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In recent days, just before we drift off to sleep on the couch, the wife and I have been enjoying two vintage mystery/horror series on the fringes of our satellite TV package: Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Rod Serling's Night Gallery. Two episodes were particularly striking:
Night Gallery, "The House"; teleplay by Rod Serling, directed by John Astin.
By the time Night Gallery started in 1969, Rod Serling was already a legend: Planet of the Apes, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and (of course) The Twilight Zone. Most people saw Night Gallery as a weak sister to the Zone, a retread with (gasp!) garish color photography. But that attitude ignores some truly evocative work, especially in the first season.
"The House" is an odd duck, even for Serling; minimal (and repetitive) plot, thin characters, weird leaps in logic--but these factors actually work for the episode in enhancing the dreamlike mood of the piece.
In a nutshell: just before Elaine Latimer (Joanna Pettet) is about to leave the safe haven of a sanitarium, she tells her doctor about a recurring dream. In the dream, she's driving through the countryside, and she turns a corner onto a long, winding driveway, until she pulls up in front of a house. She gets out, raps on the door with a big brass knocker--then leaves before anyone can answer....
Back on the outside, Latimer finds the house from her dream. She amazes the real estate agent with intimate knowledge of every detail. Even though the agent tells her the house is haunted, she buys it and moves in the same day.
As she's sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, Latimer hears the booming echo of the brass knocker against the door. She plunges down the stairwell to keep her visitor from leaving. But as she races outside, she sees herself driving away, just like in the dream.
Yes, the house is haunted. SHE is the ghost.
I want to compliment the costumer and hair stylist here. For the dream sequences, Pettet is draped in peach chiffon, her long blond hair sailing behind her, and when she's walking or driving in slow motion, she's as ethereal as the breeze. It's a spectacular special effect.
This episode has stayed with me since I first saw it as a kid, nearly 50 years ago. What gets me are all the unanswered questions: why was Latimer in the sanitarium? How did she find the house? Who buys a house and moves in the same day? Where did she get the money? How does a person haunt herself? But you see, these are all logical questions, and the more you ask, the more you realize conventional logic doesn't apply here:
What we have here is the logic of a dream.
Who's to say that the entire episode isn't Elaine Latimer's dream, chasing after a part of herself that feels happy and content, but is somehow just out of her reach?
What if she never left the sanitarium at all?
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Arthur"; teleplay by James P. Cavanaugh, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
"Arthur," on the other hand, is just pure, nasty fun. This was the 5th season opener for AHP (about the same time the Twilight Zone was getting started), and the master and his crew had settled into a groove detailing the inner monsters of duplicitous businessmen, conniving lovers, and bored housewives.
For "Arthur," Hitchcock (taking the reigns himself) switched up the formula. The basic plot is: chicken farmer dumped by fiancée gets a new ingredient for his chicken feed. (Boom.)
But this is no hayseed with bad teeth and a floppy straw hat: Arthur Williams is a suave, handsome Englishman single-handedly running an ultramodern poultry farm in New Zealand. Arthur has all the technological advances of 1959 at his disposal, not to mention an elegant tea set and a posh study.
Embodied by Lawrence Harvey (a year or two away from The Manchurian Candidate), Arthur is a charmer. No fourth wall for our man; he addresses the audience directly, practically inviting us to pull up a seat as he touts the benefits of a solitary (and homicidal) lifestyle.
After meeting the ex-fiancée, you might think he has a point. Helen is a callow gold-digger, a woman so used to coasting on her looks that she can barely summon the energy to seduce Arthur into taking her back. But Arthur doesn't want her anymore--and she can't go back to the rich jerk she married. So, says Arthur, killing her would be an "act of kindness." (Am I right, ladies and gentlemen?)
Post-murder, Arthur proves equally smooth in dealing with the local constabulary. He doesn't deny meeting Helen before she "disappeared"; why, he even kept her suitcase in case she came back! (Arthur's reasoning to the audience: "Things thrown in the river have a tendency to turn up.") Arthur even goes on a search for the missing woman, giving the Kiwi Kops (including a pre-Avengers Patrick MacNee!) plenty of time to turn his farm inside out.
But without a body, Arthur knows they got nothin'. So it all blows over, and Arthur eventually takes his place as a beloved and respected businessman in the community....
Now, you may be thinking that Arthur sounds familiar, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Let me help: Arthur is a charming Englishman who likes talking directly to his TV audience. He's an expert on how to commit a murder has an extensive knowledge of crime clichés. The feed grinder kind of looks like an oversized, old fashioned movie camera (with crank). His first name has six letters, starts with "A"...
Ah, now you've got it!
Yes, this is Hitchcock at his most meta, even moreso than Rear Window. Arthur's chicken farm is a clever metaphor for the (ahem) grind of TV production, and the ep is a virtual catalogue of Hitchcock's virtues (his wit and his cheeky, macabre sense of humor) and his vices. (See Tippi Hedren or Kim Novak or any of his other actresses that he "put through the mill.")
At the end of that season, Hitchcock would take his TV crew and film a low-budget horror movie much different from his Hollywood big budget spectaculars. Psycho would mark the start of the final fruitful phase of his career.
Night Gallery, "The House"; teleplay by Rod Serling, directed by John Astin.
By the time Night Gallery started in 1969, Rod Serling was already a legend: Planet of the Apes, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and (of course) The Twilight Zone. Most people saw Night Gallery as a weak sister to the Zone, a retread with (gasp!) garish color photography. But that attitude ignores some truly evocative work, especially in the first season.
"The House" is an odd duck, even for Serling; minimal (and repetitive) plot, thin characters, weird leaps in logic--but these factors actually work for the episode in enhancing the dreamlike mood of the piece.
In a nutshell: just before Elaine Latimer (Joanna Pettet) is about to leave the safe haven of a sanitarium, she tells her doctor about a recurring dream. In the dream, she's driving through the countryside, and she turns a corner onto a long, winding driveway, until she pulls up in front of a house. She gets out, raps on the door with a big brass knocker--then leaves before anyone can answer....
Back on the outside, Latimer finds the house from her dream. She amazes the real estate agent with intimate knowledge of every detail. Even though the agent tells her the house is haunted, she buys it and moves in the same day.
As she's sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, Latimer hears the booming echo of the brass knocker against the door. She plunges down the stairwell to keep her visitor from leaving. But as she races outside, she sees herself driving away, just like in the dream.
Yes, the house is haunted. SHE is the ghost.
I want to compliment the costumer and hair stylist here. For the dream sequences, Pettet is draped in peach chiffon, her long blond hair sailing behind her, and when she's walking or driving in slow motion, she's as ethereal as the breeze. It's a spectacular special effect.
This episode has stayed with me since I first saw it as a kid, nearly 50 years ago. What gets me are all the unanswered questions: why was Latimer in the sanitarium? How did she find the house? Who buys a house and moves in the same day? Where did she get the money? How does a person haunt herself? But you see, these are all logical questions, and the more you ask, the more you realize conventional logic doesn't apply here:
What we have here is the logic of a dream.
Who's to say that the entire episode isn't Elaine Latimer's dream, chasing after a part of herself that feels happy and content, but is somehow just out of her reach?
What if she never left the sanitarium at all?
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Arthur"; teleplay by James P. Cavanaugh, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
"Arthur," on the other hand, is just pure, nasty fun. This was the 5th season opener for AHP (about the same time the Twilight Zone was getting started), and the master and his crew had settled into a groove detailing the inner monsters of duplicitous businessmen, conniving lovers, and bored housewives.
For "Arthur," Hitchcock (taking the reigns himself) switched up the formula. The basic plot is: chicken farmer dumped by fiancée gets a new ingredient for his chicken feed. (Boom.)
But this is no hayseed with bad teeth and a floppy straw hat: Arthur Williams is a suave, handsome Englishman single-handedly running an ultramodern poultry farm in New Zealand. Arthur has all the technological advances of 1959 at his disposal, not to mention an elegant tea set and a posh study.
Embodied by Lawrence Harvey (a year or two away from The Manchurian Candidate), Arthur is a charmer. No fourth wall for our man; he addresses the audience directly, practically inviting us to pull up a seat as he touts the benefits of a solitary (and homicidal) lifestyle.
After meeting the ex-fiancée, you might think he has a point. Helen is a callow gold-digger, a woman so used to coasting on her looks that she can barely summon the energy to seduce Arthur into taking her back. But Arthur doesn't want her anymore--and she can't go back to the rich jerk she married. So, says Arthur, killing her would be an "act of kindness." (Am I right, ladies and gentlemen?)
Post-murder, Arthur proves equally smooth in dealing with the local constabulary. He doesn't deny meeting Helen before she "disappeared"; why, he even kept her suitcase in case she came back! (Arthur's reasoning to the audience: "Things thrown in the river have a tendency to turn up.") Arthur even goes on a search for the missing woman, giving the Kiwi Kops (including a pre-Avengers Patrick MacNee!) plenty of time to turn his farm inside out.
But without a body, Arthur knows they got nothin'. So it all blows over, and Arthur eventually takes his place as a beloved and respected businessman in the community....
Now, you may be thinking that Arthur sounds familiar, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Let me help: Arthur is a charming Englishman who likes talking directly to his TV audience. He's an expert on how to commit a murder has an extensive knowledge of crime clichés. The feed grinder kind of looks like an oversized, old fashioned movie camera (with crank). His first name has six letters, starts with "A"...
Ah, now you've got it!
Yes, this is Hitchcock at his most meta, even moreso than Rear Window. Arthur's chicken farm is a clever metaphor for the (ahem) grind of TV production, and the ep is a virtual catalogue of Hitchcock's virtues (his wit and his cheeky, macabre sense of humor) and his vices. (See Tippi Hedren or Kim Novak or any of his other actresses that he "put through the mill.")
At the end of that season, Hitchcock would take his TV crew and film a low-budget horror movie much different from his Hollywood big budget spectaculars. Psycho would mark the start of the final fruitful phase of his career.
