Repeat Report – Summer 1962 (Part 1)

The summer 1962 reruns kicked off on 6/08/1962 with “The Odyssey of Flight 33” and ran for fifteen weeks (14 episodes were aired; there was pre-emption on 8/24).  We’ll look at the first half here, which is comprised of seven episodes from season 2.  Note that “The Eye of the Beholder” was aired under its alternate title for its repeat airing:  “The Private World of Darkness.”  As always, click on each image for a full-sized eyeful of high-definition beauty.

06/08/62

The Odyssey of Flight 33 (rerun)

Original air date:  2/24/1961

06/15/62

The Private World of Darkness (aka “The Eye of the Beholder”) (rerun)

Original air date: 11/11/1960

06/22/62

King Nine Will Not Return (rerun)

Original air date: 9/30/1960

06/29/62

The Trouble with Templeton (rerun)

Original air date: 12/09/1960

07/06/62

Dust (rerun)

Original air date: 1/06/1961

07/13/62

The Howling Man (rerun)

Original air date: 11/04/1960

07/20/62

A Most Unusual Camera (rerun)

Original air date: 12/16/1960

It confounds me to no end that several undisputed classics from season 2 were never repeated, including “Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room,” “The Rip Van Winkle Caper,” “Shadow Play” and “The Obsolete Man.”  Meanwhile, embarrassingly awful crap like “A Most Unusual Camera” got an encore telecast.  Why, Rod, why???

We'll have a look at the second half of the summer 1962 repeats in about six weeks.  Things will likely be a bit quiet around here between now and then.  It is summer, after all....

RIP Ray Bradbury

RAY DOUGLAS BRADBURY

August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012

Ray Bradbury, writer of the Twilight Zone episode "I Sing the Body Electric," has passed away at the age of 91.  Bradbury's influence on The Twilight Zone, and on the science fiction and fantasy genres, is incalculable.  I'm a huge fan of his work (my favorite novel of all time is his Fahrenheit 451), so naturally I'm devastated.  Yet another hand I'll never be able to shake....

Rest in peace, good sir.  Thank you for all the rockets and Martians you filled my head with.

In Retrospect: Season 3 (1961-1962)

The Twilight Zone aired more episodes in season 3 than any other season (37; seasons 1 and 5 each had 36); however, two of those episodes were actually produced during season 2 (“The Grave” and “Nothing in the Dark”).  Unfortunately, quantity didn’t always equal quality…

Readers of this blog are aware that I don’t typically rate and rank the episodes as I review them.  However, for retrospective purposes, I am willing to categorize them in three general ballparks:  Decent-to-excellent, mediocre, and lousy.  Season 3 breaks down as follows:

Good-to-excellent: 32

Mediocre: 2

Lousy: 5

This means that 81.08% of season 3 was good-to-excellent.  That’s not bad, but it’s a step down from season 2’s 82.76%, and it’s a dramatic drop from season 1’s 91.67%.

The mediocre entries were “Showdown with Rance McGrew” and “Hocus-Pocus and Frisby.”  Neither were terrible and they had their moments, but I’d be fine if I never crossed paths with them again.

The lousy entries were “The Mirror,” “Once Upon a Time,” “Four O’clock,” “The Gift,” and “Cavender is Coming.”  All five are offensively bad in some way (actually several ways, in most cases), and all five should’ve been aborted before production ever started.  They could’ve (and should’ve) produced five less episodes and ran some of the season 1 gems that never got encores instead.

Here are some screenshots that I held back during the weekly episode spotlights (usually to avoid spoilers.)  Enjoy!

TZ Promo: “The Changing of the Guard” (6/01/1962)

Season 3, Episode 37 (102 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4835

Fifty years ago tonight, The Twilight Zone’s third season came to a gentle, elegiac close with a somber tale of failure, redemption, and… oh yeah, ghosts.

“The Changing of the Guard” concerns elderly Professor Ellis Fowler, who is devastated to learn that he is being forced into retirement just as school is letting out for the Christmas break. Believing himself to be an abject failure, and that he’s never really taught anyone anything worthwhile, he sets out into the winter night… with a loaded pistol in his pocket.  However, the ghosts of his past students might have something to say about this misguided act.

Genre favorite Donald Pleasence is remarkable as Fowler, a character twice his actual age (the age makeup is among the best in the entire series; it holds up quite well under the high definition microscope).  Pleasence wasn’t a recognizable actor (in the US, anyway) at the time; I imagine most who saw his performance when it first aired assumed he actually was a senior citizen.

Pleasence would go on to a memorable role the following year as a man with extraordinary psychic abilities in the Outer Limits episode “The Man With the Power” but, more famously, he was one of three actors to portray the villainous Ernst Blofeld in the James Bond film series (specifically You Only Live Twice; coincidentally my favorite Bond outing).  He also played Dr. Loomis in several installments of the Halloween film franchise.

The headmaster is played by Liam Sullivan, last seen in season two’s “The Silence,” in which his obnoxious character promised to remain silent for a year (but cheated by having his vocal cords snipped).  Here he’s got plenty of nice things to say, but our Professor Fowler is too despondent to hear them. The lovely, pastoral music heard as Fowler leaves said headmaster’s office (after being told of his forced retirement) is called “Quiet Western Scene,” a CBS Music Library stock cue by Nathan Van Cleave, contributor of many great original TZ scores.  Here we only get a snippet; the cue will be more prominently featured in season four’s “On Thursday We Leave For Home” (we’ll get it about a year from now).

Ghosts appear and fade away. (Men at Work, "Overkill")

Aside from the scheduling absurdity of airing a Christmas episode in June (TZ would also rerun its perennial holiday classic “Night of the Meek” a few months later… in August!), “The Changing of the Guard” is a gentle, satisfying tale of one man’s heartbreak and ultimate optimism for the future.  I could argue that Fowler is actually a selfish jackass for endeavoring to blow his own brains out in the middle of the campus, which would likely traumatize both the faculty and the student body, but I’ve never been forced to retire, so I’m really not in a position to judge.  In all honesty, I WISH they’d force me to retire.  At 42, however, I fear I’ve got quite a while to wait.

Next:  The summer rerun season kicks off with the passionate tale of a plane, a dinosaur, and the freak tailwind that brought them together. 

TZ Promo: “Cavender is Coming” (5/25/1962)

Season 3, Episode 36 (101 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4827

Hey, remember season one’s “Mr. Bevis?”  That silly, light-hearted story of a quirky guy with terrible luck who gets some unexpected help from a guardian angel?  Remember that?  I sure do.  Who could forget it?  It’s by far the single worst Twilight Zone episode in the entire five-year run of the series, and I absolutely hate it.  Nah, “hate” is too kind a word.  My despising of it is passionate and eternal, a seething ember that never quite dies out.  It’s so bad that I opted to barely discuss it when it reached its 50th birthday two years ago (see for yourself here).  Rod Serling gave us some of the series’ greatest episodes.  He also gave us many of its worst, and “Mr. Bevis” is the worst of the worst.  Two years on, and what does he do?  He rewrites the same goddamned story with different characters.  And yes, it still sucks.

“Cavender Is Coming,” the penultimate episode of the show’s third season, turns 50 tonight.  It stars the delightful Carol Burnett as Agnes Grep (ugh, wotta name), a luckless charmer who can’t hold onto a job because, well, she’s a clitzy dutz.*  Harmon Cavender (Jesse White) is a guardian angel desperate to get his wings, so he tries to reverse her misfortune by bestowing upon her a fortune.  Hilarity (or not) ensues.

Yes, “Cavender Is Coming” is the latest in a (seemingly endless) stream of attempts at comedy by Serling, in a series that really has no business trying to be funny.  When you think of The Twilight Zone, you think of mystery, suspense, supernatural intrigue, terror.  Are any of those things funny?  Nope.  Almost every attempt at humor by Serling falls flat on its ugly face, and this week's installment is no exception.  Maybe that’s why they slapped a canned laugh track onto it, to trick us into thinking it's funny.  Yup, that’s right, folks:  it’s a Twilight Zone sitcom.  Christ on a cracker.  Worst… idea… ever.

Carol Burnett is of course wonderful here, like she is in everything she's ever done. Despite the narrative wreckage all around her, she remains arrestingly radiant, charming and adorable, impossible not to love.  It’s a testament to just how truly shitty the script is that even her considerable talents can’t save things.

The depiction of Heaven, with its 3rd Celestial Division (Angel Placement Bureau; foreshadowing The Adjustment Bureau by half a century!), is a bright spot amid all the muck (you’ve gotta love a cloud with a door!).  Howard Smith, the boss-from-hell Mr. Misrell from season one’s “A Stop At Willoughby,” returns to The Twilight Zone as Cavender’s boss Polk.  He’s still gruff, but not nearly as loathsome this time around.  And John Fiedler, delightful as always (but unfortunately underused here), appears as “Field Representative #3” (we last saw him in season two’s “Night of the Meek,” as Henry Corwin’s boss-from-hell… hey, how are all these bosses from hell getting into heaven…?).

I guess all things considered, “Cavender Is Coming” isn’t irredeemably awful.  It’s just…. well, really really dumb and, since we've already seen this tale unfold in "Mr. Bevis," it's 100% unnecessary.  It’s not the bottom of the season three barrel (which is where you’ll find “The Gift” and “Four O’clock," not to mention "The Mirror"), but it dwells awfully low.  Watch it once, and then move quickly on to better things.

Next:  “The Changing of the Guard” closes out season three with a snow-swept tale of sad old men and merry ghosts.  No, Dickens didn’t write it.

* The (admittedly semi-offensive) term “clitzy dutz” is a vulgar tongue-twisting play on “clutzy ditz.”  I have a dim memory of a friend and I bandying the term around in the 6th grade, and it pops into my head every so often even at this late date.

TZ Promo: “I Sing the Body Electric” (5/18/1962)

Season 3, Episode 35 (100 overall)

Cayuga Production # 4826

50 years ago tonight, The Twilight Zone aired its landmark 100th episode.  Thankfully, Cayuga didn’t pick a dud to mark the occasion (see “The Whole Truth,” which was the 50th episode aired).

“I Sing the Body Electric” was written by sci-fi luminary Ray Bradbury, his only contribution to the series.  We meet a grieving widower (his name is never given, he’s simply referred to as “Father”) who endeavors to purchase a robot to act as a maternal proxy for his children.  It appears that a company called Facsimile Limited has just what he needs… unfortunately, his oldest daughter’s bitterness over losing her mother is a much bigger roadblock than he realizes.

“I Sing the Body Electric” is moderately successful (while fairly soap-operatic), but the scenes inside Facsimile Limited elevate things considerably.  There’s a delightful phantasmagorical quality to its selection of body parts, not to mention a chute in which one’s selections are deposited.  If only we could build our spouses and children in such a way…. maybe the New Life Corporation should partner with Facsimile Limited…?

“Grandma” (similarly unnamed) is well-played by Josephine Hutchinson, warm but never cloying.  Genre fans may remember her as Elsa von Frankenstein in 1939’s Son of Frankenstein (I didn’t, despite the fact that I’ve seen it numerous times and own it on DVD twice over; good thing I have the internet to do my remembering for me!).

“Father” is played by David White (best known as Larry Tate, Darin’s boss on TV’s Bewitched), who last visited The Twilight Zone in season one’s “A World of Difference,” where he played harried agent to Jerry Regan (or was it Arthur Curtis?).

Vaughn Taylor, the Facsimile Limited rep, is a TZ vet.  We first saw him in season one’s “Time Enough at Last” as Henry Bemis’s stick-in-the-mud boss at the bank, then again earlier this season as a grizzled warlock in “Still Valley.”  Here he’s a congenial salesman with just a hint of Willie Wonka about him (Facsimile Limited is a bit magical, after all, not entirely unlike Wonka’s storied chocolate factory).  Quite a diverse trio of roles; happily, Vaughn is quite good in all three.  He appeared in several episodes of TV’s The Fugitive, but he’s probably best remembered as Janet Leigh’s boss in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Veronica Cartwright is quite good as the eldest child Anne, sullen and distrustful of the new addition to the family.  Watch her face light up when she finally gives in and accepts “Grandma.”  Cartwright is something of a fixture in the sci-fi genre: she was most recently seen as the beleaguered human-alien hybrid Cassandra Spender on TV’s The X-files; she also met a gruesome end in Ridley Scott’s original Alien.

Many have lamented the fact that this is Ray Bradbury’s sole contribution to the series.  I’m not going to go into the troubled history between Bradbury and Serling, but I will say that, while I’m a big fan of Bradbury’s work, I think it usually works best on the printed page.  Most all adaptations of his work… well, just don’t work for one reason or another.  And it’s not always because of Bradbury’s unique dialogue either… Serling himself said that Bradbury is “hard to dramatize,” and I completely agree.  Not everything needs a visual translation (I’m talking to you, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  You too, Hunger Games).   Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is one of my all-time favorite novels, and (IMO) the 1966 Francois Truffaut adaptation leaves a lot to be desired (despite featuring my all-time favorite film score, by none other than Bernard Herrmann).  No mechanical hound?  C’mon, seriously?  

Anyway, Bradbury’s prose approaches the poetic, and adapting it for TV or film strips that aspect away.  Sure, the story’s still there, but the Bradbury voice is silenced.  Something huge and wonderful gets lost.

Having said that, I quite like “I Sing the Body Electric.”  It’s not one of the more popular TZ episodes, and it’ll never make my top 20, but I do like it.  It’s funny: Serling was so hot on serializing his lame guardian angel idea (see the god-awful “Mr. Bevis” and next week’s “Cavender in Coming”), but don’tcha think Facsimile Limited would’ve made a much better springboard for an anthology series?  A different electric grandmother each week, a different family…. Ah, the possibilities!

Next:  “Mr. Bevis” --- that wretched creature --- gets a remake.  The horror!  The horror!!!