Trollheart

Title: “A Nice Place to Visit”
Original transmission date: April 15 1960
Written by: Charles Beaumont
Directed by: John Brahm
Starring: Larry Blyden as Henry Francis "Rocky" Valentine
Sebastian Cabot as Mr. Pip


Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Retribution, gambling, overindulgence, despair, the afterlife
Parodied? Frequently
Rating: A+

Serling's opening monologue

Portrait of a man at work, the only work he's ever done, the only work he knows. His name is Henry Francis Valentine, but he calls himself "Rocky", because that's the way his life has been – rocky and perilous and uphill at a dead run all the way. He's tired now, tired of running or wanting, of waiting for the breaks that come to others but never to him, never to Rocky Valentine. A scared, angry little man. He thinks it's all over now but he's wrong. For Rocky Valentine, it's just the beginning.

A thief is at work, when he hears the police coming and legs it but is shot as he tries to make his escape. Waking up, he beholds a man in white who tells him he is his guide, and conducts him to a sumptuous apartment, which he tells him is his. Not only that, but clothes, food, music, money - everything he wants, and later women too. It seems everything is his for the asking, all his needs have been provided for. Suspicious, he demands to know what he has to do for all this, and is told by his guide, Pip, nothing: nothing at all. When he loses his rag and shoots Pip, and the bullet has no effect, he begins to realise something is wrong.

Pip tells him he is dead, and Valentine concludes he is in Heaven, suddenly much more disposed to believe everything that’s happening to him. But as he goes gambling, and wins every time, the shine begins to wear off this paradise he’s found himself in. The fact that he can’t have any company - can’t meet any of his old gang, as he’s told this place has been created specifically for him - further removes the gloss. And then he starts wondering how could someone like him get into Heaven? He reckons there must be some good deed he performed that somehow made up for all the bad things his life has consisted of, but for the life of him he can’t think what that could be. When was he ever kind or patient or considerate? When was he tolerant or gentle or loving? When did he ever do one good thing in his whole miserable, misbegotten life?

As he says himself, if there’s no thrill, no chance of losing, where’s the point? Pip tries to convince him - perhaps if he sets it up so he can lose occasionally? No, says Valentine, that’s no good. He would know. Well, how about going back to what he was best at in life? How about knocking off a bank? Yeah, that would be great, except… there’s no chance he could get caught, so again where’s the thrill, he moans? How could he have got here? What kind of mistake did those in power make to have sent him to Heaven?

Ah, but…

Pip begins to laugh maliciously. What ever gave Valentine the idea that this was Heaven?



Serling's closing monologue

A scared, angry little man who never got a break. Now he has everything he's ever wanted – and he's going to have to live with it for eternity – in The Twilight Zone.

The Resolution

Very clever. I don’t recall if I sussed it the first time, but your suspicions do tend to kick in when Valentine keeps winning. What worse kind of Hell could there be, where boredom is your constant companion, where a gambler always wins, a singer always goes to the top of the charts, an actress always lands the star role? To quote Kirk, man must claw and struggle for every inch, and if there’s no struggle, if everything is handed to you, well, that could be Hell.

The Moral

Be careful what you wish for; Hell ain’t always what it seems

Themes

Gambling plays a big role here. Rocky Valentine’s pathetic life has been one gamble after another, if not at the gaming tables (one would assume, while he was alive, those of a seedier, less salubrious order than the ones he now frequents) then every time he did a job, risking being taken, arrested, shot. When he goes to “Heaven” gambling is one of his only loves, and he revels in it, though quickly finds out that a gamble with no risk is no gamble at all. The thrill comes from the possibility, even the probability, that you might lose. Someone once told me gamblers don’t play to win, they play to lose. But what if you can’t lose?

Retribution of course is here too. A fitting punishment for a life badly led, a mean, miserable existence spent preying on others, living off the labour and efforts of others, and caring for nobody but himself. Retribution is meted out at the barrel of a police revolver, but continues in the afterlife, where Valentine learns a hard lesson about the dangers of not doing good in your life. There’s also indulgence, as Valentine sticks his nose in the trough and snorts and gulps his fill, and disillusionment, as he begins to weary of the place.


Iconic?

This storyline would be repeated, but perhaps not this exact outcome. One of the best examples of it I remember was in the series Angel, where the title character was to be taken to Hell via a lift, and when the lift doors opened, he was back on Earth. The symbolism as clear as could be. Hell=Earth.

The Times they are a Changin’

Even for the time it was recorded, I feel Valentine’s language, syntax and slang are from a previous era. He uses words like “broad” and “dame”, which to me seem more to belong in the late forties and early fifties, and he calls Pip “Fats”, which, while used as a sort of not-too-demeaning descriptor, was I think pretty phased out by the sixties. But I’m no expert: he comes across to me as drawing more on the likes of gangsters like Capone and Siegal, and actors like Cagney and Bogart, about a decade or so behind.

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