Classic Horrors Club

Written by | Frank De Felitta
Directed by | Don Medford
Air Date | September 12, 1952

There’s always drama on these scientific expeditions! Susan (Edith Fellows) joins her uncle, Professor John Blanforth (Edgar Stehli) into the jungle looking for fossils of unknown insect species. With them is her fiancée, Tom (Jackie Cooper), with whom Professor Blanforth disagrees about almost everything. When Tom discovers what looks like a cocoon under the shale, Blanforth refuses to believe the “brilliant but undisciplined” Tom’s theory that it was part of a meteorite. Under the crust, its case is hard and smooth. As they argue about opening it, it opens by itself and an invisible force lunges at Tom and chokes him. (I guess it’s on Blanforth’s side.)

21 years in the future, an episode of Classic Ghosts, “The Deadly Visitor,” may have been inspired by the next development. The men manage to wrangle the creature and tie it up so that it looks like one of those wired harness & leashes that give the illusion of walking an invisible dog. They go a step further, though, and create a very detailed plaster cast of it, which looks like a cross between one of the Martians from Quatermass & the Pit and a vampire frog. As the creature begins to die, they discover that human blood revives it. Attempting to keep it alive for the crew that is scheduled to arrive at the outpost, but is delayed by rain, they run out of their blood supply and one of the men (I won’t say whom) wants to transfuse his own blood.

This creates one last argument, which escalates into a physical altercation. One man wants to keep the “evidence” alive and the other believes they should let it die. Susan, who had made it clear from the beginning that she couldn’t stand the constant fighting, stops them. While one man lies unconscious, the other laments what’s happened. Meanwhile, somewhere deep in the jungle, more cocoons hatch. Later in the series, there will be an episode called, “The Fury of the Cocoon,” which appears to be a sequel. So remember this when we get there. If you’re like me, it won’t be hard to forget. It’s very well done not only with the shocking ending, but the events before supporting the impact of such an ending. I loved it!

Writer | Frank De Felitta
Air Date | October 3, 1952

A stranger (James Maloney) knocks on the door of Selena’s (Vicki Cummings) apartment claiming to represent the combined food industry of the country. He knows all about her and asks her to return to her home town of Whitman City to learn how the residents are surviving and thriving when their one grocery store has closed and there’s no record of the town receiving any food deliveries. For some reason we don’t know, she’s reluctant to go home. However, the very large check he hands her changes her mind. When she arrives, her mother, Paula (Charlott Knight) doesn’t recognize her and Selena thinks she looks like something’s the matter with her. Nevertheless, she gets right to the task, says she’s hungry, and asks if she has anything to eat.

Paula responds that first they must ask Samuel (Will Kuluva.) With his approval, Paula serves her daughter a plate of “filthy junk.” She asks what it is.

It’s whatever you want it to be.

It’s a substance prepared in a lab to which ingredients have been added that cause the brain to send signals to the taste buds. Therefore, the substance can taste like any food of which the brain has a memory. Whitman City is the control group and has achieved success with improved physical condition and immunity to disease. But there’s always a side effect and here it’s that the subjects lose all ambition and their habits have degenerated to that of animals.. Samuel encourages Selena to stick around and help him restore their pride. She refuses, and from what we can tell, it’s a wise decision.

Back at her current home, Selena learns the real side effect of “Substance X.” I won’t reveal it here, but it sets up an ending for another episode of Tales of Tomorrow that, like “The Cocoon,” packs a punch. While in that one, the ending was a scary prelude to something potentially bigger, in this one, it’s less open-ended and more emotional. Cummings does a fantastic job in the final shot and It hit me with a feeling of sadness. I don’t want to spoil it, but trust me me when I say that her character is different than most in that she doesn’t deserve what she gets. Sure, she was motivated by money, but that alone doesn’t make her a bad person.