The Twilight Zone - A Most Unusual Camera

For me, A Most Unusual Camera takes its place right next to the likes of Black Leather Jackets and Caesar and Me. I think the ending is so lousy and ridiculous (how can so many people wind up going out a window???) it taints what is already a rather laboring time spent with folks not particularly worth investing thirty minutes with. Thieves wanted for their crimes, a trio use a camera found in an antiquities shop to secure moneys from dog races. The camera, most unusual, has no latch to open to install the necessary materials needed to take and receive pictures but nonetheless prints out an image of a future event, granting whoever owns it ten before it must go to someone else. Ultimately, it appears as if the camera is like the monkey’s paw. Those who trifle with the camera die. Whatever the case, it couldn’t have happened to better people. Include Marcel Hillaire among them, inserting himself into the picture (pun intended) like the ultimate opportunist.

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Constantly bickering married heisters (Fred Clark and Jean Carson) raided an antique "curio" shop of inventory that was anything but worth the effort, hitting the mother lode it seems with a camera taken along with items claimed as priceless by those robbed. The camera has no location on the box to load film but it does take pictures…of events five minutes before they happen! You just point and click and the location will provide you with whatever happens accordingly. Soon Carson's dunderhead brother (Adam Williams; many TZ fans will know him best as the sailor Inger Stevens hopes will stay in the car with her in "The Hitch-Hiker") arrives after escaping from prison where he was serving a seven year sentence. The trio decides to use the camera to bet on the races, making quite a bit of cash in the process. But when a French waiter (Marcel Hillaire) in the hotel they stay reads an inscription on the camera regarding "ten uses of the camera", the frivolity and unity decays quickly with greed and avarice determining the trio's ruination. Hillaire might just attempt to capitalize on their demise. Basically this TZ episode spends its entire running time with crooks hoping to make big thanks in part to a magic box with the ability to offer pictures of clairvoyance. These people are out for themselves and don't like each other all that much. So when flights out the window start to happen, it is no surprise. Regarding the trips out the window…I was amazed how the episode sees that all *four* principles go over to it, when you'd think none of them would dare take such a chance considering the danger. Hillaire's fate is especially preposterous…why would *he* go anywhere near that window?!?! Carson just watching as Hillaire bags all the cash her crooked fam accumulated without even putting up a fight is also rather perplexing…surely she'd knock him over the head with something, you'd think! Clark barks and gripes, a rotter to the core, while Williams is all "duh". Carson is satisfied when their crimes offer a fur coat or neck candy to wear. Hillaire had that face of the lecherous schemer, the kind of underhanded sneak who would merrily knife you in the back at the most opportune time…Lost in Space fans will know him as the Junkman in the final episode of the series, "Junkyard in Space" or as a strangler always trying to rope Smith in "Condemned in Space". While we must spend time with these scoundrels for twenty-two or so minutes, at least they get what's coming to them. Ultimately they are presented as small time hoods briefly basking in the color green, but their time "in the money" is fleeting due to their own personal shortcomings. That the camera's final picture has all of them "together" through unanticipated means (look what they had and yet that wasn't enough) seems fitting for them.

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I looked back at my review from January of this year above for IMDb wondering what was I thinking. I wanted to watch a Twilight Zone episode early on Saturday morning before drifting back to sleep on a lazy day for myself after a rather tiresome work week. I chose this episode because to me it is not a significant example of TZ at its best. I knew I wouldn’t be too inspired to give it my whole heart because, quite frankly, it just doesn’t deserve it. It seems to be a darling in marathons, though, and some fans enjoy the cast and premise. On the premise, I like it a lot. I’m a fan of the “monkey’s paw” stories and think there is plenty of creative ways to use the theme (and it has been a creative source for many television shows and movies). I think the camera—with its French inscription seeming to indicate it came from some place far from the setting of this episode—is a neat device to tell a story, but I just wish it would have been for a different story and cast of characters. I think the impact of the monkey’s paw derives from how those in desperation (loss of a loved one, deep in debt and needing a miracle, stuck in a compromising situation needing help to escape from…) use it to better themselves only to fall into its trap. Folks who we can relate to and sympathize with. These people in A Most Unusual Camera are just rather detestable and self-absorbed, living their lives looking for the easy cash. Well, in saying that there are plenty out there that can relate to these three (umm, four counting Hillaire), come to think of it. I don’t know: the episode seems bound and determined to have the characters go out that fucking window. There are plenty of ways to kill them off yet why not just choose the most improbable way possible? And the convenience of Hillaire being French and being able to read the inscription kind of made me laugh. I agree that what happens to these people is karma sentencing them to a just, deserving end to a led life of stealing and robbing, but why not have them bumped off in ways that might make sense and could be just a bit more imaginative? I guess this episode was the “budget conscious” kind…keep the activity of the story and characters in almost one specific location. In some crummy room high above the sidewalk below so that four bodies could meet it in a most unusual way thanks to a most unusual camera.

You know, I can recall few times where you actually see the characters in the same shot as Serling. He almost always seemed to be just away from the principles yet within the setting. While I'm not that crazy about this episode this unique visual decision sets it apart from the majority of the episodes in the series.