Logan Field | Through the Shattered Lens

This episode opens with Mike Kovac (Charles Bronson) visiting an illegal gambling den operated by Walter Bradman (Dennis Patrick). Kovac takes a picture of Bradman with a small camera he’s placed inside of a cigarette lighter. You see, an honest lawyer named John Payson (Logan Field) is running for governor on a platform of shutting down these types of criminal establishments, and Kovac thought this might make for an interesting story in the current political environment. But Bradman catches him taking the picture, and just when it looks like he might forcibly take the camera and film from Kovac, Bradman decides to let him go. It seems that Bradman has bigger plans for Kovac as he happens to know that Kovac is going to the Payson’s household to take family pictures the very next day. Bradman has an inside person in the Payson household, his girlfriend Miss Hollis (Phyllis Avery), and he plans to steal the negatives. They will then use Miss Hollis’ ex-con dad Clyde Bosser (Addison Richards) to create fake composite pictures that pretend to show Payson in the gambling den and hanging out with women other than his wife. He’s hoping that a little blackmail might get Payson off his back, but as you might imagine with Mike Kovac on the case, the plan falls apart and nobody is safe!

“Turntable” is a solid episode of MAN WITH A CAMERA. There are several reasons I enjoyed it. The presence of Charles Bronson in the lead is always at the top of the list. His down-to-earth charisma anchors the series and this episode in such a way that there’s always something worth watching on screen. He does get to beat up a couple of guys and that’s very fun for me. Dennis Patrick is good as the den boss. He’s very confident and cocky until his plan starts falling apart. Once he begins to panic, things really start to get interesting. The story is also intriguing, as it deals with doctoring photos for nefarious purposes, a novel concept in 1958, but something that’s all too common these days. The composite pictures created as part of this episode are actually kind of funny to look at, and it makes you wonder how some of them could have fooled anyone! I’ve mentioned before that I like episodes where Kovac’s dad Anton (Ludwig Stossel) has an important part. In this episode, he helps his son put together an important piece of the puzzle so I liked that. On the negative side, I didn’t like the political angle. John Payson’s gubernatorial candidate is made to look like an angel, and we all know how that usually works out in the political arena. Honestly, I’m sick of politics in general, and I like to watch TV and movies to get away from that kind of stuff.

Overall, “Turntable” is a solid episode with an intriguing story, a few good performances, and a scene that actually caught me by surprise. That doesn’t happen very often!

First aired on television in 1970, The Brotherhood of the Bell tells the story of Andrew Patterson (Glenn Ford).

Andrew Patterson is a widely respected economics professor. He is an influential academic, one who has a nice house, a beautiful wife (Rosemary Forsyth), and a father-in-law (Maurice Evans) who owns a very successful business. Patterson is also a member the Brotherhood of the Bell, a secret society made up of successful men who all graduated from the prestigious College of St. George in San Francisco. Patterson has been a member of the society for 22 years and he’s never really taken it that seriously. He thinks of it as just being a collection of influential men who enjoy getting together and discussing their vision for the world.

That all changes when the man who brought Andrew to the Society, Chad Harmon (Dean Jagger), gives Andrew an assignment. The Society wants him to deliver an envelope to his friend, Dr. Konstantin Horvathy (Eduard Franz). Horvathy is up for a deanship that another member of the Society desires for himself. Inside the envelope is damaging information that the Society has gathered about the people who helped Horvathy defect to the United States, information that will be made public unless Horvathy withdraws as a candidate. Reluctantly, Andrew shows Horvathy the envelope. Horvathy responds by committing suicide.

Stricken with guilt, Andrew decides to expose the existence of the Society but he discovers that won’t be easy. Almost overnight, Andrew’s perfect life starts to collapse. He loses his job. The IRS launches an investigation of his father (Will Geer). As Chad explains it, the Society is responsible for everything that Andrew has and, therefore, the Society can take everything away. When Andrew goes public, he’s dismissed as just being paranoid and soon, Andrew truly is paranoid. With his marriage in ruins, Andrew goes on a talk show and can only watch helplessly as his claims are dismissed by the host (William Conrad) and as the audience argues about whether or not the Society is a white plot, a communist plot, a Jewish plot, a Catholic plot, or a government plot. Even the people who believe Andrew are too busy fighting amongst themselves to provide any help for him or to stand up to the unified power of the Brotherhood. The host repeatedly rings a bell during the show, the better to mock everyone’s fears. The film makes a good point. Crazed theorists are often a conspiracy’s best friend.

An intelligently written and well-acted film, The Brotherhood of the Bell‘s main strength is the direction of Paul Wendkos. The lighting gets darker and the camera angles become increasingly more skewed as Andrew’s paranoia grows. In fact, Wendkos does such a good job of visualizing Andrew’s deteriorating mental state that it’s easy to wonder if maybe everyone is right and all of this really is just happening in Andrew’s head. Though the film ends on a slightly triumphant note, it’s hard not to feel that it’s a temporary victory at best. The Brotherhood of the Bell (which I imagine was based on Yales’s Skull and Crossbones) will always be there.

14 Days of Paranoia: