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<\/a>By William Kozy<\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cThe Lateness of the Hour\u201d was the first of the six Twilight Zone episodes to be shot in the failed experiment called \u201cLet\u2019s shoot videotape to save money!\u201d The poor visual quality though was very obvious to viewers, and the practice was soon scrapped. In my survey asking writers and TZ fans to vote for their favorite episodes, this one fared poorly, receiving only two votes from the over 3,000 respondents, tying it with 11 other episodes, a few of which deserved better. But not this one.<\/p>\n
The opening shot is very promising, a huge Gothic mansion at night being pelted by a rain storm. You relish the feeling of settling in for a good ghostly yarn. Inside, a pretty blonde, Jana, peers out at, searchingly. Offscreen we hear a woman moaning nearly orgasmically. The camera pans to her\u2014it is Jana\u2019s mother receiving a shoulder massage from a maid. Already the personal\/personnel dynamics feel odd, but our interest is piqued. The blonde, played by the lovely Inger Stevens, so pretty in \u201cThe Hitch Hiker\u201d suffers here from the harsh contrast lighting of the video format. She looks at least ten years older. She has a photo album and asks her father (John Hoyt, seen in \u201cWill The Real Martian Please Stand Up?\u201d) about it as he relaxes with a book. He\u2019s no help, so she interrupts her mother\u2019s massage to ask about the snapshot. <\/p>\n
Ms. Stevens\u2019 performance has been faulted by some critics, and although she\u2019d never win an Emmy for it, it\u2019s difficult to pinpoint where she goes wrong. In fact, there\u2019s something almost so right about what she\u2019s doing based on how the story ends which you\u2019ll predict easily in a few minutes. There\u2019s one thing she does technically that I actually find quite impressive. Watch her closely, and you\u2019ll notice she very very very rarely\u2026blinks.<\/p>\n
So we know that the episode has been compromised by shooting video, but why does the sound also suffer? Anytime an actor in the background speaks, their voice is exceedingly low in the mix. Usually, the fix for that is called dubbing, whereby an actor re-records his lines later, in a sound recording booth while watching his performance onscreen to get the synchronization as close as possible. When shooting film back then, the film and the sound recordist\u2019s tapes were created on two separate elements\u201435 mm film reels and \u00bc” magnetic sound tape. It was a simple matter to replace the problematic sound recorded on that sound tape with the newly recorded \u201cdubbed\u201d recording. However, these videotaped TZ episodes were shot on low-band 2″ quadruplex videotape, whereby the sound was recorded onto an audio track along the top of the videotape. That made it difficult to replace the sound recorded on set since it was no longer a separate element. The sound was fused with the picture from the get-go. So now, the sound recordist is forced into a situation where the sound needs to be recorded perfectly while shooting, without the fallback of dubbing being available. Thus, with shots where the performer is way in the background and a boom mic can\u2019t get close enough to pick up his voice well, the sound isn\u2019t very good. And since they didn\u2019t have wireless body mics to help, we\u2019re stuck with sound recorded with a mic several feet above the actor\u2019s head.<\/p>\n
Another weird quirk about this episode is the number of times you can catch the actors being aware of the camera, stealing a quick millisecond glance at it. Some of those cameras were fairly imposing due to their size, mounted on huge dollies. I\u2019m imagining they were very hard to ignore.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s the story aspect of this episode that made things very tricky for Ms. Stevens. It\u2019s a risk for an actor to play a robot; the performance can come off as too mannered. But it\u2019s an even bigger risk to play a robot when it\u2019s supposed to be a surprise reveal to the audience at the end, that the character is a robot. If the actor plays the part with a hint of an underlying robotic nature, a totally understandable choice, we the audience might even enjoy that choice if done subtly. But it we don\u2019t know the character is a robot until later, then we may spend a lot of time wondering, \u201cGee why is so-and-so giving such a stilted performance?\u201d That\u2019s the trap that Inger Stevens has walked into. Hopefully when the not so surprising surprise is revealed, audiences forgave her and they nodded appreciatively, \u201cAh, so that\u2019s why she never blinked, walked so efficiently, pivoted so sharply, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jana\u2019s big complaint seems to be some sort of righteous indignation that her parents are using the entirely robotic house staff to do everything, while they turn her father and mother \u201cinto jelly!\u201d One of the robots tells Jana that she sounds jealous, causing Jana to push her down the stairs. The robot, rises up with a smirk. And then Mr. Serling makes his appearance perhaps later than he\u2019s ever appeared before for an opening monologue.<\/p>\n
We pick back up with Jana blaming her parents for turning her into \u201can unsocial, unworldly, insulated freak.\u201d Her father counters that he\u2019s protected her from the outside world\u2019s war, poverty, disease, etc. She accuses his protectionism as being imprisonment, making her become as vegetative as they are making themselves. Frankly I don\u2019t know what the Hell she thinks they should be doing. They\u2019re old! Does she want them heading out clubbing? They deserve to sit around reading, pipe smoking, and having a doting staff. Jana comes off as more of a brat then a crusading protagonist. Like an idiot, she grabs a glass from a maid and pours out the water and smashes the glass on the ground proving\u2026.what? She tells her parents that instead of being the ones in control, they are being controlled. And the evidence of this is\u2026.zero. Nonexistent. At no point does a robot dictate any sort of imposition on the parents.<\/p>\n
Arguing against her pleas that her father destroy these creations, he asks her if she has any idea of the scientific precision and hours of work that went into making them. He explains the complexity of their minds as well, the implanted childhood memories, their wills, their distinct personalities. Jana demands that he destroy the robots or else she\u2019ll leave, but I fail to see how getting rid of the robots helps with what she truly wants for herself: To be out in the world with normal people. \u201cPeople who live and work and then die. But do it properly, the way God intended. That\u2019s where I want to be, out there! I want my freedom!\u201d So the script is very confused about its characters\u2019 spines. Freedom is what she wants; the robots are essentially a non-factor with that character throughline, so all her blathering about them is a red herring.<\/p>\n
The robots converge and tell her she is misbehaving, and she runs upstairs throwing a tantrum. She proclaims to everyone that they\u2019re jokes, and before running to her room to pack, she warns her father that the robots may be indestructible, but he is not. The scene closes with an ominous shot of the robots crowding about him and his wife a little too closely. This bit amounts to nothing. Just another cheap trick with no basis in any truth set up by the story. Father goes to Jana\u2019s room to have a talk\u2014she\u2019s not really going to leave is she? Here\u2019s the stupid thing about the very crux of the plot. She threatens to leave if he doesn\u2019t destroy the robots. So by implication she would stay? But that contrasts very sharply with what she said she wanted\u2014to go out into the world!<\/p>\n
He begs her to say, but she refuses. He pauses, reviewing the situation and tells her he\u2019ll do as she says. But he has a look that tells me he\u2019s got something up his sleeve. He heads downstairs, and summons the staff, ordering them to head into his basement work room. There is some pushback, but they end up obeying the order. When they have all left, Jana glides down the stairs with a smirky look of triumph that does not endear her to us.<\/p>\n
Next thing we know, it\u2019s just the three of them. The robots are gone. Jana is overjoyed saying that they\u2019ll live normal lives. She then lists a bunch of things that they\u2019ll now be able to do, but not one of them is something they couldn\u2019t do with the robots around. But then she says she\u2019s going to find a young man and have children. \u201cOh father,\u201d she says hugging him, \u201cGrandchildren!\u201d But her parents look worried. Jana asks what\u2019s wrong, and her father improvises an excuse. But Jana is on to him: \u201cSomething\u2019s not right!\u201d<\/p>\n
Jana immediately grabs a photo album, and starts asking why there aren\u2019t any photos of her as a young girl anywhere. They\u2019re speechless. The truth dawns on Jana, \u201cOh no! It couldn\u2019t be true!\u201d Father tries to reassure that she\u2019s still their daughter and they love her despite anything. But she knows the full truth, that she too has been manufactured. Jana runs out distraught and once again takes her place at the top of the stairs to declare things: \u201cI\u2019m a machine!\u201d she yells, splaying her arms out too theatrically. And then she starts banging her arms against the banister yelling, \u201cNo pain! No pain at all!\u201d So in the short time she\u2019s been \u201calive\u201d she\u2019s never noticed that she feels no pain? I\u2019m not buying that. She then says, \u201cNo love. I can\u2019t even feel love\u201d and she breaks down sobbing hysterically. Now why would she not feel love? It just doesn\u2019t make sense\u2014if she can be angry as she\u2019s demonstrated, if she can feel remorse as she\u2019s demonstrated, if she can feel utter sadness as she\u2019s demonstrating now, why can\u2019t she also feel love?<\/p>\n
The parents agree that they just couldn\u2019t stand not having her around anymore. So what does father do? We cut to the last scene\u2014it\u2019s sometime later, but alas it\u2019s raining again\u2014and the camera pans slowly settling on a close-up of Mother moaning again, as she receives a massage from a maid\u2019s hands. She says \u201cJust a little to the left, Nelda. Not quite so hard.\u201d The camera tilts up and it\u2019s Jana. Cue the scary musical chord! Jana though has a far off look as she says, \u201cOf course Mrs. Loren, of course.<\/p>\n
I rate this episode a 3. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Hey, here\u2019s a game you can play: \u201cCount the boom and camera shadows!\u201d I stopped after four in the first few minutes.<\/p>\n [si-contact-form form=’2′]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [AdSense-A] By William Kozy \u201cThe Lateness of the Hour\u201d was the first of the six Twilight Zone episodes to be shot in the failed experiment called \u201cLet\u2019s shoot videotape to save money!\u201d The poor visual quality though was very obvious to viewers, and the practice was soon scrapped. In my survey asking writers and TZ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24004],"class_list":["post-95338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing-news","tag-the-twilight-zone-review-the-lateness-of-the-hour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95338"}],"version-history":[{"count":-3,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ringsidereport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}