The Twilight Zone: People Are Alike All Over

Two men stand on one side of a fence, looking up at the rocket that will soon take them to Mars. When one of them (Sam) expresses some trepidation, wishing they could just send the only part of his body valuable to the mission - his brain - into space and leave his body on Earth, the other (Marcusson) tells him not to worry. He's got a philosophy about people: God made human beings, whatever planet they live on, according to a fixed formula: 

Sam's not so sure he buys it.

"You're looking at a species of flimsy little two-legged animal with extremely small heads, whose name is Man. Warren Marcusson, age thirty-five. Samuel A. Conrad, age thirty-one. They're taking a highway into space, Man unshackling himself and sending his tiny, groping fingers up into the unknown. Their destination is Mars, and in just a moment we'll land there with them." 

Todd VanDerWerff describes this episode as "one long journey to an end we already know is coming, at least from a thematic point of view (...) pretty good, without ever making the leap up to great." Yet he nonetheless recommends it. I'm in the same boat. I recognize its limitations, yet I've seen the damn thing a dozen times now, at least, and I still enjoy watching it. Either the twist is damn great (and it's pretty good, but, again from that review the "second Marcusson says to Sam that 'people are alike everywhere,' we’re just waiting for (Sam to realize) that, yes, people are alike all over, but that also means that they have the same weaknesses and flaws as the people we have here on Earth") or some greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts mojo is at work.

Back to the story: after a mechanical malfunction, Conrad and Marcusson crash-land on the surface of Mars. Sam is fine, but Marcusson is critically injured. Almost immediately, Sam hears a rhythmic sound reverberating upon the ship's hull. Someone - or something - is outside, knocking, trying to find a way in. 

Sam is afraid to open the door of their ship, but Marcusson - badly injured - repeats his mantra. "As long as they've got minds and hearts, that means they've got souls. That makes them people, and people are alike. They're bound to be alike."  

Marcusson dies, and Conrad cautiously advances outside.

Quick interjection - see those Pac-Man-looking light panels in the top left screencap? You might recognize them from a couple of other TZ episodes or where they first appeared: Forbidden Planet. (They were the power level indicators in the Krell laboratory.) Several Forbidden Planet props (including the iconic UFO) and sets were re-gifted for use on the Twilight Zone. This is the sort of thing you read at each and every Twilight Zone review site, but hey-while-we're-here.

For the rest of the plot summary, let me utilize the one the Twilight Zone Vortex put together:

"To his amazement he sees a crowd of people, human beings, gathered around the ship."

"What amazes him even more is that they speak his language and invite him to their city. He follows them into their city where they have constructed an exact replica of what a home on Earth would look like." 

They plucked the images - right down to the drapes - from his mind.

"You think very clearly, Mr. Conrad."

"Conrad decides that he likes the Martians, especially a female named Teenya (Susan Oliver) who has been particularly kind to him.

"The Martians tell him to make himself at home and they will be back soon to check on him."

"A few hours later Conrad is mixing himself a drink when he notices that there are no windows anywhere in the house. He tries all of the doors but discovers, to his horror, that they are locked.  He is trapped." 

"He begins pounding on the walls with his fists, demanding to know why he has been locked in."

"Suddenly, one of the walls begins to lift slowly, revealing a row of steel bars on the other side. There is a crowd of people gathered around his house, staring at him." 

Then, he notices the sign on the other side of the bars:

"Marcusson! Marcusson, you were right. 

People are alike... 

People are alike everywhere."

Serling's script is based on "Beast of the Void" by Paul W. Fairman, which I haven't read but understand has the same twist at the end. Serling's teleplay emphasizes two things worth mentioning. Consider the word choice of these closing remarks:

"Species of animal brought back alive. Interesting similarity in physical characteristics to human beings in head, trunk, arms, legs, hands, feet. Very tiny undeveloped brain. Comes from primitive planet named Earth. Calls himself Samuel Conrad. And he will remain here in his cage with the running water and the electricity and the central heat as long as he lives. Samuel Conrad has found... The Twilight Zone."

First there's the recall to his opening narration, re: "species of animal." Foreshadowing the zoo, certainly, but it also positions all we've seen as a fable, albeit a fable where the human is the talking animal character. (And, I suppose, a rather pessimistic one.) 

Next is the "running water and the electricity and the central heat" aspect, going on forever. Here I thought of Sam's comments to Marcusson at the beginning, about wishing his mind could go to Mars while his body stayed behind. When the Martians pluck the images from his mind of what would be the perfect captivity ("we matched it to your brainwaves"), he "feels quite at home" and happily starts knocking back the scotch. Remember his pre-flight statement about wishing it was only his brain heading out into space instead of his body? He ends up imprisoned in something his mind brought with him.

Reinforced by the visual bookends of the story.

How easily he walks into this trap of a swanky place with free booze and television. As easily as he was led to Mars on a vague assurance that "God created humans to be the same everywhere."

As mentioned before, the ep doesn't seem to make many people's favorites lists. For me, its cynicism and downbeat ending and the clinical tone of Serling's intro and outro all combine for a pre-American-New-Wave experience. I don't always like a downbeat ending, but when I do it's usually in ... the well-you-know. 

The cast is pretty rock-solid. Roddy McDowell does his usual good work - not to short-change him but what can you say? Roddy McDowell. His buddy Marcusson is played by Peter Comi, last seen round these parts in "The Odyssey of Flight 33. (AV Club again: "He somehow makes optimism about the human condition seem super-masculine.") 

The episode's theme brings to mind the pilot episode of Star Trek TOS ("The Cage") all on its own, but the presence of Susan Oliver especially drives it home.

Alone among the Martians, she feels a touch of sadness for deceiving and imprisoning Sam.

And speaking of Star Trek, Admiral Komack from "Amok Time" and the leader of the Halkan Council appear as a couple other Martians.

~

Season 1, Episode 25.

I Wake Up Screaming (1941)

Tonight's entry:

(1941)

I Wake Up Screaming is a murder mystery adapted from a pulp novel by Steve Fisher, himself the author of another well-regarded noir, Roadblock (1951).

The murder mystery side of it is somewhat light in the sense that it's fairly obvious who the killer is all along. Its watchability comes from more from the psychodrama between Frankie (Victor Mature) and Jill (Betty Grable) as they navigate the strange corridors of her sister's murder. 

The film opens with both of them being questioned separately about it.

Frankie, a New York sports promoter, spots Vicky Lynn (Carole Landis) in the diner where she works and vows to make her a star and introduce her to "cafe society," starting that very evening at the El Chico Club.

"All the smart places - all the way to the top of the world."

Frankie's friends, fading actor Robin Ray and newspaper columnist Larry Evans (Alan Mowbray and William Gargan, respectively), also vie for her affections.

The most any of them get for their troubles is a spare key - and just enough kisses and (unfulfilled) promises for more.

Vicky's sister Jill, whom she lives with, is skeptical of the intentions of all these men rushing to help her out.

In addition to rocking some serious hair, Grable and Landis play off each other well throughout.

But when Vicky turns up murdered in her apartment shortly after breaking the news to Frankie that she was leaving for Hollywood where she's been promised a screen test, Frankie goes from Henry Higgins to number one suspect. One cop in particular, the fantastically sinister Lt. Cornell (Laird Cregar), is particularly passionate in his belief that Frankie is the murderer, even breaking into his apartment to watch him in case he says something in his sleep.  

Spoiler alert: Cornell's the killer.

He was obsessed with Vicky Lynn, as Frankie learns when he goes to Cornell's apartment and discovers the walls plastered with Vicky's pictures.

Frankie teams up with Jill to figure things out. At first distrustful of him, she slowly comes around to championing his innocence, spending most of the third act meeting him in a 24-hour theater, his hiding spot. 

Inevitably, they fall in love.

When exposed as the killer, Cornell drinks poison and dies. Frankie and Jill get married and go dancing. The End. Oh sure, I'm skipping a hundred things. But a) you don't need little ol' me and Friday Night Film Noir for a full-on plot breakdown. And b) discussion is fine, but this is a film to be watched. The plot and script - functional and agreeable as they both are - are wholly secondary to the visuals. 

Gary Giddins in New York Sun review: "The unusual look of I Wake Up Screaming derives from a combination of conventional camera placement and innovative lighting. Humberstone has a few neat camera moves, but for the most part he directs straight on, preferring flat pictorial design (and) the film stock glistens: The blacks are so inky you half expect to see your own reflection in them. Shot after shot is composed with an erotic meticulousness - 

"not just set-pieces like the interrogation, in which shadows are necessary to postpone the disclosure of a character's identity."

"Consider the entrance of Laird Cregar, like a ghost on the far side of a glass pane, inside of which Carole Landis is waitressing, doubled by her own reflection in the glass."

"Or Grable's quick step into a perfect close-up at 31:29:"

"To say nothing of the several glamour shots of Grable and Landis, their cheeks lit up like alabaster."

I'll add the shininess of their hair to this - particularly Grable's. This isn't a black-and-white film; it's black-white-and-blonde.

It surprises me that this came out in 1941. It's a better fit for the films Twentieth Century Fox was releasing at the tail end of the decade, a whole World War and a hundred noirs later. In addition to the signature noir cinematography described above, I Wake Up Screaming features several things soon to be synonymous with the genre: a female victim dead-on-arrival, a story told at least partially in flashback, and a male protagonist obsessed with the dead woman. 

THE CAST

I really don't know Victor Mature from too many things. Outside of this, actually, I think the film I've seen him the most in is Head, the Monkees movie. Night and day from I Wake Up Screaming. 

Prior to seeing this film, I'd associated Betty Grable only with her fame as a WW2 pin-up or the trivia of being the first actress whose legs were insured for a million dollars, a publicity stunt since repeated by many an aspiring Alpha Female. 

The spectacle of a young starlet struck down on the eve of her probable megastardom, with her family and loved ones puzzling out a shadowy world of clues and intrigue in the aftermath, has some unfortunate real-world resonance, as Carole Davis died (ruled a suicide, though her family maintains it was murder) on Independence Day, 1948.

In closing: as Bosley Crowther noted in his otherwise boneheaded review of the film in the NYT "the picture never does make clear who it is that wakes up screaming." 

True Enough. Great title, though. It was originally released under the generic Hot Spot. Which is equally a poor fit for the story that plays out on screen, but I Wake Up Screaming is clearly the better marquee choice.

~