This a good episode of The New Twilight Zone that actually includes interesting ideas and clever stories (I note both of them are based on short stories). "Examination Day" is set in the future, year unknown but at a point where they have cake candles that light themselves, huge TV-looking "phones" that double as numerous other entertaining machines and distributed only to those of a certain age...and the Examination Day, a point where 12-year-olds must undergo a government-required IQ test. The kid is this story, Dickie Jordan (David Mendenhall) is just celebrating his own 12th birthday and is a smart kid, so is calm, even eager to take the test that he has seen friends pass easily and knows he will excel at based on his school grades. His parents (Christopher Allport and Elizabeth Norment), on the other hand, say he shouldn't have used his birthday wish on getting a good score, and while their reason includes that they believe he's capable and he should have no need to worry, it's pretty obvious they are worried. I won't give anything away in the ending, but I will say this - there's a point where we get a glimpse of what's to come as far ass why the test is such a heavy subject: that evening (or another?) his parents ask Dickie whether he'd prefer to watch TV all night. By today's standards, we'd be pleased he'd say he'd rather read and not just because there's nothing worth watching...but why would his family ask this? The flavor of what's encouraged and discouraged in the future reminded me a bit of the atmosphere from Harrison Bergenon (which I hear hasn't received a great adaptation to the screen). I only wish they could've provided an opening and closing narration to make this theme as powerful as The Obsolete Man was. I found it to be better than the short story it was based on. I haven't read the one that "A Message from Charity" was based on, but would like to since it was interesting - a 16-year-ld boy, Peter (Robert Duncan McNeill) is suffering a fever from unclean water, that has always been common in his Massachusetts hometown...but he is able to see through the eyes of a young Puritan woman suffering the same type of fever, Charity Payne, (Kerry Noonann) who also finds herself able to experience what goes on around him. They both recover, especially since it's common for that to happen in 1985, but the connection doesn't go away. Charity is curious about the sights and sounds she records of 1985 and they each enjoy each other's company, especially Peter, who has promoted grades in school enough to always have felt isolated from other students, even at the college he's been staying in one place at. Things take an unexpected turn, though, when Charity reveals some of these experiences to a friend who take her claims that the 13 colonies will breach from England as a sign of bewitchment, added to the fact that she was spared death from the fever (not so common in 1700). The two try to learn a way to save her. The ending is sad but has an interesting final moment that makes it touching. Both segments of this episode include a lot of pain but both times, through a lesson/warning that sounds like something Rod Sterling would've cooked up and entertainment, make cheerful watching as reminders that friendship, love, and wisdom do a great deal. Probably 3/4 of this has no theme, but somehow I think it all would have been approved by Sterling's crew.

Seldom seen since theatrical release in 1970, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE has become a byword for cinematic debacles of legendary proportions. Now at last on DVD in an unexpectedly handsome package, it is as unlikely to win wide audiences today as it was when first released.
Gore Vidal's 1968 bestseller was a darkly satirical statement. Most filmmakers felt that the novel's story, structure, and overall tone would not translate to film, and industry insiders were surprised when 20th Century Fox not only acquired the rights but also hired Vidal to adapt his novel to the screen. But studio executives soon had cold feet: Vidal's adaptations were repeatedly rejected and novice writer-director Michael Sarne was brought in to bring the film to the screen.
Studio executives hoped that Sarne would tap into the youth market they saw as a target for the film, but Sarne proved even more out of synch with the material than the executives themselves. Rewrite upon rewrite followed. The cast, sensing disaster, became increasingly combative. In her DVD commentary, star Raquel Welch says that she seldom had any idea of what Myra's motives were from scene to scene or even within any single scene itself, and that each person involved seemed to be making an entirely different film. In the accompanying "Back Story" documentary, Rex Reed says that MYRA BRECKINRIDGE was a film made by a bunch of people who hid in their dressing rooms while waiting for their lawyers to return their calls.
The accuracy of these comments are demonstrated by the film itself. The basics of Vidal's story are there, but not only has the story been shorn of all broader implications, it seems to have no point in and of itself. Everything runs off in multiple directions, nothing connects, and numerous scenes undercut whatever logic previous scenes might have had. And while director Sarne repeatedly states in his commentary that he wanted to make the film as pure farce, the only laughs generated are accidental.
Chief among these accidents is Mae West. It is true that West is unexpectedly well preserved in appearance and that she had lost none of her way with a one-liner--but there is no getting around the fact that she is in her seventies, and her conviction that she is the still the sexiest trick in shoe leather is extremely unsettling, to say the least. But worse, really, is the fact that West is outside her era. Her efforts to translate herself into a hip and happening persona results in one of the most embarrassing self-caricatures ever seen on film.
The remaining cast is largely wasted. Raquel Welch, a significantly underestimated actress, plays the title role of Myra very much like a Barbie doll on steroids; non-actor Rex Reed is unexpectedly effective in the role of Myron, but the entire role is essentially without point. Only John Huston and cameo players John Carradine, Jim Backus, William Hopper, and Andy Devine emerge relatively unscathed. Yes, it really is the debacle everyone involved in the film feared it would be: fast when it should be slow, slow when it should be fast, relentlessly unfunny from start to finish. It is true that director Sarne does have the occasional inspired idea--as in his use of film clips of everyone from Shirley Temple to Judy Garland to create counterpoint to the action--but by and large, whenever Sarne was presented with a choice of how to do something he seems to have made the wrong one.
The how and why of that is made clear in Sarne's audio commentary. Sarne did not like the novel or, for that matter, the subject matter in general. He did not want to write the screenplay, but he needed the money; he emphatically did not want to direct the film, but he need the money. He makes it very clear that he disliked author Gore Vidal and Rex Reed (at one point he flatly states that Reed "is not a nice person"), and to this day he considers that Vidal and Reed worked in tandem to sabotage the film because he refused to play into their 'homosexual agenda'--which, when you come right down to it, seems to have been their desire that Sarne actually film Vidal's novel rather than his own weirdly imagined take-off on it.
Although he spends a fair amount of commentary time stating that the film is widely liked by the gay community, Sarne never quite seems to understand that the appeal of the film for a gay audience arises from his ridiculously inaccurate depiction of homosexual people. When taken in tandem with the film itself, Sarne emerges as more than a little homophobic--and quite frankly the single worst choice of writers and directors that could have been made for this project.
In addition to the Sarne and Welch commentaries and the making-of documentary, the DVD release includes several trailers and two versions of the film: a "theatrical release" version and a "restored" version. The only difference between the two is that the final scene in the "restored" version has been printed to black and white. The edits made before the film went into general release have not been restored, but the documentary details what they were. The widescreen transfers of both are remarkably good and the sound is quite fine. But to end where I began, this is indeed a film that will most interest film historians, movie buffs, and cult movie fans. I give it three out of five stars for their sake alone, but everyone else should pass it by.
Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer