The Twilight Zone: Black Leather Jackets

"Three strangers arrive in a small town ... three men in black leather jackets, in an empty rented house. We'll call them Steve, Scott, and Fred, but their names are not important; their mission, as three men on motorcycles, lead us into the Twilight Zone."

Season 5, Episode 18

One of Serling's less inspired intros, perhaps, but the music accompanying is that kind of fantastic orchestral jazz that accompanied so many scenes of this era of TV meant to convey "beatnik" to the audience. This practice seemed already kind of dated by 1965 but would continue into the 70s. And probably 80s, too. (By the 90s, doing such things was fabulously retro.)

Here's how My Life in the Shadow of the Twilight Zone breaks down the plot: 

"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."

"Evil ham radio operators have come for your daughter" - AV Club"

"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."

"Cool it, daddy-o, or I'll disintegrate you with my ray gun."

"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."

"Thank your lucky stars you don't have to depend on buses to get around."
"Stars are lucky?"
"You know that old expression."
"I understand about the constellations, the nature of the galactic structure, but - I mean, I dig stars, but they're lucky? That's a gas."

"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."

Sheriff, seen here helpfully twirling the alien-invasion-force-symbol, played by veteran actor Michael Conrad.

"Scott is apprehended without incident, and the invasion commences."

"Portrait of an American family on the eve of invasion from outer space. Of course, we know it's merely fiction - and yet, think twice when you drink your next glass of water. Find out if it's from your local reservoir, or possibly it came direct to you....from the Twilight Zone." 

The End.

Okay, so the general consensus on this one is that it's a fairly silly slice of the Twilight Zone pie. I can't argue. The actual invasion scheme is - as such things go - perfectly fine, or at least shrugworthy enough. The aliens need more room for themselves, have judged humans to be inferior squatters on the land they intend to occupy, and are ready to aggressively eradicate the infestation.  The AV Club (aforelinked) has some fun with the idea of the three bikers going to see a realtor at episode's beginning: "Why an an alien invasion force would want to set up cover in a suburban neighborhood - and why they’d go to lengths to establish that cover via legal means - isn’t answered."

Furthermore, if they're concerned enough about their mission to legally occupy the house, why be so conspicuous otherwise? Confrontational behavior, loud motorcycles, etc. Possibly because we're not meant to realistically appraise them  - as much as such an appraisal as possible - as the vanguard of an invasion force; we're meant only to interpret them (as Serling referred to them in his "Next Week on the TZ" from the previous episode) as "beatniks and raunchy-looking characters."

Is the point that underneath the facade of every beatnik / non-conformist lies an invader who wants to destroy our way of life? I don't think so. I mean, it would be a little odd if, all of a sudden, Serling wanted to deliver an earnest (and ten years too late) sermon on the dangers of beatniks and motorcycle guys. By 1964 all the "daddy-O" lingo was probably dated enough to suggest irony rather than verisimilitude. The irony of the story - slight as it is - is probably more in the vein of when the fascists invade, they won't be wearing conspicuous armbands and marching in lock-step down Main Street; they'll be dating your daughter and dressed in the fashions of the counter-culture.  

Does it burn some of its own internal-logic-fuel to achieve the escape velocity it's looking for? Sure. Not the deepest dip in the pool but refreshing nonetheless.

THE CAST

Apollo (aka Michael Forest) plays Steve. (Tom Gilleran plays the other alien, Fred.)

The Tillmans, l to r: Irene Hervey as Martha, future-Coach's-girlfriend as Ellen, and Uncle Jesse as Stu.

Lee Kinsolving stars as Scott, the alien who develops an anti-colonial conscience after hooking up with one of the natives.

Kinsolving quit acting shortly after production of "Black Leather Jackets." Interestingly enough, another of his last roles was the Outer Limits episode "The Children of Spider County." Both of these episodes (along with another Outer Limits episode, "The Bellero Shield") have been mentioned as the having a suspicious amount of details in common with the alleged alien abduction story Barney Hill gave under hypnosis. (More here for any interested parties.)

Kinsolving also starred in "The Explosive Generation" with one Bill Shatner. He quit the biz and ran a hipster bar/ restaurant in New York for a few years, romancing the likes of Tuesday Weld and Candice Bergen. He sold the bar and moved to Florida, managing a couple of art galleries and sailing exotic locales in his private schooner, before dying of a mysterious respiratory illness in 1974 at the ridiculous age of 36. 

~

January 31, 1964.

His Kind of Woman (1951)

"Good coarse romantic-adventure nonsense."

- Manny Farber, reviewing the film for his pick as one of the best films of 1951

His Kind of Woman was originally directed by John Farrow, but producer Howard Hughes brought in Richard Fleischer to add a few shots. Then, Hughes co-wrote a new ending with Fleischer, and then Fleischer ended up reshooting the entire film, during which the leads (Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, and most especially Vincent Price) took the liberty of revising their own dialogue. 

Eh?

Any film with such a convoluted journey to the finish line is likely to be uneven, and this one certainly is - but gloriously so. Its unevenness almost certainly elevates His Kind of Woman to a film noir classic rather than just an enjoyable slice of noir with a great cast.

The film begins with an exiled-to-Napoli American gangster (Raymond Burr) being assured over the short wave that the plan to get him back into the States is underway.

Ten thousand miles away, professional gambler Dan Milner (eternally cool Robert Mitchum), has just finished a thirty day stretch in the Big House.

After strangers threaten him over a debt he never acquired on a bet he's never placed and rough him up when he doesn't cooperate, Milner is made a strange offer: head down to Mexico for a year and lay low and further instructions will follow. This will disappear the trumped-up gambling debt, and he'll pocket $50K for his troubles. Milner agrees - with trademark "Hey it's your nickel, fella" body language from Mitchum - and off he goes to Mexico. 

While waiting for further instructions just over the border, Milner meets Lenore Brent (Jane Russell), a singer, in the bar near the landing strip and chats her up.

Turns out they're headed to the same place: Morro's Lodge, on the southeastern coast of the Baja California Peninsula.  

Lenore is meeting Mark Cardigan (Vincent Price), a married actor with whom she's having an affair. Cardigan's all-consuming narcissism will serve the plot well in the third act.

But, in true every-quirk-to-serve-the-plot fashion, said narcissism will come in handy for everyone.

Everyone hangs around just looking cool for most of the second act.

Milner tries to suss out the mystery of the hoods keeping tabs on him, while Lenore keeps making his head snap (or the Robet-Mitchum equivalent of this) with strategic flirting, surprise How-did-you-get-in-heres and grand entrances.

G-man Bill Lusk (Tim Holt) flies into the resort in the middle of a hurricane under guise of a maverick-drunk-totally-not-Howard-Hughes-playboy-type and kicks things into high gear when he heps Milner to the real reason he was sent to Mexico: as face-fodder for Ferraro, the exiled gangster. Fellow resort guest Krafft (John Mylong) is the plastic surgeon that Ferraro hired to help him surgically burgle Milner's face.

Crazy as it sounds, this has a tenuous connection to plausibility. Allegedly this sort of duping-someone-to-steal-their-face scheme was why Lucky Luciano moved to Cuba in his unsuccessful (at least while breathing) hope to move back to the United States.

Milner is kidnapped by the baddies and brought aboard the gangster's yacht. He escapes and is able to alert Cardigan, who seizes the opportunity to become the Shakespeare-quoting over-the-top real-world bad-ass his screen persona has always imagined himself to be. He organizes an assault on the boat, while Milner is gratuitously and excessively beaten, left to die (sort of) in the steam room, and even threatened with an experimental Nazi brain damage serum. 

The bad guys all die, Cardigan reconciles with his wife, and Milner and Lenore, after coming clean with one another, fade-to-banging. 

"You could be a handy thing to have around the house if a man went broke."

As mentioned in Drew Morton's review of the film for Pajiba: "The oddest and most rewarding characteristic about His Kind of Woman is the complete tonal reversal it exhibits. The first half of the film is a fairly typical noir plot. However, once Dan gets kidnapped by his malevolent benefactor and held hostage on an off-shore boat, it shifts to a bizarre comedy, with Mark Cardigan emerging from the supporting peanut gallery as Dan's savior, commandeering a sinking row boat and shouting down his crew's incompetency with the line 'Alas, why must I be plagued by yammering magpies on the eve of battle?'"  

The just-mentioned rowboat scene is a gag right out of a silent film.

When he insists on pushing the overloaded boat from shore, it immediately sinks under the weight of his hubris.

Primarily, though, Vincent Price's character (Mark Cardigan) sells the film. Something which may have initially upset Mitchum - Price later wrote that he thought Robert Mitchum was disappointed in the film "because if he had known about (Hawks emphasizing) the comic tilt, he would have played his character in a lighter vein." It does make things a little uneven. But it's a tonal 180 ("it bifurcates," as mentioned here; perfect word choice) that works for me. Like the switch in tone from Tarantino (the first part) to Rodriguez (the second) in From Dusk to Dawn. 

Really if the only reason this film exists is to dress a send-up of self-obsessed actors in film noir clothes, that's justification enough. (Tropic Thunder might even owe some conceptual debt to it, though I've not seen anyone else make this connection so perhaps I am overreaching.) Easily one of the most outrageous of all his performances. 

Mitchum and Russell are the leads, but no one could be faulted for referring to His Kind of Woman as a Vincent Price film.

As for the rest of the cast:

Some familiar faces from other noirs we've covered here, namely The Killer That Stalked New York (Bela Oxmyx) and The Asphalt Jungle (Thurston Howell III).

Voice actor Paul Frees (a personal favorite) has a rare onscreen cameo as one of the heavies waiting for Milner at his apartment at the beginning.

And finally, Harry Wild, the cinematographer for Murder My Sweet, The Big Steal, and other noir classics, last seen in these pages for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, does his usual excellent job. 

This film even features an impressive uncut sequence following a shapely server around the lounge and pool in much the same manner as we saw in Kiss Me Deadly.

~