drystyx — 12 years ago(January 23, 2014 07:58 AM)

Directed by Ida Lupino, and written by Serling, it should have been one of the classic episodes, as these two were noted for works that opposed the very self righteousness and hypocrisy that this episode lauded.
It is a strange piece. An old rich man is dying, and his last wish, his last insane obsession, is to play God with the lives of four relatives he detests. Maybe they are as bad as he says, but all we really see is his insane hypocrisy in a desire to play God. Instead of cutting them out of his will, he instead lures them in to a Hell he designs for them.
One of the sickest things about this episode is that supposedly objective characters are written into the piece to sanction the hateful old man's design.
You can't be a Christian and rate this over 1/10. It looks like Rod Serling either had a vendetta against four people he depicted here, or a vendetta against Christianity. It's hard to see why Ida chose to direct this hateful piece, because it's totally against her usual works in which she seems to be against judgmental behavior and lynch mob mentality.
The other possibility is that Rod and Ida made this a special piece, for the audience to judge themselves. Ironically, in order to praise this piece of hate, you would have to be the very "hate" that you condemned.
This is the ultimate control freak's episode, praising the ultimate control freak. The irony of it is that those who would enjoy this are the very personalities of the four people who are supposed to be so filled with hate. However, we only see hate from the old man. He has a "self fulfilling prophecy" in which he will justify his condemnation of whomever he pleases. We get the impression these four people have always been pushed into a corner by him, and always persecuted by him. He has his mind set, and he gets pleasure out of playing God and making accusations. Are the four greedy? Are they cruel? Are they vain? We only see those attributes out of those who would guffaw and cheer the old man who plays God.
They really dropped the ball on this one. Almost all of what Rod wrote, and almost all of what Ida directed, were potential classics, but this one looked like they were actually making an inside joke against the very people who would enjoy being control freaks.
It doesn't justify the hate of this piece of garbage. Totally sick, for totally sick minds. 1/10
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time