03.10.10 | Dr. Strangefilm | From the Files of Dr. Strangefilm...Print this Post
In the late 1940s and early '50s the United States was under attack. Not by tanks or planes, but by a much more insidious enemy, one that worked its way across America, from large cities to small hamlets. Its mission was to infiltrate all aspects of society--home, school, tavern, and even church--and slowly gain control of the will of the people before they were aware of the danger. This invasion didn't go without notice, however, and Hollywood set out to warn the populace of this new menace, even as some claimed that the filmmakers themselves had a hand in its spread.
The menace I'm talking about was, of course, television. What, did you think I meant Communism? Well, I can see, in re-reading the previous paragraph, how one might have come to that conclusion. But while Red Scare-era Tinseltown did try to reveal the perils of global Marxist domination--and appease Washington--through such efforts as My Son John, I Was a Communist for the F.B.I., and the future case file Invasion U.S.A. (no, not the Chuck Norris one), the movie moguls saw the rise of TV as a bigger threat, at least to their pocketbooks. Fortunately, today's case is a perfect example of cinematic synchronicity, because the two terrors of the McCarthy era became one in the form of...the Twonky!
I know what you're thinking: What the heck is a Twonky? Well, The Twonky is a 1953 Unted Artists sci-fi/comedy adapted from a short story and directed by Arch Oboler, creator of the classic radio suspense series Lights Out. It also happens to be a mysterious entity from a high-tech, totalitarian society that comes back in time, enters the home of a college philosophy professor, and begins to take over his life. Hans Conried (best known to Baby Boomers as the crazed piano teacher in The 5.000 Fingers of Dr. T, Make Room for Daddy's Uncle Tonoose, and the voices of Captain Hook in Disney's Peter Pan and Dudley-Do-Right arch foe Snidely Whiplash) stars as the teacher who's less than thrilled with the present wife Janet Warren gives him to keep him company while she's away: a 16-inch Admiral console TV complete with rabbit ear antennae.
Conried quickly discovers that this isn't your average Admiral when the set, still unplugged, lights his cigarettes and pipe, duplicates a five-dollar bill so he can can pay the deliveryman, and gallops into the kitchen on its little wooden legs to do the dishes and stop him from drinking coffee (a soda's okay, though, so apparently there is caffeine as well as tobacco in the future). It's after a demonstration of this multimedia manservant that Conried's colleague, school football coach Billy Lynn, declares he's the proud owner of a Twonky, which Lynn helpfully defines as "something you don't know what it is"...much like this movie so far.
The device's intrusions into the professor's life become more marked; It switches the Mozart record he was listening to for marching music and stops him from writing a lecture on individualism in the arts. When some of Lynn's football players try to destroy the set and are zapped with a ray that wipes its victims minds (and leaves them saying "I have no complaints"), he and Conried realize that it comes "from our world, far in the future," where every household "has a Twonky to carry out the dictates of the super-state" and "to regulate every thought." Conried doesn't like his "God-given right to be wrong" being threatened like that, and sets out to get rid of, or destroy, the mechanical monster. As Linda Hamilton could have told him, that's easier said than done.
Hollywood's early disdain for TV was spotlighted in several fine comedies of the era, among them Champagne for Caesar with Ronald Colman and Vincent Price and the underrated cowboy hero send-up Callaway Went Thataway, starring Howard Keel and Fred MacMurray. The movie studios' paranoia seemed to reach a high point, though, with The Twonky. The heavy-handed satire from scripter/director Oboler--who must have seen the new medium as a danger to his Lights Out livelihood, since in the original story the Twonky was a radio receiver--drives home its anti-totalitarianism message without an iota of subtlety (the story might have made an interesting Twilight Zone episode, especially with Rod Serling biting the hand that fed him). Also lacking in nuance is Conried's turn as the harried educator saddled with a robotic guardian; his performance seems like a warm-up for his cartoon voicework, and the low-budget film's supporting cast of never-were's and radio veterans must have owed Oboler a favor. One thing that will stay with you, though, are the scenes of the title terror tromping through the house and up the stairs on its spindly limbs. It's a (unintentionally?) goofy image that apparently unnerved people who saw the film as children.
As goofy and ham-handed as it is, The Townky is a fascinating--and mercifully brief--little curio to watch, although it sadly has yet to receive an authorized home video release. Should it, in the meantime, play on TCM or some other cable channel, be sure to sit down in front of your high-definition, stereophonic sound, remote control, Wii- and Internet-connected television and ask yourself...how could anyone in 1953 have possibly imgained that technology would someday rule our lives?
If the Twonky could clean the cat's litter pan, we just might set aside our fears and consider it...