The Sixth Sense Season One - Part Two

THE MAN WHO DIED AT THREE AND NINE
(1972)
Dir - Robert Day
Overall: MEH

 

People be experiencing psychic phenomena in The Sixth Sense, and the episode "The Man Who Died at Three and Nine" ups the stake since this time it is an important diplomat who gets bombarded with unwanted mental images and impulses as he is on the cusp of delivering some top secret information.  Square-jawed character actor Joseph Campanella portrays said diplomat, and as the title would suggest, he usually suffers his possessed outbursts at both 3 and 9 PM.  We eventually get an answer as to why he keeps seeing an Asian woman that he cannot save who is drowning in a swamp, and it is a satisfying enough reveal that Gary Collins' Dr. Rhodes uncovers in typical nick of time fashion.  Only five installments in and the program was merely doing slight variations of the same premise, similar to ABC's other supernatural "monster of the week" show Kolchak: The Night Stalker which debuted two years later, if one was to compare.

 

CAN A DEAD MAN STRIKE FROM THE GRAVE?
(1972)
Dir - Alf Kjellin
Overall: MEH

 

William Shatner arrives in what ultimately amounts to a thankless guest role in "Can a Dead Man Strike from the Grave?".  The opening scene is one of the most eerie that The Sixth Sense ever produced, showing Shatner slowly getting bombarded with ghostly whispers, playing a piece of horror movie music on a piano that his character actually has no idea how to play, and seeing an apparition of his grandfather murdering a woman.  The rest of the program follows the now locked-in formula of Gary Collins trying to get to the bottom of what mind-projected supernatural activity is going on after he is contacted by a concerned party, running into both skeptics and ones who are willing to believe the unbelievable.  Gene L. Coon's script, (Coon also being a Star Trek alumni), gets too convoluted for its own good, revealing psychics who are able to project visions upon other people while also being manipulated by other people who want to get revenge on yet more people.

 

WITH THIS RING, I THEE KILL!
(1972)
Dir - Robert Day
Overall: GOOD

 

A man in an iron mask mysteriously materializes and swings his sword at Stacy Harris, causing him to collapse and eventually check out in the hospital after he asks his good friend Gary Collins to get to the bottom of such a mystery.  Thus opens The Sixth Sense's "With This Ring, I Thee Kill!", and it turns out that said mysterious apparition has more to do with Lon Chaney than medieval knighthood.  While we only get that one sequence with the ghostly sword-wielding warrior, there is a later moment straight out of The Phantom of the Opera, providing the episode with some of its more overtly-horror imagery.  The script from Robert Collins finds a convenient and rushed way for our parapsychologist hero to correctly deduce what is happening, yelling at Lucie Arnaz until she accepts the impossible scenario that her husband who oddly never wants to leave his house is also not who he says he is.  Still, this is better paced than many of the program's other installments and it leads to an agreeable conclusion.

 

WITCH, WITCH, BURNING BRIGHT
(1972)
Dir - John  Badham
Overall: MEH

 

Seeing Cloris Leachman give alms to Asmodeus may be enough of a selling point for the uninitiated to check out "Witch, Witch, Burning Bright", an episode of The Sixth Sense that otherwise is merely serviceable.  The basic premise in John W. Bloch's script is one that uses an age old motif of a condemned witch vowing vengeance on future generations of her persecutes as she is burned at the stake.  In Leachman's defense, she is only partaking of the black arts in the finale in order to rid her daughter of said ancestor who is trying to possess her, Gary Collins becoming directly involved when his uncle calls him and says that the witchy apparition is out to get him.  Unfortunately and as was commonly the case for the show, there is less action than there is people partaking of increasingly redundant conversations about the power of the mind, leading to a lengthy and implausible courtroom scene where Collins is allowed to put an accused woman under hypnosis in order to clear her of involvement with his uncle's murder.