Isn’t it all?
“The Little People” Twilight Zone
Image from the TV show, “Steve Canyon” who was an Air Force pilot played by Dean Fredericks (“The Phantom Planet”). Includes Claude Akins, Ron Ely (who played Tarzan on TV – 1966) and Naura Hayden (“Irish” from “Angry Red Planet”). This was perhaps the only time that I saw Akins play an evil character. He is the commanding officer (not sure he was an officer) over Ely’s character and Akins wants to move in on Ely’s girlfriend. Also in this image Hayden is only an unlisted bit part that is interested in Akin, but Akin is brushing her off here, turning his back on her to focus on Ely and his love interest.
Oddly, she spelled her name several ways and Naura Hayden was her as an author. And several of her titles leaned toward a sexual bent. And her cookbook was published in 1972 when she was 41-42 years old.
This reminds me of one of my favorite “B” actors, Charles Aidman, who I’ve only seen one movie or show in which he played an unsympathetic character. It was a transitional war film, “War Hunt” from 1962. This film included John Saxon and was the introductory film for Robert Redford. *But I know I’ve seen Redford in several earlier TV shows such as Twilight Zone in which he was a young police officer AND the Angel of Death.
NIGHT VISIONS: “A View Through a Window“
This is one of the classic sci fi/horror themed stories I’ve ever seen and it along with a selected few stories from the Outer Limits and Twilight Zone have stuck with me through the years.
Major Darnell’s son has died and as a result he has also lost the affection of his wife. He is called by the Army to the desert where they, the Army, has found an anomaly of a window into another universe (?). They can see in to a small, idealic farm family. That family is unaware of the Army viewing them and there is a barrier stopping them both from going “to the other side.” Darnell sets up a way to determine if and when the barrier disappears by firing ice cubes at the barrier at timed intervals. Eventually, he can determine when the barrier will go down for a brief few seconds. The ice cubes were a way of breaching the barrier, but melting so the unaware family would not realize they were being watched.
Darnell falls out of favor with the General who has him put in the brig, but Darnell plans to go over to the other side when the barrier falls again. Sure enough it does and he runs full speed from his detention tent and jumps through to the other universe and the barrier closes behind him.
Now the beautiful woman sees him and comes over to examine this visitor. But very quickly her ravenous, monstrous creature reveals itself and she begins to tear into Darnell’s flesh. Her other family members come running to the feast she has started. The soldiers can see all of this, but are helpless to breach the barrier.
The father figure from the other universe opens a “magical” book and utters a spell and the window disappears, the soldiers can only see endless desert… but on the other side, we now see the family testing the barrier, apparently with one of Darnell’s leg bones as the little boy beats it in rhythm on the barrier from their side. Now that family can see the soldiers and desert from their pastoral view. The idea is that we will become their feast once again. — I’ve seen this story about four or five times over the years, but I think this is the first time that I realized that the leg bone (still with some flesh and blood on it) the boy is beating the barrier with has to be part of Major Darnell. *An attention to detail was that the pocket watch that the father figure is using to measure the barrier timing has strange written characters on it. I’m not even sure that it measures the same number of hours (in their day).