The Evil Touch: "They"

Perhaps the weirdest entry of The Evil Touch (and that's quite an honor given some of the stories...) was "They", which aired in the New York market on June 2, 1974, and was written by Norman Thaddeus Vane and directed by Mende Brown. 

Harry Guardino stars as Dr. Fenton, a man who is on vacation in the English countryside with his young son, Peter...a boy who has dreamed of the remote landscape and even the old English village that is their destination. 

Just recently, a series of deaths have occurred there on the moors, on the rocks overlooking the ocean side. 

Narrator Quayle ponders "They say the sea can kill you," and then meditates on the nature of fate. "What makes people travel long distances?" He asks. "Is it destiny that leads them, or is the journey part of their destiny?"

Once you get your mind around that question, "They" descends into a world of barely linear storytelling that, despite this unconventional quirk, is actually quite compellingly surreal and horrifying; perhaps because it feels so dreamlike; or more accurately, nightmarish. 

What happens next in the story is that Peter gets lost on the moors and runs into a cult of malevolent children who wear rings of black make-up around their eyes...a sort of quasi punk affectation. 

They (the children) are led by a porcelain young beauty, a black-haired wraith called Lydia (Alexandra Hynes). She has already met Peter in his dreams. "I've come to show you my favorite game," she tells young Peter in one nocturnal visit to his bedroom. "It's called...touch."

Anyway, Lydia and her cult of evil children want to initiate Peter into their "new order" and so therefore play another game with him, this time "blind man's bluff," to see if he is worthy of membership. 

Blind-folded, Peter almost walks off the cliff where the other five corpses were found dead, but his father, Dr. Fenton, finds him and rescues him as he is about to take a giant step for child-kind.

The boy and his father flee to what they hope is safety in a nearby cottage and lighthouse, only to discover that it is the residence of Lydia and her minions. What follows is a confrontation between Fenton and Lydia for possession of Peter's soul.

 “They” plays like Village of the Damned meets Lord of the Flies meets The Wicker Man on acid at Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate. 

And dammit if it isn't effectively unnerving.  The nightmare immersion of the episode, the inescapability of it all, is unnerving.

Lydia tells Dr. Fenton - who is a renowned advocate and lecturer on the subject of birth control (because overpopulation leads to starvation and "the population bomb," he says, "is more dangerous than the atom bomb,") - that they are enemies. 

She is the leader of "the Children of the New Order," a new cult with dozens of groups across England alone. The children of the new order have given up on the Old Ones (meaning grown-ups) and are converting children to their cause. They want a world of perfection...a world of children.

One-upping the Hippie generation in their philosophy, they believe that they can't trust anyone over fifteen...that with age comes corruption. The age of twelve is considered middle-aged by these kids.

Dr. Fenton attempts to reason with Lydia, "where do you get the experience, the maturity to rule?" He asks. Experience is sorrow, the cult suggests, maturity unnecessary.

In the final battle, Peter breaks Lydia's spell over him, and he and Dr. Fenton escape to the moors. But suddenly Dr. Fenton is trampled by a local bookshop owner whom Lydia has maliciously transformed into a wild pony (don't ask...). And then...on the bluff overlooking his father's corpse, Peter dons the black eye shadow and... joins "They.”

In closing, Quayle - our host - says "They are probably still somewhere on the moors..."

This episode feels very 1970's in a lot of ways, and that's the era that the great Irish poet (and story editor on Space:1999), Johnny Byrne often called "the wake-up from the hippie dream." The Evil Touch's "They" portrays a generational clash in a world of limited resources, and does so in the language of "cultism." 

The great civic leaders of the 1960s (JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLK), had been replaced by radical cult leaders like Charles Manson, Jim Jones and the like. It was an era of war (Vietnam), scandal (Watergate), and an Energy Crisis, and there was a feeling that things had to change in a drastic, revolutionary way, if the human race was to survive the next decade. 

That's how cult leaders became powerful, because people were seeking answers in unconventional places. 

Of course, we did survive that era...but "They" plays into a fear of the impending end of the world, of an insurgency from "within" and it does so in the unsettling language of dreamscapes and phantasms. 

Fenton's murder by the horse, for example, is cut as a lyrical montage, utilizing slow-motion photography, extreme close-ups of the horse braying, and a super-imposed close-up of Fenton's agonized face as he is crushed.

Additionally, there are jump-cuts, flashbacks and other "trippy" film techniques here that we associate from the disco decade era, and the film grain, naturalistic approach and isolated, picturesque setting all add-up to something strangely disturbing. The gaps in conventional narrative are filled in by the imagination, and the result is something that - no matter how weird (and it is very weird...) deserves to be considered artistic.

This is why I -- despite some filler episodes -- I still love the raw energy of The Evil Touch.  Every now and then, it taps into something urgent, and primal and deeply terrifying.

The Evil Touch: "They"

Perhaps the weirdest entry of The Evil Touch (and that's quite an honor given some of the stories...) was "They", which aired in the New York market on June 2, 1974, and was written by Norman Thaddeus Vane and directed by Mende Brown. 

Harry Guardino stars as Dr. Fenton, a man who is on vacation in the English countryside with his young son, Peter...a boy who has dreamed of the remote landscape and even the old English village that is their destination. 

Just recently, a series of deaths have occurred there on the moors, on the rocks overlooking the ocean side. Narrator Quayle ponders "They say the sea can kill you," and then meditates on the nature of fate. "What makes people travel long distances?" He asks. "Is it destiny that leads them, or is the journey part of their destiny?"

Once you get your mind around that question, "They" descends into a world of barely linear storytelling that, despite this unconventional quirk, is actually quite compellingly surreal and horrifying; perhaps because it feels so dreamlike; or more accurately, nightmarish. 

What happens next in the story is that Peter gets lost on the moors and runs into a cult of malevolent children who wear rings of black make-up around their eyes...a sort of quasi punk affectation. They (the children) are led by a porcelain young beauty, a black-haired wraith called Lydia (Alexandra Hynes). She has already met Peter in his dreams. "I've come to show you my favorite game," she tells young Peter in one nocturnal visit to his bedroom. "It's called...touch."

Anyway, Lydia and her cult of evil children want to initiate Peter into their "new order" and so therefore play another game with him, this time "blind man's bluff," to see if he is worthy of membership. Blind-folded, Peter almost walks off the cliff where the other five corpses were found dead, but his father, Dr. Fenton, finds him and rescues him as he is about to take a giant step for child-kind.

The boy and his father flee to what they hope is safety in a nearby cottage and lighthouse, only to discover that it is the residence of Lydia and her minions. What follows is a confrontation between Fenton and Lydia for possession of Peter's soul.

 “They” plays like Village of the Damned meets Lord of the Flies meets The Wicker Man on acid at Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate. 

And dammit if it isn't effectively unnerving.

Lydia tells Dr. Fenton - who is a renowned advocate and lecturer on the subject of birth control (because overpopulation leads to starvation and "the population bomb," he says, "is more dangerous than the atom bomb,") - that they are enemies. 

She is the leader of "the Children of the New Order," a new cult with dozens of groups across England alone. The children of the new order have given up on the Old Ones (meaning grown-ups) and are converting children to their cause. They want a world of perfection...a world of children.

One-upping the Hippie generation in their philosophy, they believe that they can't trust anyone over fifteen...that with age comes corruption. The age of twelve is considered middle-aged by these kids.

Dr. Fenton attempts to reason with Lydia, "where do you get the experience, the maturity to rule?" He asks. Experience is sorrow, the cult suggests, maturity unnecessary.

In the final battle, Peter breaks Lydia's spell over him, and he and Dr. Fenton escape to the moors. But suddenly Dr. Fenton is trampled by a local bookshop owner whom Lydia has maliciously transformed into a wild pony (don't ask...). And then...on the bluff overlooking his father's corpse, Peter dons the black eye shadow and... joins "They.”

In closing, Quayle - our host - says "They are probably still somewhere on the moors..."

This episode feels very 1970's in a lot of ways, and that's the era that the great Irish poet (and story editor on Space:1999), Johnny Byrne often called "the wake-up from the hippie dream." The Evil Touch's "They" portrays a generational clash in a world of limited resources, and does so in the language of "cultism." 

The great civic leaders of the 1960s (JFK, Robert Kennedy, MLK), had been replaced by radical cult leaders like Charles Manson, Jim Jones and the like. It was an era of war (Vietnam), scandal (Watergate), and an Energy Crisis, and there was a feeling that things had to change in a drastic, revolutionary way, if the human race was to survive the next decade. 

That's how cult leaders became powerful, because people were seeking answers in unconventional places. Of course, we did survive that era...but "They" plays into a fear of the impending end of the world, of an insurgency from "within" and it does so in the unsettling language of dreamscapes and phantasms. 

Fenton's murder by the horse, for example, is cut as a lyrical montage, utilizing slow-motion photography, extreme close-ups of the horse braying, and a super-imposed close-up of Fenton's agonized face as he is crushed.

Additionally, there are jump-cuts, flashbacks and other "trippy" film techniques here that we associate from the disco decade era, and the film grain, naturalistic approach and isolated, picturesque setting all add-up to something strangely disturbing. The gaps in conventional narrative are filled in by the imagination, and the result is something that - no matter how weird (and it is very weird...) deserves to be considered artistic.

This is why I -- despite a lot of bad episodes -- I still love The Evil Touch.  Every now and then, it taps into something urgent, sinister, and compelling about the time period in which it was crafted.

The Evil Touch: "Campaign '20"

In this episode of The Evil Touch (1973-1974), it is the year 2020 and the Presidential Election in America is in full swing. David Arlington Zack (James Daly) is the pro-science candidate, a "scientific genius" who promises an era of "unprecedented prosperity."

Alas, Zack is falling behind in the race for the presidency to an insurgent, surprise candidate, Peter Day. Along with his campaign manager, Mr. Roberts, Zack constructs a diabolical plan to win the election.

He decides to send back a "humanoid" called Tom Leeds, whom all human women find irresistible, using a time machine, to the year 1972. That was the year when Day's mother and father met, and fell in love. Altering time, Leeds will make Day's mother fall in love with him instead, thus erasing Day -- and the threat to Zack's political ambitions -- from history.

Leeds travels back in time to 1972 but, strangely, falls in love with the wrong woman.  Instead of falling for Day's mother, he falls for Zack's mother.  He does change time, as planned, but not in the way Zack intended.  Zack is erased from history, leaving his campaign manager to seek the Presidency, which was Roberts' plan all along...

When I first watched The Evil Touch back in the year 1999 -- while I was writing the book Terror Television -- there was one episode that really stood out, not because of its quality, necessarily, but because it was so different from all the other episodes.

That installment, of course, is "Campaign '20," a "far future" episode of The Evil Touch, and the only one in a different time period (other than 1972-1973, in other words).

The production is pretty spare, which even Anthony Quayle acknowledges in his opening narration, which he describes the "space furniture," and "basic white outfits" of the setting.  The episode, penned by Linda Stewart, also imagines a "perfect future through science" in terms of technological achievement in the year 2020, but a world in which a "touch of evil" still plagues human beings.  David Arlington Zack believes he is superior to all others, and that he deserves to be president because of his genius.  He is an arrogant ass, and, as the episode points out "his evil was his own undoing."

To execute his plan, Zack, uses advanced, sci-fi technology. He uses a "humanoid," which today we would recognize as an android, and a time machine too.  Obviously, the episode guesses wrong about 2020, then. We don't yet have those technologies, though we do possess beloved movies about sending androids to the past, via time travel, to erase the future of our enemies (see: The Terminator [1984]).

Here, however, the android does not use violent means to undertake his scheme of time alteration.  Instead, all human women are susceptible to Tom Leed's charms, and he is the world's greatest lover.  Therefore, he uses human emotions against humans, to bring about the "dark fate" his masters which to see enacted.

"Campaign '20" is intriguing and fun, in part because campaign 2020 is upon us. Alas, we don't have a pro science candidate promising new technologies, or an era of unprecedented prosperity.  That would be nice, indeed.

Instead, we are still bogged down in the same issues that riled us in the 1970's: civil rights, the size of  our government, religious differences, and impeachment.

The more things change, the more things stay the same, I suppose.  Zack is like our current president in at least one way: he is a raging egotist more concerned with his own self-glorification than in helping the people achieve the American dream.

In terms of plausibility, the craziest thing about "Campaign '20" isn't the time machine, the android, or even the plot line, but the idea that both David Alexander Zack and Peter Day's existence comes down to one day, and one street corner, in one town, and one encounter.  Leeds the android "misses" Peter Day's mother, and saves that candidate's future. He falls for Zack's mother, and erases David's future instead.  The path of the 2020 campaign presidential election thus all comes down to 1972, two women, and which baby is born.

"Campaign '20" is imaginative, weird and fun. It may not make the most sense, or be vetted in a particularly believable way, but it is one of The Evil Touch's strangest and most unforgettable stories.

And you can watch it now on YouTube.

The Evil Touch: "Dear Beloved Monster"

In "Dear Beloved Monster," an arrogant geneticist, Jonathan Slater (Ray Walson) sees a water-skier killed in the nearby lake.  He is tortured by this murder, and other deaths in the lake as well, because of his work. 

Slater actually created a plesiosaur in the laboratory, and it escaped from captivity. Now, other scientists and government officials want him to help destroy his creation before it kills again.

Slater works another scientist to create poison that will kill the beast, but can't bring himself to destroy the monster, which he views as his child...

Well, there's an old saying: "be careful what you wish for." 

For weeks, I've been writing in this spot about The Evil Touch (1973-1974) and its obsession with telling stories about little old ladies and the men who try to kill them for their inheritance. 

Now for something completely different: "Dear Beloved Monster."  

This is an entirely different kind of narrative; one about a scientist creating a monster in a lake, and it is absolutely dreadful. Its the lousiest episode of The Evil Touch thus far.

Part of the problem is surely budgetary. This is an inexpensively produced series, and the production company clearly couldn't afford any decent special effects to depict the titular creature. Accordingly, the audience never sees the plesiosaur in this episode, only something that looks like a piece of gray tin, skimming the surface of the lake.  It's a terrible effect, and since this is our monster of the week, the episode fails to impress.  Never for a moment do we believe that a monster inhabits the placid waters.

The teleplay is no great shakes, either. Slater declares "I created it. It's not for someone else to destroy." In other words, he wants to take responsibility for what he made.  However, the rest of the episode is literally about him not taking responsibility for his jurassic fish, and in essence, protecting it because he sees it not as a dinosaur "just as an innocent child," at least according to Quayle's closing narration.

Slater's (entirely predictable) comeuppance comes at the end of the episode as he dashes into the water, and the episode ends.  We are meant to understand that his own creation kills him; that his love for the creature (and the pride/hubris involved in its creation), blinds him to the danger it presents.  Again, the episode couldn't afford to dramatize this moment, so the episode ends with Walston splashing into the surf, and a freeze frame.

So basically, we have no real narrative, with no real ending in "Dear Beloved Monster." A scientist creates a monster, loves the monster, and the episode culminates with the suggestion the monster will kill him.  This is a Frankenstein story, for sure, or a metaphor for parenting, even, but nothing really happens, beyond a free trips to the lake, and a few poorly dramatized murders.  There's a lot of talk, to fill up the running time, but very little of it is meaningful, or illuminates Slater's personality in a way that makes him anything other than a two-dimensional mad scientist.

"Dear Beloved Monster" is such an underwhelming, poorly produced half-hour of horror television that it makes one wish, unbelievably, that The Evil Touch would go back to scaring little old ladies.

Next week: "Campaign '20."

The Evil Touch: "Scared to Death"

In this week's installment of the 1970's horror anthology, The Evil Touch (1973-1974), an old woman, Constance (Mildred Natwick) is dying. Her young husband, Evan (Jack Thomson) has been poisoning her for months, in cahoots with his mistress, a nurse.

Constance learns the truth, and demands that Evan be honest with her about his behavior.  "Everything I have is yours, unless you deceive me," she reminds him.

This confrontation occurs while the mistress is hiding in a nearby closet in their home. When Evan refuses to come clean about his affair, Constance demands that he brick-up the entrance to the closet immediately, trapping the mistress inside.  

Evan has no choice to oblige. He seals his lover inside the closet.

Over the next several days, Constance experiences disturbing and frightening visions of the mistress lurking in the house, and on the property.  In truth, this is all part of a plan to jolt -- or scare -- her to death. 

But Constance has the last laugh. She finds the secret exit from the closet, and decides to brick that up too...with Evan and his lover trapped within. 

The defeated lovers beg her for mercy, but Constance puts the last brick over the door, and leaves them to die together...

"Scared to Death" is a return to the favorite narrative of this particular series: a young man plots and executes the murder of a rich old woman. This story has been, literally, done to death on The Evil Touch.  That fact established, "Scared to Death" is actually one of better iterations of the tale, despite the fact that it follows several other stories of the same type. 

I credit the story's effectiveness to one particular detail: claustrophobia.  

It is horrible to ponder a fate in which one has been sealed permanently in a small chamber, like a closet, behind unmovable bricks.  There is simply no escape for those trapped.

"Scared to Death" also is more suspenseful than the average tale in this series. When Constance and Evan quarrel, and she makes her murderous demand (that he brick up the closet), one legitimately wonders how he will behave.  Will he save his lover and risk his inheritance?  Or, will he do as his wife demands, and throw his lover under the bus (or behind the brick wall, as it were)?  Then, as the story develops, it becomes clear, that the brick wall is part of Evan's plan, because he knows of the secret exit from the closet.  But again, the tables turn, and old Constance remembers the secret exit, and picks her moment to trap her deceitful husband and her lover in that tiny room.

"Scared to Death" has two drawbacks that pop to mind, and diminish this installment a bit.  

The first is a matter of practicality. Constance taunts Evan and his lover as she puts in the final bricks to seal their fate. At this point, the brick wall would not yet have hardened, so to speak, since she is still working on it, and there is still a gap.  Evan should just start kicking madly at the opening, to see if he can damage it, and escape.  Since his life is at stake, one would think he and the nurse would grow more desperate, and attempt a physical rush at the still compromised wall before it is too late.  They accept their grim fate a bit too easily, in my estimation.

The other problem in "Scared to Death" involves a lengthy voice over narration by Quayle at the mid-point.  This narration explains what Constance is going through (when she keeps seeing the mistress), and how she believes she is going crazy, though she doesn't "believe in ghosts." This narrative interruption is entirely unnecessary as the visuals and Natwick's performance, convey this idea without any exposition.  This is an example of not trusting the audience enough to get the story.  "Scared to Death" would have been more powerful without the mid-point exposition.

As disappointing as it is to see another "old woman in jeopardy from young inheritor" tale featured on The Evil Touch, "Scared to Death" is an effective story because of its particular details, particularly the idea of Evan and his mistress feeling like "caged animals," because they can't escape from Constance. That reality, in the end, becomes literal, rather than metaphorical.

Next week: "Dear Beloved Monster."

The Evil Touch: "Marci"

In "Marci," a teenage girl, the titular Marci Quinton (Elizabeth Crosby), is upset when her father John (Peter Gwynne) remarries following the accidental death of his first wife. While Marci apparently mourns the death of her mother, Elizabeth (Susan Strasberg), the new wife, attempts to adjust to life in the Quinton family.

Marci makes it clear, however, that Elizabeth is not welcome. She is fiercely competitive over her father's affection. When Elizabeth attempts to explain to John about the fact that her daughter is possessive and cruel, he rejects her counsel.  After Elizabeth is nearly killed in an accident of her own, she resorts to playing Marci's own game, attempting to real the truth about the girl.

In the end, Elizabeth learns that Marci murdered her own biological mother, who was pregnant with another child, rather than face competition for her father's love.  When Elizabeth attempts to make John see the truth about Marci, he learns that the girl has an unexpected ally...

"Marci" is a creepy and effective episode of the 1970's anthology The Evil Touch. It concerns a girl who is "calculating" and "vicious," in the words of host Anthony Quayle. Marci is locked in combat with Elizabeth, who finds herself in a "contest for her life and sanity with a mere child."  The episode plays out like a chess game, though Quayle describes it in Shakespearean terms with a reference to Titus Andronicus. 

Once more the subject of an episode of this Australian-made series is murder, and the focus is the family unit. At least here, its not about the money one stands to inherit, or take from a dying old woman. 

Instead, "Marci" explores the father-daughter bond in a really creepy way, with the final punctuation being that John himself is a willing partner in Marci's efforts. Quayle's closing narration finds Elizabeth dead and Marci dead, and John remanded to a "private home" for those with "neurotic disorders."

Today what seems most intriguing about the episode is not the third act twist that John would rather kill Elizabeth than see Marci take responsibility for her murderous actions, but rather the way that John gaslights Elizabeth throughout the narrative. He knows full well about Marci's murderous actions, and yet keeps telling Elizabeth she is the one who is crazy.  "I always thought you are such a stable person," he says. turning responsibility on her for his daughter's actions.

"Marci" is a fun episode, primarily because one sympathizes with Elizabeth's character, and because the twist is so shocking and murderous. John just goes ballistic, making his true loyalties known, and then the episode ends.  One thing is for sure: sweet Elizabeth did not deserve any of what she gets.

Overall, this episode plays better than the last few installments of the series, but next week it's back to scaring little old ladies in "Scared to Death."

The Evil Touch: "Murder's for the Birds"

In "Murder's for the Birds" by Dean Haberman, and directed by Mende Brown, a man named Harold (Vic Morrow) celebrates his fortieth birthday. It is not a happy occasion, however. He owes a loan shark $12,000 dollars, and his mean old Cousin Lilly (Neva Carr Glynn), must bail him out.  She is a wealthy but mean old woman that Harold can't stand.

Harold plots to murder Lilly, and inherit her money, but the murder goes awry when a pet cockatoo, Radcliffe, begins to talk, shouting out the word "murderer," again and again, and in the company of the maid.

Now Harold must commit his second murder of the evening and kill the bird...

Readers following my reviews of this 1970's Australian horror anthology, The Evil Touch (1973-1974), may be sensing a pattern,  Specifically, the low-budget, blunt-minded but entertaining series keeps re-telling the same old story, week-after-week.  

That narrative, simply put, is of a middle-aged playboy looking to inherit an old woman's fortune via unsavory, murderous means.  We have seen men murdering spinsters before in "A Game of Hearts," and also a husband murdering his rich wife in "The Upper Hand."  Here, the story is much the same, except for the presence of a tattle-tale cockatoo, Radcliffe.

The late Vic Morrow is powerful and diabolical in the role of Harold, a man who "desperately craves success" and "money," according to Anthony Quayle's opening narration. To make his wishes come true he plans out the murder, and executes it without remorse.  A heart-beat sound track accentuates his crime, after he has used poison on poor old Lilly.

The last portion of the episode is amusing as Harold chases Radcliffe around the house. The bird sits on a chandelier, and flies up to the roof with a gun-toting Harold in pursuit.  At one point, the camera adopts the bird's POV, as Harold moves in for the kill. The final sting in the tail/tale is that Harold dies pursuing Radcliffe, and that nobody could understand the bird's utterances, anyway.  Nobody except for Harold and Lilly, that is.

The episode culminates with Quayle's notation that "everybody is a potential murderer," and being a cynic I might amend that statement.  Every main character featured on The Evil Touch, at this points, seems a potential murderer, of rich old women.  "Murder's for the Birds" is entertaining enough, and well-shot and performed, but the series has gone to this particular narrative well one too many times already.

Next week: "Marcie."

The Evil Touch: "The Upper Hand"

In "The Upper Hand," Roger Carlyle (Peter Gwynne), husband of health food guru Louise Carlyle (June Salter), arranges his spouse's murder. After a return home from a trip, he tells her to check out some equipment (a fruit press) in the basement, but neglects to tell her that the stairs have been removed.  

After Louise falls to her death in this apparent accident, and the members of the "Youthful Forever Club" mourn, Roger's maid, Jenny (Julie Harris) begins to black mail him. 

She takes Louise's fur coat and jewelry, and he can't stop her, lest the maid reveal the truth about what really occurred in the house. At the same time, the police begin to nose around the Carlyle home for more information about Louise's death.

As Roger and Jenny play their game of cat and mouse, Roger realizes it can only end if Jenny suffers a fatal accident too. He sets up a trap for the maid outside, with hedge clippers, unaware that the police are on the premises...

The Evil Touch (1973-1974) is back to its Alfred Hitchcock Presents-type mode in "The Upper Hand," with a story of conniving would-be murderers attempting to outmaneuver one another for personal gain. The tale is compelling, if not original. So far in this horror anthology series, we have already seen the murder-of-a-wife story in "The Lake," and a murder for money in "A Game of Hearts."  So "The Upper Hand," while entertaining, is not new territory for the series.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the tale involves context. Louise Carlyle, the health food guru, is treated as a figure for laughs early in the story. She is killed while going to see a fruit press, and her husband sneaks junk food in the yard, because he is desperate to eat something other than health food and drink something other than carrot juice. In the episode's first scene, set in a car, Louise asks, specifically, about the nature and quality of Roger's bowel movements. Thus Louise is portrayed as an obsessive and obnoxious nag.  Today, in our culture, nutrition tends to be much more respected, and not treated with such contempt or humor, so this episode feels very 1970's in concept.  What was once viewed as oddball is now considered a legitimate part of the national conversation.

One quality of "The Upper Hand" that does work well is the visual approach. When Roger feels that he is being watched after the death of his wife, the camera adopts a high angle as he enters the house, making him look small and endangered. Another shot, near the end of the tale, features a murder weapon (the aforementioned hedge clippers) in the foreground of the composition, looming abnormally large.  The Evil Touch may not have had much to work with in terms of a budget for special effects, locations, or design, but the series is often shot in a way that makes the most of those limited resources.  This is a reason why I am reviewing the series here on the blog: to hopefully call attention to it for those who haven't seen it.  The stories are typically well-visualized, if not always original or fresh.  There's a raw quality to stories even as mundane as this one, that make them worth watching at least once.

Next week: "Murder's for the Birds."

The Evil Touch: "A Game of Hearts"

In “A Game of Hearts,” heart surgeon Dr. Thomas Sullivan (Darren McGavin) performs heart transplant surgery, and removes a healthy heart from a donor named Gabor Skorzeny. Before Skorzeny goes under the knife, however, he still seems to be breathing, an act that Sullivan rationalizes as an “involuntary reaction.”

After the surgery is complete, Dr. Sullivan begins to receive harassing phone calls from a man claiming to be Skorzeny. Croaking out the word “Doktor,” Skorzeny asks him why Sullivan stole his heart. Terrified of his stalker, Sullivan goes to a cemetery and discovers that Skorzeny still lives, and that he wants his heart back. Or worse, he wants Sullivan’s…

One of my pet theories about the horror genre (at least applied to film and television; not necessarily books), is that it is often like a dream, or possesses dream/nightmare logic. “A Game of Hearts” is an utterly irrational, some might even say “ignorant” story, and yet it succeeds largely on the basis of its weird, dream-like horror. If you’re looking for an Evil Touch (1973) story that makes linear sense, this isn’t it.

“A Game of Hearts” is irrational because a man without a heart cannot live, and certainly can’t go out in search of his missing heart, right?  And “A Game of Hearts” may be ignorant too, because the idea here seems to be that Sullivan is a bad man for pushing the boundaries of science and going ahead with the donor surgery, as if it tampers in God’s domain to cross this frontier. 

The narrator, Anthony Quayle, even opens the segmen twith a quote from Machiavelli that “all men are naturally bad” and they will “yield to passions.” Applied to Dr. Thomas Sullivan, that means, I suppose that he is too ambitious for his own good, crossing thresholds that shouldn’t be breached.  

But really, if the text of the episode is to be believed, Sullivan didn’t have much of a choice. He’s basically presented with a patient at the start of the narrative, and also with a donor, Gabor Skorzeny. He didn’t choose the patient, or Skorzeny. He just went ahead with the operation, as it was scheduled,

But “A Game of Hearts” doesn’t pause much to consider logic, good taste, or realism. Instead, it presents an absolutely terrifying specter in the thickly-accented Skorzeny, who keeps coming, Terminator-style, for Dr. Sullivan. He wants his heart back, but he’ll settle for Sullivan’s. No, I readily admit it: this scenario doesn’t make sense. A dead man wanting his heart back? Why? Because, if he is dead and still ambulatory, what help would another heart be to him?  Because, if he is alive, and missing a heart, he should be dead, right, and can’t possibly do the things he does?

The entire story is irrational and dream-like. Some may just say the story is bad, and I’m giving a weak installment too much credit. But “A Game of Hearts” is filmed with visual bluntness, at night, and moves at a commendable pace as Sullivan discovers that reality isn’t what he makes it out to be. There’s a low-budget energy about the whole affair that makes it compelling even as the audience is aware, constantly, that the narrative makes no sense. For me, “A Game of Hearts” works because it lapses into this particular un-reality, where logic and reason are absent, replaced only by terror. Skorzeny’s thick, accent, and foreignness adds to the quality of him being not quite right, not quite real.

A final note. Horror TV fans may recognize the name Skorzeny.  That was also the name of the vampire Darren McGavin battled in 1972’s hit made-for-TV film, The Night Stalker.  In both productions, McGavin and undead monster become locked in mortal combat by moonlight. Only here, McGavin’s character loses the fight.

The Evil Touch: "Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie" (1973)

In “Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie” a woman limited to a wheelchair, babysits for her nephew and niece on New Year’s Eve. Across the way from Carrie’s (Julie Harris) home, a raucous party is held in an apartment to celebrate the occasion. Unfortunately, an unwanted guest -- a murderer -- spoils it. Looking through her own window, Carrie sees the murderer, and worse, the assassin sees her. 

Aunt Carrie prepares for the worst as the killer, Mr. Frank Bigelow makes his way to her apartment and plans to eliminate the only witness to his crime. But Mr. Bigelow has not counted on dealing with a “lucky amateur.”

This week on The Evil Touch, the flavor of the week is definitely Hitchcock pastiche. “Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie” eschews all supernatural elements, and is basically Rear Window (1954) on the cheap, with a character confined to a wheelchair observing what he/she believes to be a murder. The bulk of the episode builds suspense, as the gangster comes to get Carrie, and warns here “it’s just a matter of time. I’ll get you.”  Our narrator, Anthony Quayle ponders “how much of that (new) year” Bigelow will let Carrie live through.

As for Carrie, she is smart, and knows the secret to survival: “We’ve got to get our wits about us.” The episode cuts between three settings, mostly: Carrie’s apartment, the murder, and the New Year’s Eve Party. Fireworks are inter-cut with harrowing events for punctuation, and Auld Lang Syne plays on the installment’s soundtrack.  “Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie” plays like a not terribly memorable episode of Alfred Hitchcock  Presents or some other crime anthology, at least until Carrie gathers her aforementioned wits.

With the help of the children, Carrie mounts a strong defense. In fact, her defense of her apartment forecasts, pretty much, the whole of Home Alone (1990). Specifically, Carrie lays booby traps for Bigelow, including marbles on the floor, to trip him up.  In short, he doesn’t stand a chance, which Quayle writes off to good luck on Carrie’s part.

“Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie,” offers a good performance by Julie Harris but nevertheless strikes me as a not-terribly interesting or original tale. The set-up comes straight from Hitchcock, and in execution the episode can’t hope to match or even approximate the master of suspense. The lack of a real horror aspect to the tale makes one wonder what market, precisely, The Evil Touch hoped to corner. Four episodes in, the series is a bit unfocused, and helter skelter. It doesn’t yet have anything approaching an identity, only a format held together by Quayle’s narrations, and admonitions, at the end of each installment, of “pleasant dreams.”  That last comment is appropriate because this is one episode you could sleep through.

Next week’s tale with Darren McGavin, however, is an anti-rational doozy: “A Game of Hearts.”

The Evil Touch: "The Obituary"

In “The Obituary,” an “old newspaper man” with a cane, Pettit (John Morris) hobbles into an airplane hangar and confronts the pilot working there, Willie Tremaine (Leslie Nielsen), about an incident from his past. He flew a plane drunk, once, and the plane crashed, killing 53 innocent people.  Although Tremaine was vilified in the press, he was never charged with a crime, and he has always proclaimed his innocence. In short, Willie was “legally cleared, but never forgiven.”

But Pettit has shown up on this day to warn Willie that he has not escaped scot free. A murderer named Henderson has been released from prison. He lost a wife and child on that fateful plane flight, 3000 nights earlier. And now he wants revenge for the death of his family.

Willie reaches out to his own wife, Susan, and son, Billy, but can’t find them anywhere. They don’t answer his telephone calls, and they are not at home when he races there. Willie begins to believe that Henderson has abducted his loved ones, and is planning to kill them.  A desperate, weeping Willie confesses to being drunk on the flight and causing all the deaths.  “I made the mistake. How do you think I feel?” He acknowledges.

Willie soon discovers, however, this family is safe. Henderson died a month ago. And even more mysteriously, Pettit, the reporter is also dead. He had been in a coma for two weeks before his demise, meaning that Tremaine confessed to a ghost!

As Anthony Quayle’s narrator reminds the audience at the end of “The Obituary,” “confession is good for the soul.” This is the story of a man, Willie Tremaine, who has never taken responsibility for his actions, and for 3,000 days, has lived with the weight of a guilty conscience. He has never told anyone the truth about his actions, and only confesses when his family that is threatened.

The episode’s final sting, or kicker, is that Pettit, the newspaper man who visits Tremaine in the airplane hangar, is actually dead, forcing this confession as a kind of last act on this mortal coil. This is a twist that feels very Twilight Zone-ish, and yet works well for the episode overall.

What makes “The Obituary” such an intriguing cult-TV half-hour, however, is the fact that other than in the opening and conclusion, there is a lot less-talking here than there is action.  There are long stretches in this installment where there is no dialogue, as Tremaine goes in search of his family, looking for them everywhere, and coming up empty. These moments are tense, and we empathize with Tremaine as he dashes about. He races from scene to scene, hoping to prevent a disaster that he knows he has caused.  Still, the approach is intriguing. Perhaps the series’ low budget precluded more performers from appearing per half-hour, and also precluded more scenes of character development?  Instead, this is virtually a one-man show with Leslie Nielsen on the run.

The funny thing, of course, is that once upon a time, Leslie Nielsen had a well-known reputation as a dramatic actor, and more than that, an actor willing and able to play dastardly villains.  He appeared as a bad guy in series such as Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (1970-1973) and in films including Day of the Animals(1977) and Creepshow (1982).  Everything changed for Nielsen with Airplane (1980), and also, ultimately, The Naked Gun(1988). Those films cemented him as the perfect deadpan actor to feature in utterly outrageous comedies.  But in “The Obituary” Nielsen is still firmly ensconced in his earlier career mode, playing a morally compromised, not entirely likeable man.

Of the three stories I’ve reviewed thus far for this retrospective, I would say I enjoyed “The Obituary” the most, in part because it hints at the supernatural without delving deeply into it. As was the case in “The Lake,” there is a ghost haunting the main character, but in “The Obituary,” that ghost is really the past.  Pettit shows up as a phantasm, perhaps, during an out-of-body experience (while he is in his coma), but Tremaine’s haunting is all about what he’s done, what he’s responsible for, not the machinations of a villainous specter.

It’s also worth noting that The Evil Touchin three installments has approached three  distinctly different sub-genres of horror. “The Lake” was a supernatural ghost story. “Heart to Heart” was a serial killer show and thriller. And “The Obituary” feels of a piece with The Twilight Zone, a little paranormal, and very dramatic.

Next up, back to suspense thrillers: “Happy New Year, Aunt Carrie.”

The Evil Touch: "Heart to Heart"

In “Heart to Heart,” The Evil Touch(1973) host Anthony Quayle introduces a story he calls a “meal of suspense” and “ghastly echoing of fear.”  In particular, a serial killer is roaming the countryside, a “monster who was born with a seed of evil.”

Meanwhile, a callow playboy, Richard (Peter Sumner), stands to inherit the fortune of his wealthy aunt (Mildred Natwick) if he can only get his act together. But he is cruel, abusive, and ungrateful, and is disinherited from the will. Realizing he will lose the estate, he turns over a new leaf, and attempts to mend his ways, though his aunt is suspicious. He secretly has another plan, however, one that takes into account his elderly aunt’s weak heart.

One night, Richard arranges to drive his aunt to her weekly bridge game. But his car breaks down on the way, even as the radio tells tales of “the monster,” believed responsible for eight murders in as many days. Richard’s aunt appears terrified, but has turned the tables on Richard. Conspiring with her butler, she arranges for Richard to be killed, apparently by the local serial killer.

With Richard dead, the aunt and the butler return home for the note, only to be paid a visit by “The Monster…”

The first episode of The Evil Touch,“The Lake,” was, truth-be-told, pretty underwhelming. Nothing much happened, and the episode struggled to achieve its intermittently creepy vibe. On top of that, the narrative was very straightforward, and familiar.  

“Heart to Heart” similarly begins with a familiar or tired premise, but then moves in some exciting and suspenseful directions. The idea of a young man attempting to scare an old female relative to death, for her money, is one that has been explored far too many times in horror fiction and film. Yet “Heart to Heart” adds an element of the unexpected into the proceedings with the presence of the serial killer, “The Monster.”  

This unseen killer could be anyone in the cast, or someone all together outside the dramatis personae. And he operates according to his own agenda and rules. So while the old aunt, and her ungrateful nephew separately hatch murderous plans, the killer is making plans too. There’s an old saying that man proposes, and God disposes. “Heart to Heart” embodies that concept as the aunt and Richard each plot and scheme, playing at being a murderer, while a far more experienced murderer stands to upset their respective apple carts.

“Heart to Heart” is smart enough to play lightly with its twists. Everyone watching the episode realizes that Richard hasn’t suddenly reformed. He’s just out to get his aunt’s money before she can officially disinherit him, and is not afraid to stoop to murder. The aunt’s plan is a shocking twist, but the best twist is last: that the killer chooses the aunt’s estate for his nightly murderous visit. This is more than enough authorial gamesmanship to carry the 25-minute episode’s duration, and make it an entertaining span. 

It’s true that this episode is not one of the best of the series, but it finds the fledgling series on some solid ground after a weak start.  You may not agree with the aunt that the tale is a cause to be “chilled to death,” but if entertainment and suspense is the name of the game, the episode delivers.

Next week, The Evil Touch explores a different genre of horror with “The Obituary.”

The Evil Touch (1973): "The Lake"

The Evil Touch (1973) is a largely forgotten TV horror anthology produced forty-five years ago in Australia by Mende Brown. The series was syndicated in the United States, and ran for one season of twenty-six half-hour chilling tales. The low-budget series arose at the same time that other syndicated series from around the globe were making an impact on American screens (UFO in 1971, and The Starlost, from Canada, also in 1973). The horror anthology format was also experiencing something of a renaissance in the early 1970's. Other titles in this format include Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1970-1973), Ghost Story/Circle of Fear (1972), and Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected (1977). '

The anthology format permitted The Evil Touch to alter tones, guest stars, and locations each week. Many American TV stars of the day, from Darren McGavin to Robert Lansing, to Leslie Nielsen filmed multiple episodes in Australia to grant the program an "American veneer."  The host for the series was Anthony Quayle, who appeared at the start and end of every episode, setting up the action, and then discussing how "there is a touch of evil in all of us," at the closing. 

Contemporary and legacy reviews of the series have not been kind. Gary Gerani's (great) 1977 book Fantastic Television termed the series "bizarre" and "unintentionally campy." Alan Morton's The Complete Directory of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Television Series noted that the program often featured very unlikeable characters, so they could get their comeuppance.

I first encountered the Mende Brown series almost twenty years ago, when writing my book Terror Television (1970-1999), and found that the criticisms didn't quite tell the whole story.  I discovered a hit-or-miss horror series of great highs, and great lows. There were -- and are -- some remarkably scary episodes.  Some of those are titled "The Trial," "They" and "Kaidatcha County."  Overall, I felt that the series felt a lot like the low budget horror films of the same era (Last House on the Left, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), even if the writing on the series often left some things to be desired.  The stories were basic, blunt, and in some cases could really get under the skin, and sometimes, they were just trite and cliched.

The first episode of The Evil Touch, "The Lake," is not, alas, one of the stronger segments in the catalog. Written by Robert Earle and directed by Mende Brown, the episode stars Robert Lansing as an unhappily married man named Arthur Randall. He wants a divorce from his wife, in part because he is having an affair with his young secretary. "Everything is dead. It has been for years," he tells his mistress. Arthur's wife, Helen, however, refuses to divorce Arthur, and is downright hostile. 

Arthur's therapist suggest that he and Helen go on a weekend trip together to try to repair their failing marriage, and he acquiesces. They travel together to their vacation home, and go on a row-boat ride. While out on the lake, Helen falls out of the boat, and instead of helping her, Arthur rows away and leaves her to drown. He reports her death as an "accident," and realizes he is free to move on with his life.

Soon, however, the guilty Arthur is haunted by the ghost of his dead wife. He returns to the lake to confront Helen, but ends up meeting her fate: drowning in the same body of water.

To its benefit, "The Lake" features an eerie dream-like quality as it explores its familiar "revenge from beyond the grave" narrative.  Overall, the episode features 1970's stylings (like a multitude of creaky zooms), and visually, it is compelling at times, thanks to its vintage look.  The low-budget, however, proves a real deficit, as nothing ever really happens on-screen. Helen's ghost is constantly heard calling Arthur's name, but not seen.  The final scene sees, basically, Arthur have a wig-out in a rowing boat. He throw himself into lake, causing his own demise, with no sign of Helen's ghost. It all plays as a bit silly.

Unlike Rod Serling's narrations in The Twilight Zone (or his intros to Night Gallery), Quayle's book-end appearances don't add much of interest to the proceedings. The introduction talks about the reasons why Arthur is upset on the eve of his 20th wedding marriage anniversary, and the coda opines that his case is "not unusual."  Does that mean all married men are unfaithful murders?  Then, Quayle asks what role destiny played in the event, and asks what's in that lake? Neither question shines much light on the story, or makes it feel sharp, or meaningful. The idea of destiny is never brought up in the body of show, and it doesn't seem likely that the lake itself is a vehicle for the supernatural. 

"The Lake" is a hoary, familiar, straight-forward revenge from beyond the grave story, and one told without a surfeit of flair or intelligence. It's not an auspicious debut, but if I've learned anything after twenty-five years of reviewing TV series, the first episode is rarely the best example of a series' overall potential. There's usually a lot of room to grow, and that is clearly the case with "The Lake."

Next week: "Heart to Heart."