Okay, this one breaks the pattern. Not only is it from the 1950s, but it was in fact never screened! You can buy this on DVD but otherwise YouTube is your only man. Let's see what it's like; maybe there's a reason why it never made it to the televisions of America. Ooh look! It's Boris Karloff hosting. That's got to be a good start.
Title: “Summer Heat”
Series: The Veil
Season: 2
Year: 1958
Writer(s): Rick Vollaerts
Storyline: In the searing heat of a New York summer, Edward Page sees a woman attacked in an apartment from his window, but when he calls the police and they open up the door the apartment is entirely empty. (Trollheart’s Theory (™) *: it happened in the past and somehow he’s seeing it now, or it’s going to happen in the future). The cops dismiss it as “just the heat” but when Page gets anxious they decide to take him in.They get him committed, but the doctor in charge believes Page is sane, and that he saw something. He sends Page home.
Meanwhile, a woman rents the apartment and it’s clear that what Page saw happening is about to occur now. Of course, when the cops get the call they assume Page is the culprit. He did, after all, give a detailed description of the woman, the apartment, the scene. And he’s just returned home. But there’s one thing in his favour: when he described the apartment, it was unfurnished, empty. So how could he know what the furniture would look like, where it would be placed, what she would look like? Still, this is an old-style cop in charge, and he’s not going to let anything inconvenient like facts get in the way of putting Page away, even when his sergeant expresses serious doubts that Page could have done it.
What about fingerprints? Have they even taken any? Page’s would not be here, and that would surely help exonerate him (though he could have worn gloves I guess, but they haven’t mentioned anything about prints) and how is he supposed to have got into the apartment? They take him to the station - I thought they were arresting him but they have him going through mug shots - and then he remembers the killer had a cauliflower ear. Suddenly, the two cops believe him and they go off to check this description against known offenders. They find the guy, and Page is able to show them that the woman he murdered bit the guy before he could kill her. Rolling up his sleeve, they see the bite mark on his arm and they know they have their guy.
The cop, the doctor and Page are all left with the unsettling knowledge that somehow Page saw the crime before it was committed.
* Trollheart’s Theory is my attempt to, at any point in the episode (but ideally as early as possible) suss out how it’s going to end.
Comments: Now
this is how to write a story! And only six years after
Tales of bloody
Tomorrow! Yes, I sussed it out quickly enough but the story was well-written and presented, and within the context of the show, again, quite believable, something you could see on
The Twilight Zone or
The Outer Limits maybe. A very impressive start. Why wasn't this greenlit, eh?
Rating: A+