And it’s also not really necessary that Serling cloak all of this in that conceit because it’s wholly believable that, say, Feathersmith wouldn’t know how to build a drill to get down to the oil buried beneath the land he just purchased. There’s a sadder undercurrent to this episode, as the script credit to Beaumont isn’t strictly correct. (For the full story, Marc Scott Zicree’s Twilight Zone Companion is, as always, recommended.) One of Brahm’s choices, one that could feel chintzy but somehow doesn’t, adds to the episode’s nightmarish streak as well. “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” deserves criticism for its unconvincing makeup effects (e.g.
What a twist!
What a twist! What’s different here is that the same writer was responsible for both episodes—which aired around a month apart.
TCL - 55" Class 4 Series LED 4K UHD Smart Android TV. Fans of a serious temperament may thus take issue with this episode, which occasionally suffers from tonal inconsistencies. There’s one thing here worth heartily recommending, and that’s Julie Newmar as the devil, here known as Ms. Devlin. “The New Exhibit”/“Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville”, “The New Exhibit” (season four, episode 13; originally aired 4/4/1963). “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” is a well-acted and intelligently written episode of The Twilight Zone. Instead, Serling goes all in on an idea that doesn’t really work: Although Feathersmith asked the devil to make him appear to be a young man, he didn’t ask her to make his mind and organs young as well. But that is already fairly close to what Serling was up to with “No Time Like The Past,” and it’s in the same general family as every one of these episodes, where the easy allure of an American small town sometime between the years of 1880 and 1920 is revealed to be hollow. The problem is that the man receiving said comeuppance—a rat bastard old millionaire named Feathersmith—is mostly just irritating.
Specifically, series enthusiasts may enjoy this offering for its unique twist on the devil character—featured previously in “Escape Clause,” “The Howling Man,” …
As Martin’s friend and boss, Mr. Ferguson, Will Kuluva offers up a solid bedrock for Martin to fall back on. The scene where Feathersmith and Devlin negotiate the terms of his contract is the best in the episode and a lot of fun.
This is a story about a man hurting those he loves most because he can’t quite get a bead on what’s happening in his own head. “Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville” (season four, episode 14; originally aired 4/11/1963) In which Rod Serling needs to get over his fetishizing of small towns in the Midwest in the …
This is my second Twilight Zone article in a row where I’ve had to deal with an episode about a guy who travels back to a small town in Indiana in what was the relatively recent past in 1963, only to find that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. But in reality, he was just a leech and a mooch, destroying others’ businesses and raiding the ruins to line his own pocketbooks. The central idea of Feathersmith’s character—he thinks the getting of riches is more exciting than the having—isn’t a bad one (and certainly describes more than enough billionaires in the present), but Feathersmith too often seems, well, kinda dumb. When Feathersmith arrives in Cliffordville initially, he runs around, practically kicking up his heels at his good fortune. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974). By talking down to a humble janitor and driving a longtime associate to financial ruin, Mr. Feathersmith will evoke contempt from those with a sense of justice and fair treatment.
By hinging the whole episode on the sanity of a man we’re first introduced to as an appreciator of the finest the wax medium has to offer and friendly tour guide, Beaumont and Brahm give Balsam further to fall, and Balsam is only too happy to chew every last bit of scenery on his way down in highly entertaining fashion.
Despite its lack of subtlety, “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” contains a powerful lesson on the dangers of taking things for granted, viewing history through rose-tinted glasses, and placing too much value on class distinction. Combining time travel elements with moral commentary, “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” is a clever and thought-provoking episode.
: After selling Hecate his oil-rich land to get the money necessary to return to the present, Feathersmith becomes the janitor and Hecate the businessman. It seems less like the behavior of an old man clothed in a young man’s form than an authentically young man. Written by Charles Beaumont (about which more in a bit) and directed by John Brahm, “The New Exhibit” is yet another episode where I get to say that an hour-long edition of the show feels padded and overlong, but it’s also one of the few episodes this season to turn that flaw into something of a strength. There’s not really much story here—the second all those wax murderers are introduced, you’re waiting for them to start murdering, and they take their sweet time before doing so—but I’m not sure there needs to be.
The central conflict throughout isn’t so much about whether the wax figures are doing what they’re doing—we get to see them move the three times they kill—but about just how devoted Martin is to those figures. Balsam plays both scenes so convincingly that it’s easy to forget just how weird all of this is, just how much his wife has a good point about the oddity of keeping these monstrous figures in her home. I love the look on Salmi’s face when Feathersmith first sees Devlin with her horns. But “Cliffordville” is too padded and too repetitive of other episodes in the series’ run to ever really manage that trick.
(That being said, the final scene of this episode indicates that tremendous wealth, hard-earned or otherwise, will necessarily corrupt those of a decent or upright nature—a dubious implication from Rod Serling. It feels as if Jack the Ripper might lunge out at us at any second.
The reason this idea doesn’t really work is because it comes out of nowhere. If you want to do a riff on the Ebenezer Scrooge story, then you need someone who’s sort of fun in his irritation. (It happened in season three with stories set in the Appalachian backwoods.) In spite of his odious behavior, however, the main character benefits from a relatable motive: to relive his past experiences while employing the wisdom of advanced age. By filming the wax figures—who are obviously real actors in heavy makeup—in extreme close-up, then holding on still frames instead of asking the actors to hold a pose for as long as the camera is on them, Brahm’s camera makes the figures seem somehow more lifelike than if the actors were playing freeze tag. If the characterization of Feathersmith had skewed more toward that, this episode might have worked much better.
The idea that Feathersmith has misremembered his youth—forgetting about muddy horse tracks and the horrible warbling of the young woman he was courting at the time—is probably the most promising of these, but Serling doesn’t really do anything with it after the scene where he goes over to the house of his potential lady love. (Again, however, this makes him seem a little too dumb to be believed. “Of Late I Think Of Cliffordville” (season four, episode 14; originally aired 4/11/1963). Feathersmith is just kind of a dick to a bunch of people we’ve never met, which requires a lot of exposition about how everybody knows each other that starts the episode off at a crawl.
That writer was Rod Serling, and who knows what the hell this particular scenario held for him, because he returned to it over and over and over again, to diminishing returns.
Director David Lowell Rich sure overworks the Dutch angles and fancy camera spins to make Feathersmith’s confusion and isolation in the past feel more acute, huh? It’s the look of a businessman who’s always wanted to deal with someone his equal and has finally met the ultimate dealmaker. You wanted this evil in your basement, buddy. Specifically, series enthusiasts may enjoy this offering for its unique twist on the devil character—featured previously in “Escape Clause,” “The Howling Man,” and “Printer’s Devil.”. It also doesn’t help that the man playing Feathersmith—Albert Salmi—isn’t a very convincing actor, choosing to portray his assholery by reading every line as if he learned it phonetically. Beaumont used a fair number of ghost writers, against Writers’ Guild regulations, and many (including Sohl) would go on to have great careers of their own.
In terms of bit players, the sailor who takes Martin’s tour at the episode’s beginning is pretty fun. The way that everything seems to have a little too much space adds to the tension, particularly when one of the characters is wandering around those wax figures, and the extra padding adds to the dreamlike feeling of the episode. He wouldn’t have considered there might be a reason that oil wasn’t extracted until 1937?)
It’s one good performance in Newmar, then a whole bunch of dross, much of it the sort of thing the show has shown you many, many times before. Feeling nostalgic, businessman William Feathersmith (Albert Salmi) stumbles into a local office and makes a deal with Miss Devlin (Julie Newmar)—a sly, attractive woman who allows Mr. Feathersmith to return to Cliffordville, Indiana in the year 1910 and reacquire his extravagant fortune from scratch. Compassionate viewers may therefore sympathize with the protagonist, who, though incredibly mean-spirited, offers a compelling reason for going back in time and altering history to his personal liking.
(I choose to believe that the wax figures are merely trying to convince Martin that he was the murderer, when they were really the ones to carry out the acts, but that’s not really supported by what’s on screen in any way.)
The final moments when the figures all turn and move toward Martin as one unit are appropriately ghoulish, and I also like wax figure Martin quite a bit (as seen above). The idea of an employee of a wax museum becoming so attached to five figures meant to represent some of the most horrifying murderers in history that he moves them into his basement and starts bankrupting himself to care for them is just a marvelously creepy notion in and of itself.
Next week: Zack heads into “The Incredible World Of Horace Ford” with the great Reginald Rose, then learns that “On Thursday We Leave For Home.”. Cast: Albert Salmi, John Anderson, Wright King, Guy Raymond, Christine Burke, John Harmon, Hugh Sanders, and Julie Newmar.
: Martin is the one who committed the murders, and he’s later memorialized because of this fact as a wax figure, forever to live with his wax figure friends. Viewed in those terms, the episode seems almost something more. All of our TV reviews in one convenient place. Scripts for the Twilight Zone would continue being credited to Beaumont throughout its run, but all were ghostwritten. It’s meant to be another of Serling’s incisive eviscerations of the darker side of capitalism.
Instead, we follow Feathersmith back to Cliffordville, and while there are some clever ideas here, Serling can never settle upon just one. I like how he allows himself to get creeped out by the whole thing. The rest of the cast is quite good as well.