Peter Falk is Ramos Clemente, who is a stand in for Fidel Castro.\u00a0 Clemente and his four lieutenants are celebrating their victory over and capture of the former dictator De Cruz (a stand-in for Battista).\u00a0 The five friends toast each other with the wine they\u2019ve captured in the Presidential Palace.\u00a0 De Cruz is brought in and Clemente taunts him with the prospect of a slow torturous death.\u00a0 De Cruz dismisses his taunts and rails at Clemente with the reality that now he was the new dictator and he would be living in fear of the next avenging angel to follow.\u00a0 De Cruz follows up by telling them that the ornate mirror on the wall of the Presidential Office is magic and will show Clemente the face of his would-be assassins.\u00a0 Clemente sends off De Cruz to his fate but we can see that de Cruz\u2019s words have hit home in Clemente\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n
At this point one of Clemente\u2019s lieutenants upbraids him for treating De Cruz in an extralegal fashion.\u00a0 He insists that Clemente cannot murder De Cruz but must have him tried in court.\u00a0 Clemente explodes at him and calls him a fool and dismisses his criticism as stupid.\u00a0 But when Clemente turns away from his critical comrade, he sees in the mirror that this man is now holding a gun as if he means to shoot Clemente.\u00a0 But when he turns back to the man, he has no gun and isn\u2019t even looking toward him.\u00a0 But now Clemente remembers De Cruz\u2019s words of the magic mirror.\u00a0 He accuses the man of plotting his murder.\u00a0 And immediately Clemente pushes his comrade through the balcony doors and throws him down to his death.<\/p>\n
Now two of his other three lieutenants are shocked and agitated and upbraid him for what they see as insanity.\u00a0 By the way one of these two is dressed and made up to look like Che Guevara.\u00a0 Clemente argues with them and when he turns to the mirror again the two men are shown with a gun and knife.\u00a0 He tells the two men to go down to the prison and make sure De Cruz hasn\u2019t escaped.\u00a0 They go reluctantly and as soon as they are gone, he calls the gate of the prison and tells the guards to kill his two lieutenants when the appear.\u00a0 Then he tells the guards to let him know when it is done.<\/p>\n
Facing his last comrade, he asks him whether his turn will be next to turn on Clemente.\u00a0 The man says that there are two kinds of men, followers and leaders and he himself will follow Clemente until that day when he no longer thinks Clemente is the strongest.\u00a0 But he also tells Clemente that he can never again think of other men as his friends.\u00a0 A dictator has no friends, only followers or rivals.\u00a0 This seems to satisfy Clemente.\u00a0 Next the lieutenant answers the phone and informs Clemente that his two men have been executed by the prison guards.\u00a0 This seems to depress Clemente and he turns away.\u00a0 But when he looks in the mirror again, he sees his last comrade leering at him and holding a glass of wine.\u00a0 When he turns around the man is not holding any wine.\u00a0 When shortly after the man offers Clemente a glass of wine, he assumes the man is trying to poison him.\u00a0 He slaps the glass out of his hand and accuses him.\u00a0 The man mocks him for believing in magic mirrors but despite this Clemente shoots him dead.\u00a0 Now he is alone.<\/p>\n
In the next scene the Catholic priest in charge of the area comes to Clemente and demands that the firing squads that have been working around the clock killing De Cruz\u2019s men end.\u00a0 Clemente refuses saying he will kill off all his would-be assassins.\u00a0 The priest leaves but he tells Clemente that all dictators always miss the one real assassin.<\/p>\n
As he leaves and closes the door Clemente in desperation throws his gun through the mirror and a few seconds later the priest and the guards outside the door hear a shot ring out and enter to find Clemente has committed suicide.<\/p>\n
At the time Castro was in the news having just overthrown Battista and taken control of Cuba.\u00a0 Of course, no magic mirror overthrew Castro and he only finally died a few years ago but Peter Falk is so much fun to watch in this thing as a crazy Latin American dictator.\u00a0\u00a0 A-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Peter Falk is Ramos Clemente, who is a stand in for Fidel Castro.\u00a0 Clemente and his four lieutenants are celebrating their victory over and capture<\/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":[38,1355,1194,44,309,265,1691,1816,154,1692,838],"class_list":["post-6558","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-mirror","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-twilight-zone"],"yoast_head":"\n