Classic Horrors Club

Written by | Mann Rubin
Air Date | Oct. 31, 1952

It’s shades of The Fatal Flower as Doctor Allen (Walter Abel) and Quincy (Richard Purdy) argue about their situation. Instead of an experimental plant station in Brazil, though, they’re at a dig site in Egypt. Quincy fears they’ve been abandoned and says he never wanted the job, anyway. (Then why did he take it?) Allen replies that they’ve got to find the mummy. As soon as he says this, they receive a transmission that something has been found.

This is it, the tomb of King Tarus! In the tradition of most mummy movies, they ignore the warning on the entry and go right in:

He who opens the vault will carry a curse forever.

Unlike most mummy movies, they discover inside the sarcophagus a living, breathing man who never died when he was wrapped in cloth and bandages. Above him is a case containing a liquid they believe has kept him alive for hundreds of years… a fluid preventing the agonies of death… an elixir of life. The conflict between the two men escalates as they struggle over this discovery. Shots are fired, King Tarus dies, and the case begins leaking.

By the end, one man is standing and drinks the elixir… then gets what he deserves. The Tomb of King Tarus is a nice little variation of a mummy story in which the beat of the cloth-wrapped feet is not as much a problem as the greed of a fortune-sought deed. As far as most Tales of Tomorrow go, it’s slight, but that makes it perfect companion for our next episode, which is a little too grandiose.

Writer | Armand Aulicino
Director | Don Medford
Air Date | Dec. 26, 1952

Professor Leland Russell (Arnold Moss) is frustrated the he keeps receiving interference from the experiment over which he’s labored for many years on an abandoned island. His sister, Madeleine Barnett (Ethel Remey), who moved in with her daughter, Pat (Joanne Woodward), and her boyfriend, Steve (Phillip Pine),  after her husband died, stares out the window at an approaching storm.

The title doesn’t necessarily refer to the weather outside, but instead to the mental state of Professor Russell inside. He’s bitter… extremely bitter, that other people have stolen his previous ideas and found fame and fortune, hence his self-imposed exile to an abandoned island. When he leaves the room for a moment, Steve and Pat give the experiment a try. They first hear conversations from the past, then the further they turn the dial, unintelligible noise.

Madeleine hears something in the noise, though, and throws up her arms before collapsing. After the break, there’s confusion as the four try to escape before a hurricane downs trees on top of them, but also figure out what it was that Madeleine heard. I hope they grabbed their bibles, because The Bitter Storm then becomes religious, perhaps uncomfortably so. You can guess the end… the storms outside and inside clear and all is right in the world.