(1972)
Dir - Sutton Roley
Overall: MEH
It took until the season two opener of The Sixth Sense for the formula to be abandoned, be it not profoundly. "Coffin, Coffin in the Sky" it set exclusively on an airplane that Gary Collins' Dr. Michael Rhodes just so happens to be on when a woman falls into a semi-coma and experiences creepy gothic horror visions of many of the passengers lying in caskets and whatnot. These nightmare sequences are fittingly surreal, bathed in fog, and feature guest star Ed Nelson, (the plane's pilot), as an unsettling Victorian undertaker. Collins spends most of the episode doing that intense thousand-yard stare thing that he always does when he is trying to pick up any psychic energies, and his performances is as flat as it ever was on the program. The rest of the drama never connects since Don Ingalls's script is pedestrian and lacking in suspense, (we know that the airplane is going to land OK because our star is on said airplane), but again, it wins points for trying something singular from the previous season's output.
(1972)
Dir - John Newland
Overall: MEH
The most singular episode of The Sixth Sense up until this point in that it does not feature lead Gary Collins in the main narrative, "Dear Joan: We're Going to Scare You to Death" is more notable instead for featuring the final screen performance from Johan Crawford. Collins does appear as himself in bookending segments, briefly interviewing Crawford in the later one where they discuss the potential legitimacy of ESP. Since Collins is M.I.A., this was one of the easier episodes of the program to later get reconfigured into Night Gallery for syndication purposes, (several installments of The Sixth Sense got such a treatment in a drastically edited format). While Crawford is as intense as ever portraying a woman who is targeted by some college-age kids in a mansion who practice their telepathy skills on her with malicious intent, Jonathan Stone's script is pedestrian at best. The psychic visions involving Crawford seeing the ghostly visage of her dead daughter are eerie on paper, but we know that they are being projected by the gang of ruffians so there is no supernatural mystery, just a far-fetched premise that utilizes the series' bare bones parapsychology angle.
(1972)
Dir - Sutton Roley
Overall: MEH
It took three episodes for The Sixth Sense to get back to its tried, tired, and true formula, "Witness Within" having Gary Collins' Dr. Rhodes called in to investigate a woman's traumatic ESP experience where a mysterious man tries to murder her when she returns home. Tippy Walker portrays said woman who has both a blind mother withholding a pivotal family secret from her and a father that is doing hard time in a penitentiary. Things are not as they seem of course and truths get revealed via the concept that babies who are still in the womb can miraculously bare visible witness to horrific events that are suffered by their mothers. It is a far-fetched enough concept to fit into the program's supernatural trajectory, but the lack of variation here from virtually every episode in the first season plus Collins' consistently flat performance makes the whole thing less exciting than it could be.
(1972)
Dir - Robert Day
Overall: MEH
Frequent series screenwriter Don Ingalls finds a way to fit Victorian England's most infamous serial killer into an episode of The Sixth Sense, and anyone following the program at this point can accurately guess how. The title "With Affection, Jack the Ripper" is taken from the killer's calling card signature to the police during his murder spree, the same M.O. matching another series of murders that all point to an extrasensory experiment being conducted by Patty Duke. Duke portrays a colleague of Gary Collins who manages to use Robert Foxworth as a test subject, the latter being able to perform music written during late 19th century London without any prior knowledge or skill. Naturally, (or unnaturally), there is a catch to such experiments in the form of the Ripper seemingly being able to possess Foxworth with more than just exemplary harpsichord skills. The concept would be recycled in Kolchak: The Night Stalker's opener "The Ripper" two years later, and despite some sufficient period-set detours which enter the psychically manipulated state of Foxworth, the presentation here is merely bog-standard, if not still acceptable.
No comments:
Post a Comment