Category: TV Reviews

Reviews of tv shows by our amazing critics

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 14 – The Whole Truth

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Jack Carson plays Harvey Hunnicut a New York City used car salesman who tries to sell decrepit automotive wrecks to unsuspecting car buyers.  His sales pitches have absolutely zero resemblance to reality and never get anywhere within a mile of the truth.

Along comes an old man selling a Model A Ford and Harvey tells him that the car isn’t worth a dime but he’ll give him twenty-five dollars.  The man sells him the car and then tells him that the car is haunted.  Any man who owns the car has to tell the absolute truth about everything.

Now Harvey starts going into his sales pitch to a young couple and tells the awful truth about the awful cars he sells.  Of course, they run away and Harvey is starting to despair.  Next his wife calls up and he tells her that the inventory story he tells her every week is actually a ruse to hide his weekly poker game with the boys.  Finally, his sales assistant asks him again about his long-delayed raise and Harvey tells the sad truth that there isn’t a chance in the world of his ever getting a raise working for Harvey.  His assistant punches him in the face and knocks him down before exiting the establishment.

Next day a politician named Honest Luther Grimbley comes in looking to buy an old car that will make his constituents think he is poor.  Harvey is willing to sell it for a song but when Grimbley asks if there are any strings attached, he tells him the honesty catch.  Grimbley recoils and said no politician could possibly buy it because it would destroy his career.

Before Grimbley leaves he tells Harvey that it would be fun to sell it to the politician who was on the front page of the newspaper.

In the last scene we find out that Harvey has sold the car to Nikita Khrushchev who is getting ready to speak at the UN and now will have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  He calls the operator and asks if there is a way for him to speak to Jack Kennedy.

Jack Carson is great.  He can even make this clunker fun.  And I always give Serling a break if he can make it funny.  This should be a B but for the above considerations I’m going to promote it to an A-.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 13 – Back There

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This is a straight up time travel story.  Peter Corrigan is a member of an elite club in Washington D.C.  He and his fellow club members are debating whether it’s possible for someone to go back in time and thereby change history.  As he leaves his club, he becomes dizzy outside the door and when he comes to himself, he realizes that everything has changed and appears as it would in the mid-nineteenth century.  When he arrives at his home it isn’t his anymore.  He talks to the landlady and she agrees to rent him a room.  As he’s walking to his room, he hears an army officer who is leaving say that President Lincoln will be at the theater that the officer and his girlfriend are also about to attend.  Upon cross-examining the officer, he confirms that the performance is the one that Lincoln attended when Booth assassinated him.

Peter rushes to the Ford Theater and tries to convince them that Lincoln’s life is in terrible danger.  He makes a nuisance of himself and ends up arrested.  At the police station he tries to convince the police about the assassination and is about to be jailed when a stranger intercedes with the police and has Peter remanded to his custody.  The man introduces himself as Mr. Wellington and takes him to his rooms where he tries to understand how Peter knows what he says he knows.  After Peter tells his story Mr. Wellington gives Peter a handkerchief for an injury he sustained with the police and a glass a wine to calm his nerves.  But the wine is drugged and Peter passes out.  When he awakens, he yells for help and the landlady and a police officer show up.  Telling the landlady his story he finds out that the man wasn’t named Wellington but John Wilkes Booth.  Now Peter is panicked and he tries to force the policeman to run to the theater and save the President.  But it’s too late, Lincoln has already been shot and the news is being shouted on the street.

Now when Peter walks down the street he is back in the future and he arrives at his club and he tries to tell his former debaters that history cannot be changed even if a man can go back in town.  But a curious thing has happened in his absence.  A man who was a waiter previously is now a rich club member.  By his own narration we find out that the family fortune was founded when his ancestor who was a Washington policeman forcefully attempted to convince the authorities that they should protect Lincoln at Ford’s Theater.  This prescience so impressed everyone that he was advanced to authority where his performance brought him riches.  So even if some things can’t be changed, others can.  When Peter reaches for his handkerchief, he finds one monogrammed JWB (John Wilkes Booth).

Peter is played by Russell Johnson (the Professor from Gilligan’s Island).  It’s a pretty clever story and somewhat fun.  The only downside is the scene where Peter is at the door of the theater and he is pounding on the door and shouting.  It hearkens back to my dislike for any Twilight Zone episode that degenerates into someone shouting wildly at no one visible.

Because of this I’ll take away a half point B-.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 12 – Dust

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A small town in the Old West.  A peddler named Sykes arrives and walks into the town jail and goads the prisoner named Luis Gallegos about his imminent hanging.  Sykes revels in the strength of the five-strand hemp rope that he sold to the town for the noose.  The Sheriff berates Sykes and tells him to stop torturing the condemned man.

Sykes goes outside and watches the funeral procession for a little girl who was run down by a wagon driven by the man about to be hanged.  As it comes out in various accounts Gallegos was depressed about his financial difficulties so he got drunk and riding home he struck the child without knowing it.

Sykes loudly celebrates to the girl’s parents the upcoming hanging of their daughter’s killer.  They are too devastated to pay him any attention but head to the church for the funeral.  Another viewer of the procession is Luis’s father.  He apologizes for his son’s action and says that if he could exchange his life for the little girl’s he would gladly do it.  But once again they move on thinking only of their lost daughter.

Sykes sees Luis’s father and has an idea.  He sends a message to the old man saying that if he can obtain one hundred pesos then Sykes will sell him a bag of magic dust that will turn the hate in the hearts of the townspeople to love and thus save Luis’s life.

The old man begs and borrows the money and Sykes gives him a tobacco sack that he has filled with the dirt he found on the town’s main street.  With the hanging about to begin Mr. Gallegos runs to the gallows and pathetically casts the “magic dust” into the air hoping it will sway the crowd.  But as he does it, he hears the crack of the trap door opening and winces.  But when he opens his eyes and turns around, he sees that the rope snapped and Luis is lying below the gallows alive.

Some of the crowd call out for the hanging to be repeated.  The Sheriff asks the girl’s parents if they want it repeated.  The father is unsure but his wife says Luis has suffered enough.  Her husband agrees and the Sheriff releases Luis to his overjoyed father and they depart.

Now Sykes is looking at the broken rope and is perplexed how a brand new five strand hemp rope could fail on its first use.  He concludes that the dust really was magic.  And as proof of this he gives the one hundred gold pesos to some poor children who are near him in the street.

This one is a little too arch for me.  Sykes is too creepy and Luis and his father are a little too sympathetic.  Regardless of whether Sykes is a terrible man, Gallegos is not a blameless victim.  Being poor and an outsider doesn’t automatically mean we just sympathize with the negligent killer of a little girl.  Serling over did it here.  C-.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 11 – The Night of the Meek

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If you were a kid back in the day this was your favorite Twilight Zone episode.  Santa Claus.

Henry Corwin is a skid row bum who every year dresses up as Santa Claus at the local department store.  But Henry is overcome with sadness for the fate of the poor inhabitants of his slum neighborhood.  He goes to the local bar and drinks until he’s drunk and cries until he’s thrown out of the bar.  On the way to the store he meets poor children begging him for things that might make their Christmas less sad.  And he cries.

At his job as Santa his inebriated state draws the ire of a little boy and his mother who report him to the store manager Mr. Dundee.  Dundee berates Henry and fires him for his drinking.  Henry apologizes for his condition but explains that he drinks because his sadness for the suffering of the poor hurts him too much.  And he says if he could have one wish it would be that just one Christmas, he’d “like to see the meek inherit the earth.”

Later on, he is walking down an alley when he hears sleigh bells and finds a big sack full of gifts.  Amazed and ecstatic with joy he heads to the local Salvation Army mission and starts handing out gifts to his fellow down and outs.  And every package turns out to be the exact gift wanted by the recipient.  This goes happily along until the lady running the place complains to the police that Henry is handing out stolen property.

Officer Flaherty arrests Henry and calls Mr. Dundee to tell him that Henry must have stolen merchandise from his store and is handing it out to his poor neighbors.  But when they inspect his sack all they find is trash.  Flaherty tells Henry he is free to go.  Now Dundee berates Flaherty for his stupidity.  Flaherty declares that something supernatural had occurred but Dundee says if that is true, he’d like to see the bag produce a rare bottle of cherry brandy.  And of course, Henry produces the brandy as he leaves and wishes them a Merry Christmas.

Back at the Salvation Army spot he finishes handing over gifts to all of his neighbors.  One of his friends asks Henry what gift he wants.  And he says he can’t think of one but if he had his wish it would be to give gifts like this every year.  Wandering back to the alley where he found the sack, he sees a sleigh drawn by reindeers and an elf that calls him Santa and invites him onto the sleigh.

Later on, Flaherty and Dundee are walking down the street and see Henry and the elf flying through the sky in the reindeer drawn sleigh.  Overcome by the wonder Dundee offers Flaherty the hospitality of his home, a drink of the brandy, and says, “we’ll thank God for miracles, Flaherty.”

What can I say?  This episode is outrageously melodramatic and sentimental.  But if I can’t give Art Carney as Santa Claus an A then I might as well join the SJWs and join the war on Christmas.  The only suggestion I’d make is that this episode should be watched on December 24th with the small children of the family in attendance.  And to all a good night.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 10 – A Most Unusual Camera

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This one falls under the broad category of fantasy and combines aspects of a fable about karma with what can go wrong when you can see the future.

Chester and Paula Diedrich are crooks.  The night before they robbed an antique shop and Paula reads a newspaper article about the crime describing the stolen merchandise in terms that Chester sees as the real crime.  He complains that all the rare items listed are actually nothing but worthless junk and he’ll be lucky to get five dollars for the whole lot.  This includes a strange old camera with an inscription in a foreign language on the front that he found in the shop.  Just for laughs he gets Paula to pose near the window for a picture.  A few seconds later a developed picture pops out of the camera.  But when he looks at the picture Paula is wearing a mink coat.  This all very confusing until a few minutes later while opening a box that they stole from the shop they find a mink coat just like the one in the picture.

Later on, they take a picture of the apartment door and the picture shows Paula’s brother Woodward opening the door.  But since Woodward is in jail, they feel the camera must be malfunctioning.  A few minutes later Woodward walks in.  He has broken out of jail and wants to stay with them.  Now Chester figures out that the camera takes pictures that show things that are about to happen.

With this in mind and noticing that Woodward is watching a horse race on tv, Chester decides to use the camera to bet on horse races.  He’ll take pictures of the race track results board before the race and the winners will show up on the picture.  It works like a charm and they make a ton of money.  They go back to the apartment to celebrate and spend their profits on expensive toys like convertible cars.

While the waiter Pierre is cleaning up the dishes, he notices the camera and asks what the camera’s inscription means.  It says, “Only ten pictures to an owner.”  Counting up the pictures they’ve taken the crooks realize they only have two pictures left.  While fighting over the camera another picture gets taken.  It shows Paula in a pose suggesting something horrible is happening in front of her.  Chester says it must be someone doing something bad to her husband, him.  He assumes it must be Woodward and immediately produces a knife and attacks Woodward.  While struggling for the knife they both fall out the apartment window to their deaths.

Although at first distraught, Paula comforts herself at the prospect of all their money being hers.  She smiles and takes the last picture out the window where Chester and Woodward are lying dead.  She begins gathering it up when Pierre returns and informs her, he is taking all her money because he knows she is wanted and won’t be able to call the police.  Just then the camera delivers the last picture and Pierre informs her that there are more than two bodies out the window.  Paula runs over to see, trips on a cord and goes out the window to her death.  Pierre looks at the picture and sees four bodies and somehow falls out the window too.

This is a pretty dopey plot.  But it’s done with considerable humor and a modicum of acting ability on all parts.  Fred Clark who plays Chester is a pretty familiar character actor of the time and acquits himself admirably.  Crime doesn’t pay?  Sure, why not.  B.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 9 – The Trouble with Templeton

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Booth Templeton is an old Broadway actor whose twenty something second wife is cheating on him.  He is about to start on a new play and he is thinking back to his youth when life was more appealing.  When he arrives at the theater the play’s producer, Sid Sperry informs him that he’s fired the director and installed in his place young firebrand Arthur Willis in his place.  When Willis sees Templeton arriving late for rehearsal Willis hectors him about the importance of being on time for the first day of rehearsal.  When he repeatedly asks Templeton whether he is ready to step up to the challenge, Templeton runs for the back stage exit onto the street.

But when Templeton walks out of the alley, he sees a theater sign that says it’s 1927 (thirty-three years earlier than the present time for him).  When he meets up with an old theater employee from that era, he’s told that his wife Laura (his first wife who died years earlier) is waiting for him in a speak-easy around the corner.

Arriving at the club he’s shown in and sees Laura with his dear but departed friend Barney Flueger sitting at a table eating dinner and enjoying the music.  Templeton tries to tell Laura and Barney how shocked and happy he is to see them after all these years but they’re not interested in his amazement and just want to enjoy themselves eating, drinking and dancing.  When he tries to make Laura understand how important it is for him to spend some time alone with her, she just shrugs him off and continues to eat her steak and fan herself with some papers.  Templeton grabs the paper from her and puts them in his coat pocket and then begs her to listen to him.  She escapes to the dance floor and starts doing the Charleston.  When Templeton grabs her and tries to stop her, she slaps him in the face and tells him to go back where he came from.

Templeton rushes out of the speak easy and as he leaves the room; the music stops and all the people fall silent and look sad and the scene fades to black.

Templeton runs out onto the street and heads back into the theater.  When he gets inside it’s 1960 again.  He is shocked by the change and wonders if he imagined the whole thing.  But he reaches into his coat pocket and finds the papers he took from Laura.  When he reads it, he realizes it is a script that has the words that Laura and Barney were speaking to him.  Now he realizes that they did all this to force him to stop his nostalgic sadness and reconnect with his present life.

Now Sperry and Willis who have been waiting for him start complaining about his flight from the theater.  Willis asks Templeton if he is in the play or out.  Composing himself he replies that he is in but then tells Willis that he prefers to be called Mr. Templeton.  Then he tells Sperry that he doesn’t allow non-cast members to attend rehearsals.  When Sperry objects, Willis, who now sees Templeton as an assertive authority figure, tells Sperry that Templeton is right and he should leave.  Now Templeton has re-entered his life and is enjoying it again.

This is a pretty standard Twilight Zone and the ending is a little pat but I actually kind of liked it.  It’s probably the upbeat ending that makes it more palatable for me.  I’ll say B.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 8 – The Lateness of the Hour

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Jana Loren lives with her parents in a large house filled with servants who cater to their every need.  Jana complains to her parents that they have retreated into this isolated life where they are completely dependent on their servants.  The back story comes out that Dr. Loren built his servants.  They’re robots.

Jana’s parents explain that far from being a prison their life is a refuge from the drudgery and danger of the outside world.  Jana flies into a rage and pushes one of the maids down the stairs.  The maid gets up, and smiling, gets back to her duties.  Now Dr. Loren tells his daughter that that she’s being irrational.  But she remains adamant that she won’t live this way anymore.  Dr. Loren assembles all of the staff and tells them to head into the basement for shut down.  The parents reconcile themselves to losing the creature comforts and Jana starts thinking about the future.  She imagines dinner parties, boyfriends and even grandchildren for her parents.

This causes her parents to panic and start to warn her that children might not be an option.  While looking through a photo album she realizes that there are no pictures of her as a child.  And now they admit that she is a robot the Doctor built to be their daughter.  Jana collapses in despair.

In the final scene we see a maid giving Mrs. Loren a shoulder massage and when the shot is opened out, we see that the maid is Jana.

As everyone who has read my reviews knows I will not tolerate mannequins or robots who think they’re humans.  And this wasn’t some exception where great acting or dialog saves it.  This isn’t good.  This is a D.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 7 – Nick of Time

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This is a very special episode.  The usual criteria for judging the quality of these episodes cannot be used here.  One fact overrules all other considerations.  William Shatner.

Don Carter and his newlywed wife Pat are travelling from Ohio to New York City on their honeymoon when their car broke down in a small town called Ridgeview, Ohio.  Don is a salesman who is hoping to be selected as the manager back at his office.  He is also extremely superstitious.  While waiting for their car to be repaired they went into a small restaurant and ordered lunch.  On the table was a napkin holder with a novelty devil’s head fortune teller.  For one penny the devil would answer any yes or no question.  Don, of course, wanted to know if he had gotten the job.  He asked the devil and he was told it had been decided in his favor.  He called up his office and the devil’s answer were confirmed.

After this he asked a string of questions of the devil and all of them seemed to be true.  Pat became concerned that Don was becoming obsessed with the machine.  She asked him to leave.  But the devil warned him not to.  While trying to cross the road Don and Pat were almost struck by a car.

Now Don was convinced that the devil could predict the future.  The answers that the machine continued to give him were correct.  But finally, Pat gave an impassioned speech telling Don that he must break free of this fear of the future and walk away from the devil.

As Don and Pat leave the restaurant to continue their trip to New York another couple enters and begin questioning the devil.  Finally, after hearing that they could not leave Ridgeview that day the man asks, “is there any way out, any way at all?”

So, this is a pretty standard Twilight Zone story but what distinguishes it is the Shatner factor.  The overacting, the hyper-emotionalism, the spastic facial expressions.  All of the abundant skills of the famous thespian are there to see.  This is ham acting beyond dispute.  I must give it an A.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 6 – The Eye of the Beholder

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Janet Tyler is a patient in a hospital.  When we first see her, she is lying in a hospital bed with her head wrapped in bandages.  Her doctor provides the back story as an annoying expository lecture to her of facts that she is obviously aware of.

He tells her that the injections she has been given are meant to alter her horrible facial deformity that makes her a source of horror and a member of a group that is forbidden to remain in the normal population.  A number of attempts have been made to cure her of her deformity and this is the final attempt allowed by law.  If she remains deformed, she will be exiled to a reservation for people with her affliction.  We learn that this world mandates conformity including conformity of appearance.

Janet becomes extremely agitated as the Doctor repeats this litany of her misfortune.  She starts yelling and complaining about the unfairness of discriminating against her appearance.  The Doctor agrees to remove her bandage that night instead of waiting another day.

The Doctor is shown in a scene talking to a nurse and reveals that he is extremely sympathetic to Janet’s plight and even talks treason by saying that appearance shouldn’t be the basis for acceptance in society.  In this scene as in all the scenes up to this point, the faces of the “normal” people, the doctors, nurses and orderlies, are heavily shadowed so that we can’t tell what they look like.

Finally, the Doctor removes the bandages in a painfully slow and boring scene and we are informed by the words and body language of the staff that Janet is still hideous.  Then we are shown her face.  She’s actually a pretty cute blonde.  And now we see what the “normal” people look like.  They’re hideous pig-snouted freaks with bizarre sharp cornered lips and other ugly features.

Knowing that she’s still a hideous monster Janet freaks out and starts running through the hospital disgusting everyone she meets.  Finally, by accident she runs into the representative of the freak reservation who is there to indoctrinate her into freak society.  Of course, he’s a leading man type and she quickly seems to relax and adjust to the idea of living in the freak colony.  As he gives her the pep talk, he concludes by telling her to think about the idea that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

This is a very famous episode and it’s been parodied several times.  But the message is anything but subtle and is pounded on the nose throughout the show, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  But ironically, the ugliness of the “normal” people and the attractiveness of the “freaks” has the opposite effect than the message from the lesson.  We are attracted by Janet and her friend and repelled by the other people.  So the real lesson we learn is avoid weird looking people because they’ll gross you out.

This episode is annoyingly didactic and normally I would punish it with a very low mark but it’s so laughably obtuse in its tone deafness that for its unintentional comedic value I’ll give it an A-.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 5 – The Howling Man

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David Ellington narrates his unbelievable past.  After WW I he was hiking through Central Europe when a sudden thunderstorm disoriented him and he sought shelter in a hermitage.  The brothers were unwilling to give David shelter but he passes out and when he wakes up, he hears a wolf howling.    He follows the sound back to a man imprisoned in a cell who begs him to release him.  Before he does, he is brought to Brother Jerome’s office.  Brother Jerome, the head of the hermitage, informs David that the man in the cell is actually the Devil.  David seems so skeptical that Jerome explains that since he had imprisoned him the Devil had no longer been able to wreak havoc on the world.  And he warns David that if he escapes again, he’ll devastate the earth.  But David couldn’t believe the story so he removes the “Staff of Truth” that was barring the cell and the Devil escapes.

It’s many years later and we see that David is telling this story to his maid.  He tells her that after many years he has recaptured the devil in a room in the apartment and tells the maid not to remove the “Staff of Truth” from the door.  When David leaves to arrange transportation back to Brother Jerome’s the maid removes the staff and the Devil is loosed on the world again.

The set is reminiscent of some Universal Classic Horror movie and Brother Jerome is played by John Carradine who looks sufficiently gothic with his big beard and haunted eyes.  I’m a sucker for classic horror ambience.  B.