Classic Horrors Club

Written by | Harry Guth, Mann Rubin
Director | Don Medford
Air Date | April 25, 1952

While Colonel Jeffrey Ward (Gene Raymond) and Captain Hutchinson (Charles Proctor) await the arrival of General Bonameade (Richard Keith), a strange disc that they tracked earlier on radar reappears in the sky and then lands on base. They haul it into hanger seven and begin examining it. Meanwhile, Ward places his already shaky career in further danger by going on lockdown and preventing his boss from landing.

Ward then receives two communications in a row. First is his discharge notice. Second is a set of results from the tests on the craft… they’ve determined it’s from Mars.

From another planet? It’s impossible. It couldn’t happen.

Before his replacement arrives, Ward orders his men to open the door to the craft. Inside, they find a living, breathing creature. Although the series is shot in black-and-white, I got the impression the Martian is silver, perhaps because he’s sparkling.

Soon, the men who come into contact with it start dropping like flies and Ward concludes that the country is under attack by a form of disease warfare. Whether intentional or not, the Martian is a living bacteria using multiple brainwaves, and it soon passes them to the men who die. It’s a puzzle only Ward can solve and he’s so serious about it that he tosses the bottle he’s been nursing into his trashcan.

We watch Ward as he contemplates the situation, talking aloud to himself. He drops clues, but doesn’t reveal his conclusion. With each minute that passes, we grow closer to understanding. Nevertheless, the conclusion packs a punch, hearkening back to the darker episodes of Tales of Tomorrow. As I’ve stated before, those are the ones I tend to enjoy the most.

Writer | Frank De Felitta
Director | Don Medford
Air Date | Nov. 7, 1952

As a man (William Coburn) tells his daughter, Martha (Merle Albertson), that he’s completed computations proving that by tomorrow Earth will be a flaming white inferno, there’s static on the screen. When it clears, we’re looking inside a window where two men and a woman are bickering among themselves at the kitchen table. A man in the studio from where Tales of Tomorrow is being broadcast asks where the picture is coming from. A “please… STAND BY!” slide  then fills the screen.

Interruptions continue throughout the episode, but the original teleplay is cancelled and when we’re back in the studio, we see the executives and crew filling air time by speculating on the origin of the picture. Then the producer butts in; they absolutely must broadcast another commercial. (Funny how that’s not interrupted.) Back through the window, we witness that when one man, Al (Frank Maxwell) leaves the room, the other, Henry (Rod Steiger) embraces the woman, Jean (Virginia Vincent) and they discuss tossing Al out the window.

This panics those in the studio as they try to find the location to prevent a possible murder. The people in the window drop clues… the name of a local grocer, their street, etc. The interruptions become more frequent as the suspense escalates. The two stories progress, but we miss elements of each while we’re watching the other. There’s a moment of sheer brilliance as Jean looks out the window and tells Henry she thinks someone is watching them. However, after a quick return to the studio, it all ends rather suddenly.

For its time, this was a clever and original episode to be broadcast on live television. It’s not quite up to the level of a War of the Worlds, but it’s enough for a special message at the end:

We hope you found it an exciting and different kind of television experience.

The episode is alternatively known as The Window, but I think that shifts focus toward the “stunt.” Viewers should think they’re going to see a story about a lost planet that may or may not have something to do with Earth becoming a flaming white inferno, then wonder what the heck is happening when it’s interrupted by what’s been called a “phantom broadcast.” I think it’s a great episode, a predecessor to the modern found footage film… meta before meta was a thing.