Queen Of The Nile is worse than Dead Man's Shoes. It's beneath even mediocre. There are, sad to say, quite a few like that, including, for my money, the Peter Falk episode, The Mirror. Four O'Clock is bottom of the barrel in my book, too. The Talking Tina one is another, though it has, inexplicably, as I see it, a fair number of fans. Maybe, for some people, Telly Savalas sells it. Not for me, and I like Telly.
Thanks, Dr. Julia. As Angular Turnip pointed out in his response, the radio play ended differently. My problem with the radio version stems in large part from Orson Welles, an actor whose radio acting I don't care for at all (even as I love him as a film director and like him as a film actor). Aside from his Mercury Theater work his radio acting strikes me as way too flamboyant, the gigantic ego all too obvious. Welles never convinces me he's the character he's playing. He's always Orson Welles. This spoils The Hitch-Hiker, especially, for me. As to Louise Fletcher, her radio plays nearly always impress me. I wish she'd written more.
I've heard the radio version with Orson Welles and didn't care for it that much. Welles just sounded wrong to me. The TZ version is so much better and far more moving. Inger Stevens was the perfect choice for the lead, with her natural depressiveness making her character more credible. If one watches it too many times it becomes more obvious, with foreshadowings from the git, with the repairman's "one for the angels" remark, but it's still an effective, spooky piece. It's odd for the Zone inasmuch as it doesn't seem to mean anything, to be about anything,--aside from death, that is!
The Masks is one I used to like but it's grown repulsive to me. I don't care for anyone in it but the doctor and the "colored help". Jason Foster is a nasty piece of work, and I despise the way he plays God as if he was coming from a "higher place". Higher place my arse. His adult and often not so adult acting children are unlikable and yet in a way they're pathetic; unloved and unlovable, I can't help but feel sorry for them. Their punishment strikes me as beyond harsh. It's downright sadistic. Maybe if the story was better written or offered some hope for redemption I'd like it better. Films and TV shows set in New Orleans at Mardi Gras time often have a magical quality. This is one does, too, yet the magic makes its ending an extreme downer.
Count me in as a fan of I Am The Night,--Color Me Black. Pedantic, moralistic, the symbolism of the encroaching darkness was neither new nor in my opinion used particularly well. Actually, on the surface, as a TV show, it sucks on ice, plays like a road show riff on To Kill A Mockingbird. So why is it a favorite?...
It captures the spirit of its time to a tee, was written in the dark, seemingly sunless days after the JFK assassination, and for those of us who remember that time, and/or saw the episode first run, it's darkly nostalgic. The symbolism actually revolves around the issue that the episode never raises, that of mourning.
Yes, there are other political issues in there,too, whether civil rights, war or just plain hatred, but I see it as a cry of the heart more than anything else; a primal scream in the wake of the awful death of a man who brought so much hope to so many, and for so many Americans it felt like the world was falling apart.
That's a good one. I like Ring-A-Ding Girl; the overly familiar but still watchable Stopover In A Quiet Town; The Old Man In The Cave,--very well done, flawed script--with its post-apocalypse theme, yet again on the Zone; Come Wander With Me, a haunting one off that seems to divide even die-hard Zoners; The Fear, a sort of ugly duckling favorite of mine that was on MeTV last week, it's the second to last, or maybe third, of the series, and I like the slow build-up, the characterizations, the creeping surrealism near the end.
The fifth was by no means a bad season. It was more eclectic than the earlier ones, with one good point in its favor that Serling & Friends were losing interest in suburbia, offered up some strange ones, such as the outright horror, Night Call.
A very late response (ahem!): I totally agree re the ending of Fearless. It was such an emotionally draining movie, and most of it rang true to life, more so than most films of its (or our) era, and then they mess up the ending like that. A very good film, rough around the edges, which, depending on what's happening, works for and against it. Very raw. The ultimate Jeff Bridges picture.
I like The Guests a whole lot. I'd say love but I've become punch drunk about the episode. A downside of easy access (too easy), I suppose. Maybe the best ensemble of actors in the series, or, more properly the best ensemble acting in any episode. Excellent characterizations, it's almost like a play. Other problem: the love is the answer to all the world's problems gets tiresome to hear (albeit in different forms) in an Outer Limits, even as I basically agree with it at an emotional/spiritual level. However saying or implying this repeatedly does not make for good drama. I found the underlying existentialism implicit in (especially) the words of the Alien Of The Week not to my tastes. Still, flawed as it is, it's a thousand times better than anything on TV today, or anything that I know of.
Elegy, though it's a sad tale in the end might have worked as an hour long. Something about the setup, with the astronauts wandering around the earth-like asteroid (I think that's what it was) was strangely seductive, even reassuring, even with all the "frozen" people. It was very like Willoughby or Walking Distance's Homewood,--and then bada bing! The ending would have been even more of a shocker, what with the benevolent seeming Mr. Wickwire turning into something very different what he appeared to be over a longer period of time.
It's brilliant and daring, rather pretentious, yet somehow it works. Of the uber weird eps, Don't Open Till Doomsday even stranger and more successful for what it is. Its elliptical aspects enhance the strange way the story is told, while in Forms/Unknown the time tricks and poetry are distracting. Another weird one that works for me: The Invisibles, with its bizarre sexual subtexts, make of them what you will.
It's too damn scary. Not in a horror movie sort of way but like real life. Unsettling.
Definitely not Shadow Play or A Nice Place To Visit.
Maybe Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up? It could have started on the bus, shown us the characters interacting, had some scenes to establish the location, set the tone, allowed the viewer to settle in for a while prior to the diner part of the episode. How, I can't say, but I think it could have been done.
I've seen Fun And Games a few times, caught it first run (as it were), and I find it highly effective. Like so many first season eps it sort of is and isn't like the rest of the series, by which I mean the inclusion of something very un-Outer Limitsy: the low rent apartment building of the early part of the episode,--and again, at the end--with the Damon Runyon characters around a card table, it plays almost like an episode of Naked City, right down to naked ex-NC regular Nancy Malone in the cast. The Oedipal and childhood trauma stuff with Nick Adams' character was rather awkwardly written, saved by the actor himself, who gave a bravura performance. Great production values, too. The setting was sort of suggestive of the Amazon, but from Hell! Good ending, too; nicely ambiguous. Earth was saved, but what about the Adams and Malone characters? One wants them to meet and hook up in the real world. There's hope but no resolution. The viewer can fill in the blank, as he wishes. Good stuff.
I saw it when it was first broadcast and, amazingly, it plays as well now as it did then. Excellent writing, acting and directing. The production values are fine, and they did a good job of covering over the rather low budget for such a "big" episode (stock footage, "library shots", etc., but not too much and not too many).
There are racial undertones in the episode. I wouldn't say it's anti-Asian but it does play on stereotypes, as indeed the Selby clone is himself a stereotype, and the bit with the eyes seeming to revert to their "Asiatic" shape and size is, well, of its time, as is the spooky Fu Manchu music. Still, I'm glad none of this was edited out.
An effective time capsule, it's also, for what it is, excellent.
Yes, and I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen the first time I watched it. The second time I thought it was below average but had its moments. Now I actually like it, accept its being somewhat ineptly handled, am charmed by the frogs, even though they're supposed to be sinister. Just like frogs, I guess. I'm also fond of tumbleweeds. Overall, not scary at all. More dramatic than anything else. Arthur Hunnicut gives the most effective performance. Any number of players could have done the leading roles but the old man of the frontier had to be cast just right, and it was.
Yup: the one I just finished watching this A.M.: Come Wander With Me, from the final season, one of the last episodes of the series. It's one that people seem divided over. Some love it (me); many hate it. I don't think it's perfect,--they messed up the end using standard issue chase music instead of the haunting title tune when Floyd Burney's being chased by the Rayfords--but overall I find the episode truly bewitching. No, it doesn't make much sense. It's like some other episodes, such as Shadow Play, but more open season (so to speak). This one takes place outdoors. Great use of the MGM back lot forest.
That about covers it.
My sense is no, that wasn't Serling's intent, it's just the way some of us read the episode. I find Jason Foster loathsome, but while he's horribly sadistic in what he does to his children when he dies,--imagine what he was like when they were growing up!--it feels like he's intended, indeed presented early on as a crotchety old moral compass of a man, not the mean bastard many of us see him as.
The ones in which Burgess Meredith is cast as a wimp.
Three fifth season episodes: Steel, Night, Call and The Old Man In The Cave.