The Kinescope Krypt

I decided to explore this new-fangled medium of television and watched three creepy kinescopes for Halloween.

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Lights Out: “The Faceless Man”

Air date: August 6, 1951

“Francis Carvel, I am the horror in your own black soul!”

Francis Carvel is vindictive, anti-social, and ugly. However, he is wealthy and determined, so he hires London’s finest plastic surgeon to give him a new face. To eliminate any connection to his former life, he promptly stabs the surgeon to death after the successful procedure. Then Carvel travels to France to seduce and destroy a young widow who had once rejected him. Will this plan be thwarted by a mysterious stranger with a bandaged face who stalks Carvel?

The script by radio writer George Lefferts (Dr. Sixgun, Dimension X, X Minus One, as well as the creator of the Frank Sinatra series Rocky Fortune) is a nasty delight. It’s also a model of economy—each line of dialogue simultaneously reveals the somewhat dense plot and moves the action at a nice clip. There are four sets plus a couple of night exteriors (simply accomplished with a pure black background).  

Robert Sterling, star of TV’s Topper, is excellent as Carvel, the handsome sadist. More chilling than Sterling’s performance is his shadowy nemesis buried under layers of gauze. With the lack of detail on the kinescope, his facelessness appears like a spectral glow.

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Suspense: “On A Country Road”

Air date: March 13, 1951

“Crazy people don’t always look crazy.”

A couple drives through the lonely roads of Maine at night, low on gas. The radio reports that a madwoman murderer has escaped from the asylum. When the couple find shelter in an abandoned house, a wild-eyed woman pleads for them to let her in…

It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train to be compared to a symphonic work or a great painting. I feel the need to compare this episode of CBS’s Suspense—aired just three months prior to release of Strangers on a Train—to a sketch on a napkin, or a 4-track recording done in a basement.  It could be said for virtually all early television, but the stark and entirely studio-bound world this episode inhabits puts the spotlight on the writer’s work and the performances (close-ups abound). The crude sets and other limitations, like the driving scenes lack of rear projection to sell the illusion, require a patient and forgiving audience. Or an audience that prefers their art a little less grand. Dimitri Tiomkin’s richly textured score for Strangers on a Train and Hank Sylvern’s icepick-in-the-ears organ accompaniment to Suspense can both be appreciated.

Walter Bazar’s script “On A Country Road” was first performed on radio with Cary Grant in the lead. Bazar was a young newspaperman on the staff of Hearst’s New York Journal-American, when the script—apparently his sole foray into show business—hit the radio waves.

Coincidentally, three of the cast members—John Forsythe, Mildred Natwick, and Parker Fennelly—reunited in The Trouble with Harry a few years later.

Director Robert Stevens helmed the majority of Suspense episodes, and later became a mainstay of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. As late as 1987, he was still in anthology television, directing an episode of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories. The details of his murder in a Westport, Connecticut home in 1989 read like a script from one of his works. 

John Forsythe and Mary Sinclair cower.

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Suspense: “All Hallow’s Eve”

Air date: October 28, 1952

“Evil, for which I live, consists not of action but of character. The bad man is dear to me, not the bad act.”

Adapted from the Robert Louis Stevenson short story “Markheim,” with a script by Halsted Welles (3:10 to Yuma), and direction from 27-year-old Robert Mulligan (The Other), this episode of Suspense is unusually ambitious both in its dialogue and visual flourishes.

London, 1880. Mr. Markheim (Franchot Tone) kills a pawnshop owner out of a crazed mixture of resentment and righteousness. The pawnshop’s abundance of clocks tick like chattering teeth, and the mirrors surround the murderer as if he is confined within a kaleidoscope.

Suddenly, we are reminded to check our car’s spark plugs—it’s another Auto-Lite commercial with our genial mechanic, Rex Marshall.

Just as suddenly, we are plunged back into the story about the nature of evil. Markheim is confronted by the ghostly vision of a group of street urchins—a chilling effect where the children are seemingly projected onto a translucent wall. Then a diabolical visitor shows up and encourages Markheim to kill again.

This is a beautiful piece of work, a claustrophobic chamber play with a fully committed performance by Franchot Tone. Hank Sylvern’s chugging organ playing and the nonstop clock ticking make the viewer feel Markheim’s madness. It’s perfect late-night viewing.

Franchot Tone as Mr. Markheim.