THRILLER #27: ‘Late Date’ Confession time: for the most part, I vastly prefer the supernatural episodes of THRILLER to the crime-based ones. That isn’t due to a bias against the more ‘realistic’; I always think of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents adaptation of Roald Dahl’s ‘Man From The South’ as a prime example of how a very simple story- a bet involving a cigarette lighter- can elicit more chills than most of today’s CGI-fest monster movies. But, in large part, the crime stories on THRILLER were just not that interesting. Consider the recent ‘Choose A Victim’. Ignoring the fact that any plot where 60’s goddess Susan Oliver falls for a nebbish like Larry Blyden would have to be considered the wildest fantasy, ‘Choose A Victim’ was a predictable, poorly-plotted snoozefest, with only some unintentional humor and the allure of Ms. Oliver providing its sole saving graces. However, not every THRILLER crime story was that bad. In fact, a few of them were among the best shows of the series. Which brings us to Episode #27, ‘Late Date’. Based on a short story by the legendary Cornell Woolrich, ‘Late Date’ takes a very different tack than ‘Choose A Victim’; instead of dwelling on all the preparations to commit a murder, ‘Late Date’ starts off with the murder already committed. The rest of the episode deals with the cleanup from said murder…which proves to be much, much, much more difficult than expected. The basic plot of ‘Late Date’ is this…brawny beach boy Larry Weeks comes home to a murder: his elder brother Jim has strangled his cheating wife, Doris. Guilt-struck, Jim is about to turn himself in to the police, but Larry convinces him to instead go back to the city and pretend that nothing has happened. For Larry has a plan to dispose of the body by framing Doris’s ‘back door man’... There are a lot of things to like about ‘Late Date’. Director Herschel Daugherty and cinematographer Ray Rennahan shoot it with aplomb. In particular, two moments stand out. They take a bit of a chance in the first scene, which is very brightly lit right up to the moment the cast is introduced; considering ‘Late Date’ starts out with a murder, it’s a bold move that works nicely. The other moment is at the end of the second scene, when Larry is trying to dispose of Doris- only to have his step-niece (?) Helen enters the bathroom and turn on the light, throwing a beam of light onto the dangling hand of dead Doris. It’s very tense, and a harbinger of all the close calls Larry will go through before the end of the story. Jerry Goldsmith comes up with another winner in terms of the music. The score for ‘Late Date’ bears a certain resemblance to an earlier one Goldsmith had done for The Twilight Zone episode ‘Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room’, particularly with the stopwatch-like ‘tick tick tick’ in the background. But it’s a strong score in its own right, particularly the woodwinds bit as the cast is introduced. ‘Late Date’ benefits from a solid supporting cast. Chris Seitz, who plays ‘back door man’ Sid, doesn’t have a lot to do, but seems like a suitable enough drunken jerk. Seitz gets bonus points for his crazy look as he drives off to his doom- the rear projection is very much out of control, and his face mirrors it wonderfully in spots. Jody Fair (as Helen) exudes teenage playfulness, with just an edge of suspicion. The single biggest problem with her part isn’t her fault: due to an apparent rewrite of the script, it’s unclear how she’s related to Larry, so when she teasingly flirts with him for a moment, it seems a bit…creepy. If she’s Doris’s daughter from a previous marriage, it makes a little more sense- she’s just jerking Larry’s chain. In any event, Fair does just fine. Edward Platt (as Jim) is best known as ‘The Chief’ from Get Smart!, but there’s no humor in his character here- nor should there have been. Platt acquits himself well as a murderer who is horrified at what he’s done and whom ultimately is determined to pay the price for his crime, even when he gets a chance to escape scot-free. However, what makes ‘Late Date’ work more than anything else is a bravura performance by Larry Pennell. Pennell, who would become Elly May Clampett’s movie star beau Dash Riprock on The Beverly Hillbillies, proved that he wasn’t just a good-looking face- his interpretation of Larry is spot-on. Larry isn’t some criminal mastermind- he’s just an ordinary Joe who suddenly takes on the job of disposing of a corpse…a job complicated at every turn by nosy people and outrageously bad luck. Larry isn’t much of a liar and is clearly winging it most of the time- or else he wouldn’t have left his fingerprints absolutely everywhere. But he’s nothing if not determined, and his perseverance in the face of ridiculous adversity- driven on by the need to protect the older brother who cared for him when their parents died- makes Larry an admirable, if misguided, soul. If I have any quibbles about ‘Late Date’, they’re minor ones related to the screenplay by Donald S. Sanford- the aforementioned confusion about just how Larry and Helen are related; as well as how it’s not entirely clear at the beginning that Jim committed the murder, versus simply having discovered the body. Still, Sanford does so many other fun things in this script, piling on layer after layer of difficulties for Larry to awkwardly deal with, that it’s easy to overlook them. A lot of folks who have reviewed ‘Late Date’ really dislike the ending- it’s too pat, too clean. But I would disagree. After all that Larry went through in order to frame Sid for the murder of Doris, it’s the perfect coda that it was all for naught. To my mind, ‘Late Date’ was perhaps the best of the non-supernatural THRILLER shows, and definitely in the top twenty of the series. Final score: 8 of 10 criss-crossed THRILLER lines.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 14:57:29 +0000
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