Classic Horrors Club

Teleplay | Cyril M. Kornbluth
Director | Charles S. Dubin
Air Date | May 30, 1952

Dr. Arthur Fulbright (Joseph Anthony) was responsible for the death of a patient and can never forgive himself. He’s led his wife, Angie (Vicki Cummings) into near-poverty and she won’t let him forget it. As a desperate means to make a little money, he pawns the last thing he owns… his medical bag… for $25.00.

However, the pawnbroker (John Shellie) offers him a different bag that’s been sitting on the shelf for years… for $5.00. It contains unusual medical tools that Arthur is not sure at the time how he would use. When a neighbor’s child is dying, though, he learns that it contains a syringe of curative medicine that never empties.

Two years later, the Fulbright’s have discovered other magical instruments, such as a scalpel that neither inflicts pain nor causes bleeding when it slices. Upon further investigation, they find in tiny print a date: July 28, 2450, and a card warning that using the tools in an unauthorized way is punishable by law.

This raises the inevitable ethical question. By the time they’ve regained financial success, Arthur wants to share the bag with the medical community, but Angie wants to continue using it for personal gain. The last straw in their argument comes when Arthur states:

After all these years, I’m not afraid of anything you can do to me.

I won’t spoil the ending other than to say for one person it’s tragic and for the other it’s deserved. You can probably put two and two together, but you still might not know what exactly happens. It’s worth watching to find out. This is one of my favorite episodes of Tales of Tomorrow so far.

Writer | Arthur C. Clarke
Director | Don Medford
Air Date | June 13, 1952

“The Little Black Bag” is followed by another excellent episode, “All the Time in the World.” A woman whom we later learn calls herself, “the Collector,” offers shady private investigator Henry Judson (Don Hanmer) $100,000 to “obtain” several works of art for her.

She gives him a device that will allow him to do so in broad daylight: a wristwatch that slows time to nearly a stop within a 5’ radius of the wearer. This will allow Henry to act like Barry Allen and leisurely steal the items before anyone actually notices.

You’ve got to wonder why the Collector wants these things and, when we learn she’s from the future, there’s got to be a reason she wants to take them from the present. Henry can’t see beyond the paycheck, though, and wants her to give him the watch. When she agrees, we know what’s happening long before Henry.

This leaves him with a decision that is for us, delicious to watch, but for him, punishing either way it goes. Like Angie Fulbright, you know Henry Judson is going to get what he deserves. This conclusion is more impactful, though, because it affects the entire world, not just only one despicable person.