The Troublemaker
Flicker on the
local level does the town, there are lots of New Yorks, this one is Nieuw
Amsterdam overgrown with congealed rottenness, and requires a sufficient
photographic apparatus to encompass it, as well as skill with a pen.
Bosley
Crowther of the New
York Times, “a troublesome film.”
The Lucky Letter
The Andy Griffith Show
A chain letter
upsets Barney so frantically when he doesn’t send it on that he risks
failing to qualify on the pistol range. Floyd sent it, got a dollar tip the
first day. The other copy went to Goober.
Barney searches
the city dump at night for the letter he has thrown away, despite the smell and
the rats that would make good target practice for Andy, who has come looking
for him. Andy hasn’t brought his pistol, however, and all they find is a
foldout pinup magazine Barney subscribes to. “That girl should be ashamed,”
Andy tells him, and, “what a month!”
Thelma Lou gives
Barney inspiration at the target range, he hits the center every time.
One Hundred Terrible
Hours
The Dick Van Dyke Show
How Rob Petrie
landed his job on The Alan Brady Show fresh out of the Army and a radio
stunt at WOFF in Danville, 100 hours in a department store window, broadcasting
live and reading the news.
An abounding
satirical analysis of left-wing politics down to its ultimate basis in the
regimentation of the Communist state.
It begins with
political ignorance, “talking in your sleep”, finds an escape in
suburban paranoia, slips away to grace and nature with a hippie rock band,
comes under the purview of the Canadian Secret Service and then the Russian,
which is psychoanalyzed.
The Phone Company
is the final metaphor, numbers for names, a prenatal Cerebrum Communicator
injected by law.
This must be
shaken off, and the final image is of TPC robots watching a screen that rather
resembles a Christmas card from “your White House”.
Hell’s Bells
Night Gallery
A hippie in hell
finds it’s somebody else’s idea of heaven.
A nice mod apartment, “You’re a Sweetheart” on the turntable,
Grant Wood’s farmer, tourists back from Tijuana showing their slides.
A “Fat
Lady” in the waiting room explains about the recent rush of entrants and
complains of littering.
The hippie
arrives after missing a detour and plunging over a cliff at night to a fiery
end. Demons greet him initially with cries of “Blasphemer! Liar! Cheat!
Hypocrite! Thief! Idolater!”
He imagines his
fate in the waiting room as engravings of the Inferno, “that’s a
trip!” The devil appears at his bored insistence, “that’s far
out!”
The hippie lies
on his side, covering his ears and pounding the floor, “bummer!”