The Twilight Zone (1959) -- Season 1 Episode 19 (The Purple Testament)

Sometimes, a character is given a gift to show that it can also be a curse.  What if a character was given something he knew to be a curse to begin with?  Lt. Fitzgerald is serving in World War II in the Philippines.  At the start of the episode, Fitzgerald is horrified that he can predict who in his company will die next.

The episode begins with him claiming to have foreseen four deaths.  Is he going crazy?  His superior officer, Capt. Phil Riker, consults the doctor, but there’s nothing that would indicate any mental problems.  Still, be sees an eerie light for a soldier in a bed; the soldier dies moments later.

When Riker says that he’ll go out on a mission, Fitzgerald begs him not to.  Fitzgerald has seen the light on Riker’s face, meaning Riker won’t be coming back; he doesn’t see the light on anyone else’s face.  When everyone comes back, there’s only one casualty.  The last death that Fitzgerald predicts is his own.  When he’s given orders to report back t headquarters, he doesn’t even resist.  He picks his stuff and leaves.

It’s not easy being Fitzgerald.  We do see the light on the faces of people destined to die, so we’re led to believe that he really does have this ability.  However, we don’t actually see many of the deaths.  The first four occur before the start of the episode.  Riker dies off screen, as does Fitzgerald.

It’s not explained how or why Fitzgerald can predict the deaths.  He simply can.  It’s possible that it was imagined, as he only really called two deaths that he could have prevented.  Maybe he just happened to be right twice.  Then again, would it matter?

It’s also not explained how long he’s had this ability.  He doesn’t explicitly state that the four men Fitzgerald told Riker about were his first four or how he knew that the light meant death.  It could have been an actual ability brought on by being surrounded by death.  He did call several deaths.

Either way, he really did need to get out of there.  Staying with that ability would have put an unfair burden on Fitzgerald, assuming he could actually do anything about it.  He doesn’t know how people will die.  It could be a bullet or a shaving accident.  He could have the condemned stay behind only to see them die another way.  It’s understandable that the episode didn’t go down this path.  The point is that war is hell.

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Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

In my quest to find really cheesy and bad movies, I came across The Giant Claw.  When I ordered it from NetFlix, It was paired with The Creature with the Atom Brain, so I decided to see if I could get an extra review out of it.  I have to admit that this movie is better than The Giant Claw, but not by much.

The plot is simple.  A gangster that’s supposedly in Europe makes his way to America and teams up with a German scientist who’s working on some sort of mad-scientist project.  With the gangster’s funding and the scientist’s  knowledge, they find a way to reanimate dead bodies that they’ve stolen from the morgue.  In return for the funding, the gangster wants to use the bodies to kill those that put him away.  It sounds like a great plan.  Someone ends up dead and you were nowhere to be seen.

This is where it gets strange.  The reanimated bodies are controlled from a computer back at the lab.  The person controlling them simply looks at a monitor to see what they’re doing and speaks into a microphone to command them.  (The zombies retain no memory, but know how to follow commands.)  The dead body can speak, but is always in the voice of the person controlling them.  It’s not clear why this is or how the zombie knows what’s an order and what’s to be spoken.

What got me most was that the police noticed a connection after two homicides.  Somehow, they knew that some sort of creatures were involved.  The identity of the gangster is worked out not to long after that.  Granted, they had finger prints from dead people and radioactive blood.  That would be a little obvious, but of the first two murder victims, one was a district attorney and the other was a gangster.  It seemed a bit rushed.

The science is somewhat good, but nothing on par with today’s stuff.  The forensics lab apparently consists of a small centrifuge and a basic microscope.  Also, the scientist becomes radioactive despite wearing protective clothing.  He’s so radioactive, in fact, that he’s able to make a beer set off a Geiger counter after a few seconds of exposure.  I don’t know if that’s how radioactivity works.  It seems more like a way to have the police know that where the scientist was.

I think most people, having seen today’s big-budget movies, would not be impressed by The Creature with the Atom Brain.  This is the kind of movie I’d expect either on a specialty movie channel or something that the broadcast networks might show late at night.  In fact, I don’t know if they release it alone any more.  If you wanted to get just this movie, you might have to find it on VHS at a garage sale.

At 69 minutes, it was just the right length.  On a side note, I’ve always wondered why people in movies like this never become alarmed at someone talking in a monotone voice.  If someone came up to you and started speaking in a flat voice, wouldn’t you become just a little worried?