Serling starts this off by telling us that the protagonist Arch Hammer (I kid you not) is a small time con-man, crumb and all around nogoodnik.\u00a0 He also has the ability to look like someone else.\u00a0 If he can look at a photo or remember a face, he can change his appearance to resemble that face.\u00a0 He uses this ability to scam people.<\/p>\n
In the story he takes pictures and descriptions from the obituaries to impersonate the dead.\u00a0 First, he shows up at the nightclub where a young singer is mourning for her dead boyfriend.\u00a0 When Arch impersonates him, he tells her that he was mistaken for the dead man and convinces the girl to run away with him to Chicago.\u00a0 She\u2019s so elated to find him still alive that she kisses him and agrees.\u00a0 Next, he goes to the home of a gangster posing as one of his mobsters that was murdered during a job.\u00a0 He shakes down the mob boss and runs off with a load of cash with two mobsters in hot pursuit.\u00a0 Cornered by them in a dead-end alley he quickly sees a photo of a boxer on a poster and changes his face to avoid the mobsters.\u00a0 But on emerging from the alley he meets a newspaper seller who turns out to be the father of the boxer.\u00a0 It seems the boxer was an awful man and the father hates him viscerally.\u00a0 Arch knocks the old man down and returns to his apartment and his own face.\u00a0 A police detective shows up at his door and tells him he has to go to headquarters for questioning.\u00a0 Leaving in the revolving doors of the apartment building he escapes the detective for a second and when he catches up to Arch, he has assumed the face of the boxer.\u00a0 Walking away free and clear he runs into the boxer\u2019s father and despite his hurried attempt to change his face again the father shoots him down.\u00a0 While he\u2019s dying on the pavement Arch Hammer\u2019s face changes briefly through all four of the faces he used in the episode.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s give some credit for the plot idea.\u00a0 A human chameleon has been done a lot but it was probably pretty exciting in 1959.\u00a0 The three vignettes he involved himself in were pretty simplistic and not highly novel but the acting was mostly okay.\u00a0 But the payoff was the boxer\u2019s father who wanted revenge.\u00a0 That actor wasn\u2019t very good or convincing.\u00a0 It seemed very flat to me and didn\u2019t provide the emotional energy needed to justify the execution of an adult child by a parent.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t buy it.\u00a0 I\u2019ll give this a C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serling starts this off by telling us that the protagonist Arch Hammer (I kid you not) is a small time con-man, crumb and all around<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,240,1661],"tags":[38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,1703,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-5951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-tv-reviews","category-twilight-zone","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rod-serling","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-the-four-of-us-are-dying","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n