Title: “The Chaser”
Original transmission date: April 13 1960
Written by: John Henry Collier (teleplay by Robert Presnell Jr.)
Directed by: Douglas Heyes
Starring: George Grizzard as Roger Shackleforth
John McIntire as Professor A. Daemon
Patricia Barry as Leila
J. Pat O'Malley as Homburg
Marjorie Bennett as Old Woman
Barbara Perry as Blonde Woman
Rusty Wescoatt as Tall Man
Duane Grey as Bartender
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Love, desperation, magic, be careful what you wish for
Parodied? I would imagine so, though no examples spring to mind.
Rating: A
Serling's opening monologue
Mr. Roger Shackelforth. Age: youthful twenties. Occupation: being in love. Not just in love, but madly, passionately, illogically, miserably, all-consumingly in love - with a young woman named Leila, who has a vague recollection of his face and even less than a passing interest. In a moment, you'll see a switch, because Mr. Roger Shackelforth, the young gentleman so much in love, will take a short, but very meaningful journey into the Twilight Zone.
A man who is madly in love with a woman who has not the faintest interest in him is given a card, told to go see a man who will sort out all his problems. Dubious, but desperate, he goes to see the man, and finds himself in what appears to be a library, where he is told the man can give him a bottle which will make the woman, Leela, fall helplessly in love with him. He warns Roger that if anyone gets hurt it will be him, and seems to have gone through this plenty of times before, knowing the outcome. He asks if Roger would like to purchase some “glove cleaner”, a euphemism, it would appear, for poison, but Roger is blissfully unaware what he means.
The potion works, all too well. Leela falls so totally in love with him that she becomes cloying, clinging, driving him mad. She won’t leave him alone, she wants to do everything for him; she is virtually his willing slave. Eventually he goes back to the shop and after some farting around he buys the glove cleaner. The professor tells him it is odourless, tasteless, painless and undetectable, but he must use it immediately, and he must use it all, as if he falters just once he will never have the courage to use it again. It costs a thousand dollars (whereas he took only a single dollar for the love potion), but at this point Roger is desperate in a whole new way, a way he had never expected to be. He used to be desperate to have Leela’s love, now he’s desperate to get out from under its strangling, suffocating influence.
At home, he’s all ready to do the deed when Leela drops her bombshell - she’s pregnant. In shock, he drops both glasses, and his chance is gone forever.
Serling's closing monologue
Mr. Roger Shackelforth, who has discovered at this late date that love can be as sticky as a vat of molasses, as unpalatable as a hunk of spoiled yeast, and as all-consuming as a six-alarm fire in a bamboo and canvas tent. Case history of a lover boy, who should never have entered the Twilight Zone.
The Resolution
Clever. It could have gone plenty of ways - Roger getting the glasses mixed up and drinking from the wrong one, she having visited the professor herself and having her own potion, something as simple as him being seized by a sneezing fit and spilling the champagne. But at the end, after he has dropped the glasses he admits he could never have done it; he truly is in love with Leela, even this kind of all-consuming, exhausting love.
The Moral
Love doesn’t necessarily make the world go round, or as Brian May sang, too much love will kill you.
Themes
Well there could only be one major one, couldn’t there, and love frames the theme of many a Twilight Zone episode. Here, it’s originally unrequited, then achieved by nefarious means, then no longer wanted, and finally something the guy is stuck with. Shows how too much of any good thing is never wise, and how easily love can turn to hate (although in fairness Roger just gets really stressed out and annoyed at Leela’s devotion, he never says he hates her). Obsession would be another, at least at the start; the desperate mission, the seemingly unattainable goal, to win Leela, and then remorse, when everything works out, but not as he had expected.
And magic. Magic is here too. This episode could not work without magic - or maybe it’s science, though if someone ever came up with the proper equation to distill love into a bottle he’d be a millionaire, and not hanging out in some dingy, dusty bookstore.
And isn't that...?
George Cooper Grizzard Jr (1928 - 2007)
Had roles in
Hawaii 5-0, The Golden Girls, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Spenser: For Hire, The Cosby Show and
Law and Order, among others.
John Herrick McIntire (1907 - 1991)
In addition to being in films like
Herbie Rides Again, Rooster Cogburn, Psycho and
The Incredible Hulk, he was in
Diff’rent Stokes and also the lead in
The Virginian and
Wagon Train. Hmm.
Both roles came to him on the sudden deaths of the previous two leads. Just sayin’...
Questions, and sometimes, Answers
Okay, this is New York. When the guy in the telephone kiosk is constantly making calls and there’s an impatient queue behind him, you don’t think someone is going to haul him out? They all just stand there, waiting, as he makes call after call, with no intention of ever leaving the booth? I repeat: this is New York.
Iconic?
No. Stories about love potions - and, to some smaller extent but related to this, genii - are as old as time itself. You’ll find them in the writings of Arabic storytellers in
the 1001 Nights, or
Arabian Nights. This is an interesting little twist on the theme, but I don’t think it led to a slew of copies and could not claim to be the wellspring of this idea.
Those clever little touches
A little on the nose, perhaps, but the nameplate on the door says Professor A. Daemon. Hey, at least the number over the door isn’t 666!
Personal Notes
I have to be honest, I bloody hate both main characters here. Leela is horrible as the stuck-up, haughty, thoughtless and heartless woman as Roger pursues her, treating him like a puppy she can kick, and when she falls under his spell she’s twice as annoying. Roger is an idiot, let’s be honest. He doesn’t get the hint about the glove cleaner, he looks sappily at the next guy into the booth as he claims he has to keep calling his “girl”, he doesn't offer an apology. He’s just fresh-faced and very very annoying.