The Cat From Outer Space Needs a Little Human Help

Years ago, my great-uncle, a jovial man known by the nickname Happy, died, leaving behind a large collection of movies he had taped off of television. We inherited many of those, one of which was The Cat from Outer Space. Most of those tapes went kaput long ago, but I remember my brother Benjamin being enthralled with this particular movie when it made its way to us. This fall, I watched it again for the first time since the mid-90s, this time with my brother Nathan, who wasn’t quite so mesmerized but still found the movie fun.

As the movie opens, we see the landing of a vessel from outer space that contains an alien intelligence in communication with his commander. It isn’t until the conversation ends that we see who was talking: a nondescript cat who spends the next 20 minutes or so of the movie silently observing the ruckus the landing of his ship has caused. Finally, he reveals himself to a bumbling scientist rather like the title character in The Absent-Minded Professor, explaining that he needs help getting back to his ship after gathering the materials needed to get it running again.

That scientist is the endearing Frank, played by Ken Berry, who I mostly know as the sweet-natured Willoughby in Herbie Rides Again. I found his presence interesting because I could have sworn that his role was occupied by Dean Jones, who starred in the original Herbie movie and a sequel. I think Berry makes more sense in this role, however; while Jones tends to come across as rather arrogant, Berry instead projects a charming awkwardness that is especially apparent in his dealings with his perky colleague Liz (Sandy Duncan), whose crush on him causes considerable complications throughout the movie.

The cat, who takes on the name Jake after Frank gives it to him, is voiced by Ronnie Schell, whose delivery is rather detached, with certain novelties arousing unexpected interest. For instance, Jake is very impressed with human cuisine, particularly tuna, and Sandy’s female cat proves a definite distraction. Jake’s ability to interact with humanity in an unusual way comes from his collar, which glows when its powers are in use. With it, he can transmit thoughts out loud and manipulate matter with his mind as well; without it, his skills are limited to those of a typical housecat.

As a big fan of the classic TV show M*A*S*H, I found it curious that both McLean Stevenson and Harry Morgan are in this movie, though they rarely interact. Stevenson played the rather inept Colonel Blake on the series, while Morgan was the more efficient Colonel Potter, who replaced him several seasons in. Here, Stevenson is Frank’s buddy Link, a loafer whose addiction to gambling proves surprisingly helpful, while Morgan is the irritable General Stilton, who is trailed by a gaggle of underlings who pass instructions to each other. Stilton is in charge of the investigation into Jake’s ship, so getting past him is an obstacle, though he mostly serves as comic relief. The more potent antagonist is Mr. Olympus (William Prince), who, thanks to the efforts of weaselly freelance spy Stallwood (Roddy McDowall), has a pretty good idea of what Jake’s collar can do and will stop at nothing to harness that power himself.

This is a silly movie, no doubt about it. Like countless Disney sports comedies, it involves using dubious methods in order to secure a victory, in this case for the purposes of winning enough money to repair Jake’s ship. The government officials are ineffective, and as concerned as they are about Jake’s ship, they certainly don’t keep it very well guarded. The ending leaves some rather significant threads dangling, and some of the dialogue is just plain goofy. My favorite instance would have to be Link, having burst in on Frank in the middle of using Jake’s collar to levitate himself, plopping down on the couch and then casually asking, “Say, what were you doing up in the air?”

I knew from my experience of watching Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo with him a couple years back that my sophisticated brother would probably find plenty of reasons to pick the movie apart, and I was right, but we still had a great time watching the movie together, and his running commentary just added to the hilarity of the movie for me. The Cat from Outer Space is a madcap comedy with an A-list cast, and I happily recommend its brand of intergalactic silliness.

Get to Know a Lighter Version of the 4077th with M*A*S*H - Season 1

I grew up on M*A*S*H. It's been one of my favorite TV shows for as long as I can remember. It used to be in reruns almost constantly, so I watched quite a bit of it, though I don't think it was until high school that I got to know the first wave of M*A*S*H characters, the folks who preceded a sort of changing of the guard midway through the series. I had some recollection of pesky Frank Burns (Larry Linville), who was always trying to lord his authority over pranksters Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce (Alan Alda) and B. J. Hunnicut (Mike Farrell), but then he stuck around two years longer than Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson), the colonel initially in charge of the 4077th, and John "Trapper" McIntyre (Wayne Rogers), Hawkeye's first partner in crime. These were certainly characters worth getting to know.

M*A*S*H, of course, is the long-running sit-com about a group of doctors and other personnel living and working at the 4077th M*A*S*H unit in Korea during the Korean War. M*A*S*H stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital; they must be prepared to pick up and leave at any time, so the accommodations aren't exactly cushy. As for the medical part, the wounded come in bursts, with the distant sound of an approaching helicopter the tip-off that it's time for another marathon session in the O.R. This particular group has a remarkably high success rate with its patients. Even so, there are some who don't make it, and being surrounded by young injured soldiers takes its toll on each of the doctors, particularly star surgeon Hawkeye. He also is the camp's head jokester, as he has discovered that laughter is the only thing that can stave off despair in situations like this.

It's pretty heavy stuff for a sit-com, serious enough that I have a hard time sticking this in the same genre with the likes of The Monkees and The Brady Bunch. Nonetheless, the show is funny, more consistently entertaining than just about any show I can think of, so the comedy label is not applied inappropriately, and in its first few seasons, the focus is definitely on the lighter side of life at the 4077th. That's not to say that the darkness doesn't intrude, but there's so much silly stuff happening early on that it almost reminds me of Hogan's Heroes.

That has a lot to do with the characters featured here but not in later seasons. Frank is a sniveling stick-in-the-mud whom nearly no one respects. He's whiny and petty, easily duped and not much of a doctor. In season one, he's firmly in league with Head Nurse Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Loretta Swit), the show's only really prominent female character; the only one who comes close is Kellye Yamato (Kellye Nakahara), a nurse who's in about half the episodes but rarely in the foreground. Frank is married, but he and Margaret have a torrid affair going on. They'd like to think it's clandestine, but everyone in camp knows about it. As the series progresses, Margaret becomes much more sympathetic, but in season one, she's a shrill tattletale and a self-righteous hypocrite. When she and Frank aren't busy making each other's nostrils flare, they're plotting ways to dispose of Hawkeye and Trapper, who get away with their shenanigans in part because they're a lot more likable than Frank and Margaret, but more importantly because as surgeons, they are indispensable.

It also helps that Hawkeye and Trapper pretty much have Colonel Blake in their pocket, thanks largely to their alliance with sweet but shrewd company clerk Walter "Radar" O'Reilly (Gary Burghoff). Blake is a skilled doctor and a heck of a nice guy, but he's fairly oblivious about the intricate workings of his camp, and Radar has a knack for tricking him into signing everything from requisitions forms to permissions for leave in Seoul, everyone's favorite (well, pretty much only) vacation destination. The bespectacled young man has a strange clairvoyant streak that allows him to predict exactly what the colonel is about to tell him, and this flusters Blake so much that it makes it even easier to pull the wool over his eyes.

Blake is as different from seasoned, efficient season-four replacement Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan) as Frank is from his eventual replacement, Charles Winchester (David Ogden Stiers), who is uppity and cosseted but also a brilliant doctor and ultimately a pretty good guy underneath all of his pretension. The Trapper-Hawkeye dynamic is extremely similar to the B. J.-Hawkeye dynamic, but while B. J. is pretty clean-cut and constantly thinking about his family back home, Trapper doesn't let the fact that he's married stop him from being as shameless a philanderer as Hawkeye. He's more sarcastic than B. J., and as Hawkeye's sidekick, he lives in his shadow much more than B. J. does.

A couple of years ago, my brother bought me the first two seasons of M*A*S*H for my birthday, so whenever I watch the show, I find myself thinking of him, especially when Hawkeye, with whom he shares a first name, is on screen - which is most of the time. This frisky, wise-cracking, incredibly dedicated doctor is one of only four main characters to last the run of the series, and from the beginning, the show tends to focus on him more than anyone else. Though it's an ensemble comedy, Hawkeye is the star.

The only other major players are Max Klinger (Jamie Farr), a corporal most notable for his persistent attempts to get out of the army by convincing his superiors he's insane, and Father Francis Mulcahy (William Christopher), a humble priest who really has his hands full as the camp's chaplain. Neither is given terribly much to do in the first season, but Klinger is more noticeable because he's always parading around in stylish women's clothing. Minor recurring characters this season include African-American doctor Oliver "Spearchucker" Jones (Timothy Brown), part of Hawkeye and Trapper's posse; Australian anesthesiologist "Ugly John" Black (John Orchard) and Korean houseboy Ho-Jon (Patrick Adiarte), who Hawkeye helps send to medical school at his alma mater.

While my favorite seasons of M*A*S*H are probably four through seven, I still love the early seasons, and the first one has many stand-out moments. For instance, there are episodes with notable guest stars. Leslie Nielsen turns up as reckless Colonel Buzz Brighton in The Ringbanger; his disregard for the safety of the troops under his command is such that Hawkeye and Trapper plot to put him out of commission. Ron Howard plays underage soldier Walter Wendell in Sometimes You Hear the Bullet, the most moving episode of the season, in which Hawkeye takes one death especially hard and receives the following solemn pep talk from Blake in an unusually sage moment: "Look, all I know is what they taught me at command school. There are certain rules about a war. And rule number one is young men die. And rule number two is, doctors can't change rule number one." Although I wasn't familiar with his name, I was tickled to recognize Alex Henteloff - who had a brief but very memorable role as the scientist Scotty and Bones visit in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - in Dear Dad, Again, in which he plays a genius who takes on a number of careers without going through the proper certification process. This episode also includes one of the season's funniest and most cleverly shot scenes, in which Hawkeye walks across camp naked to try to prove to Trapper that no one will even notice.

Romance is always in the air at the 4077th, and two stand-out episodes revolve around unlikely pairings. In Edwina, Hawkeye is elected to go woo the lovable nurse of the title (Arlene Golonka), whose accident-prone nature has caused the men of the camp to avoid close contact with her. In Love Story, Hawkeye and Trapper help hook Radar up with an erudite new camp arrival; this is fun to watch, but what really got my attention here was the revelation that Radar had once been engaged. He's my favorite character, but I had no idea!

My two favorite episodes of the season both involve a ridiculous chain of events. In The Longjohn Flap, Hawkeye receives an extraordinarily warm set of long underwear from his father. The weather in camp is frigid, so this is a highly coveted prize, and before the episode is over, just about every major character has managed to get his or her hands on it. Watching the longjohns pass from person to person via every method from gambling to extortion is a hoot, as is Hawkeye's agonized reaction.

My other favorite is Tuttle, in which Hawkeye modestly gives credit for his charitable donation to an orphanage to a captain by the name of Tuttle. They say that no good deed goes unpunished, and Hawkeye learns this the hard way when news of this noble, nonexistent captain gets around and he, Trapper and Radar must scramble to maintain the illusion. By the time the episode ends with Hawkeye killing the captain off before the situation spirals completely out of control, everyone has grown thoroughly attached to him; indeed, both Frank and Blake are convinced that they had meaningful relationships with Tuttle. It's an audacious con, but in the end, everyone wins.

It's not vitally important to start from season one and work your way through the series in the proper order. But if you want the real scope of M*A*S*H as a show, you'll want to start off here. It isn't the best of the seasons, but it's a wonderful introduction to one of the finest television shows ever created.

An American Icon

Mention the name Don McLean, and the first association -- all too often the only one -- that your listener will come up with is American Pie. That recognition is certainly well deserved. It's one of the greatest songs ever written, and how many songs can claim to give a tidy history of rock and roll within their confines? Of course, McLean will never describe his signature song as such; he prefers it to be shrouded in mystery. And it certainly has enigmatic appeal.

My dad told me just today that it is the most requested song on our oldies station. But it is not McLean's only song, and it must be a bit frustrating to have such an impressive repertoire of music and only be known for one song. I think McLean may be compared to another McLean, McLean Stevenson, who grew to despise M*A*S*H because he was beginning to be locked into people's minds for his role on that hit TV show. American Pie is a wonderful song, but it should not overshadow McLean's other compositions to the point that it seems they do not exist. This album contains the best of both worlds, with the track everyone wants to listen to and a fine sampling of his other work.

All of my favorite songs are on Side 1. What is there to say about American Pie that has not already been said? It's sheer brilliance. How often does a seven-minute song become a hit? Not very. But all six verses are pure gold, from the melancholy first verse and the idealistic second verse to the chilling fifth verse and the sixth verse which returns to the depression of the first. The album is dedicated to Buddy Holly, who most music scholars agree is the subject of this song. When his plane, the Miss American Pie, went down, an era of music died along with him. Get out your fine-toothed comb and find references to Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Elvis, the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, and other major figures in music history. And listen to the unabridged version, for goodness' sake, and if you must listen to the short version, at least go for McLean's version. Madonna's passionless rendering backed by a disco beat makes me shudder just thinking about it. This album contains the full version.

Till Tomorrow is a beautiful song about a couple who cannot be together. Sweeping music and lush imagery make this love song a beautiful addition to the album. "High above the heavens, a rainbow paints the sky. White doves sing their songs of love. I watch them as they fly and wonder why can this be. Can you tell me? Would you like to discover why we're not free to be lovers?"

Vincent is another tribute song, gorgeous and tragic. Full of painting images, the song is written to Vincent van Gogh, lamenting the fact that he was so underappreciated during his lifetime. I have always thought of this song by its opening words, "Starry, starry night," which brings to mind Van Gogh's most famous painting. If Vincent could hear out of his remaining ear, I know that he would be smiling gravely in agreement... "Now I think I know what you tried to say to me, how you suffered for your sanity, how you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they're not listening still...perhaps they never will."

Crossroads completes my quartet of favorite songs. It is an introspective piece of poetry, a man examining where he's been and where he's going and believing that he's lost in the muddle at the moment. "You know I've head about people like me, but I never made the connection. They walk one road to set them free and find they've gone the wrong direction." But he decides in the end not to worry about it, to continue living and just accept what life brings his way. "There's no need for turning back, 'cause all roads lead to where we stand. And I believe we'll walk them all, no matter what we may have planned."

Side 2 is, unfortunately, the neglected side. Once in a while I have an album that gets so much play on one side, the other is left alone. Ironically, American Pie and Feuilles-Oh (from Art Garfunkel's Angel Clare) are two of my three earliest favorite song, and I suffer from this affliction on both albums.

Winterwood is a nice song, kinda reminds me of Annie's Song. Lots of nice images in it. "And for the first time I've been seeing the things I'd never notice without you. And for the first time I'm discov'ring the things I used to treasure about you."

Everybody Loves Me, Baby is the song of an obnoxious guy who thinks he's God's gift to the world, but one particular person isn't buying it. And that happens to be the one person he most wants to love him. The tone reminds me of Baby Driver, one of my least favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs. "Everybody loves me, baby, what's the matter with you?"

The Grave is just plain depressing. It's not a bad song, it's just a really sad song about a soldier dying in a foxhole. "There's nothing left to do but die..." Gives me the shivers.

Babylon is an old traditional chorale, and McLean breathes as much life into it as Simon and Garfunkel did into Scarborough Fair. Also on the second side are the songs Empty Chairs and Sister Fatima. A fine collection of songs by a talented singer/songwriter who is so much more than one of the most enigmatic and powerful songs in musical history.