The Twilight Zone Review: A Thing About Machines

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By William Kozy

The prickly, pinched Barlett Finchley (Richard Haydn) drives his 1939 Lagonda V12 Drophead coupe into his long driveway, past the swimming pool, up to his luxuriously large home. He commences a tart discussion with the TV repairman (Barney Phillips, in his 2nd of 4 TZ appearances, the most memorable being the three-eyed alien). Finchley argue over cost and the state of machines that just don’t work. But the repairman lets us in on the truth as he banters back and forth and we learn that Finchley is prone to physically abusing the appliances in his home, tearing out wires from the TV, throwing radios downstairs, and smashing alarm clocks onto the floor. When asked, “What does go wrong with these machines Mr. Finchley? Have you got any idea?” we see a quick look of frightened flash across Finchley’s face, and we wonder what he’s thinking. How long has this been going on? It’s information that we never find out, and it’s the kind of detail that I think makes this episode feel underdeveloped. It’s not that I’m asking for answers to the mysteries, but I do feel like without certain details we don’t really have a firm grasp on what exactly the mystery is.

As you’ll see, various machines and appliances start attacking with our lead, but how long has this been going on? His whole life? That does seem to be the case when he confesses later to his secretary that for his whole life he’s never been able to operate machines, but the degree of antipathy between him and machines has never reached the level that they have of recent. So what set of this development?

Finchley is extremely short-tempered with everyone and one might be tempted to attribute that to the stress of the events, but I don’t think that’s it. He’s just too authentically pompous and fussy—it’s definitely a part of his very essence. So then, is that perhaps why he’s being tortured? Because he’s an ass? If so, then when did the machines decide enough was enough?

After the repairman leaves, an alarm clock on the mantelpiece chimes, and I assume it wasn’t supposed to because Finchley grabs it and smashes it on the ground. And then takes a fireplace poker and strikes it repeatedly. Oh Finchley where were you when we needed you at the climax of “It’s a Good Life”?

Mr. Serling explains: “This is Mr. Bartlett Finchley, age forty-eight, a practicing sophisticate who writes very special and very precious things for gourmet magazines and the like. He’s a bachelor and a recluse with few friends, only devotees and adherents to the cause of tart sophistry. He has no interests save whatever current annoyances he can put his mind to. He has no purpose to his life except the formulation of day-to-day opportunities to vent his wrath on mechanical contrivances of an age he abhors. In short, Mr. Bartlett Finchley is a malcontent, born either too late or too early in the century, and who, in just a moment, will enter a realm where muscles and the will to fight back are not limited to human beings. Next stop for Mr. Bartlett Finchley – The Twilight Zone.”

If indeed his issue is that he hates…what? Anything mechanical? Surely he wouldn’t surround himself with so many of them. And also it sure seems he made happy of that car he drove home. And he’s so wrong about the typewriter when he denigrates it to his secretary Miss Rogers (Barbara Stuart, who was married to comedian Dick Gautier). Complaining about her only typing 30 pages in 3 ½ hours, he asserts that Thomas Jefferson wrote the entire Declaration of Independence with a feather quill in only half a day. Aside from the fact that it was written by five men over the course of 17 days, let’s assume he was right—is the one page Declaration of Independence written in half a day a better rate of production than what Miss Rogers put out? Not by a longshot. So is Finchley mathematically challenged as well?

In any case, she quits. As she walks to the door, Finchley halts her pleadingly: “Miss Rogers please!” He quietly asks her to stay and suggests they have dinner. She politely declines, and then he comes out with the truth. He tells her that he doesn’t want to be alone, but when she shows genuine concern for him, he can’t help undermining the moment and he snaps at her. But she stays engaged and listens as he explains all the strange goings on with the clock, the TV, the car. Miss Rogers suggests he see a doctor, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Twilight Zone—never ever suggest to someone that they see a doctor. It will send them into a rage (See my previous TZ review of “Sounds and Silences”). We do find out in his temper tantrum that these “mechanical monsters” have been acting up for the last several months, but we are without a clue as to why. But this idiotic man who claims to be logical and rational insults Miss Rogers, calling her “Mechanical faced”, which is an odd phrase. I’m not sure what that referred to. She’s an attractive woman after all, maybe not the bombshell that other TZ blondes were (Donna Douglas, Inger Stevens, Patricia Barry), but she was certainly pretty. Was he referring to her stoicism? The insult just seems a little esoteric.

After she has left we get our first real hard evidence of supernatural shenanigans. The typewriter starts typing by itself! Finchley rips it out and sees that it has typed “GET OUT OF HERE FINCHLEY!”

And then the television set joins in, showing flamenco dancer Margarita Cordova doing her thing and then pausing to look out at Finchley and say, “Why don’t you get out of here Finchley?” (Ms. Cordova and her husband owned and ran a flamenco club in Los Angeles called “El Cid”)

Finchley scampers up his steps and makes his stand at the top, proclaiming to the whole house: “All right you machines! You’re not going to intimidate me! Do you hear me? You’re not going to intimidate me! You…you…machines!” And the camera pulls out and wide for a nice closing shot of the mayhem before going to commercial.

When we rejoin Finchley, he’s in his bedroom calling women on the phone and inviting them to dinner, but he strikes out, blaming the telephone for his embarrassment. And then, standing before his mirror holding an electric razor, suddenly the razor stars hovering menacingly in midair all by itself. The telephone begins intoning over and over “Why don’t you get out of here, Finchley?” So the mayhem continues. Even his car makes trouble. Outside his home there is a commotion—as Finchley approaches the gathered crowd, a policeman tells him he ought to get his emergency brake checked out because his car rolled down the driveway and “almost hit a kid on a bike.” Finchley balks at the notion, and then calls the crowd idiots after instructing them to leave.

He takes to drink at night and passes out on his sofa. The alarm clock, typewriter and TV begin their sonic assault. Then the electric razor comes sliding down the steps, bump bump bump after Finchley. (Get up close to your TV screen and you can see the thin white string pulling the razor down the steps.)

Finchley escapes out his front door, and then his car starts up and reverses, positioning itself to chase down its owner. What follows is the climactic car stalking in which a driverless car pursues Finchley. Stunt drivers were used to make the scene work and the effect actually works out rather well upon first viewing. It’s only when you read afterward about all the shots where you can see them along with some other continuity mishaps that you can spot these giveaways. The stunt drivers sometimes crouched down low, and in some shots they were dressed all in black from head to toe to blend in with the black shadows in the car. At one point, the car crashes through a fence that Finchley has jumped over, and then it crashes into a pile of boxes. When the car reverses, extracting itself from the pile, there are a whole mess of fun things to spot. Firstly, look closely and you can clearly see a stunt driver in black turning the wheel. But then the most glaring and yet unnoticed error upon first viewing, is the huge metal grill that was placed on the front of the car, presumably to protect it when it crashes through the fence and boxes. I mean the thing encompasses the entire front of the car. But then when they cut to the next shot, it of course disappears, having been removed by the crew of course as they continue shooting the rest of the scene. Getting back to the shot of the car pulling out of the boxes, you can also see a shadow of the crew up against the white side of the car—you can even see a silhouette of a man running, and no, it’s definitely not supposed to be Finchley as he was long gone by that point.

Finally, having chased Finchley down to his swimming pool, observe closely the shot of Finchley running toward his pool as we see the car and its headlights bearing down on him from behind. Look at the ground in front of the car, and you can clearly see tire tracks already there, apparently from a previous take or practice run.

Finchley falls backward into the pool. We cut to the next morning and a throng is on the scene. At the back of an ambulance a policeman and doctor discuss the oddity of Finchley’s body not floating despite not having anything to weigh him down. I feel like that’s a detail the episode didn’t need, because it stacks the deck on the side of the supernatural, removing the possibility of Finchley’s being either mentally disturbed, or drunk as the policeman also suggests. We do know that Finchley had been drinking so that does make for a nice rebuttal to keep the viewers wondering. But no, the episode adds that weighted down detail which pretty much spells it out for us.

I rate this episode a 4.9

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