The Twilight Zone Review: Mr. Dingle, The Strong

By William Kozy

Wow. Just wow. There have been many awful Twilight Zone episodes, but upon seeing this one, I am convinced (and hoping) that I have seen the worst episode. And yes, I’ve seen The Bard, Black Leather Jackets, and Cavender Is Coming. It received a lowly 5 votes in my survey of fans and writers asking, “What is your favorite episode of the original Twilight Zone series?” This ties it with 7 other episodes for 117th thru 123rd place. But it’s a wonder how anyone could have voted for it if they’d seen any other episode let one of the finest episodes.

The story involves a milquetoast vacuum-cleaner salesman named Luther Dingle, who is bullied by another patron in his regular bar, over a sports opinion. A visiting Martian(s?) have chosen him as the subject of an experiment, and they give him the strength of 300 men.

What puzzles me most is that director John Brahm has helmed eleven other episodes, and none of those show the signs of ineptitude that this one does; in fact, he has the distinction of having directed Time Enough At Last, considered by many to be the very best Twilight Zone episode. It might then be tempting to say, “Oh well it must have been a terribly written episode.” While it’s true that the script is among Rod Serling’s worst, there are without question directorial issues that belie Mr. Brahm’s former successes with the series.

For instance there is the directing of the actors. Now, admittedly Don Rickles has never been thought of as a great thespian, despite being one of the best stand-up comics in history, but his performance here comes close to being an embarrassment. It’s as though it was decided in production that since this was one of the “comedic” TZ episodes, it would fine for Rickles to mug excessively. It was not fine. As nearly always with comedy, less is more. But the more tragic transgression is the tremendous degree to which this is Burgess Meredith’s least successful TZ performance. Part of the problem is the inconsistency of conceptualizing the character in the writing, but some of the blame does have to fall a bit on Mr. Meredith’s shoulders. But again, since he’s proven so wonderful an actor in other episodes, it stands to reason one should probably assume a lack of proper directing guidance. One puzzling affectation Mr. Meredith seems to have chosen was a slight stutter, which comes and goes as if he’d forgotten to use it.. And then there are the awkward physical gestures he uses in the big demonstration scene in the bar, where reporters and a TV crew have come to cover his display of feats of strength. His affectations are a little too precious—holding up his index finger as if to say to us, “All right now, watch here” right before he punches his fist through dry wall. Which pretty much a lot of normal men could do without a Martian’s help. And that index finger—why does he so daintily keep it planted on his lips so incessantly during the scene in which several talent agents try wooing him. Did someone glue his fingertip to his lips because that’s what it seems like. But some of the blame as I said involves the uncertainness of the writing. For instance, the Martians apparently chose him to bestow with strength because he was obviously a weakling. But at the end of the episode, when Venusian aliens now visit, they decide to endow Dingle with super intelligence. It feels like the story is buttoning up the episode with a structural counter balance: give the weakling super strength and see what happens, okay and now let’s give him super intelligence and see what happens. Indeed he goes on a convoluted scientific monologue spouting out formulas. But the problem is he already displayed jags of intellectual musings and calculations throughout the episode. So it’s not really the big stretch that the strengthening trick provided. Dingle was already talking like a genius as in the park bench scene where he asks an attractive woman (who is uncredited but gives the best performance in the episode—natural and unaffected) “What I mean is, looking at me in a perfunctory cursory first surveil, do I appear abnormal in any way?”

But then he goes on to demonstrate his strength by lifting the park bench up into the air as the woman screams. Normally a reaction like that from a woman would induce someone to immediately lower the bench and apologize for scaring her, but nope, instead Dingle holds her up there screaming for a long while. It’s bizarre, nonsensical directing. We just never get a clear sense of who this character is. And back again in that opening bar scene, why does Serling intone in the monologue, “Uniquely American institution known as the neighborhood bar”? Those very first words we hear represent a lack of thought in the writing: neighborhood bars are uniquely American? Really? It’s an example of a writer searching out catchy phrases and cadences, but not considering what the words mean upon further scrutiny. Oh and while still on the subject of bad acting, the culmination is in that bar scene where a TV host interrupts the talent managers wooing Dingle. He is played by the impossibly overacting James Milhollin, who misses not one second of screen time to register a prickly face or a pregnant pause with an eye-roll that you can tell he thinks is hilarious, but only slow things down and feel unjustified in their over-accentuation. His acting is the one flaw for instance, in the classic TZ episode The After Hours.

What else is wrong with this episode? Well, along with the aesthetically misguided choices, there are also the technical aspects. Some of the visual effects misfire, while some come off sufficiently well. But all of the sound effects editing is ridiculous. The actual sounds created are inappropriate to what they represent on screen and oftentimes their synching is off, coming either too late or too early. Their recording also feels too “present”, that is, they aren’t mixed into the rest of the scene’s sounds to feel as though they’re happening in the same room.

Many visual mishaps occur such as a huge looming camera shadow that plays across Dingle’s bed, right before his alarm clock rings to awaken him. And in at least two instances, there are shots obviously showing a stunt man’s face instead of Burgess Meredith’s.

The visual design of the Martians seems crudely mammoth, and the performances seem robotic raising that very question: Are they robots or beings? Douglas Spencer as Martian #1 was so much better as the reporter in Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World. And then the use of children to depict the aliens from Venus is visually unconvincing, but I have to admit the synching of adult voices to the children’s speaking is technically pretty spot on.

In a nutshell, while one can find something professionally handled about even many of the failed episodes, I’m hard-pressed to find much here that was a positive.

I rate this episodes pleasures only 1.23 Tingles, The Worst.

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