Episode Spotlight: "Night Call" (2/07/1964)

Season 5, Episode 19 (139 overall)

Originally aired 2/07/1964

Cayuga Production # 2810

What if you could talk to your lost loved ones? Fifty years ago tonight, the dead reached out and touched the living… but unfortunately things didn't go well.

Miss Elva Keen is a crippled old woman who receives, quite out of the blue, several telephone calls in which the caller moans. Obscene calls? Maybe, but there’s no heavy breathing (which is something of a clue, actually). The moans change to two simple phrases: “Where are you?” and “I want to talk to you.”

The telephone company traces the problem to a set of downed telephone wires in the local cemetery. Elva has her housekeeper drive her out there, and is shocked to see the wires resting on the grave of Brian, the fiancé of her youth, who was killed in a car accident (Elva was driving and lost control of the car).

Elated at the prospect of talking with Brian once again, Elva tries to summon him through the telephone. He finally comes on the line: “You said to leave you alone. I always do what you say.” The line goes dead.

“Night Call” was written by Richard Matheson, based on his short story “Sorry, Right Number,” which was first published in 1953, then again in 1961 in Matheson’s short story collection Shock!  Here’s where things gets a bit weird. “Night Call” is similar to the season two episode “Long Distance Call” (which also depicts the dead placing telephone calls to the living), which originated with a script by William Idelson, one of Matheson’s friends. It was Matheson’s championing that led to Cayuga Productions buying it, and the resultant episode was broadcast in 1961, the same year that Matheson’s short story was republished under a different title: “Long Distance Call.”

The upward shot of the telephone wires stretching down to Brian’s grave is very effective; in fact, the entire cemetery sequence, brief though it is, is the best scene in the entire episode. The prologue, in which Elva receives the first mysterious call, is quite atmospheric and effective (it’s your basic “dark and stormy night” intro). Unfortunately, the bulk of the episode takes place in broad daylight, so there’s not a lot visually to sustain the moody dread that the script aspires to. At the helm is Jacques Tourneur, director of the noirish horror classics I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People (as well as 1947’s Out of the Past, widely considered one of the greatest film noirs ever made), so the relative dearth of shadowy ominousness is something of a disappointment.

So where (and what) is Brian, exactly? Is he a reanimated corpse, communicating through unknown means through six feet of earth and into the frayed telephone line? Or is he is a damned soul, suffering in his own right, torturing the living as his only means of relief?

I’ve never been a big fan of this episode. For me, there’s too little going on with too little payoff. So Brian starts calling Elva from beyond the grave, wanting to chat…. however, he never identifies himself and spends most of the time moaning unintelligibly. When she (understandably) freaks out and demands to be left alone, he bows out in a pretty severe example of passive aggression. Okay, yeah, she’s responsible for killing him all those years ago, but she’s spent most of her life a cripple because of it. Does she really deserve this on top of it? Nay, I say. What if instead she apologized profusely for the accident, and he forgave her, leading to many lively talks throughout whatever remains of Elva’s life? Wouldn't that be more in line with The Twilight Zone’s sensibilities? 

Honestly, “Night Call” would work better as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, in which the whole thing turns out to be an elaborate ruse by the housekeeper, Margaret, to drive Elva crazy for some reason or other.

FAMILIAR FACES

And speaking of Hitchcock, the entire cast (all three of ‘em) is made up of Hitch veterans…

Gladys Cooper is convincingly lonely and bitter as Miss Elva Keene in her third and final TZ appearance (she previously graved season three’s “Nothing in the Dark” and season four’s “Passage on the Lady Anne”); she also put in a single appearance on The Outer Limits (“The Borderland”). She did one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (“The End of Indian Summer”), two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“Consider Her Ways” and “What Really Happened”), plus she appeared in Hitchcock’s 1941 film Rebecca.

Nora Marlowe plays Margaret Phillips in her second TZ appearance (she was also seen in season two’s “Back There”). Over on The Outer Limits, she memorably had her heart fatally stopped by the super-evolved Gwyllm Griffiths in “The Sixth Finger.” She did one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (“I Killed the Count: Part 3”) and one Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“The Landlady”); she also played an uncredited housekeeper in 1959’s North by Northwest.

Miss Finch (the telephone operator) is played by Martine Bartlett, who appeared twice on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“The Star Juror” and “Nothing Ever Happens in Linvale”).

“Night Call” is by no means awful (something I can’t say about next week’s episode), but it’s not one of the better season five offerings. Like so many episodes in this final stretch, the moral center is skewed, uncomfortably so. It doesn’t feel much like The Twilight Zone around here anymore....

Next week:

All bets are off! "Mr. Bevis" isn't the most annoying Twilight Zone character anymore.

Episode Spotlight: "Black Leather Jackets" (1/31/1964)

Season 5, Episode 18 (138 overall)

Originally aired 1/31/1964

Cayuga Production # 2628

50 years ago, The Twilight Zone continued its slide into oblivion with something truly…. weird. Oh, and stupid too.

Suburbanite Stu Tillman is annoyed by his new neighbors, three leather-clad motorcycle riders whose elaborate rooftop antenna array is interfering with his TV reception. When he goes to bust their chops about it, they telepathically change his disposition. Back at home, he vacantly tells his wife that the new neighbors are “nice boys.”

But they aren’t. They’re invaders from an unspecified planet, one small cell in a large force planning to eradicate mankind by poisoning the earth’s water supply. The youngest of the three, Scott, starts hanging around Ellen, Stu’s daughter and, as he gets to know her, he starts thinking twice about their mission. Maybe humans aren’t the self-destructive, godless cretins their research has indicated.

The night before the worldwide poisoning, Scott confesses the whole thing to Ellen who, thinking he’s off his nut, relays the story to her father. Stu, still hypnotized into thinking the best of the alien thugs next door, calls the police in an earnest attempt to “get that boy some help.” The sheriff, however, has been replaced with another invader. Scott is apprehended without incident, and the invasion commences.

Earl Hamner Jr.'s “Black Leather Jackets” is hands down the weirdest, wackiest episode in the entire series; however, compared to The Outer Limits (which around the same time was airing its wildest and woolliest entries, “Don’t Open Till Doomsday” and “ZZZZZ”), it seems pretty tame. By TZ standards, however…. well, it's quite jarring after almost five years of conservative urbanity.

Often in these types of stories, the invasion plan is full of exploitable inexplicable holes (honestly, many Outer Limits invasion tales, particularly the aforementioned “Don’t Open Till Doomsday” and "The Mice" are guilty of this). Surprisingly, this invasion plot, essentially a silent affair without bloodshed or planet-wide destruction, is actually pretty ingenious. Where it gets stupid is the hilariously unsilent manner with which our trio goes about its business, with its loud motorcycles and confrontational behavior… unless they’re using some kind of alien reverse psychology approach, which I suppose is possible. They don’t seem like dangerous extraterrestrials… they just seem like assholes who speak in 60’s lingo (in his "next week on The Twilight Zone" preview at the end of last week's episode, Serling called them “beatniks” and “raunchy-looking characters”). So yeah, maybe it’s intentional. If so, the episode isn’t as stupid as I want to think it is.

The episode would work immeasurably better if the invaders masqueraded as everyday ordinary guys. Well, they could still be dicks (which would preserve the initial conflict with Stu), but subtract the leather jackets and the motorcycles (and the horrendously dated “Daddy-O” dialogue), and you've got a much more convincing story. Actually, replace the biker trio altogether with a nice couple and their teenage son, and you've got something even better… nobody’s gonna suspect em, right? Nope, we get brash, obnoxious proto-Fonzies instead. But, no matter what, it’s fun. Goofy, eye-rolling fun. Part of the fun is the relative lack of campiness, which one might expect from a story like this: the actors play their parts earnestly, without eye-winking or in-joking, as this TV equivalent of a 50’s-b-movie-slash-60's-teen-rampage-flick unfolds.

And it’s worth noting that, while it’s certainly not the first alien invasion the show has done, it doesn’t shamelessly rehash previous episodes (like many season five efforts do). So at least it’s got that going for it. And I do like the big communications center, just sitting there in any otherwise empty house, and the fact that we only see one eye of the Imperious Leader-type that our invaders report to (why? Who cares? It looks cool!). And look! The aliens even have their own insignia!

THE MUSIC

“Black Leather Jackets” features an original jazz score by Nathan Van Cleave. Like all fifth season original scores, it’s never had a soundtrack release; however, unlike most of them, it’s NOT available as an isolated track on the DVD and blu-ray releases. The only way one can possibly hear Van Cleave’s score is to actually watch the episode and try to ignore the hep-cat dialogue. For a TZ music collector like me, this is a major drag, man.

FAMILIAR FACES

Scott is well-played by Lee Kinsolving in his only TZ appearance; he’d also appear the same year on The Outer Limits (in “The Guests,” which turns 50 in March). Despite his talent, Kinsolving’s acting career was brief: he retired from Hollywood after a scant eight years. Ten years after "Black Leather Jackets" aired, he passed away from a rare respiratory illness. He was only 36 years old. I was going to make a joke about the hazards of being a leather-clad street biker, but it suddenly seems callous.

The lovely Shelley Fabares plays Ellen Tillman in her only TZ appearance. This is the only sci-fi/fantasy credit on her considerable résumé, but she did co-star in three Elvis Presley films, which I guess is sorta tangentially related to the whole 60’s “Daddy-O” vibe on display this week. It’s a stretch, I know. Maybe I just wanted a reason to show her in a bikini. She is undoubtedly a TZ Babe.

*Sigh*

Michael Forest plays Steve, one of Scott’s biker alien peers. Interestingly, he played outlaw biker Zeno in 1972’s The Dirt Gang, a role which “Black Leather Jackets” undoubtedly prepared him for. Forest’s other genre credits include appearances on Star Trek and One Step Beyond, but I know him best from his work on The Outer Limits (“It Crawled Out of the Woodwork”).

Michael Conrad plays Deputy Harper in his only TZ appearance, but he does have another (extremely tenuous) Rod Serling connection: he appeared in an episode of TV’s Planet of the Apes in 1974 ("The Tyrant"), a series which was based on the 1968 film of the same name… which Serling co-wrote.

Finally, Wayne Heffley is easy to miss as an uncredited mover here, but he was much more visible (and he did receive credit) as 2nd Officer Wyatt in season two’s “The Odyssey of Flight 33.”

“Black Leather Jackets” is stupid, but entertaining. Given some of the shitty episodes coming up, however... well, it’s hard to hate it. Turn off your brain and enjoy it.

Next week:

TZ alum Gladys Cooper is getting obscene phone calls. Okay, maybe they aren’t

exactly obscene, but they’re definitely creepy.*

* For real this time!

Episode Spotlight: "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" (1/24/1964)

Season 5, Episode 17 (137 overall)

Originally aired 1/24/1964

Cayuga Production # 2618

50 years ago tonight, The Twilight Zone offered us a chilling glimpse of the future, where beauty really is only skin deep.

Marilyn is a troubled teen. She’s reached the optimal age to receive The Transformation, a government-sponsored program in which citizens are given beautiful faces and bodies. Those around her pressure her to choose a pre-designed model (her mother is Number 12, while her best friend Val is Number 8), but she fears the loss of individuality that will inevitably result. The Transformation is supposed to be optional, but nobody seems willing to let her remain herself.

Lana, Marilyn’s mother, finally sends her to a psychiatric clinic in the hopes that she’ll come to her senses. After an unproductive session, Marilyn attempts to sneak out… only to accidentally wander into the operating room, where the doctors are waiting to Transform her.

Lana and Val anxiously await her emergence. Marilyn bounds in the waiting room, full of smiling, empty joy. She’s now a Number 8. “And the nicest part of all, Val,” she coos, admiring herself in a mirror, "I look just like you!"

The smiling, vacuous characters surrounding Marilyn are similar to the denizens of François Truffaut’s 1966 adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: bereft of depth, relentlessly pro-conformity and chemically propped up. Their society has reached something of a zenith in plastic surgery technology; the next logical advancement would be in utero genetic intervention (a concept explored in 1997’s Gattaca, whose "Invalid" characters are those who haven't been genetically altered). In our world, however, I’m betting we’ll be resequencing DNA and predesigning babies before we ever figure out to perfect a boob job with no visible scarring.

I can’t help but imagine what lies behind the curtain of this future society. What kind of government are we dealing with here? I assume it’s some kind of dictatorship, given the push toward conformity (I’m reminded of The Leader’s speech in season two’s “Eye of the Beholder,” which shares common themes with this episode). I understand the overmedication approach, since a happy populace isn’t likely to ask questions or rise up against The Powers That Be. But why is it necessary to cosmetically modify the citizenry? It’s clearly a form of control, but to what end? They aren't all identical, since there are several “models” to choose from, so the goal isn’t absolute physical conformity. I dunno, maybe I’m looking too deep, when I should really just focus on the surface… wait, did someone slip some Instant Smile into my beer?

The costumes and décor have a nice retro-futuristic flair; however, the lighting and staging of the episode is a fairly flat affair. That all changes in act two with Dr. Sigmund Friend’s shadowy office, which looks like something straight out of German expressionism (Friend’s German accent no doubt contributes to this). The institute's vast hallways appear to be the same as those seen in “The Long Morrow” two weeks ago.

The episode's teleplay is based on Charles Beaumont's 1952 short story “The Beautiful People.” However, like all Beaumont-credited episodes this season, he didn't actually write the teleplay: this one was written by John Tomerlin. Unlike other examples of Beaumont using ghostwriters, both get screen credit here.

THE MUSIC

The episode is stock scored; most of the music heard is from Bernard Herrmann’s “Brave New World” suite, which was originally composed for a radio adaptation of the Aldous Huxley classic. The suite was first released by Cerberus Records as part of their 1986 vinyl album Bernard Herrmann: Music for Radio and Television. It subsequently showed up on CD on Bernard Herrmann: The CBS Years Volume 2: American Gothic from Prometheus Records.

We also get a few snippets from Fred Steiner’s score for season two’s “A Hundred Yards Over the Rim,” which actually coexist quite nicely with the Herrmann stuff.

FAMILIAR FACES

Collin Wilcox is quite good as Marilyn in her only TZ appearance. Wilcox is best remembered as Mayella Ewell, who falsely accuses Tom Robinson of rape, in the 1962 big screen adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (which featured several TZ alums, among them William Windom, Robert Duvall, Frank Overton, and Mary Badham). She played a similar white-trash-type of character in “The Jar” on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1964, which was written by Ray Bradbury and featured an original music score by frequent TZ contributor Bernard Herrmann.

TZ Babe alert! The lovely Suzy Parker is a treat for the eyes as the titular #12, the model inhabited by several characters in the episode (most notably Lana Cuberle, Marilyn’s mother). Parker would cross paths with Rod Serling again in 1970, in Night Gallery segment “The Housekeeper.”

Richard Long returns to The Twilight Zone as #17, which seems to the model every male in the episode chooses. We last saw him in season three’s “Person or Persons Unknown.”



And while Pam Austin (#8) doesn't seem to have any other genre connections, I'm gonna mention her because, yes, she's a TZ Babe (I'm assuming--- okay, hoping--- she was 18 when this episode was filmed).

“Number Twelve Looks Just like You” is a high point of The Twilight Zone’s fifth and final season. It succeeds as an effective meditation on beauty and conformity (and serves as a perfect bookend to season two’s “Eye of the Beholder”); however, on a more, ahem, surface level... well, it’s just plain fun to watch. You might say it brings an Instant Smile to my face.

Next week:

If The Fonz was from outer space… and there were three of him…