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Welcome back to Tumbleweeds and TV Cowboys, a classic Western film and TV podcast.

My name is Hunter.

This week we're talking about three Western episodes from the Landmark TV series The Twilight Zone and joining me in this discussion as a new guest writer and classic TV historian Mitchell Hadley.

Mitchell, thanks so much for coming on the show.

How's it going.

It's going well, Hunter, Thank you for having me on.

I've looked forward to this.

Oh, I'm very excited to have you on.

I've been listening to you on Dan Budennick's podcast, Eventually super Trained for a while now, and I really enjoy hearing you and Dan on the show.

So I've been excited to talk about these episodes of the Twilight Zone with you.

But before we get into that, can you tell listeners about yourself, your blog, and your latest book.

Sure.

Well, as you said, I'm a classic TV history historian.

I have written about classic TV and popular culture for fifteen years at the website It's about tv dot com, and I write about everything from old TV guides, I review a different one every week from the generally from the fifties through the seventies, and I'll write about those.

I'll write about the impact that TV has had on popular culture over the years, or conversely, the effect that the world has had on television, and how we can learn a bit more about ourselves by some of the TV shows of the past.

And in conjunction with that, I have written two books about television.

The first one was called The Electronic Mirror, and the latest one is Darkness in prime Time How classic era TV foresaw modern societies dissent into hell.

And it's a long title to describe a basic premise.

I've taken twenty one episodes or dramas or made for TV movies that aired primarily in the fifties and sixties, but some of them even into the seventies, where I felt that the shows did a particularly pointed job of warning us or predicting what kind of a world we were going to live in.

And in that sense, it's very much the world that we are living in today.

Some disturbing things, some frightening things, and I think some really interesting ways in which these shows saw what was coming and either tried to portray it or tried to warn us about it.

Or just let us know what the future might be like if we did or didn't do anything.

So it's an interesting topic.

But I think it's also interesting to learn about a lot of these shows which most people won't be familiar with.

I think there are several shows that you can't find anymore anywhere.

There are some shows that are on YouTube or are held in certain historic archives, but they haven't been seen since their original broadcast date.

And people will be very surprised by some of these things.

I know I was, and I don't think I surprise easily on some of these things.

So it's a book that I'm actually rather pleased with how it turned out, and I hope readers are too.

And this gives me also an opportunity to correct a scurless lie that Dan Butnick told about me when he was on the show the last time, where he said that I made him buy three copies of this book.

I want everybody to know that the third copy of that book was half priced, so I did not force him into buying three copies, and I would appreciate the next time he's on the show if he issues a public apology to that point.

So well, hey, if he doesn't apologize, I'm just gonna boot him off the show.

Well, yes, I think that's appropriate, and I appreciate that vote of support.

Yeah, Dave, I hope you're squirming right now.

But Nick Dan presents himself as this really nice guy and then here he is telling these lies about you.

It's just I know, I was.

I was.

I was so surprised that I had to stop writing something about how he was lying about all of these TV shows.

So I was shocked.

It's it's upsetting, it really is.

You think you know somebody well and and then it turns out you don't know them at all.

Yeah.

Absolutely, Well, yeah, and I mentioned I actually don't know if I mentioned in that episode.

Actually, was it the last episode that I mentioned that I actually won your book in a social media contest?

Okay, yes, yes, yes, So I'm the proud owner of Darkness in prime Time and so far I've only been able to get into the chapters on Twilight Zone episodes, but I'm definitely looking forward to digging into the rest of the book as well.

Well.

Thank you.

I really do appreciate that.

It is I think, as any author will will tell you, it's nice to know that you are not writing in an echo chamber, and it's always fun to hear somebody talking about how they've read one of your books, even if even if there are things they disagree with, it's just nice to know that they took the time to read what you had.

Oh yeah, oh I bet.

Yeah.

And then so all the links to to your books and your blog will be in the show notes, so it'll be very easy for listeners to check those out and to go over there and support you.

All right, Well, let's talk a little bit about Rod Serling and Westerns.

So The Twilight Zone has multiple Western episodes, and we're dis covering three, but I think there are around like ten or twelve, and he wrote two of the episodes that we're talking about for this.

And Serling also created a Western TV series called The Loaner, Yes, which I think just ran for one season, which actually makes it eventually super train material.

It does.

I think I'll have to talk to Dan about that.

Oh you should, Yeah, that would be awesome.

He would love it.

It's a very good it's a very good show.

I know that Rod Serling himself was distressed about The Loaner because he felt that he was his vision of the show was being compromised in that he had to return to some very traditional Western tropes in Ryola, when he had something much different in mind.

Not so much a revisionist Western, but he wanted to explore social issues and serious topics that you often don't get in a typical television Western of the time.

And I think it's to his credit that CBS bought the series and they should have expected something like that from him.

I'm not sure if they were disappointed why they would have been, because if you look at the episodes of The Twilight Zone that covered the West, and of you mentioned that we'd be looking at three of them today, one of them is The The Grave, which we will be getting to.

Is the only one of those Westerns that Serling didn't right himself.

The others he did write, and Serling had kind of, I think, a desire to look at Westerns in the sense of correcting the historical perspective of them.

I said that The Loaner wasn't exactly a revisionist Western, and it wasn't, but it certainly was a different kind of Western from what people were used to seeing on TV.

And that was something that runs through several of the Twilight Zone episodes that Serling does with westerns, he wants to present or hopes to present a vision that is a little more realistic what it was really all about instead of I think he had mentioned once about John Wayne taming the West all by himself or winning World War Two all by himself, and that was the kind of thing he wanted to get away from.

He wanted to look at what the West really was like and what it was all about, and he fails nobly sometimes in those efforts.

I think that the three that we're looking at today are pretty good in that they all have the West as an integral character in the stories.

They may be conventional or unconventional Westerns, but they work particularly well within the Western motif.

Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah.

And my next question was going to be what would you say about his approach to the Western genre, But I think you already covered that.

Yeah.

I think he as I say, he didn't always get it right.

One of his one of the westerns that he wrote, where he was trying to show how phony the TV Western was actually relied on as many bad Western tropes as those that he was criticizing, but it was also a comedy and Serling was never a gifted comic writer.

He always did better with more serious dramas.

And I think that if you look at The Twilight Zone as a whole, and you look at the comic episodes of it, or the at least the episodes that have a fair amount of humor in them, most of the most successful comic episodes or ones he did not right himself, so he did not really have that kind of a grasp of the comic genre.

But I think in general he did a pretty good job accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish in writing about the Western and I think these are good examples of that.

Oh yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you.

And I may I may end up this month if I can work it in, I might go through the rest of his Western episodes, because I've seen this whole series and this is one of my all time favorite TV shows, Like it's probably in my top three.

But it would be really fun to revisit the Westerns for sure.

And yeah, and let's get into the first episode we're going to discuss, which is mister Denton on Doomsday.

Portrait of a town drunk named Al Denton.

This is a man who's begun his dying early, a long, agonizing route through a maze of bottles.

Al Denton, who would probably give an arm, or a leg, or a part of his soul to have another chance, to be able to rise up and shake the dirt from his body and the bad dreams that infest his consciousness.

In the parlance of the times, this is a peddler, a rather fanciful looking little man in a black frock coat.

And this is the third principal character of our story.

Its function perhaps to give mister al Denton his second chance.

Yes, it's actually the third episode of The Twilight Zone.

Yes, first third episode of the first season.

It originally aired on October sixteenth, and nineteen fifty nine.

Written by Rod Serling and directed by I believe it's Alan Reisner.

They thank you, and this is the only episode of The Twilight Zone he directed.

It's got a pretty great cast.

It's Dan Durier, who I think everybody who is a fan of westerns will know from Winchester seventy three.

But he's also he's in some classic noirs, and he's in a lot of good movies.

And then an early role for Martin Landau and also a very early role for Doug McClure, who a few years later would go on to play Trampis and the tremendous series The Virginian which Dan and I will cover at some point and are eventually the Virginian Podcast, which will never happen, but it's fun to talk about.

Hope springs a turn, Yes, right, Mitchell, Can you tell us what this episode's out.

Well, it is a prototypical Twilight Zone in the sense that it deals with a supernatural or fate as it's called, and fate just happens to be the name of one of the characters in this episode.

The protagonist is a gunfighter named Al Denton that's played by Dan Durier, and we are to imagine his fame and his success as a gunfighter because as we join the story, he's now the town drunk and he is being weighed down by the ghosts of the men he has killed in the past.

And this, I think is one of the reasons this works so well as a Western is because at this point Serling is able to deal with with ape of the Western, the gunslinger that becomes very important.

I'll probably touch on that a little later, But to continue with the story, he's he's fallen on hard times, down on his luck, really just looking for enough money to buy his next drink so that he can stay drunk again.

And he meets this peddler named Henry J.

Fate.

I don't know about you.

I have not met anyone named Fate lately, and I'm not sure that I would want to.

But what Fate becomes the mechanism through which Denton is able to regain his self respect.

He is called out by the town bully, Martin Landau, who plays that kind of a role very well.

He's kind of of a liberty valance type of character who's always pushing, pushing Denton around, and Fate kind of direct Denton's hands so that he's able to get off a couple of incredible shots that disarm disarm Landau's character, and as is usually the case with a bully, once you push back on them, they cease to be a bully.

And so in this way, Denton is given an opportunity to regain his self respect.

But there's a downside to that, the kind of thing that Serling really enjoys writing about.

It's true that Denton is the drunk who is now trying to regain his self esteem.

But this is going to come at a price, and the price is that if he becomes renown once again as a gunslinger, he's also going to have to deal with the same ghosts he's been dealing with, more and more of these young men who are going to come and challenge him, and that he's going to have to kill or be killed.

And it's an interesting way of taking the haunted part of a Twilight Zone ghosts and haunted things, and since we're, you know, around Halloween, it's kind of appropriate to talk about that kind of thing.

But this is a different kind of ghost.

It's the ghost of the men that he's killed, especially a very young man sixteen years old, who challenged him to a duel for the only only because Denton was the best senseless killing.

And this is all caught up to Denton.

That's what happened to him.

And now as he regains himself, he's aware that this is going to happen all over again.

Sure enough, Pete Grant, that's Doug McClure.

He's another young man and he comes into town and he wants to have a showdown with Denton.

And this this is where fate, both the character and fate itself.

This is where they move in to manipulate the events to give Denton one last chance.

But what kind of a chance is that going to be?

What does Fate really have in store for him?

That's the question?

Yes, yes, now, uh so, what did you think of this episode?

I thought it was I thought it was really a very good episode.

It deals, as I said, with a couple of things that Serling really likes to write about.

The man who is given a second chance to redeem himself, the man who is haunted by visions of his own past.

And one of the reasons I said that this was a good topic for a Western is because in Denton you've got a man who's killed a lot of men.

If you tried to take it into any setting other than a Western, let's say he's a former mafia hit man.

Well, that isn't the same thing.

When you go out to do a hit on somebody, you're not only breaking the law, you're a cold blooded killer.

Even if some of these people deserved to be killed, you're still guilty of something.

By setting it in the West, he's allowing Denton to have the same regret, the same haunted feeling that any killer would have, without having the negative connotation, the pejorativeness of being a murderer, and that allows us to remain sympathetic to Denton.

Now, I think that's a very important point, and it would be very difficult to script a story outside of the West that would allow Serling to have it both ways.

So that's a nice touch that he adds to that.

And Durier, of course, is wonderful in the role partial reason he is, and he's one of those actors that I like to say elevates almost every story that he's in.

It becomes better because he's in it.

And he has this way of projecting a weariness even when he's playing the heavy there's this this sense sometimes that he's seen more than he wants to see.

And in a role like this where we know what he has done even though he's the protagonist, it's that past history that Duryer brings to the role through the other roles he's played that makes that gun Slinger convincing.

We never see him as the gun slinger prior to the beginning of the episode, but he brings the history with him as an actor that's very effective, not only in casting but in Durier's performance itself.

And I think that that the rest of the rest of the role are very well covered.

Even though even though Doug McClure isn't in it that much, he's very good as this young greenhorn type of character.

Martin Landau isn't in it very much, but he's the same kind of heavy that we got used to seeing so often, you know, in a movie like north By Northwest, where he's the kind of guy that you just want to cheer when he gets pushed off of Mount Rushmore.

And Martin Landau is very effective because, like Durier, he brings a past history to his role from having played heavies, and so he takes some of the pressure off of the writers in not having to create that ominous sense sense for him.

So Landau is very good.

And I think that you look at Malcolm Addaburry, who is an actor that everybody will recognize even if they don't know the name, just because he was in virtually every show in the fifties and sixties.

If it's in black and white, he's in it.

And Jeanie Cooper, who is the love interest.

The loyal woman who stands by Durier waiting to pick him up when he falls, does a nice job in a role that isn't huge, but it is important in the Western trope.

So all of all, I think that I think that it works very well.

The only negative point that I guess I would mention is that there is a certain manipulative quality to the climax at the very end.

Some people might find that that's a little preposterous or a little hokey.

I think that you are aware of it, but at the same time, I'm inclined to say, well, geez, that's the way is.

If something is fated to happen, then it's gonna happen, no matter how weird it might look or seem when it does happen.

So you got to kind of take that into consideration.

This is the Twilight Zone.

Things aren't always cut and dry.

But that is a very minor point, I think on the end of what is I think a very good episode that utilizes its setting and its characters and its story very well.

Yeah, I agree.

I'm a pretty big fan of this episode, and I think it's actually it's very well directed, and I'm not like an expert on TV from this era by any means, But I've seen a good amount of TV from the fifties and early sixties, and I think for nineteen fifty nine, like the direction in cinematography are at a very high level and not just compared to other TV shows, but it has a cinematic quality to me, I think it looks great and you know, and I wish we could get more series from this era in HD, yes, because I do think that that definitely gives the visual quality a pretty big boost.

But even so, it's it's well shot.

There's interesting camera angles, which I do think, you know, is kind of a characteristic of the series in general.

It has a unique visual style, Yes it does, but I think it really stands out at least from from what I've seen from this era.

And I think Dan Durier is excellent.

Is Al Denton.

I think Martin Landau is also tremendous.

Is kind of like the first half the villain from the first half of the episode.

And I think the introduction to Denton is great, Like I think you instantly feel for him in this scene, which this scene is you know, you talked about different Western tropes.

This is to me something that you see in a lot of westerns where there's a drunk at a saloon who desperately wants to keep drinking that has no money and will like make a fool of themselves to you to get another drink.

And uh, and what they do in this is that they landaut makes Denton sings this song it's like how Dry I Am?

Which I looked up and it's it's an Irving Berlin song called the Near Future.

And Mitchell, I do have to ask, after rewatching this episode, did you find yourself walking around the house singing how Dry I Am?

Whereupon I went to the refrigerator and got myself another diet coke, so because I was dron But you're right, it's it's one of those tunes that just sticks with you.

It really does.

It's it's pretty good and I will admit I've sung it a few times and even in singing it makes me feel like I've had a few drinks.

But you can almost feel where the hiccups come in the lyrics.

You really do.

But but yeah, but anyway, it it's got great Western tropes.

I mean, like the the idea of someone who's an elite gunman, you know, being tracked down by upstarts who want the notoriety that kind of comes with being the fact, with taking out the fastest gun in the West.

I mean, that's something that you see in other Westerns and and even just like the town drunk, sobering up and becoming effective with a gun again is uh is something This is kind of a twist on that where the character of Henry Fate kind of guides Ditton's hand to help him aim.

But that is something that's even in something like Rio Bravo.

M.

What's interesting about it, the serling twist, if you will, for this is that what I had mentioned earlier that even though Denton regains a modicum of self respect, he's also thinking this, oh my gosh, this is going to start all over again, and even redemption has a price.

Yes, yes, and I really like I like the scene with Denton and Liz, who she's basically like the miss Kitty of this episode, but he the scene where he tells her that he started drinking a little earlier each day until one day someone challenged him, and after he killed the challenger, he found out they were just sixteen years old.

Like you mentioned earlier, and that led him to become kind of what he is when we first meet him in the episode.

I thought that scene was was really well done and really well performed by Jerry A.

And I actually like the ending.

You know, we're Denton and mclure's character.

They they they both end up taking this potion that fate has given them, and they and what happens is they shoot each other, you know, in their like hand that would hold a pistol maybe, you know, making it to where they can no longer be defined.

By the they're finely crippled as far as shooting a gun, yes, And I think that you know, there are there are some people who have said, well, geez, you know that that's an awfully neat conclusion, both literally in the sense that you don't you don't see the blood or the the effects of it, which must have been tremendously painful.

You don't see any of that, and and figuratively and that it's a nice neat conclusion.

But that's not what Serling is going for.

He's going for the symbolic nature of it.

And when when when Denton says to the kid, you know you learned the lesson that I wish I had learned at your age, essentially you what a great gift you've been given.

Yeah, that's what it's all about.

Right.

Yeah, Now that's pretty much all my thoughts on on the episode.

I mean, overall, I really enjoyed it.

I think it's just a tremendous episode of TV.

But do you have any other thoughts on this one?

Well, the only other thing that I would add is something that I found out when I looked this up, which may or may not be common knowledge for people, but this was originally supposed to star Burgess Meredith as okay as the as the Denton character who is going to be named mister Dingle, which we know from the Twilight Zone.

Meredith does wind up playing a character named Dingle, and it was supposed to be more in that comic vein.

There's nothing funny about this one, and so I think it shows a recognition by Serling of how this story ought to work, and the changes that he made to bring it about the way it has were the right changes.

This story works absolutely.

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but as the third episode of the Twilight Zone, you're already getting the feeling that this is a pretty good show.

You're realizing this is something that I'm not used to seeing on TV.

This episode does nothing to dissuade you from that opinion, because it is a top flight episode and it's you're you're just continuing in that idea that this is a series that's gonna be special.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And I can't say enough about Derry.

Ah, You're right, he's uh.

He just invests this character with so much of a backstory that you don't see you don't, I mean you don't see it.

You don't see it in the story.

You see it on his face, you see it in his posture.

He's just great.

Yeah, Oh he's excellent.

Yeah yeah, he is just tremendous.

But but yeah, so yeah, off off to a very good start here and then moving on to the grave.

Normally, the old man would be correct, this would be the end of the story.

We've had the traditional shootout on the street, and the bad man will soon be dead.

But some men of legend and folk tale have been known to continue having their way even after death.

The outlaw and killer Pennos Sykes was such a person, and shortly we'll see how he introduces the tone and a man named Connie Miller in particular to the Twilight Zone.

This is from the third season.

It's episode seven, and it originally aired on October twenty seventh in nineteen sixty one.

It's written and directed by Montgomery Pittman, who he had a kind of a relatively short career that works mostly in TV, and he worked on some your major shows from this era.

And this is one of his three episodes of the Twilight Zone.

And it has us like an all star cast, Lee Marvin, James Best, Struther Martin, and Lee Van Cleef.

So it's a fantastic cast.

And so, Mitchell, can you tell us what this episode's about?

Who's who of Westerns, isn't it?

I know?

Oh yeah, it's amazing.

Yeah.

You don't even have to provide the troupes.

They're living right in front of you.

Well, this is a this is a tale that comes from European folklore.

Essentially, you've got Lee Marvin playing a gunfighter and he had been brought in to as a hired gun named Connie Miller, and he was brought in to rid the towne of this character named Sykes.

We never see Sykes, but he dominates the story even unseen.

As it turns out, Sykes is now dead, but Marvin is finding himself having to dissuade people from the belief that he was afraid of Sikes, that he didn't chase him.

He had the chance to pursue him, but he lingered around an extra day to make sure that Sykes got away.

And this is something that people kind of believe Eve although Lee Marvin being Lee Marvin, you don't want to say it too loudly.

And it's something that Psychs's sister also believes, and she is not shy about telling Marvin this.

You know, you're you're you were a coward, you were afraid of him.

You'll never be the man that he was, that kind of thing.

And what's interesting about this, I think, is how in one way it works against type, because you think of Marvin as the as being the big, tough, heroic or villainous type, depending on which a story you see him in, but you never think of him as a coward and this, and yet he plays it with such calm and quiet that it works really well in the story.

Anyway, what he's had enough of this whispering, this talk that he was, that he was afraid of Psykes, and so he accepts a bet to go to the graveyard to see where Psykes is buried and to stick a knife into the grave to prove that he was there.

Thinks it's kind of silly, but sure, he's going to do it.

Uh, he gets to the graveyard, he's he is afraid.

It's a it's a very spooky scene.

It's very Gothic.

When when they talk about the European trappings of the story in this case, they're not kidding, you know.

It's that you can you can feel the storm in the air.

You've got the wind, you've got the bare trees, you've got it overcast.

It's just very atmospheric.

And uh, who would not be intimidated in a situation like this.

Nonetheless, he goes up to the grave, sticks the knife in it.

But then something happened, you know, he gets dragged back down, and as it turns out, the next day, when the townsfolk are talking about, well, I wonder why he didn't come back, and the and and they go to the graveyard, they find him there dead.

Presumably, they assume because they want to provide a rational explanation for this, they presume that what happened was his coat.

His wrap got tangled up somehow when he stuck the knife into the grave.

He stuck it threw his coat, and so when he got up to walk away, it felt like something or someone was pulling him back down.

And he dies afright, presumably has a heart attack or something and dies.

That's that.

That's a logical explanation.

And if you don't want to believe in the supernatural, fine you can, you can buy this.

But but no, you've got you've got the secondary twist at the end, which is actually the primary twist.

You think the twist is he goes to the graveyard and the dead man pulls him down and he just like the Commendatore and and Don Giovanni, that he's pulling him down to the underworld.

But is a you know, you think that's going to be the shock ending, but it isn't.

That's actually the sensible ending.

The shock ending is when uh, the sister comes and says, well, you can think that if you want, but look at which way the wind was blowing.

Cap wouldn't have been behind Hi would have been it.

He wouldn't have stuck his knife through it.

The wind was blowing in the wrong direction.

Boom, Well there goes your explanation.

There's the end of the episode.

I now, what did you think of the grave?

Well, you know, it is what I liked about it.

And this is, by the way, as I mentioned in the intro, this is the only Western themed Twilight Zone episode that Serling himself didn't write.

And one of the reasons, you see that was written and directed by Montgomery Pittman, if I remember correctly, Pittman had written television before and had become very unhappy with the adaptations of his work how it was being done on screen, and so he became a director and had it written into his contracts that he would not write any television episode that he did not also direct.

That way he could guarantee that his vision was going to come through.

And I think that that he writes the these kinds of stories about these kinds of people very well.

The townsfolk are great.

And when you've got a cast of you know, like when you get Struther Martin and Lee van Cleef and you've got this this cast of townsfolk that are just perfect for this kind of kind of a role.

The uh, the performance of Martin is really good.

I think because Lee Marvin is one of those actors I mentioned that we think about him as being a big, tough guy, courageous.

You're going against type in saying that he might have been a coward.

Well, one of the things about Marvin that I have found is that the quieter and calmer he is, the more dangerous he is.

If you if you watch a movie of his like Point Blank, which I think is one of his greatest performances.

Uh, it's awesome.

He he he doesn't raise his voice, he doesn't get angry.

He just takes care of business.

And he's the kind of man that when he gets really quiet around you, you start to worry.

And so taking that to this performance, his manner, which is very similar throughout most of the episode, is effective on two counts.

Number one, it gives off that danger that we come to expect from Marvin.

But number two, it's just laid back enough that you find yourself wondering, well, maybe he was afraid of psikes, maybe he did decide not to follow him.

It's got just enough of an equivocal tone to it that I think it works really well.

And I think that all the characters play their roles well.

The ending again is a little suss and I will I will defer to some of the commentary that you can read online about it.

The uh it it is not shot very well because uh Pittman as director now is handicapped by what Pittman the writer has written into the script.

Because because you don't know why uh he dies until the very end.

Because but because you don't know that, Pittman the director is limited in the way he can shoot the scene.

He really only shoots uh Marvin's character from the way stop, so that when when it turns out that they speculate that he put the knife through his coat, there is no visual evidence to contradict that.

And I don't think that that comes through terribly well.

I think that had I been trying to do it, I might have decided that it would be better not even to try to provide a rational explanation, just to have everybody confronted with what appears to be irrefutable proof that he died there for no reason.

Maybe have a little rumpled piece of dirt on the graves, suggesting something may have disturbed the dirt during the night that couldn't have been the wind couldn't have been a footprint, what could it have been?

I think that might have been a better type of an ending, something like that.

I wouldn't presume to insist that it is, but I would suggest something like that.

And so I think that it does prevent this from being a really top flight episode.

It's a good episode in the performances I think are quite good, but I think that the ending lets us down and not so much that you say it's a bad episode, but you're left more saying it could have been better than it is.

Yeah, I totally agree.

I I this is an episode that I like.

I mean, it's fun just based on the cast alone, where you got Lee, Marvin Struther, Martin, and Lee Van Cleef and the very next year.

All the only one they're racing is Bruce Dern.

Yes, but the very next year all three of them appear in the manushat Liberty Valance.

So it's kind of fun.

And so it's kind of fun to see them in this together.

And uh, and I do think that you know, we're we're recording in October, this is going to be released in October, and it's got a good Yeah, October kind of spooky vibe.

It's got good atmosphere and uh, you know, it's not terrifying or anything.

But there's also this character that now that the sister of Pentose Sykes.

I think it's Iona, Yes, Iona Spikes Sikes.

Yeah, she's played by Ellen Willard.

And you could easily picture someone like Barbara Steele in this role.

Oh yeah, like she would fit in perfectly in this But but yeah, the story, like it's overall it's pretty entertaining.

I think all the actors are good.

I do think the ending is a bit of a let down.

And this is a series where endings are so crucial they are and and and for for it to fall flat is is disappointing.

Because there are episodes of The Twilight Zone where for the first you know, twenty two minutes, I'm not even sure I like the episode, and then the ending happens and it's like, oh, this episode is fantastic.

Huh yep.

And and so for the ending to be the weakest part it really I don't know it.

It it just really hurt for me.

It really hurt the and the explanation.

I think it's leaving Kleef, who kind of provides the logical explanation for this is it's not It's not a great explanation.

I mean, this is much worse than something like the end of Psycho, which I know people have complained about.

But yeah, I do think the rest of the episode is good.

It just doesn't go out with a bang.

But I don't know, do you have anything else to add on on on this thing.

I think it probably read better on paper than it did on the screen, because if you had read this as a ghost story, say in you know, Alfred Hitchcock's Great Ghost Tales, the ending would have been perfect because you wouldn't have seen the contradictions.

And I think so, I think that this one perhaps would have benefited from just a little more thought being given into the visual side of the ending.

One of the stories that I like, and this is this is my cap to my look at it.

One of the stories I enjoy about this episode.

It is about Marvin himself that apparently on the first day of shooting he came on the set bombed and they couldn't do anything, and so the director sent everybody home for the day, and the next day Marvin came in stood in front of the cast and the crew everybody, and he says, look, I showed up, Yester, I came here yesterday not prepared to work.

I let everybody down.

I apologize it was very unprofessional, but you just wait and see what I'm going to do today.

And they said afterwards, of course, he just knocked everybody's socks off.

He was terrific in at the rest of the way.

And that's so typical of Martin or Marvin in both ways.

I think that does he show up drunk to work, Yeah, you know, would easily Marvin, but that it shows you what he can do when he puts his mind to it and he's into it.

And I find that just a nice coda to the rest of the story.

Yeah.

Absolutely, Yeah.

I know he has definitely a reputation for being drunk, like actually on set, yet while filming like with Paint Your Wagon, I know he was actually drunk quite a bit.

And I don't blame him.

Yeah, I don't blame him either.

Yeah.

If you're going to drink a three way production, that is a good one you want to do.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Introducing mister Jared Garretty, a gentleman of commerce who in the latter half of the nineteenth century, plied his trade in the wild and wooly hinter lends of the American West.

And mister Gerritty, if one can believe him, is a resurrector of the dead, which on the face of it certainly sounds like the bull is off the nickel.

But to the scoffers amongst you, when you ladies and gentlemen from Missouri, don't laugh, this went off entirely, at least until you've seen a sample of mister Garrity's wares and an example of his services.

The place is Happiness, Arizona, the time about eighteen ninety and you and I have just entered a saloon where the bar whiskey is brood bottled and delivered from the twilight zone.

All right, well, I think we're ready to move on to mister Garrity and the graves.

This is our the final episode Recovering.

And this was written by Rod Sterling, And this is adapting story by I think it's Mike Cora Locus something like that.

Yeah, yeah, so I don't know how he pronounces it, but yes, okay.

And it aired on May eighth in nineteen sixty four, and it was directed by Ted Post and he did a ton of work in TV.

I mean he directed fifty five episodes of gun Smoke, twenty four episodes of raw Hide, and he also directed Eastwood's first Hollywood western that he was a star of, called Hang Them High.

And this is another solid cast, Like it doesn't have the star power of the previous episode, but we've it's John Dayner.

He plays the title character, Jared Garretty, and he did a lot of TV.

And he was also the voice of Paladin in the radio version of Agun Will Travel and he has a tremendous radio voice.

Oh.

And then there's a couple recognizable actors.

I can't really say what they would be known for, but Stanley Adams is in this and I know I've seen him and other shows.

Percy Helton, who might be more recognizable, who might be more recognizable for his voice.

Actually he's the.

Guy you like to punch in the face whenever you see him in a movie.

Oh, show absolutely, and then j Pat O'Malley.

So those are the kind of the three main players in this.

And all right, well, Mitchell, this is the last summary.

What's this one about?

Well, mister Garrity comes into town and he is whatever you want to call him a con man, a grift, a snake oil salesman.

But he has a very interesting proposition.

He has the ability to raise people from the dead.

And okay, you know that's not entirely without precedent, but uh, giving me a break, and and and people are skeptical, I wonder why until until this little scene happens where there's this commotion outside.

Everybody rushes out to see what's happened.

Uh, there's a dead dog in the middle of the street who has been run over by a wagon.

Now, of course, in the actual episode, the dog doesn't do a very good job of playing dead, because you can see him moving and blinking while he's lying there.

But yeah, you know again, yeah, let's give him.

Let's give him a break.

You know, he probably wasn't used to being on screen, let's hope.

But anyway, the the dog is supposed to to be dead, and guess what, Garrety is able to resurrect the dog.

And then he starts talking about all the people who happen to be in the town's graveyard that are dead, all of their dearly departed.

Wouldn't you love to have a chance to see those people again, to be with your loved ones, to be with the people who've met so much to you in life.

Well, there are, and I love this part of it.

There are one hundred eighty seven people in the graveyard, you know, not nearly two hundred, not over one hundred and eighty, one hundred eighty seven people.

I love the preciseness of that.

All but one of them are in there as a result of some kind of violence that they wound up getting shot and killed.

And this weighs on the town's people.

They start to think about the implications of everyone rising from the dead, and they realize that most, if not all, of these people have a have a bone to pick with somebody in the town that they're not really all that happy about how they wound up in Boothill.

And when when Garrety gives them a sample and you see somebody walking in, it looks like he's walking into town.

This is a This is a man, a man whose brother had killed him, supposedly, And when you see him coming into town, guy freaks out.

He's coming to get me and he'll pay whatever it takes to keep him dead.

Yeah, you know, five minutes before these people have been saying, you know how much how much this person meant to me, And now they're they're more like you know.

On the other hand, it really would be criminal to disturb them from their RESTful sleep.

I can't do that.

So they start shoveling money at him to kid to keep the dead dead, which is I think one of the flaws of the story in that is that all these people are carrying money around with him like that.

I'd be asking him if he'd take a card.

But the the the end result is that it turns out this was all a fake.

He's got he and his partner have this wad of money.

The dog was a trained dog.

They taught him how to play dead.

The dog belonged to them, so that was part of it, although as I mentioned earlier, the dog didn't do a really good job on camera.

The partner was the apparent brother rising from the dead, although they never quite explain how it was that he was able to just vanish like that, unless it was something done with mirrors.

But this, again, you think, is the Twilight Zone flip that it turns out this was all just a con that Garrety was pulling, and so he's leaving town and he kind of turns and apologizes to the to the dead in boot Hill.

You know, I'm I wish I could have raised you up.

I'm sorry about that, almost affectionately.

And after he leaves town, guess what he was selling his own talent short Because they are rising from the dead, this means we're in for a whole lot of fun that we won't see in this episode.

But it's right.

It is anticipating the question of what I thought of it.

It's a problematic episode, but it has a fun ending.

Yes, no, So what did you think of this episode overall?

Well, it's got some flaws.

It the dog is a flaw.

The fact that the the the this illusion that the uh doctor or that the partner performs to make it look like he's disappeared.

We don't know how that happened.

There's never even an explanation given.

And it's one of those things that you will think of after the episode is over.

You're gonna, hey, wait a minute, if this all was a hoax, how did they do that?

Those?

Yeah, those are minuses.

There's no question about it.

Even if you take for granted the idea that people may not have been able to see the dog living and breathing in the TV of the time.

It's still there if you if you look for it, it's still there.

And I believe I read one critic who had suggested, well, maybe they should have used a kid.

They could have trained, you know, they could think it could have been like, uh, you know Paper Moon, where you've got one of that where he's got a daughter who's part of the con along with him.

They could have had something like that and it might have worked better on screen.

But be that as it may, the plus is I think kind of outweigh the negatives.

First of all, Dayer is terrific.

Oh he's fantastic in this.

Well, you know you were talking about his radio voice, and Dayner is one of those actors that you'd listen to him read the phone book.

He's that good.

And he has an ability to play a serious role seriously.

But if you ever watch him in his more comedic roles, he can go over the top and chew the scenery with the best of them.

And where you where you find that irritating with some people, With him, it's actually as fun.

And so I like him a lot in this.

I think he gives it just the right balance between seriousness and kind of a wink and a nod to the audience in the best tradition of a good con man is you know.

I think it was the first Ramana on doctor who talking about a con artist once and he said, but she said, but he had such an honest face.

And the doctor says, well, of course he had an honest face.

He wouldn't be a good con man if he didn't.

This is the Danner is a perfect, perfect con man.

The little bit of affection that he shows for his for the people in Boothill at the end is a nice touch.

I really wish I could have raised you from the dead, and then just imagining the havoc that is going to arise when the dead do come back to life is is a really nice touch.

But you know, I had talked earlier about how Serling doesn't do comedy particularly well.

This it works, and I think it's because it's not really comedy.

It's humor.

It's these these seeing the townspeople backing away from their prior, you know, talking about how much they love these people, and all of a sudden having to come up with these excuses for why they shouldn't be raised from the Dead.

It's it's it's humorous.

It is uh humor that you see as directed well because these are these are people that you you kind of have the feeling deserve to have the dead come back after them.

And so it works well here.

This is this is one of serlings really nicely done touches of humor.

And I think, because this isn't a full blown comedy, it works well.

So I think that the overall it's it's not the greatest Twilight Zone.

I don't think it would probably fall somewhere on along the spectrum where you say it's a little lightweight compared to some of the heavier ones, especially when you compare to mister Denton on Doomsday.

The the the similarities really beginning end with the mister part.

But right, but it is it's a nice use of the Western trope.

It is a it's a nice atmosphere of the Western.

It works well because of the superstitions and even despite some of the negatives in there.

I think you wouldn't you wouldn't say it is a great episode.

You'd say it's a fun episode.

And sometimes that's really all I want is something fun.

So I enjoyed it.

Yeah, I think this episode is so fun.

I mean, John Dayner is fantastic, and of everything I've seen him in now I've I have not seen him in any other comedic roles that I can remember, but this is what definitely the performance I've enjoyed him in the most, and I think he's so good.

And I really enjoyed all of the main characters in this.

I think they're all funny.

J Pat O'Malley, who plays kind of like the drunk.

He's almost like a drunk Hitchcock in this.

He reminded me so much of Alfred Hitchcock, and I wish it was because that would be even better.

But he's really funny, and I think I think there's some really funny dialogue.

Like early on, there's a scene in the saloon where all the main characters are talking about this man that raises people from the dead, and the sheriff guesses that the man's name is Garrety because his name is written on his wagon, and Percy Helton's character says something like, by golly, that's deduction.

We've got law and order in this town because we've got a sheriff that uses scientific deduction and it just all the comedic moments really work for me.

I think it's so entertaining.

Yes, and yeah, and the scene where Garrity cons all of these people in the town, you know, for you for he's charging them to be able to keep certain people in the grave.

It's pretty ridiculous.

But I do think it's like a good, darkly comedic moment.

And and yeah, and I agree with you the scene with the dog.

I actually think a child would have been definitely much better.

Yeah, but you know, the dog is blinking and breathing, and obviously you wouldn't want to you know.

Another thing I did wonder is why they wouldn't just use like a still frame.

That's a good question.

I can't imagine that you couldn't have staged the scene, that you could have gone in for a close up on the dog and you would have seen the still and you know, you couldn't have staged the scene somehow so that you didn't have to have anything going on to prove that it was a live shot.

You could have even superimposed the dog onto it.

Yeah, that's true, but.

It Yeah, and the other I think the other questionable thing that happens is that as we said that these people all happen to have this money lying around.

You don't even get to see them a stage or run on the bank to pull all their money out, which I think would if the episode had been a bit longer, perhaps it would have been very funny to see them all lined up in front of the bank the next morning trying to withdraw everything they had, just so they could give it to them.

But think, think of the perfectness of this con give me money to not do something.

You know, I could have retired ten years earlier if I had simply figured out that the way to get rich is to have people pay you for inaction.

Yes, you know.

My problem was that the usually employers wound up figuring that out.

You know, it would work for a little while and then they'd figure out was something going wrong here.

But if I had just been able to pull that off for a while longer, I would have been fine.

But you know, you're you're you're right.

I think that this is this is really a fun episode, and it is enjoyable characters all around.

You don't mind seeing the con man get away with it.

You you you enjoy the prospect of what's going to happen in the town afterwards.

And I think that, uh that that the the the minuses that you have involved in them, you're just gonna have to write them off.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

And it's and stuff like having no explanation for the uh the guy who is kind of the co con man like him disappearing in that shot where he's walking down like the fog foggy street.

Uh, that is something that I think is pretty easy to overlook, that them not having an explanation for that.

And and one thing, I do think this is kind of a good episode to save for Halloween, especially if you enjoy, you know, around like the Halloween time watching more comedic stuff.

I think this is good.

You know, it's got kind of like the Graveyard the people, you know, rising out of the grave, and they do look like zombies.

I mean it's not like it's not not of the living dead, but they do have that aesthetic.

It's like a good, really good horror comedy episode.

Yes, it is.

And that Yeah, I it had been a while since I had seen this.

It isn't up yet on my regular viewing of the Twilight Zone.

Well this time around, so in looking at it again here, it was just a pleasure to watch this because knowing how it's going to end, you can just kind of enjoy everything for what it is, and and you enjoy the performances.

You had mentioned about John Dayner and comedy.

He actually is on.

There's one episode of Hogan's Heroes he's in where he plays an SS general who is totally comedic, you know, he's he's keeps trying to let Hogan, Uh, to get Hogan to let him read the bumps on his head and he's and and they they convince him that Himmler is in town, and of course it's a member of the underground playing Himmler, and Dayner doesn't meet him.

They get him out of there before Dayner returns to his headquarters so that Dayner can't see that the man is an obvious fraud.

But Dayner's first reaction he says, the guys saying, it's it's very mysterious.

Uh, he was, he was partning prisoners, and he was speaking Russian.

And Danner says, never mind that did he say anything about me?

Am I still in command?

And the guy says, hey, he didn't say anything about that, And he says, see, that's why you'll never go anywhere.

You've got to learn what's important.

I've still got a job.

He didn't order me to the Russian front.

It's it's Prime Daner.

And you know, there's another episode of Colombo he is in where he's playing an inspector from the the FAA and Colombo's investigating this plane crash.

I think it's the one that Johnny Cash is in.

Okay, and it's not a comedic role, but there's a very he's very droll in it.

And you know Colombo, he's asking.

He says, you know, we could use a man like you at the FAA.

He says to Colombo, your investigative technique is really good.

And the Colombo who hates flying is trying to say, well, you know, I don't even know how to fly.

Well, that isn't a problem.

We teach you how to fly.

We could just use somebody like you on the team.

How much are you making now?

I've never seen him give a bad performance.

Yeah, I'll have to track down some of his other comedic work, because, yeah, he's just so funny in this.

Now.

Do you have anything else to say about about this episode?

Or you about ready to wrap up?

The only the only I'll add another footnote here, one of the truth part thing.

This is supposedly based on a true story.

And okay, the the the man that the credited with the story based on it was a sports writer who had read about this story and wrote an article about it, and Serling read the article while he was on vacation and borrowed or bought the rights to the story.

So that's where the story by credit comes from.

But it supposedly based on an eighteen seventy three incident where a con team had raised twenty five hundred dollars to promise to leave town without raising the dead.

And the believe it or Not thing that I read this from, which was from last year, said that the twenty five hundred that they gave the grifter to not raise people from the dead would have been worth over sixty five thousand dollars today.

So there is a profit in this kind of thing.

I had no idea was that profitable.

Yeah, that is so wild.

It's based on a true story, but that's all I've got.

Excellent, all right, Well, well, Mitchell, where can people find you on social media?

You can find me at my website.

It's about tv dot com.

It has links to me on social media.

I am on x I'm on Facebook.

I have a YouTube channel on which you'll see some more information about my books, and I've also started a video series called The Two Minute Author, although I seldom stick to two minutes, but it just gives me a chance to talk about not just about Darkness in prime Time, my new book, but it also gives me a chance to talk about writing in general and some of the projects that I'll be working on in the future.

So I haven't quite gotten to that point in the series where I start talking about the future, but you can you can see me there as well.

I've got links to some of the other podcasts that I've appeared in, all the TV guides that I've written about, so if you go to It's about tv dot com, you'll probably see more than you ever wanted to know about me.

All right, excellent, all right, Well Mitchell, this was a lot of fun.

Thanks so much.

Oh, I really have appreciated Hunter.

It's been a lot of fun.

Thanks for having me on.

I hope you enjoyed this episode.

It was great to talk about the Twilight Zone with Mitchell.

It's one of my all time favorite TV shows, and Mitchell was the perfect guest for this topic.

We'll be back in two weeks and recovering what is easily the most well known recent Western horror movie.

I'll have two guests and we're talking about s Craig Zoler's Bone Tomahawk.

So tune in in two weeks and until then.

If you're looking for more film related podcasts, please check out other shows on Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.

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