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telegonus's Replies
Thanks, Sentient. I don't think the back lot issue was as crucial as it might seem. More likely Where Is Everybody? was filmed much earlier than the other first season eps, as I believe it was, maybe even by a year, and Rod Serling's Cayuga company in conjunction with CBS were able to utilize the Uni back lot.
By the time the series got the green light Serling and CBS had struck a deal with MGM. I doubt that Uni declined. The show was, I believe, a joint product of Serling and the network,, thus no matter where it was filmed the rights (reruns, etc.) would revert to the show's owner (or owners), not the studio whose back lot was used for the series. That's my understanding anyway.
I appreciate your response, am hoping this and other boards here will "get a life" and actually start breathing.
More like nightmare logic on the Zone. Perchance To Dream is one such. Also, The After Hours, Nightmare As Child, The Hitch-Hiker, Shadow Play, A Game Of Pool, In Praise Of Pip.
One For The Angels, which less than sixty years old, is already a period piece for many reasons already mentioned on this thread. It plays almost like an O. Henry story now, and is maybe best appreciated in the spirit rather than the "dreadful" dated. Yes, it's old-fashioned. It's also very sweet.
Where Is Everybody? has really grown on me. It was the premiere episode of the first season, was the only Zone not filmed on the MGM back lot (it was Universal instead). Earl Holliman's very good as the man with (literally) no name and the nightmarish feeling is nicely conveyed. It still feels fresh. I can see why it sold the show back in the day.
Nice to see you guys here. Now if we could get all the old gang back that would be great. Sad to say I think that a lot of regulars or semi-regulars who already had one foot out the door ain't comin' back, but we can always hope,,,
I like The Last Flight very much, too. The set up is very well done, the performances excellent. Kenneth Haigh does a brilliant job in the lead, gets fine support from Alexander Scourby and Simon Scott.
That bothered me, too, the first time. Henry Fonda sounds "sorta North", while Oklahomans tend to sound "sorta South", but that could be explained in some back story about some time he spent elsewhere. Whatever. Where Fonda nails it in his rural, small town persona,--midwest, South, Far West--he's got it, and after my first viewing of the film I came to accept him.
Great scene. Director John Ford at his best. Doesn't miss a beat.
Hans Christian Blech as Plushkat.
I think that the scene was set up in advance, as Grady, as played by the likable Everyman actor Ed Binns, was am amiable guy, a good guy, and yet once he was piloting the plane he had to drop "all that" and do his job. The scene of his wife pleading,--he may well have known or sensed the truth--showed just what war and the military can, in extreme cases, do to a good man, a family man. It was awful. Grady was damned if he did, damned if he didn't (follow through on his mission). This part of the movie was necessary if rather predictable.
I agree those are strange scenes. At least they happen early in the movie. Establishing character most likely was probably the intent. Since I haven't read the novel I don't know if it starts the same way. Of the two I like the Cascio one better. (The late) Fritz Weaver sells it, and it plays rather surreal, to my eyes, as the viewer can't possibly know WTF is going on. Later on it makes more sense when Cascio melts down. I like those little "touches" in Fail-Safe. They sort of take the viewer away from the almost unbearable main theme of the movie.
I agree with every word you wrote, AngularTurnip. There are many TZ episodes like The Hitch-Hiker, most less extreme. Sort of epiphanies of death. In some cases the protagonist actually lives, in other cases not. Or else there's a purpose, a reason, unfinished business, as in The Last Flight and In Praise Of Pip.
The song is really good, and you just gotta love Hank Patterson, who was sort of the Twilight Zone go-to guy for rough hewn rustic types. Alas, he didn't have much to do in the episode but his mere presence made up for it.
Yup. I think that it's more horror than sci-fi tone, the illogical, elliptical storytelling, turns a lot of people off. No, it doesn't make sense, but then it's The Twilight Zone.
There's yet another good site, like this, also featuring old IMDB message boards and a similar set-up, but one thing at a time, eh? (I hope that some day that they'll be able to combine them all, which would create something very like the old IMDB message boards system.)
Laugh it you will: King Kong.
Solidly made, it tells a rip roaring adventure tale.
The special effects have something they don't have in movies today: beauty.
I could go on praising the movie for this and that for dozens of paragraphs but what sticks in my mind, and has developed over the years is that more than any other film I can think of King Kong is about the moviegoing experience itself. Yet there's irony in the tale inasmuch as its main character, a film-maker, travels to the Far East and finds something that he originally wants to film, and then, when it wreaks havoc on the island and its natives, he decides to capture it and bring it back to civilization and put it on display.
As most of us know, Kong doesn't like to have his picture taken, thinks the photographers are trying to hurt the girl he's still enamored with, so he breaks his chains and goes on a rampage to find the girl. The movie concludes with the girl rescued, Kong fatally wounded by machines gun mounted on airplanes, and then his captor's closing line "'twas beauty killed the beast". As I see it, Kong is the real world. He's also us. What happens in the world cannot be controlled or defined by the movies, and yet movies have become in many respects our window to the world.
What enchants me about Kong is the back and forth sympathies the movie creates, first for Denham, then the girl, Ann, the crew of the ship that takes them to Kong's island, and then, for a while, the natives; and finally the great and powerful Kong, who, as things turn out is both extremely dangerous and yet a romantic at heart. Kong is sometimes shown as tender, even affectionate in his way, given that the girl he's in love with is the size of a chipmunk in his hand. King Kong is a movie in which the story compels the viewer to switch sympathies continually; and it often raises uncomfortable questions, such as, for instance, "who's worse, the big ape or the man who captured him?".
King Kong keeps my eyes riveted to the screen and my ears open; to the dialogue, the incredible sound effects, Max Steiner's thunderous score. It's the gift that keeps on giving, from start to finish. Yet while "it's all on the screen" it makes me think about things, movies in particular; the mass media and now the social media in general, and wonder what man has wrought over the past century. For me, Kong is the nature we cannot control, and that includes human nature; the things we have to learn to live with, and which come back at us in unpleasant ways, whether it's AIDS, bedbugs or Muslim terrorists. The movies try so hard to "prettify" life, and yet when real life comes at us it's often monstrous and not pretty at all. Nor do I see Kong as all that separate from life. In the movie, yes, in reality, no. We're all little Kongs to one degree or another, but unlike the monster in the movie we can control our impulses somewhat better, and also unlike Kong, we like to have our pictures taken
Oops. I knew this was going to go on for a while...
Dr. Julia: I don't know why it's so damn difficult to find that forum by googling. It's on my favorites menu AND, fortunately, I'm a member of another Proboard site, so I'm "protected".
Yes, the Proboards IMDB v.2.0 (maybe the extra zero would help,--it helped me early on--go figure, eh?) is quite busy, loads of familiar names, among them, and I just responded to him, Boo Radley, from way back, and ECarle, Gubbio and Spiderwort as well, and that's just off the top of my head.
I should have been more specific, Dr. Julia, didn't want to advertise another site but WTF: it's imdb v.2, though it's often difficult to find on-line. If you google and it doesn't come up you might want to add forums to the search or, better still, join Proboards, an excellent message board site (along the lines of Yuku but more modern feeling). It's free, a bit complicated to get into at first but you can search for imdb v.2 (or v2, making it one word, etc.). If this doesn't work feel free to contact me. It's not quite easy as pie but it ain't rocket science, either...
Thanks, Amy. It's great to have someone to talk to (so to speak) on this site. I've seen a few familiar names here but not a whole lot of action. The boards here are imperfect but it's what we've got. It's like the Titanic sank and we got rescued, not on the Queen Mary but a mid-sized vessel, not elegant but good enough, and that's the way it (frickin') is. The guys running this ship are performing a miracle.
Those classic TV shows were featured on MeTV a few years back. Did you catch any of it? They had a great Sunday Night Noir but were good every night of the week: if it wasn't The Untouchables it was Peter Gunn, if not Gunn then The Fugitive. Also, the Hitchcock hour and Thriller. It was grand viewing and I loved it, then they started to scale back and I began to get that sinking feeling.
I think they did the best they could under the circumstances. There must have been a lot of posts on their site and on Facebook crying out for classic black and white shows, so they gave it a shot. That's my take. And a great shot it was. If the audience was out there,--and a lot of us were--they'd have kept it up. I don't think it was a conspiracy that did the black and white shows (and movies) in. It was low or at best fair to middlin' ratings. Broadcast TV is a business, and they play, of necessity, to a wide audience. They're not running an art gallery. I know business. Life is like that.
What makes me feel worse about the decline of classic films and TV on broadcast TV is that young people are spurning that stuff for almost exclusively new, super-duper, up to date stuff, complete with CGI and all the trimmings. They do NOT like the "stately", to a Millennial the sloth-like pace of old shows and movies. It's all about instant gratification and short attention spans. I read somewhere on the Web last week that even sporting events,--a freakin' multi-billion dollars business--are going to have to be shortened, sped up and altered to suit the "low tolerance for boredom" of younger fans. For real. This is the future. Sometimes one has to be thankful for what one's got and leave it at that.
Over & Out.
With the boards gone (from the IMDB, that is) it's more like The Day After. I do see hope in this site and that other one (v.2). It's not the same, needless to say, but it's going to have to do.
The thing about the so-called retro sub-channels is that they're not retro, Amy. They use words like classic to describe shows like Wonder Woman and The A-Team. It's pathetic. My sense is that there's much less affection for the later post-black and white shows than the older, earlier ones, but that's me.
For me the golden age of television is 1955-66, sort of, again, IMO, what the 1930-50 are to movies those eleven years are to television. I have a lot of (mostly on-line) friends who agree with this assessment but there apparently aren't enough of us to make those old shows tick in terms of ratings. What difference does it make what action series they show? Seventies or Eighties. Does it matter?
A certain sameness crept into television in the Seventies and even more so later on. The earlier classic shows were different. Peter Gunn was a very different kettle of fish from Hawaiian Eye and neither much resembled Richard Diamond. Westerns were different, too, with the tone of The Rifleman not at all like Bonanza's and with both unlike Have Gun Will Travel. Yet even the Norman Lear comedies, all the rage in the Seventies, seem to blur into one another after time, All In The Family excepted.