Semi Off Topic: The Haunting of Rosalind and more

[Mysterious Benefactor]

And the fifth ep, And The Bones Came Together, has the fewest DS connections. It stars Laurence Luckinbill, an extremely successful soap, TV and occasional film star, Robin Strasser, a huge soap star, as well as a successful nighttime star, and who just so happened to be married to Luckinbill at the time, Herbert Bergshof, who I never heard of but seeing as he was billed as a "Special Guest Star," I looked him up and apparently he was very successful in early TV and worked into the '80s, and Earle Hyman, who also appeared in many soaps and nighttime TV shows. Also, Kate Harrington appeared in a small role, and she was also quite successful on soaps and did occasional nighttime TV - but I mention her mostly because, for some very odd reason considering she was almost 50 years her junior, Kate Jackson was often identified as her in some of her early DS publicity - talk about those people not doing their homework! No DS actors in small roles. Though this one was directed by Henry Kaplan (I wonder if he made Robin Strasser cry, as he did some of the DS actresses?  ). But other than that, the only connections are the same DS personnel handling the same behind the scenes capacities. Not DS set pieces show up at all. But then, unlike the other four, which take place in mansions, this story takes place in apartments and an office.

As for the story, it's a bit confusing but it comes together in the end...

[Uncle Roger]

I met Lucie Arnaz at Broadway Cares some years and mentioned that I had seen her husband Laurence Luckinbill in And The Bones Came Together back in the day. She apparently had never heard about it, said And the what came together and did a take worthy of her mother.
From what I know about Robin Strasser, she's never been anywhere close to be considered a shrinking violet. If her diva mood was in full swing, she could well have made Kaplan cry.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

The Lela Swift section in the Blu-ray's The Remasterialization of The Classic Ghosts featurette:

"Only be doing cooking shows" - talk about condescension!!  But she knew better. 

DC looked on her as a mentor? Well he sure as hell should have considering the reports that if she hadn't helped him during the shooting of hoDS, he wouldn't have had much of an idea what he was doing! In fact, so many people claim it was really Lela who directed a great deal of the film but without credit. But then the featurette would certainly seem to give us some insight into why that was...

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I forgot to mention the other day that these eps have one other thing in common with DS: three of them have short glitches in the Master Tapes very similar to what we see with the DS Master Tapes. But then such things weren't limited to DS, they're something that happened to many 2-inch videotapes. And the nice thing is, unlike how MPI tried to get away with editing out such glitches, Kino Lorber, who restored the Master Tapes and distributes the Blu-ray, left them all intact.

And speaking of 2-inch videotape, there's a really interesting featurette on the Blu-ray all about 2-inch videotape technology.

[ProfStokes]

Thank you, Mysterious Benefactor, for your detailed reviews of each episode! I enjoyed reading your thoughts about these teleplays.

I'm afraid I was less impressed than you were, overall. My biggest problem was feeling like the episodes were drawn-out and padded. At first, I thought this was because I had read all the original stories except "And the Bones Came Together," all of which are fairly short and would require more content to fill an 80-minute slot. I particularly thought that the changes made for "The Deadly Visitor" watered down the original story's impact. O'Brien's "What Was It?" is a classic weird tale of the unexplained; attempting to give "It" a human identity and motive made the phenomena less creepy and threatening. Crawford's story "The Screaming Skull" is one of my favorites, and I was deeply disappointed that in the adaptation, the skull never screams and the story's signature, haunting imagery of a little lead ball rattling around inside the brain pan of the murdered woman is absent. However, my boyfriend, who watched along with me, didn't know the source material and also expressed boredom and frustration over how belabored some of the execution was.

The episode I liked most was "The House and the Brain." As  far as I'm concerned, this is a totally original story. Its plot has nothing to do with Bulwer-Lytton's work (better known as "The Haunters and the Haunted"), which is about an investigator trying to lay the malevolent ghost occupying a haunted rental house (its conclusion is similar to Hell House). I'm baffled as to why he was cited as the inspiration. Even though I could make reasonable predictions about the trajectory of the story, I was still fascinated to see how it would turn out. I was also impressed by both Hatfield's and Williard's performances. 

In general, I did enjoy the DS-like aesthetic and thought McKinley's period outfits (especially from The Haunting of Rosalind) were gorgeous.  It was also fun to see Powell and Gardenia (whom I recognized from "All in the Family" and Little Shop of Horrors) as guest stars.

ProfStokes