Classic Horrors Club

When a car runs our heroes off the road and their car flips on its side, the briefcase containing Mel (Marshall Thompson) is thrown from the moving vehicle and Bill (Arthur Franz) lies unconscious. As Mel follows protocol in “cases like this,” he attempts to get clear of the accident and find a place of concealment to wait for the bureau to arrive.

Using a paperclip to pry open his peephole on the briefcase, he encounters an impenetrable jungle… of ordinary grass. As two gardeners perform their jobs nearby (but I guess not nearby enough to notice there was a car accident), Mel dodges falling shovels, trips in muddy footprints, and faces the animal of the week: a squirrel that’s “as big and mean as a Rocky Mountain grizzly bear!”

Episode 4: ‘Death Trap’ becomes quite suspenseful in its second act. Mel crawls into a gopher hole, leading the squirrel/grizzly into a trap. It’s a trap, though, that Mel must escape before it snaps its jaws on him instead of the beast. Relax, the trap doesn’t get the animal, either; it just scares him into turning and running when Mel trips it.

‘Death Trap’ was directed by Byron Haskins, who also directed the sci-fi classic, The War of the Worlds in 1953. While he won a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation for that film, Haskins was a four-time Oscar nominee for Best Effects, Special Effects on the non-genre films, The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex (1940), The Sea Hawk (1941), The Sea Wolf (1942) and Desperate Journey (1943.) In 1939, he won a Technical Achievement Oscar “for pioneering the development and for the first practical application to motion picture production of the triple head background projector.”

Haskins was a cinematographer during the silent era and worked on technology that eventually brought sound to the film industry. He directed Disney’s first live-action film, Treasure Island (1950) and, post-The War of the Worlds, worked with George Pal on three other films: The Naked Jungle (1954), Conquest of Space (1955), and The Power (1968.) He also directed From the Earth to the Moon (1958) and Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964.)

Back on Earth, his episode of World of Giants (W.O.G.) is another fun one, if still not entirely original, borrowing the two to three recurring building blocks of other episodes. The lessons that Mel provides us at the end of each episode is becoming a favorite part for me. This week, he says, “Surviving in a world of giants is my problem, not theirs. And I refuse to let it defeat me. Because what man by being anxious about it can add to his stature one inch.”