I saw the TWILIGHT ZONE episode "A Game of Pool" with Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters today. I've seen it multiple times but this time there was a scene that I didn't remember! It was on ME-TV. I stopped watching TZ on Sci-Fi years ago because they cut too much out but to suddenly see something new! Maybe I am in the Twilight Zone! Rod? Are you there?
This is a show that I'd never thought I'd see again. It's so obscure that whenever I mention it in a group, someone inevitably says, "Don't you mean Land of the Giants?" (If I'd led this post with simply World of Giants, some of you probably would've thought that, too. Instead, I led with the way the show was announced in the opening credits.)
World of Giants was a syndicated programme that aired only thirteen episodes in 1959. That's the last time I saw it before discovering it on YouTube a couple of days ago. My memories of the show were few, but striking.
The premise was this: six months before the time of the first episode, Mel Hunter (played by Marshall Thompson) and Bill Winters (Arthur Franz), two agents for an unspecified U.S. intelligence agency, were on a mission behind the Iron Curtain, attempting to prevent the launch of a ballistic missile. They succeeded, but Hunter was caught in the explosion of an experimental rocket fuel. Winters got Hunter safely back to the States, but the exposure had a bizarre effect on Hunter---it shrunk him to the size of six inches. Government doctors were able to stabilise Hunter's shrinking, but they have not yet been able to find a way to restore him to his normal size.
Hunter's situation is classified top secret, and the agency uses his unique stature to perform its clandestine work.
In the field, WInters carries Hunter in a modified briefcase, equipt with a pilot's chair in which the tiny agent can strap himself. There are vents in the case, so he can breathe, and a concealed panel, by which he can enter or exit the case.
The first three episodes concentrated on the difficulties Hunter has in dealing with the real world. In the first episode, WInters is knocked out, and Mel has to find a way to contact the Bureau and get help before saboteurs blow up a goverment facility. In the second, WInters is injured in a car accident, and the briefcase containing Hunter is thrown into a near-by woodland. Hunter has to negotiate the forest, with its animals, and somehow get help for Winters. In the third, Hunter is trapped in an apartment with a hostile Doberman. The actual plots in these three episodes are secondary to showing us the various perils and difficulties the miniature Hunter encounters. To rachet up the tension, the show uses that annoying tactic of giving Hunter nearly endless voice-overs, telling us what we can plainly see on the screen.
With the fourth episode, a new directorial slant took over. There are some cosmetic changes. We see now that Hunter lives in his own miniature house, concealed in Bill Winters' apartment. The house is hidden in a recess behind a painting on a wall; when a button is pressed, the painting rises and the platform on which the house rests extends outward. The explanation for this is that the house, constructed to Hunter's proportions, gives him an environment in which he can feel normal, easing the pressure of his condition. It makes sense. Hunter is even given a complete wardrobe in his size. (Probably because the audience was getting tired of seeing him the same sweater and khakis every week.)
Hunter and Winters also have a "girl Friday" assigned to them---Miss Dorothy Brown (Marcia Henderson). She was one of the nurses who first dealt with Hunter during his shrinking, so there was no revealing of his condition. Expanding the cast was a good move, as there were no other regulars. The head of their agency, Commissioner Hall (John Gallaudet), appeared in approximately half the episodes.
Thematically, the tone of the show lifts. While the plots continue to make use of Hunter's six-inch size and the problems it presents, the viewers' faces are no longer rubbed in it. The melodramatic voice-overs are gone. Instead, Hunter occasionally breaks the fourth wall, at the beginning or end of an episode, to bring new viewers up to speed. Instead, the focus is placed on the cases to which Hunter and Winters are assigned.
The plots are pretty straightforward, with rare sub-text regarding the ramifications of being stuck at six inches in height. Hunter can be grumpy on occasion, especially with Miss Brown, but he generally seems to have adjusted to his condition. There was one nice moment of subtlety. In one scene, the stereo is playing in Winters' apartment, and he and Miss Brown begin to dance to it. Watching from the front porch of his doll house, Hunter joins in the light mood and begins to shadow dance with the music himself. Then, suddenly, he stops and a cloud forms over his expression. It's clear he realises that he will never dance with a girl, or hold one in his arms, again. He turns and silently walks into his house. Winters is puzzled at this and starts to ask, but Miss Brown, understanding, says, "No, Bill . . . let it go."
The show got pretty clever in the advantages to be found in having a six-inch operative. In one episode, Hunter and Winters are sent to a Caribbean island where a malfunctioning U.S. missile crashed in the waters near-by. Their assignment is to recover the missile's guidence system before it can fall into the hands of the "other side". The agents learn that a peasant boy, about ten years old, has found the guidence system and has hidden it as his own prize, "finders keepers". When conventional efforts to pursuade the boy fail---his father has no love for self-important "Yankees" and runs Bill off with a shotgun---they resort to trickery. Hunter conceals himself under the sombrero worn by the boy's pet burro and pursuades the boy that the animal can talk. The "magic" talking burro appeals to the amazed youngster's conscience, and the boy gives up the guidence mechanism.
It was just a random notion that made me see if the show was on YouTube, and I was surprised as all get out to find it. The poster claims to have the entire series on line, but he's actually missing two episodes. I was sad to discover that one of those missing episodes was the one I remembered most strongly from watching the show sixty-seven years ago. It was an episode in which a Communist agent discovers Hunter's secret and breaks into WInters' apartment and terrorises Mel in an attempt to capture him. I vividly remember how the foreign agent tore Mel's miniature house apart by sticking his hand in it, trying to grab Hunter. That's the one I most wanted to see again, and of course, as life so often does, it stymied me.
No, World of Giants isn't The West WIng. But if one is in the mood for some interesting television that doesn't require a lot of mental interaction, then I recommend it. So many old series which I rediscover disappoint my adult perspective, but World of Giants did not.
STUART FAILS TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE is the Assorted Crisis Events of TV; Assorted Crisis Events is the Stuart Fails to Save the Universe of comics. I very seldom ever laugh out loud at a TV show, but I did so more than once watching episode two. (It was for the same joke over and over, but the repetition is what made it funny.)
I started watching the Captain Marvel serial on one of the streaming platforms. I have been impressed by the quality of the special effects, especially the Captain in flight. Pretty impressive for the Forties. I read somewhere, possibly here on the board, that the studio wanted to do Superman and when that didn't work out they adapted Captain Marvel instead.
MST3K SHORTS: Tracy found a streaming platform that airs just the shorts, so we've been watching those lately. (The movies can be hit or miss, but the shorts are always funny.) Currently we're watching the "Phantom Creeps" serial starring Bela Lugosi, which neither of us has seen straight or funny. "Commander Cody" is also available, but we watched that straight just recently.
STUART FAILS TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE: The "skip" option is available for the intro, but they change it up and do a different one ever week to "force" people to watch.
DAYS OF OUR LIVES: John Oliver guests today, tomorrow and Friday. When he was on General Hospital last month I recorded it, but apparently DoOL is no longer broadcast, but only streamed on Peacock. I think I'll wait for the inevitable YouTube compilation.
TWD: Is anyone still watching Dead City (a.k.a. "the one with Maggie and Negan")? Two weekends ago, they made one of the truly worst decisions in the history of the franchise, and this past weekend were the ramifications. (It worked out okay, against all logic, only because that's the way the writers wrote it.)
Replies
THE WALKING DEAD: DEAD CITY (the one with Maggie & Negan) returns tonight with its third season.
Old episodes of Jeopardy
I saw the TWILIGHT ZONE episode "A Game of Pool" with Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters today. I've seen it multiple times but this time there was a scene that I didn't remember! It was on ME-TV. I stopped watching TZ on Sci-Fi years ago because they cut too much out but to suddenly see something new! Maybe I am in the Twilight Zone! Rod? Are you there?
WOG! World! . . . of! . . . Giants!
This is a show that I'd never thought I'd see again. It's so obscure that whenever I mention it in a group, someone inevitably says, "Don't you mean Land of the Giants?" (If I'd led this post with simply World of Giants, some of you probably would've thought that, too. Instead, I led with the way the show was announced in the opening credits.)
World of Giants was a syndicated programme that aired only thirteen episodes in 1959. That's the last time I saw it before discovering it on YouTube a couple of days ago. My memories of the show were few, but striking.
The premise was this: six months before the time of the first episode, Mel Hunter (played by Marshall Thompson) and Bill Winters (Arthur Franz), two agents for an unspecified U.S. intelligence agency, were on a mission behind the Iron Curtain, attempting to prevent the launch of a ballistic missile. They succeeded, but Hunter was caught in the explosion of an experimental rocket fuel. Winters got Hunter safely back to the States, but the exposure had a bizarre effect on Hunter---it shrunk him to the size of six inches. Government doctors were able to stabilise Hunter's shrinking, but they have not yet been able to find a way to restore him to his normal size.
Hunter's situation is classified top secret, and the agency uses his unique stature to perform its clandestine work.
In the field, WInters carries Hunter in a modified briefcase, equipt with a pilot's chair in which the tiny agent can strap himself. There are vents in the case, so he can breathe, and a concealed panel, by which he can enter or exit the case.
The first three episodes concentrated on the difficulties Hunter has in dealing with the real world. In the first episode, WInters is knocked out, and Mel has to find a way to contact the Bureau and get help before saboteurs blow up a goverment facility. In the second, WInters is injured in a car accident, and the briefcase containing Hunter is thrown into a near-by woodland. Hunter has to negotiate the forest, with its animals, and somehow get help for Winters. In the third, Hunter is trapped in an apartment with a hostile Doberman. The actual plots in these three episodes are secondary to showing us the various perils and difficulties the miniature Hunter encounters. To rachet up the tension, the show uses that annoying tactic of giving Hunter nearly endless voice-overs, telling us what we can plainly see on the screen.
With the fourth episode, a new directorial slant took over. There are some cosmetic changes. We see now that Hunter lives in his own miniature house, concealed in Bill Winters' apartment. The house is hidden in a recess behind a painting on a wall; when a button is pressed, the painting rises and the platform on which the house rests extends outward. The explanation for this is that the house, constructed to Hunter's proportions, gives him an environment in which he can feel normal, easing the pressure of his condition. It makes sense. Hunter is even given a complete wardrobe in his size. (Probably because the audience was getting tired of seeing him the same sweater and khakis every week.)
Hunter and Winters also have a "girl Friday" assigned to them---Miss Dorothy Brown (Marcia Henderson). She was one of the nurses who first dealt with Hunter during his shrinking, so there was no revealing of his condition. Expanding the cast was a good move, as there were no other regulars. The head of their agency, Commissioner Hall (John Gallaudet), appeared in approximately half the episodes.
Thematically, the tone of the show lifts. While the plots continue to make use of Hunter's six-inch size and the problems it presents, the viewers' faces are no longer rubbed in it. The melodramatic voice-overs are gone. Instead, Hunter occasionally breaks the fourth wall, at the beginning or end of an episode, to bring new viewers up to speed. Instead, the focus is placed on the cases to which Hunter and Winters are assigned.
The plots are pretty straightforward, with rare sub-text regarding the ramifications of being stuck at six inches in height. Hunter can be grumpy on occasion, especially with Miss Brown, but he generally seems to have adjusted to his condition. There was one nice moment of subtlety. In one scene, the stereo is playing in Winters' apartment, and he and Miss Brown begin to dance to it. Watching from the front porch of his doll house, Hunter joins in the light mood and begins to shadow dance with the music himself. Then, suddenly, he stops and a cloud forms over his expression. It's clear he realises that he will never dance with a girl, or hold one in his arms, again. He turns and silently walks into his house. Winters is puzzled at this and starts to ask, but Miss Brown, understanding, says, "No, Bill . . . let it go."
The show got pretty clever in the advantages to be found in having a six-inch operative. In one episode, Hunter and Winters are sent to a Caribbean island where a malfunctioning U.S. missile crashed in the waters near-by. Their assignment is to recover the missile's guidence system before it can fall into the hands of the "other side". The agents learn that a peasant boy, about ten years old, has found the guidence system and has hidden it as his own prize, "finders keepers". When conventional efforts to pursuade the boy fail---his father has no love for self-important "Yankees" and runs Bill off with a shotgun---they resort to trickery. Hunter conceals himself under the sombrero worn by the boy's pet burro and pursuades the boy that the animal can talk. The "magic" talking burro appeals to the amazed youngster's conscience, and the boy gives up the guidence mechanism.
It was just a random notion that made me see if the show was on YouTube, and I was surprised as all get out to find it. The poster claims to have the entire series on line, but he's actually missing two episodes. I was sad to discover that one of those missing episodes was the one I remembered most strongly from watching the show sixty-seven years ago. It was an episode in which a Communist agent discovers Hunter's secret and breaks into WInters' apartment and terrorises Mel in an attempt to capture him. I vividly remember how the foreign agent tore Mel's miniature house apart by sticking his hand in it, trying to grab Hunter. That's the one I most wanted to see again, and of course, as life so often does, it stymied me.
No, World of Giants isn't The West WIng. But if one is in the mood for some interesting television that doesn't require a lot of mental interaction, then I recommend it. So many old series which I rediscover disappoint my adult perspective, but World of Giants did not.
STUART FAILS TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE is the Assorted Crisis Events of TV; Assorted Crisis Events is the Stuart Fails to Save the Universe of comics. I very seldom ever laugh out loud at a TV show, but I did so more than once watching episode two. (It was for the same joke over and over, but the repetition is what made it funny.)
I started watching the Captain Marvel serial on one of the streaming platforms. I have been impressed by the quality of the special effects, especially the Captain in flight. Pretty impressive for the Forties. I read somewhere, possibly here on the board, that the studio wanted to do Superman and when that didn't work out they adapted Captain Marvel instead.
MST3K SHORTS: Tracy found a streaming platform that airs just the shorts, so we've been watching those lately. (The movies can be hit or miss, but the shorts are always funny.) Currently we're watching the "Phantom Creeps" serial starring Bela Lugosi, which neither of us has seen straight or funny. "Commander Cody" is also available, but we watched that straight just recently.
STUART FAILS TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE: The "skip" option is available for the intro, but they change it up and do a different one ever week to "force" people to watch.
DAYS OF OUR LIVES: John Oliver guests today, tomorrow and Friday. When he was on General Hospital last month I recorded it, but apparently DoOL is no longer broadcast, but only streamed on Peacock. I think I'll wait for the inevitable YouTube compilation.
TWD: Is anyone still watching Dead City (a.k.a. "the one with Maggie and Negan")? Two weekends ago, they made one of the truly worst decisions in the history of the franchise, and this past weekend were the ramifications. (It worked out okay, against all logic, only because that's the way the writers wrote it.)
I saw his General Hospital stint -- that show is BONKERS.
I'll check out Days of Our Lives, but likely after I get home from Philly Folk Fest this weekend.
-
153
-
154
-
155
-
156
-
157
of 157 Next