Trollheart

Title: “Escape Clause”
Original transmission date: November 6 1959
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Mitchell Leisen
Starring: David Wayne as Walter Bedeker
Thomas Gomez as Mr. Cadwallader
Virginia Christine as Ethel Bedeker
Dick Wilson as insurance man #1 (Jack)
Joe Flynn as insurance man #2 (Steve)
Wendell Holmes as Bedeker's lawyer
Raymond Bailey as Bedeker's doctor

Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Greed and hubris; eternal life; the devil; trickery
Parodied? Not to my knowledge, no
Rating: A

Serling’s opening monologue

You're about to meet a hypochondriac. Witness Mr. Walter Bedeker age forty-four. Afraid of the following: death, disease, other people, germs, draft, and everything else. He has one interest in life and that's Walter Bedeker. One preoccupation, the life and well-being of Walter Bedeker. One abiding concern about society, that if Walter Bedeker should die how will it survive without him?

Walter Bedecker is a sick man. In his mind only. He thinks/wishes he is dying, but in reality he’s perfectly healthy, as several - mostly unnecessary - visits from the doctor have shown. He’s basically a hypochondriac who worries about every ache and pain, every sneeze and sniffle, and thinks he has everything from measles and whooping cough to bubonic plague. He is, in short, a pain in the arse. His is very rude to and unappreciative of his long-suffering wife, who leaves him to rest after a particularly snippy argument.

Suddenly, a man appears in the bedroom. He introduces himself as Cadwallader, and offers Bedecker a bargain: immortality and invulnerability in exchange for his soul. Cadwallader is of course the Devil, and Bedecker realises this, but the deal is too sweet, and once he has made some adjustments (such as never ageing) Cadwallader shows him his escape clause, which allows him, if he ever gets tired of living, to call the Father of Lies to release him, whereupon, of course, his soul becomes the property of Hell. Happy with the contract, Bedecker signs.

He immediately tries out his powers, and begins to use them for scamming every insurance company he can: jumping in front of trains, buses, running into burning buildings and claiming for damages. But soon it becomes apparent the novelty is wearing off. When you can’t be hurt, can’t die, where’s the thrill in life? Even the least of us get the tiniest frisson from, say, walking down a deserted street at night or crossing against traffic. When the possibility, however remote, exists that you might hurt or even kill yourself, there’s interest, there’s danger, there’s excitement.

There’s fear.

But not for our Walter. Oh no. Everything bores him now, and once again he’s moaning. But he’s still the same selfish, heartless scumbag he was before the deal. When he accidentally knocks his wife off the roof of their apartment building and she falls to her death, he doesn’t even try to save her, even though he could easily. He just shrugs, probably envies her the final rush, the terror, the disbelief as her young life comes to an end. Eventually he considers turning himself in, so that he can try out the electric chair, and so he does. Unfortunately for him, his guilty verdict does not bring in a sentence of death, but life imprisonment. And back in 1959, life meant life! With no option left, he calls up Cadwallader and exercises his escape clause, suffering and dying from a heart attack.

Serling’s closing monologue

There's a saying, "Every man is put on Earth condemned to die, time and method of execution unknown." Perhaps this is as it should be. Case in point: Walter Bedeker, lately deceased. A little man with such a yen to live. Beaten by the devil, by his own boredom, and by the scheme of things in this, the Twilight Zone.


The Resolution

Clever. I like it. I couldn’t see it myself, but yes, eternity spent behind bars would have been a fitting end for this loser. It’s kind of a pity that the Devil didn’t renege on the contract and leave him there, or maybe say the decision might be tied up in committee or appeals procedure for a few hundred years. But well handled, yes.

The Moral

As is stated in, I think, another episode, if you seek immortality, you’re going to have to live with that for the rest of your life.

Questions, and sometimes, Answers

When the doctor leaves Bedecker’s bedroom and his wife follows the doctor out, why does she leave Bedecker’s bedroom door open, only for him to call after her and whine he’s cold? Why not close it, knowing he was going to raise a fuss, and particularly if she believes - incorrectly - that her husband is sick?

Oops!

Being the nitpicker I am, here’s where I’ll point out any errors I find in episodes.

It’s being a prick I know but who cares? The actor playing Bedecker, David Wayne, gets one line wrong when he compares man’s life to that of the world. Instead of saying microscopic he says microscropic. There: I told you I was a bastard, didn’t I?

I would also classify Cadwallader’s contention that “five or ten thousand years is not much; the world will go on ad infinitum” as inaccurate and wrong. The world will not go on forever. In a matter of a few billion years the sun will cool and go out and die, and long before that the Earth will be a barren rock. Had he said “life will go on” or “man will go on”, then maybe: Man may very well escape into space before his home planet dies, but that insignificant ball of mud spinning in the cosmos will not be spinning till the end of time, far from it.

You’d also have to point to the fact that, on Cadwallader’s departure, the contract having been signed and stamped, Bedecker says “Everything seems to be in order” but does not bother to read the contract. How does he know everything is in order?


Personal notes

Stories about deals with the Devil are hardly new. You can go back hundreds of years for tales of souls exchanged for money, power, women, or anything else, so even in 1959 the challenge would have been to put a twist on a very old story. Serling manages better than he doesn’t, casting a fat, jolly old man in the role (which he will do again) and making him hardly scary, and even quite generous in the terms of the contract he offers Bedecker. Of course, as in all such stories, the moral is “if you’re going to sup with the Devil use a long spoon”, for his ways are wily and he knows all the tricks, and like stories of wishes granted by genii, they never turn out well.

It’s a decent twist, as referred to above, and I also like when Bedecker asks Cadwallader how he got into his room the Devil replies that he has always been there, intimating that evil has been in the nasty hypochondriac’s heart for a very long time, just waiting for the right time to show itself and make its move. I like, too, how Bedecker, thinking he is so smart and has covered all his bases, still gets tricked into giving up immortality, and after a very short time too. He could have used his power for good - going into burning buildings, for example, not for the insurance money but to save people - and he might have not had to put himself in the position he ended up in, but he didn’t think along those lines.

It’s also poetic justice how he isn’t forced or tricked into jail. He smugly and arrogantly places himself in that position, believing nothing can harm him, but unaware that his under-appreciated lawyer is working hard to have his sentence commuted, the worst possible outcome for him. Of course, given that he is invulnerable, I suppose you could say he could punch his way out of the cell without damaging his hands, and just go on his way, but he would be a fugitive.

Forever.

Themes

On the face of it, a comedic episode but with a dark side (Bedecker’s wife does after all die, an innocent) with a very serious and timeless message: no matter what you do, you can’t outsmart the devil. Stories of immortality are as old as, well, the idea of immortality, and everyone in them thinks he can cheat the devil, or whoever is offering eternal life. They’re always wrong. Just ask Dr. Faust. Greed is a recurring theme in many episodes as the series goes on; people trying to get all they can out of life regardless of what it costs them or others. And of course man;s hubris always leads him down a dark and slippery path, running faster and faster down those slick stairs till he loses his balance and falls.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018