Episode: “Green
Fingers/The Funeral/The Tune in Dan’s Cafe”, in which Cameron Mitchell is a
sleazy industrialist who wants to build a factory on the property of
gardening-enthusiast Elsa Lanchester. Mitchell would have probably backed off
if he’d known just how effective the sweet, old lady’s green fingers are. “Green
Fingers” soars with a macabre script by Rod Serling (based on R.C. Cook’s short
story), creepy direction by John “Saturday Night Fever” Badham, the star of the
greatest monster movie ever made, and an awesome tribute in Siouxsie and the
Banshee’s “Green Fingers” (song not
included in this episode). Our next painting is a morsel of fun silliness
from Richard Matheson in which a vampire plans the funeral he never got a
chance to have. The mourners look like the cast of The Halloween That Almost
Wasn’t. Yay! The portrait at the end of our museum of miscreants depicts Susan
Oliver and Pernell Roberts as a couple incessantly blabbing about their
flailing marriage in a bar while the same crappy country song plays over and
over on the juke box. Apparently, it was the song that was playing when another
doomed couple was swept up in violence at the joint years ago. Despite some
groovy psychedelic solarization effects and an elegantly filmed shoot out, this
last tale is a whole lot of nothing. The other two are essential Halloween
season viewing.
