LIGHTS OUT - DEAD MAN'S COAT {1951}

THE ORIGINAL RADIO SERIES "LIGHTS OUT, EVERYBODY" BY ARCH OBOLER IS A CLASSIC WITH MANY, MANY EXCELLENT EPISODES TO HEAR. 

The late 40's-early 50's TV show LIGHTS OUT is not so stellar featuring many inherent difficulties of which early "recorded live" TV shows fell afoul.  So it might be preferable to have some poor slob watch a lot of episodes so they could steer you towards the ones that hold up as entertaining today.  You're welcome.  This particular episode entitled "DEAD MAN'S COAT" originally aired on May 14th, 1951.  It takes as its premise an old legend that (we are told) if you dig up a dead man's coffin and put on the corpse's coat, you will gain the power of invisibility.  This is actually info-dumped rather nicely to the audience by having Frank Gallop's disembodied head intro the show (as he always did) but the camera then pulls back and we see it on the television set belonging to nasty ole rich guy Mr. Francis (played with real nastiness by William Post Jr.).  Francis is actually watching the LIGHTS OUT programme on his TV set!  Talk about pre-pre-PRE-meta!  Francis asks his long-put-upon butler Gregory (the incomparable Basil Rathbone) if he thinks that old legend is bullshit and Gregory's not too sure.  Naturally, Francis decides to dig up a recently dead acquaintance (actually to make GREGORY do all the manual digging) and try out the coat.  Because well what horrible things could Francis do to all his enemies if he was invisible!  Gregory is plainly terrified at the prospect but does as he's told.  Francis dons the coat and promptly disappears into invisibility.  Don't worry; he still makes Gregory fill in the grave.  And yes, that is a stray stagehand who gets caught on camera during the digging of the grave scene; hilariously right after a line reading that there's no one around for miles!  Mr. Francis next decides to force Gregory to visit another of his foes Mr. Hamilton (Norman Rose) in the man's office; tagging along in an invisible state in order to kill the man.  Francis plans to continue on his 'reign of terror' (to quote another Invisible Man) but things don't turn out exactly as planned.

"DEAD MAN'S COAT" still suffers from the buuilt-in problems with early television in that there appears to be very little rehearsal time before the actors went live.  Rathbone particularly seems to be having some pauses while he waits to deliver his lines; however, Basil is still wonderfully sympathetic in the role and brings all his talent to it.  This brings us to William Post Jr. who, as I've said, is really going for the 'scumbag nasty bastard' award.  Several times he manhandles Rathbone so realistically that I actually cringed a couple times!  Post is really going for it and Rathbone really sells the physical abuse.  Post is an actor I'm not really familiar with but he appeared in supporting movie roles (starting with his first role in the Charlie Chan movie THE BLACK CAMEL as well as SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON alongside Basil himself).  Around the time of this LIGHTS OUT episode, Post appears to have segued into television work for the rest of his career.  Post's performance here isn't of the 'mustache-twirling villain' variety but realistically nasty.  Whatever just desserts Mr. Francis receives at the end of this episode, is too good for him! While no classic, this episode of LIGHTS OUT is most certainly one of the best of them and, if you can overlook the primitiveness of the production, there are quite a few things to enjoy here!