Staying After Hours jn The Twilight Zone

It's March once again, time to do some Spring cleaning on the cobwebs of your mind and celebrate, along with blogathon host Terence Towles Canote at A Shroud of Thoughts, all those classic TV episodes that entranced us, entertained us, and even inspired us.

"Inspiring" isn't too strong a word in describing Rod Sterling's The Twilight Zone, as it came along at just the right time for Boomer Monster Kids like myself, stimulating their sense of wonder, giving a slew of future star actors some unique, meaty roles, and showing the way for a new generation of fantasy authors and filmmakers.

Also inspiring was the way in which Sterling and his stable of writers could take elements and objects of ordinary middle class life, add a twist or two, and come up with intelligent, albeit sobering and often macabre, commentaries on the human condition.

The beauty of the series was that the lessons were often seamlessly woven into a dark tapestry of imagination that seemed far removed from any kind of forced social messaging. It's the kind of schooling through entertainment we could use more of today.

The Twilight Zone did its thing so well that it still.has a hold on the popular imagination over six decades later. Indicative of its stature is the series' continued use for New Year's Day broadcast marathons, such as the the recent fest on the Heroes and Icons (H&I) channel. Even though episodes are available on demand at other locations, I went old school, pretending it was still the VCR era, and recorded a bunch of them for bingeing. Somehow, just setting up the recordings gave me a warm, nostalgic feeling.

I've written before on this blog about "lost" Twilight Zone episodes -- lost in the sense that I don't remember seeing them as a kid, and only (re)discovered them in the streaming era (see my posts here and here). Now that the New Year's recordings have run out, I've been sampling episodes from TUBI's on demand stash.

Now Playing: "The After Hours," season 1, episode 34 of The Twilight Zone, first aired June 10, 1960. Written by Rod Serling, directed by Douglas Heyes, and starring Anne Francis, Elizabeth Allen and James Millhollin.

One of the episodes that I binged recently, "The After Hours," is something I definitely remember from those halcyon days sitting in front of the black and white console TV. While it doesn't have the surprise gut punch of more celebrated TZ episodes, "After Hours" effectively establishes a dark and creepy atmosphere, only to end on an unexpectedly upbeat note (in a twisted fairy tale sort of way).

Anne Francis plays Marsha White, an attractive but nervous young woman who is hoping to get a gift for her mother at a busy downtown department store. After distractedly perusing items in various display cases, she heads for the elevator, which seems to be running slow, as there is a crowd of shoppers huddling in front of it.

Fortuitously, an adjacent elevator door opens, and an operator in a dapper uniform beckons to Marsha. Marsha informs him she's after something very specific -- a gold thimble -- to which he dryly responds that she wants the "specialties" department on the 9th floor. Except, after the door closes and it cuts to a close-up of the floor indicators above the elevator, we see there is no 9th floor!

The elevator doors open on a dimly lit, seemingly abandoned floor with empty, dusty display cases. Even as Marsha protests that "there's nothing here," the operator silently closes the doors, stranding her on the mysterious 9th floor.

As Marsha nervously looks around, a figure emerges from the shadows in the form of an elegantly dressed woman (Elizabeth Allen), who asks Marsha, "Can I show you something?" Oddly, the only piece of merchandise is the very gold thimble that Marsha was looking for. More suspicious still, the sales woman knows Marsha's name.

Marsha, increasingly nervous, only wants to pay for the gift and get out of there. As she heads for the elevator, the woman calls after her, "Marsha, are you happy?," as if they've known each other for years. When Marsha retorts that it's none of her business, she reacts strangely, throwing up her hands in exasperation, "Alright Miss White, suit yourself, it's none of my business!"

In the elevator, Marsha notices that the thimble she just bought is scratched and dented. The equally exasperated elevator operator drops her off at the Complaints dept. on the 3rd floor, where she proceeds to harass the management with her story of being sold damaged goods by a very odd sales woman on the non-existent 9th floor. Assistant manager Mr. Armbruster (James Millhollin), already a nervous type himself, has his hands full with the dissatisfied customer.

As Armbruster and his boss the store manager try to make sense of Marsha's story, she spies the very woman who sold her the thimble, who is standing across the room, her back turned to her. Just as Marsha calls out, she gets a bad shock when a store employee literally picks up the mysterious sales woman, who turns out to be a very lifelike display mannequin.

Ready to faint, Marsha is deposited on a couch in a store office, while Armbruster complains about the young woman to another employee. As it nears closing time, both the nervous assistant manager and the employee are distracted by duties and forget about Marsha, who wakes up to find herself in an eerily still, shadowy room long after the store has closed.

If the 9th floor seemed odd, her present predicament is positively frightening, as the elevators aren't working and she's effectively locked in. The mannequins situated around the room certainly don't help ease her anxiety, and when she hears them calling out her name, she realizes in a panic that she's not in Kansas anymore, so to speak.

Many of the series' best episodes featured dark fairy tales superimposed on the most prosaic of mid-20th century settings, i.e., "After Hours'" downtown department store. The moment Marsha gets on the elevator, she, and we, know that something is very off, not the least of which is the stiff, laconic elevator jockey.

The deserted 9th floor ups the weirdness factor a notch or two, as does the materialization of the sales woman out of the shadows, as if she's not just an employee, but a part of the very building itself. Her penetrating stare as she "helps" Marsha find her thimble, and her more vulnerable reaction of exasperation as Marsha retreats to the exit, combine to unsettle both the viewer and the story's protagonist.

But it's not just the sales woman who is odd. Marsha's quest for a gold thimble for her mother seems a bit peculiar (although you can never tell what a collector might obsess over). This is a strange object to be looking for in a bustling urban department store, which reinforces the folk tale quality of the story.

Sterling's script wisely interposes the comic relief of assistant manager Armbruster between the weirdness of the 9th floor and the terror of the shadowy Complaints department. Actor James Millhollin, with his doughy, everyman face and nervous ticks, perfectly captures a character who has neither the time, inclination or imagination to solve his problem customer's mystery. Armbruster is emblematic of the ordinariness of busy, everyday life that is in stark contrast to the haunted fantasy world that Marsha experiences when she becomes trapped in the deserted store.

On the other hand, the mannequins in "After Hours" represent a bridge from the prosaic world we all know to Marsha's nightmare world. They are the ultimate uncanny objects -- at a glance they look like real, honest-to-goodness people, but upon closer examination, the differences become more than a little unnerving, especially in the stillness of the night.

Japanese robot expert Midi Mashahiro called the instinctive repulsion toward things that appear almost but not quite human the "uncanny valley." (Michael Dylan Foster, The Book of Yokai, University of California Press, 2024, p. 105.) Recently, AI generated "people" have taken over from mannequins and robots in plumbing the depths of the valley, resulting in a good deal of public backlash.

"After Hours" exploits that natural repulsion, effectively raising goosebumps when night falls on the department store and its spooky denizens. But by the conclusion, Serling is winking at us, turning the lights on after figuratively yelling "Boo!" and transforming shudders into a sense of wonder. What if something made to be so very lifelike could actually capture the essence of life, if even for a short time? And what if, like in any society, there were rules for using that gift?

In The Twilight Zone Companion, author Marc Scott Zicree has high praise for the people who helped Serling turn his ordinary department store into a dark fantasy world. Zicree credits director Douglas Heyes with making "use of a wide variety of shots to create tension: long shots of silhouetted figures, closeups of Anne Francis's feet as she walks down darkened aisles, shots through pebbled glass of her face -- and through all of this, the camera is almost always in motion, as though it were itself a character, nervously stalking."

As for Anne Francis, at the time of this episode, her iconic appearance in Forbidden Planet (1956) was behind her, and her starring role in in the trailblazing TV show Honey West was several years in the future. Zicree sings her praises: "No amount of visual flair could make this episode work without a strong central presence, and this is where the contribution of Anne Francis comes in. ... There's an energy about her and a freshness, an individuality."

He also quotes Francis herself as saying, "I still have people who walk up to me and say 'The favorite show that I ever saw was that ["After Hours"].' It did make a mark, it did make an impression." (Marc Scott Zicree, The Twilight Zone Companion, 3rd Edition, Silman-James Press, 2018, pp. 117-118.)

Credit too goes to actress Elizabeth Allen for making a big impression in a small part as the enigmatic sales woman on the 9th floor. Her strange familiarity helps build the atmosphere of unease and mystery. (See also my post about Allen's contribution to the creepy Thriller episode "The Grim Reaper.")

All this talent coalesced into the making of a unique modern fairy tale of an unseen world within a world, one of the better episodes of the series.

It's a Wonderful Afterlife

Now Playing: Beyond Tomorrow (1940)

Pros: Good cast of B-movie veterans; Has its share of genuinely touching moments.
Cons: Tests viewer patience with a naive, pseudo-Horatio Alger storyline.

In 2008, a poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion revealed something startling: 55% of the 1700 respondents believed that at some point in their lives, they had been “protected from harm by a guardian angel.” According to Time magazine’s report, this majority belief held up “regardless of denomination, region or education.” (The percentage declined to 37% for those making $150k or more a year - not really a surprise, as many studies have found a strong correlation between lower incomes and religiosity.) 

Perhaps it’s an artifact of a particular time and social climate. In 2008, the nation was on the cusp of the Great Recession and embroiled in a fractious presidential race that was a big, noisy warning of even greater divisions to come. You can forgive people in uncertain times for grabbing any mental lifesavers they can, including the long-shot belief that their as*es just might be saved by a benevolent angel looking down from above.

Maybe it’s time for Baylor to do a follow-up. One wonders if this sort of belief would still hold firm, with church attendance on a steep decline over the past decade. On the other hand, even though the mainstream media keeps braying that the economy has recovered and unemployment is at near-record lows, Americans seem to be jumpy and gloomy and ready to tear into each other at the drop of a hat. More than ever, we could all use a kindly angel to whisper in our ear, if only to persuade us to put down the smartphone for a few minutes.

If these times call for guardian angels, then the 1930s and ‘40s must have required a mass mobilization in Heaven. Predictably, Heavenly guardians and divine intervention figured into more than a few movies of the era. The protagonist of Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) is given a new body and sent back to earth after he’s mistakenly called up to Heaven too soon. In A Guy Named Joe (1943), dead pilot turned guardian angel Spencer Tracy looks after fellow pilot Van Johnson even to the point of helping him romance Irene Dunne.

"A word of advice Clarence, when you appear before the House
Un-American Activities Committee, just take the Fifth."

And then of course there’s the most popular guardian angel of them all, Clarence from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), who earns his wings by showing George Bailey the value of his life. Considering its current iconic status as one of the most popular holiday films of all time, it’s interesting to note that when it was first released, critical reception was mixed, and it actually lost money -- around $500,000 -- for RKO. To add insult to injury, it even attracted unwanted attention from the FBI, which circulated a memo accusing the film of giving aid and comfort to the communists by “attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters," among other thought crimes. 

In spite of its perceived commie sympathies, It’s a Wonderful Life would eventually earn its wings and take off in the hearts of audiences yearning for a bit of innocent, sentimental nostalgia. It’s perhaps no coincidence that as the country in 2008 entered the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, reruns of Capra’s ode to small town America were all over TV during the holidays, and Paramount issued a “collector’s edition” DVD set and blu-ray the following year. 

Of course, not every cinematic angel became a super-star like Clarence. Six years before Capra’s novice angel worked his magic, jovial industrialist turned ghost/guardian angel Michael O’Brien (Charles Winninger) would similarly try to save a lost soul from himself in Beyond Tomorrow (1940). Although the film has been a staple of holiday TV for years and has seen a number of home video releases, it hasn’t quite warmed viewers’ hearts to the extent its younger cousin has.

"I've only got a twenty, does anyone have change?"

Beyond opens on Christmas Eve, with wealthy industrialists George Melton (Harry Carey) and Allan Chadwick (C. Aubrey Smith) obliviously working on plans for a new project in the spacious library of their townhouse. Enter jolly old Michael bearing presents and a festive mood in anticipation of a dinner party with invited guests. The household is a relatively large one, with the three wealthy bachelors, Madam Tanya (Maria Ouspenskaya), a Russian countess who fled the communist revolution and who now manages the house for the trio, and a loyal butler, Josef (Alex Melesh).

When the dinner guests cancel at the last moment, Melton, who is a morose cross between Scrooge and Eeyore, is convinced that it’s because of his involvement in a recent scandal (we’re not given details). To cheer everyone up, Michael proposes a fun game of “wallet fishing” (my name for it). The three bachelors each pony up a wallet with a card with their name and address and a $10 bill (the equivalent of around $100 today) in it. From the balcony, they throw the wallets out onto the sidewalk. If anyone returns a wallet, they become an instant dinner guest.

True to form, Melton bets that none of the wallets will be returned. At first it looks like Melton’s pessimism will be confirmed, as a prosperous party girl (we’ll see her later) finds the first wallet and frivolously hands it over to her chauffeur as an impromptu Christmas bonus. But O’Brien is ultimately vindicated, as two honest, not-so-prosperous people show up to return the other two.

Jean patiently waits for slow, awkward James to propose.

Honest citizen #1 is James Houston (Richard Carlson), a cowboy from Texas whose “aw shucks” demeanor and drawl mask a world-class singing voice (which he uses to wow everyone at the last-minute Christmas party). #2 is Jean Lawrence (Jean Parker), a sweet, dedicated caretaker at a local children’s clinic. Both are alone and near destitute in the big city. After the party, the three bachelors practically adopt the two naifs, having a blast bowling with the pair and playing dress-up and parading around with the children at the clinic. Of course, James and Jean fall in love, with James proposing in that stumbling, awkward way so dear to lovers of old Hollywood romances.

Then, tragedy strikes. The three benefactors have to fly out of state to attend to some business. As they board the plane, Madam Tanya has a premonition that something bad will happen and pleads with them to take a train instead. Sure enough, their plane crashes into a mountain, killing all three.

As their friends and compatriots grieve, word gets out that the wealthy men provided a significant financial nest-egg for Jean and James. The newspapers are intrigued by the human interest angle, and as a result of all the attention, James’ singing aspirations are uncovered.

Faster than you can say “American Idol,” the Texan is invited to demonstrate his talents on a nationally syndicated show, meets singing star Arlene Terry (the posh woman who couldn’t be troubled to return the wallet at the beginning of the film; played by Helen Vinson), and is promptly signed up for Terry’s new touring show. Naturally, as his fame and fortune grows, the once awkward country boy gets stars in his eyes and forgets his engagement to poor Jean.

Madam Tanya senses the presence of her ghostly friends.

In the meantime, the ghosts of the three bachelors have convened back home. They seem to be earthbound for some purpose, and can see that things are going south for Jean as James is increasingly seduced by showbiz and the glamorous Arlene. But being incorporeal spirits, they’re not sure what they can do. It’s left to perspicacious Madam Tanya, who senses the spirits’ presence, to advocate for old fashioned virtues in the face of glittery temptations.

It soon appears that the ghosts’ mission has been called off, as one-by-one they’re summoned to their other-worldly destinations. Old curmudgeon Melton is first, and he stoically shuffles off amidst terrifying thunder and lightning -- it seems that the mysterious scandal has earned him a ride on the down escalator. Stiff-upper-lipped Brit Chadwick is the next to go, as his soldier son -- who obviously preceded him in death -- appears and beckons his dad to join him at a heavenly version of the old colonial post where Chadwick spent his happiest years.

Chadwick prepares to join his dead son in reporting
for eternal duty at Shangri-La.

O’Brien is the last spirit standing (floating?) as things start to come to a head for James. The cowboy's glitzy new life has caused him to cross paths with Arlene’s alcoholic, washed-up singer of an ex-husband (who, to add insult to injury, James replaced on Arlene’s show). When the jovial Irishman is suddenly summoned to his final destination, he demurs, insisting that James is in big trouble and needs his help. The summoner tells him that if he doesn’t go, he’ll be earthbound forever. In spite of the consequences, he decides to stay and do what he can as James’ self-appointed guardian angel.

In contrast to It’s a Wonderful Life, with its depictions of malicious, greedy bankers and alternate reality capitalist hell-holes, there is very little in Beyond Tomorrow that J. Edgar Hoover could have objected to. The film’s wealthy businessmen are mostly kind, charitable, and fun to be around. (Melton, with his dark secret, is grumpy and pessimistic, but down deep has a heart of gold.)

The needy characters at the beginning of the film, James and Jean, aren’t resentful of their lot in life. Like 1940s-era Horatio Algers, they don’t look twice and happily seize on the opportunities afforded by their new benefactors. Similarly, Madam Tanya, who left everything behind fleeing Soviet Russia, seems to want nothing more than to run the household for the bachelors.

I can visualize the old, puritanical J. Edgar giving the film a huge red, white and blue seal of approval. And that’s part of the problem. Beyond Tomorrow is filled with such All-American sweetness and light for so much of its running time, that the eyelids start to droop.

"I'm dreaming of a white limo..."

While It’s a Wonderful Life also indulges in gooily sentimental scenes, it at least has a scene-chewing villain in the form of crabby, avaricious Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) to give it an edge that Beyond sorely lacks. Beyond Tomorrow wants us to hiss at star singer Arlene Terry as a hussy and temptress, but she makes a pretty weak villain -- she has no idea James is engaged to Jean, and she has her own cross to bear with an alcoholic ex-husband who can’t let go.

In fact, James is far worthier of the viewer’s ire. Unaccountably, after the benefactors are killed in the plane crash, James moves into their cushy townhouse while Jean continues to stay in her drab room at the clinic. Once his career takes off, he’s too cowardly to tell Jean the marriage is off to her face, sending her lame excuses by telegram instead.

Everyone -- especially guardian ghost O’Brien -- is fretting about how the poor, guileless Texan is being seduced by Terry and showbiz, as if he’s a child with no control over his life. In contrast, George Bailey’s big mistake is a kind of selfless one -- he concludes that everyone will be better off without him.

Like in many movie romances, the lovers themselves are either boring or irritating. Jean wallows in stoic martyrdom while James follows the women in his life around like a puppy dog. It’s the characters around them that propel the action and elicit the smiles. Beyond Tomorrow is redeemed by the rich “uncles,” who, despite being textbook character types -- the sour businessman with a heart of gold; the stiff-upper-lipped Brit; the jovial Irishman -- are fun to watch with their betting, bantering and matchmaking.

Their ultimate fates in the afterlife provide some of the film’s most intriguing moments. At first, when the three gather back home as spirits after the plane crash, it seems clear that they’ve been given a short time on earth to try to save James from himself. But when Melton and Chadwick are called to their final destinations before the mission is completed, we’re left wondering just what their spirits were doing on earth in the first place.

O'Brien is summoned to that great Christmas tree lot in the sky.

Each apparently has a different, personalized eternal fate in store. As the Irishman is summoned, the trees before him light up like a heavenly Christmas theme park, and a bright guiding light shines above. It’s especially poignant when O’Brien forsakes such a beautiful eternity to stay on earth to help James.

When Beyond Tomorrow was released, Harry Carey (Melton) was the biggest name, having picked up an Oscar nomination the year before for a supporting role in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). He was a huge cowboy star in the silent era, later graduating to more diverse character roles. C. Aubrey Smith (Chadwick) was also very familiar to audiences of the time, having made a career out of playing upper-crust British military men and politicians in such films as The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) and The Four Feathers (1939).

Regular visitors to this blog (you are out there, aren’t you?) are no doubt familiar with Maria Ouspenskaya (Madam Tanya), the sorrowful gypsy woman in The Wolf Man (1941), and Richard Carlson (James), who was everywhere in ‘50s sci-fi. Richard battled the Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), alerted the world to the existence of aliens in It Came from Outer Space (1953), and even directed and starred in his own space opera, Riders to the Stars (1954).

But Beyond Tomorrow belongs to Charles Winninger as Michael O’Brien, who brings buoyant energy to a somewhat stereotypical role, and provides the film’s most touching moment. His character lays everything, including his own eternal peace, on the line for a friend, and we can’t ask for a better example of the Christmas spirit than that.

Where to find it: See Oldies.com for a number of different DVD editions; it's also streaming for the moment on Amazon Prime.

Martin “Thanos” Scorsese vs. the Marvel Universe

This is truly the age of faux controversy. I never cease to be amazed at the ability of the social media behemoth to take a fairly innocent celebrity comment, strip it of all context, and blast it out there to get all those thumbs furiously tapping out as many knee-jerk tweets, texts and posts as possible. I was particularly interested when King of the Movie Nerds Martin Scorsese caused a major kerfuffle with a comment on Marvel superhero movies in an Empire magazine interview:

“I don’t see them,” he says of the MCU. “I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well-made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

(By the way, I mean no disrespect in using the term Nerd; quite the opposite. Not only does Mr. Scorsese, well into his ‘70s, work his butt off making great movies, he spends his time off the set tirelessly advocating for film preservation and the richest possible viewing experience. Recently, he’s tackled the arcane tech issue of motion-smoothing on newer TVs that changes the way movies look on the small screen, and is working with major manufacturers to develop a “film mode” that better replicates the look that filmmakers are going for. It takes a passionate nerd to step in and do the nitty-gritty work so the rest of us can take it for granted that our favorite films will be there for us.)

Martin would prefer you watch his movies in a theater, but if you
have to watch at home, turn off that motion-smoothing setting.

There’s nothing new or particularly outrageous in Scorsese’s remarks. Lots of people have been comparing the blockbuster comic book and sci-fi movies to amusement park rides since at least the early 2000s. Heck, I’ve said it more than once on this blog -- in fact, it’s enshrined as part of my “About the Blog” statement (revised in November 2018):

“Theaters compete [with Netflix and Amazon Prime] with CGI-infested blockbusters that more resemble amusement park rides than traditional movies (and desperately try to deliver on ever-more exorbitant ticket prices). It’s Cinerama all over again, trying to woo jaded consumers away from the net, if only for a couple of hours. An increasingly desperate Hollywood pushes every franchise entry, re-boot, re-make or sequel as an “event,” with accompanying big ticket prices, leading to empty wallets and growing cynicism.”

Scorsese tries to be as gentle as possible with his fellow filmmakers -- “...as well made as they [MCU movies] are, with actors doing the best they can…” -- while simply expressing a personal preference. That this should become such a huge news story, with all the theatrical hand-wringing and head-shaking (e.g., “James Gunn ‘Saddened’ by Martin Scorcese...”) is characteristic of a culture that needs to stoke controversy and outrage over everything, 24/7, to capture eyeballs and sell ads.

Variety’s coverage of the teapot tempest featured a number of prickly, defensive tweets from the usual MCU suspects, but I smiled when I saw this very sensible reaction:

People are mad about this but it would be so much weirder if Martin Scorsese *loved* Marvel movies. Like, grew a Tony Stark goatee and had a bunch of DeviantArt of pregnant Loki and shit https://t.co/CcXHQiAkgI

— Chase Mitchell (@ChaseMit) October 4, 2019

To be fair to the MCU fans whose feelings got hurt, I think saying that superhero movies aren’t “cinema” is somewhat closed-minded. Even if you privilege art over industry in your conception of Cinema with a capital C, just because a movie doesn’t plumb a group of characters’ psychological depths doesn’t mean there’s no art or cinematic value there.

The purpose of the art is just different -- in the case of superhero movies, to create worlds that inspire wonder and awe as backdrops to basic conflicts of good and evil. You can complain about the techno-fetishism, or the over-reliance on digital effects, or even simply that they’re loud and dumb (and believe me, I do), but hey, to give the Devil his due, they are also the result of small armies of highly talented, passionate people who work long hours at their art.

When I was kid, we'd never heard of a "shared
cinematic universe," but we sure did love the
Universal monster rallies.

Also, if we think of cinema as having an enduring value and relevance for audiences over longer time frames, then we have to pay respect to the good-vs.-evil melodramas that, on the face of it, seem so puerile. After all, millions of people still enjoy the fruits of the very first cinematic universe -- the Universal monsters -- decades after they first appeared in theaters, while many of the “adult” dramas of the period are all but forgotten. (If home video releases and streaming availability are any indication, then the monsters win hands down.)

In a recent Den of Geek article, "Universal Monsters, How the Wolf Man Created the First Cinematic Universe," David Crow writes,

"Over 80 years since it began, the Universal Monsters legacy continues to stretch into a new century, spreading celluloid immortality like a juicy Transylvanian kiss. The Universal Monsters did it first, and in many ways, their blunt directness had a special charm that is sorely lacking in the self-seriousness currently masquerading in their bloodless, caped descendants."

I doubt Scorsese would hold up the Universal monsters as a model of good cinema, but at least a few current film writers appreciate the “ancient” (by 2019 standards) antecedents of today’s multi-billion $ fantasy and sci-fi franchises.

Scorsese’s crime was expressing an off-the-cuff, mild prejudice that we all indulge in from time to time: Comic book movies aren’t cinema; George R.R. Martin’s novels aren’t literature; Andy Warhol didn’t create “art.” You don’t have to agree to see where the person is coming from.

I don't know if this is art, but I know
what I like, and I like soup.

Maybe true “cinema” should engage audiences more directly with deep, meaningful takes on the human condition. Maybe superhero movies don’t cut it. So what? My advice to MCU fans is to walk away, decide not to engage. You don’t need to have the whole world behind you, and certainly not dear old Martin, to enjoy your movies. Take the high road. Watch The Irishman when it comes out. Cleanse your palate by enjoying a more down-to-earth drama or comedy. Maybe track down an old genre flick or two just to get a sense of how movies have evolved (the classic Universal monsters might be a good place to start). Then get back to your passion, refreshed and relaxed, and watch some superheroes artfully kick ass.

Lost in the Twilight Zone: Lesser Known Episodes, Part Two

Host Rod Serling introduces "The Howling Man"

In Part One, I saluted Rod Serling’s classic series for still going strong nearly 60 years after its initial air date. I looked at two episodes from the first season, that, while not usually celebrated as among the best of the series, are still to my mind minor classics and exemplify the uncanny, macabre mood for which The Twilight Zone is so well known.

One of them, “Elegy,” I don’t remember ever seeing before I stumbled upon it last year while perusing Netflix’s episode menu. “Elegy’s” peculiar premise and characteristic twist ending was the work of Charles Beaumont, whose 22 Twilight Zone scripts greatly contributed to the series’ dark, eerie feel.

In Part Two, I’ve picked two more Beaumont-authored episodes from the second season. They’re not in the same fan favorite league as “Eye of the Beholder” or “The Invaders” from season two, but they are wild and bizarre and very repeat-watchable.

“The Howling Man” (1960)

This 5th episode of season 2 starts off like a conventional ghost story, with the pale, shaken protagonist, David Ellington (H.M. Wynant) speaking directly to the camera, relating what he admits is an unbelievable tale that happened to him years ago. He had been on a walking tour of central Europe shortly after WWI and had gotten caught in a fierce storm. In a neat segue, Ellington turns around to look out the window at a storm brewing outside.

In flashback, we see Ellington, soaked to the skin, stumbling toward a sprawling old hermitage. Banging on the door with his hands, he manages to summon a grim, bearded man with a long cloak and old-fashioned lantern who looks like a refugee from the set of The Ten Commandments. The man at first gruffly tells Ellington that they don’t admit visitors, but then takes pity on the distressed traveler and takes him to see the head man, Brother Jerome (John Carradine). As they walk through the corridors, Ellington is startled to hear an eerie howl, half animal and half human-sounding.

Jerome, with his long white hair and beard, shepherd’s staff and Biblical-era garments, looks like God himself. But Jerome has no mercy on the weary traveler -- when Ellington asks for shelter and food, Jerome insists that he leave immediately. Ellington, chilled and sick, turns to leave, stumbles a few paces, then falls to the floor in a faint.

The Howling Man is definitely going to trash
Jerome and his hermitage on Yelp.

After recovering from his blackout, Ellington follows the unearthly howls to a barred cell in the deep recesses of the hermitage. He’s startled to find a handsome prisoner in tattered rags who begs for Ellington’s help, claiming that Jerome and the brothers are all mad as hatters. He tells a harrowing tale of being captured by Jerome and held prisoner for simply kissing a girl in the local village square.

Ellington, not sure what to believe, confronts Jerome about the secret prisoner. At first denying he even exists, Jerome relents and tells the whole truth about the man they are holding. The story is even more fantastic than the prisoner’s. Ellington, his mind swirling, makes a fateful decision.

This Twilight Zone fairy tale has great fun with its gothic mix of lightning, thunder, weird howls, and dark, candle-lit sets. Veteran B movie actor John Carradine, with his deep, resonant voice and antique costume, is perfect as brother Jerome. He looks ready to lead the Israelites to the promised land. This was Carradine’s only appearance on the original show.

This too was H.M. Wynant’s (Ellington) only appearance on the series. His character is shaky, nervous and uncertain throughout. The camera emphasizes his chaotic state, at times in extreme close-up where we can see every drop of sweat on his forehead, and at other times in long shot, where his character seems to be swallowed up in the gloomy halls of the old hermitage. Incredibly, Wynant, who started his TV/film career in 1955 on the live Studio 57 show and has done just about every series you can think of, is still acting today, with a credit (on IMDb) for 2018!

English actor Robin Hughes, who looks like a poor man’s Errol Flynn, does a great job as the impassioned, persuasive prisoner. His job is all the harder, as he has to deliver his best lines from behind the bars of his cell. He also has a fun transformation scene towards the end that is reminiscent of Henry Hull’s in The Werewolf of London (1935). Hughes is the star of one of my favorite “forgotten” horror films of the ‘50s, The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958) 

Underneath the High-Gothic hokiness, there is a modern psychoanalytic fable starring Ellington as humanity’s Ego, Brother Jerome as the Superego, and the prisoner as the Id. Whether in real life or in The Twilight Zone, you unleash him at your peril.

“Shadow Play” (1960)

SPOILER ALERT: This episode is difficult to discuss in much depth without revealing important plot points. Proceed with caution.

“Shadow Play” adds a vicious twist to the age-old idea that life is all a dream. In the messed up head of Adam Grant (Dennis Weaver), life is a recurring nightmare in which the world and the people around him are merely set pieces in the strange, dark drama he must go through again and again.

The episode opens with a close-up of Grant in profile, seemingly sitting by himself in the darkness. As the camera pans back, the rest of the set suddenly lights up to reveal a courtroom. The jury is just returning from their deliberations. Grant is on trial for murder, but as the jury foreman declares him guilty of first degree murder, he stares off into space, chin in hand, oblivious.

At the judge’s repeated commands to stand up for sentencing, he wearily rises. As the judge imposes the ultimate penalty of death by electrocution, he at firsts laughs, then explodes in rage: “Not again, I won’t die again!” Before the guards can rush him out of the courtroom, he yells to a press reporter: “Tell the District Attorney he’s prosecuting himself, everybody in this building, … everybody in the world!”

On death row, Grant acts as if he’s seen it all before. When an old con (William Edmondson) in an adjoining cell advises him to stop imagining what the execution is going to be like, Grant, as if in a trance, describes the final minutes in great detail, from the colors of the doors and the execution room, to the feel of the electric chair seat, to the musty smell of the hood as they pull it over his head.

In a neat bit of gallows humor, just as Grant gets to the pulling of the switch, the scene jump cuts to the District Attorney’s home, where his wife has opened up the oven to check on two steaming steaks.

Grant’s bizarre behavior has wormed its way into the heads of the reporter, Paul Carson (Wright King), and the DA, Henry Ritchie (Harry Townes). Paul shows up at Ritchie’s house on the night of the execution, liquored up and clearly weirded out. His interviews with Grant have him doubting his own reality. He convinces the reluctant Ritchie to make a last minute visit to death row to talk to Grant himself.

Upon arriving, Ritchie is surprised to find out that Grant is expecting him. Ritchie gets more and more uncomfortable as Grant seems to know what he’s going to say before he says it. Grant sticks to his mad story that he is dreaming his own execution “night after night after night.” As Ritchie leaves, a desperate Grant chillingly calls after him, “I’m telling the truth Mr. Ritchie! Please, let me live and I’ll keep you alive, I’ll dream you every night, just like this…”

When Ritchie gets home, he finds a small but unnerving change to his reality -- one that Grant had predicted -- that leaves him speechless and very spooked.

With Beaumont’s clever script, you get two tortured souls for the price of one -- Grant, caught in an endless loop of nightmares, and Ritchie, who slowly comes to the chilling realization that his own comfortable world can be wiped out in the blink of an eye.

"Last meal? Hmmm, I can't decide between the mystery
meatloaf or the Spam sandwich..."

Grant’s nightmare worlds are built from scraps of memory. Another nice touch is that, even in the depths of the nightmare, Grant is fully aware of how rickety and superficial it is: the DA is an old teacher from grammar school, the clergyman who visits him before the execution is a pastor who died years before.

And, having no real world experience with courtrooms or death houses, the particulars of his tortured dreams are filled with cliches from prison movies he’s seen. He muses, “I got tried and sentenced the same day -- it doesn’t work like that. It’s like a movie. Real death houses aren’t like that, but I’ve never been in a real death house…. That’s my impression of it.”

But, in spite of the banal absurdity of it all, the horror is no less real. Or perhaps, it’s all the more horrible because it’s so absurd. Dennis Weaver’s performance is a gem. He deftly rides his character’s emotional roller-coaster from all-out panic to quiet desperation and back again.

By this point Weaver had already established some TV fame with his role of Chester on Gunsmoke, and of course would go on to even greater glory as McCloud in the 70s. But credit The Twilight Zone for really putting his talents to good use.

Weaver is ably supported by the other cast members, especially William Edmondson as Jiggs, another prison movie cliche pulled straight out of Grant’s mind. Jiggs is the grizzled death row veteran who at first tries to take the new guy under his wing, but as Grant continues to insist that the prison, the cells and everyone around him are figments of his nightmares, Jiggs snorts in derision at the madman.

Yet another plus for “Shadow Play” is the capable direction of John Brahm. The German born director was no stranger to strange films and TV. Before diving headlong into TV in the mid ‘50s, Brahm had helmed two well regarded thrillers, The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945), both starring the quietly menacing Laird Cregar. Brahm had an very productive TV career, directing episodes for all the usual suspects -- Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, The Outer Limits, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Man From Uncle, among others -- as well as 12 episodes of The Twilight Zone.

To my mind “Shadow Play” is the best of the Brahm lot, for its clever, mind-bending script and great performance by Dennis Weaver.

Why Bother with B's?

Why bother with old B movies? Because they're there. They're on NetFlix. They're on Amazon. They're on eBay. They're on Turner Classic Movies. They're on hundreds of video archive and gray market sites. They're everywhere.  It seems there are a lot of folks who can still enjoy a good pre-CGI sci-fi, fantasy, or horror flick. Fans can excuse that model spaceship hoisted on wires, or the creature from beyond space in a rubber suit, because there's a kernel of pure, childish joy to be found in these modest pictures.

In case you hadn't noticed, science fiction, fantasy, and horror have become BIG business. Millions are sunk into productions requiring vast armies of technical specialists. To ensure maximum returns, films are crafted to resemble amusement park thrill rides or big screen video games. Vampires have turned into teen idols, and torture porn (Saw, Hostel) masquerades as horror. Filmmakers with more modest budgets compensate with over-the-top, gross-out special effects (Slither, Splinter). And as if that wasn't enough, a film can't just sell tickets. If it's not already part of a franchise, it has to have franchise potential… and it has to do merchandising, and tie-ins, and product placements, and you name it.  With all that riding on the typical science fiction or fantasy vehicle, there's very little room for imagination, creativity, uniqueness… or simple fun. For all the latest CGI effects, today's movies tend to "dazzle" audiences in the same predictable, stultifying ways.

Sure, B genre pictures are by definition formula pictures, and there's nothing more tedious than a bad, unimaginative, shoestring-budget programmer. But for many pics, low budgets and modest expectations freed moviemakers to take chances on interesting lesser known actors, original material, creative shoestring effects, and quirky bits of dialog and business. The results, while not always sublime, were often refreshing and fun. It's to these movies, the men and women behind them, and the fans who enjoy them to this day -- free to 'B' themselves -- that this blog is dedicated.

So, what to expect? I'll be rooting around in the shadowy past, from roughly the early '30s to the early '70s, dusting off those intriguing rough gems of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror that have been overlooked and under-appreciated. While I love them dearly, I'll tend to bypass classics like Forbidden Planet and Creature From the Black Lagoon (what's left to say about them?) in favor of more obscure titles like The Phantom Planet and The Monster of Piedros Blancas.

Making movies, even "bad" ones, is a hard, time-consuming job. My purpose is not to make fun of these underdog movies to show what a clever, sarcastic guy I am. Granted, there will be unintentionally funny and inept lines, plot elements, acting and/or effects in many (if not most) of the movies featured here, but my mission will be to show what works, what doesn't, and why you might want to seek it out -- not to ridicule it. And wherever possible, I'll include clips to show you exactly what I'm talking about. Occasionally, I'll veer off into film noir and even westerns-- it is my blog after all.  And I reserve the right to just blather in general about movies or popular culture.

There's a lot to discover beyond the cinematic time barrier: giant mutations, mythical beasts, gothic vampires, atom-age vampires, teenage werewolves, mad scientists, madmen, and their cursed sons and daughters…  I invite you to come along for a ride or two into this fantastic film world.