#the vise

[mariocki]

A young Christopher Lee guest stars as dastardly Larry Spence - a rising star in the world of journalism, turned blackmailer and then murderer - in The Vise: The Final Column (1.16, ABC, 1955); the episode wasn't seen in the UK until 1963, as part of ITV drama anthology Tension

[kwebtv]

From the Golden Age of Television

Season 4 Episode 2

The Vise - If This Be Murder - NBC - June 27, 1957

Crime Drama

Running Time: 30 minutes

Written by Ken Field

Produced by the Danzigers

Directed by Ernest Morris

Stars:

Donald Gray as Mark Saber

Diana Decker as Stephanie "Stevie" Ames

Patrick Holt as Inspector Brady

Basil Dignam as Oliver Moon

Michael Brill as Tony Latham

Eric Pohlmann as Turek

[culttvblog]

Denis Shaw Season: The Vise - Never Let Me Die

Denis Shaw had a role in another of the episodes of this show on the boxed set released by Network DVD which I have bought as my Christmas present.

Never Let Me Die is about Lou Duggan, a vengeful criminal who has escaped from prison and his target, another gangster called Vincent Minotti.

So far so similar to the plot of the last episode of this show Shaw was in. However this is much more of a 'bottle episode', largely taking place in Minotti's hotel suite where he is wheelchair bound and alone except for his girlfriend. We see his increasingly desperate attempts to either get away from the city after he learns that Duggan has escaped from prison or try to get another gangster to help him.

Shaw's role is as one of the other gangsters who won't help him, and he does a magnificent Italian-American gangster (in London) in an equally magnificent dressing gown. It's a perfect role for him, which he obviously relishes and hams up as far as the role can possibly be taken. He frankly tells Minotti that he has it coming to him before telling him to shuddup.

As we know the intent of this show is to show people in a vice of fate or the consequences of their actions. The intended moral in this episode is that Minotti is a bully and the events of the episode are the result of that, as is the fact that nobody will help him. I'm not sure it's that successful as a moral, because it suggests that if you're not a bully your criminal confreres will stand up for you. There is also the slight problem that the transatlantic origins of this show mean that it shows a whole lot of American gangsters in London, when we have perfectly good gangsters of our own.

The absolutely best bit is the bit where Minotti rings the airport trying to get a flight to South America the way they answer the phone in the most fraightfully far back accent which you don't hear since the Queen died.

A good role for Shaw and a competently carried out bottle episode of this show.

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Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog

[chiptrillino-art]

(ID in ALT text)

just some kuruk tests

[trashmancer]

Wanted to draw a more colorful Emmrich 🩷💚

[leona-florianova]

Dan "Cricket" Periwinkle

After years of working as a camera technician at the Golden Globes in New Reno, he decided hes had enough of dealing with the producers, "directors", "writers", other cameramen and The Stars of the studio... And left along with most of the cameras, film material and knowledge. Essentially leaving the New Reno porn industry in shambles*...At least for a while

He currently works as freelance war photographer for NCR. Its not better work but he enjoys the action.

*mercenaries were tasked to fetch him dead or preferably alive and to retrieve the cameras, but so far hes managed to dodge them.

[zoestanleyarts]

Bunny Cerebella Vise Versa is serving drinks!🍸

[clearnachopirate]

DBD True Crime AU

Charles and Edwin's bodys are burried together.

Someone is investigating Charles' death, eventually it gets enough steam that they get permission to escivate his grave... except there's two bodys there.

No DNA match, but its way older than Charles' body, from around the time another boy disappeared... so they track down the Payne family and see if they can match the DNA.

Of course, it does.

This, of course, spurrs a massive conspiracy that the school snuck the other boys remains in Charles's casket to cover up Edwin's death.

The Payne family pays for a proper burial for Edwin, but Charles, liking that he and his best mate have been together forever literally, moves the body back, much to everyone's confusion and shock.

Que a series of more bizarre ways people try to keep Edwin's bones in place, and the boys (to Niko's amusement , and Crystal's headache) keep moving them back. Sometimes they lay the bones next to eachother, sometimes they're high fiving. Charles likes wrapping his arm around Edwin's shoulder.

On one memorable occasion, Charles was so annoyed they kept being separated, he jumbled their bones around.

Now the bones are in the British museum on display with a few words about each of the boys, (there's an excerpt from one of Edwin's journals from when he was alive. There's a quote from one of the boys who attacked Charles about what a good mate he was.)

Charles and Edwin go and visit the bones sometimes, rearranging them again and again. They eventually leave the bones behind after having them hold hands.

(Edwin defacing museum property bc 'that is embarrassing, Charles. I hardly thought anyone would ever read that.' He also obviously crosses out what Charles's "friend" had to say.)

(There's one podcaster who is convinced the two met time travel style and fell in love, and they can't even be separated in death. She's practically laughed off her show, but Niko loves the show.)

[emdeerm]

*Insert that Spiderman meme*

So, we see a lot of "DComics exists in Danny's world and he knows about the Batfam".

And I raise this:

"Danny Phantom exists in the DC universe and Damian knows a lot about Danny because he was forced to watch a cartoon by Richard. Who loved the show."

So, Danny ends up in the DC universe (bad reveal or something else - your pick). He knows about this place. He is an avid fan. He is a little confused at first about what version this is (a mix. It's a mix of favourites) but otherwise he's having fun.

That is, until Robin pulls the stunt where he comes upto him and speaks to.him about things he really shouldn't know????

[mariocki]

Honor Blackman guest stars as art expert Syd Lewis in Saber of London: Deep in the Heart of Chelsea (1.3, NBC, 1957)

[mon-chef]

My favorite thing about sydcarmy fic writers on AO3 is the way everyone has collectively decided that Carmy is a CHAMPION eater. He does it often and he’s apparently very good at it.

Seriously like every fic I’ve read, has him practically begging Sydney to let him go down on her lmaooooo.

[culttvblog]

Denis Shaw Season: The Vise - The Very Silent Traveler

Content warning: this show depicts a racist stereotype of Irish people as stupid.

Spoiler warning: I give away the resolution of this episode.

I commented a few posts back that doing this series of posts about shows in which actor Denis Shaw had a role had happily introduced me to several new things. One of them is that I discovered that before it collapsed Network DVD released a bigger selection of surviving episodes of The Vise than I had previously been aware of, and thus doing this series of posts has furnished me with my Christmas present to myself.

Honestly I had watched several episodes of The Vise, and was convinced that it was American-made, an impression that it reinforced rather by the US-centric perspective of its WIkipedia page. In fact it's another show that was the result of transatlantic collaboration and wasn't a mystery series but was about individual human interest stories about people who get caught in a vice of fate. It is further confused by the fact that it changed tack completely into a straightforward mystery series, taking a detective who was already in another show, moving him to London and removing one of his arms. No surprise therefore that it's never appeared here! Oh, and that is even without the simple fact that in British English the noun for a thing you hold things in in a workshop is spelled vice not vise. This episode is one of the ones without Mark Saber detective, and thus is purely about people hurtling towards their fate that they have unwittingly set up for themselves.

To simplify the plot somewhat. basically everyone we see in this episode who isn't obviously an officer of the law, is a criminal. There are several different criminal operations depicted here who unwittingly end up interconnecting all together. To start off with we have Dicky Miller killing Arnold Brockley, his previous criminal partner, for putting him in prison. Brockley's current associates Rusty and Dillon discover the body and remove it from his address so they don't get blamed. The police are looking for Brockley so of course a manhunt starts because he's disappeared. Rusty and Dillon have the idea of pinning the death on Miller by putting the corpse on the night train from Manchester to London that Miller will be travelling on. Miller spots them and merely gets off the train, as you would.

At Birmingham (where else) Denis Shaw, playing a character called Gortz, gets on the train and shares the sleeper compartment with Brockley's corpse. Eventually he realises that the other passenger he is sharing with is dead and so he opens the door while the train is in motion and puts the body off the train.

Of course the body is found, but the vice that they all find themselves in is that of course every criminal involved in this wants to find out what on earth Gortz thinks he is playing at so they all follow him once he's in London and converge on him when he pays a visit. It turns out that Gortz is a diamond smuggler who the police have been following everywhere and so they arrest all the criminals in one fell swoop.

This keeps up a good tension by the fairly simple device of getting Gortz to carry out the bizarre act of throwing the corpse off the train rather than tell the conductor about it, thus making the viewer wonder what he's up to. As a role for Shaw, it's very much in his normal stable of villains, gangsters, and general unsavoury characters.

It's interesting to me that the cast are more international than I would have remembered for the show. Gorts has a German accent, other villains are depicted as Irish and there is even an American, who hilariously pronounces Birmingham the American way. The narrator is Australian. I see that this show was actually shown pretty much all over the English-speaking world, frequently slotted into schedules in different ways in different places, which adds to the confusion about it.

You will of course readily see that the plot has a massive hole in it that you could drive the night train through: it is intentionally complicated, which is alright, but the device of a wanted criminal throwing a corpse off a train falls flat on its face because we're encouraged to believe that the police were watching him from the moment he arrived in the country. This means that they very cleverly missed him throwing the corpse of a murdered man off a train, which is a slight failure.

The suggestion is therefore that all of these criminals got themselves into a vice despite the incompetence of the police, because frankly Gortz could have even thrown himself off the train and they wouldn't have noticed.

Nonetheless as a role for Shaw it's great because he has relatively quite a lot to do, including keeping up a conversation with a dead body, and gets to do the being suspicious act that he's so good at.

This blog is mirrored at

culttvblog.tumblr.com/archive (from September 2023) and culttvblog.substack.com (from January 2023 and where you can subscribe by email)

Archives from 2013 to September 2023 may be found at culttvblog.blogspot.com and there is an index to the tags used on the Tumblr version at https://www.tumblr.com/culttvblog/729194158177370112/this-blog

[shijiujun]

"I like you."

"W-What? I don't understand."

HE TOTALLY DOES

[ghostliteal]

yay happy twin peaks day!! this is my piece for @blue-nebraska for the wonderfulxstrange fanworks exchange hosted by @countdowntotwinpeaks !

they mentioned coop/harry, the environments of twin peaks, and no angst, and when i think of those things i think of the lure harry ties for coop :,)

[covesdadappreciation]

Liz: So, how's parenthood treating you?

MC: Good. I didn't expect this much crying though...

Liz: Don't worry, that's normal for babies

MC: The baby? I was talking about Cove

Cove, sobbing from the next room with the baby: I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

[the-primordial-archivist]

I find it adorable that Chiron probably calls people 'my dear' because apollo says it all the time and because they spent sm time together (apollo adopting chiron canon??????) it became a habit he never lost.