The Twilight Zone - The Lateness of the Hour

Although once again shot on that ill-advised videotape, I do think The Lateness of the Hour is damn good Twilight Zone. Good twist at the end, too. A genius robotics inventor and his well-tended-to wife hole themselves comfortably in their manor with their automaton domestic servants. The maid, cook, butler, and handyman were all made with a purpose, given life, and they obey as intended while their daughter, Jana, has become frustrated with being a prisoner in her own home. She’s tired of watching her parents being served and looked after for every single need and want. Robots that function only to please and dedicate themselves to their masters: they become this source of misery for Jana who considers them a blight she wants her father to be rid of. Complaints and cries for their absence are met with resistance because her parents so enjoy their presence. They have become dependent of the servants, and this unsettles Jana, just driving her mad.

I do believe there will be some viewers critical of Jana’s unyielding bitching and griping. But I think those who see how she feels from the perspective of someone involuntarily isolated from a society she so desires to associate (her father fled society to his domicile because he found the outside world not to his liking and his wife has become totally accustomed to life inside the manor) might consider her outcry warranted. There is the question of Jana just leaving. Jana just walking right out of that door despite her parents’ protest could have been her option, right? And maybe that is a question worth asking. Why didn’t she just leave? Even if she was “built not born”, given memories from childhood instead of actually having a past as a kid, I didn’t see anything that would stop her from just walking right out that door into the world. Unless, perhaps, in her programming that wasn’t allowed. I could see that as a reasonable excuse for her not leaving the manor. Just the same the point was her not leaving. Jana’s protestation of being trapped in the manor and making demands that the servants be destroyed and removed from her presence was the point so that once all of that was done she’d be left all by herself with the parents, disappointed and crestfallen that it would come to that. John Hoyt fascinated me with his performance, how he takes a lot of flack and shit from Inger Stevens’ Jana, portraying Dr. Loren with this rather alarming calm and ease. No matter how Stevens’ cadence raised, her eyes bulged, and her mouth bellowed, Dr. Loren never wavered in his resolve. Jana’s mother (Irene Tedrow) likes her daily shoulder massages thanks to the soothing fingers of maidservant, Nelda (Mary Gregory). Her moaning seemed quite eroticized, just unnerving Jana to no end. They were certainly eye-raising in how they filled the room, even when Mrs. Loren wasn’t in picture. Her face fixed in orgasmic thrill, the voice certifying that Dr. Loren built Nelda quite well for serving as a pleasing maid. It surprised me.

I’ll be honest: Jana never is satisfied. She’s consistently miserable and never shuts up. When addressing the servant robots, Jana continuously downgrades and belittles them. Despite Dr. Loren providing each servant with memories and a will to live and serve, Jana considers them a calloused sore in the ass of her everyday life. Just seeing them enrages her. The parents try to just enjoy what they have, fine with their closed-in existence, but not Jana. No, not Jana. She just won’t give in. She wants a “normal life”, but Dr. Loren’s revelation regarding her changes everything. What Dr. Loren and Mrs. Loren decide once Jana learns of how she’s “not a real girl” makes for quite a conclusion. It was an available option the entire time, though. Destroying the servants and Jana learning of the truth regarding her own existence, I did ask myself why Dr. Loren and his wife just didn’t come to terms with their “daughter” not “panning out” as they had hoped when creating her. Why destroy the other servants only to not long after shift Jana’s role in their life? It was something I have mulled over.

Stevens’ two TZ appearances sure are quite different…couldn’t be more different. The classic The Hitch-Hiker is more nuanced and subtle while The Lateness of the Hour is full-bore dramatic and noised. Jana is vocal, volatile, and passionate in her stance on living life, not wasting away. I thought it was a hell of a performance. I liked Hoyt’s polar opposite performance to Jana in his robots genius. I like how he’s controlled, unemotional, and practically inert. His wife is just oblivious to Jana’s raving, barely responding to her ranting. It was as if Mrs. Loren could hardly work up the effort to meet the challenge of engaging in dialogue with Jana. I thought the dynamic was fascinating. And how the servants move and behave really were quite robotic…I found them quite creepy. One great moment has Jana pushing a maid down the stairs with her rising up undamaged with a smile on her face! The servants scold Jana for her treatment of her parents but she isn’t budging from behind her pulpit. The independence provided to Jana as opposed to her "kindred", the servants, and the loss of that with her rendered just like them is quite ironic...it is a hell of an ending.