Description: Season 5, Episode 23
Air Date: March 6, 1964
Plot Summary: A journalist discovers that an actress is far older than anyone would believe.
Review: Think of this episode as the reverse of "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine;" instead of an actress growing older, the actress cannot age. As the title would imply, the actress is, more than likely, supposed to be Cleopatra who has magically achieved immortality through shenanigans with a scarab. While this is mostly a mediocre episode it did have its moments. I especially liked that the actress uses her daughter, who is an old woman, as her mother. Though, this begs the question, why wouldn't the daughter be immortal too? Or, if it really does come down to this magic scarab, why can't the actress share this power with her own daughter? I'd love to say that this story touches on interesting ideas or topics, but it doesn't dig deep. Too much time is spent with the journalist pathetically trying to explain away how this actress can be all over the world at different eras yet claims to be only in her thirties. The journalist does die due to his own idiocy, but you'd think this actress would get caught by now, right? I mean, sure, technology was limited back in those days, but it shouldn't be too hard to keep track of a woman who stays in the limelight in all eras rather than keeping a low profile. Hell, there's even a guy in the episode who claims he knew one of her past identities, and he doesn't put two and two together? Come on, son. Eh...average thrills for an average episode.
This episode copies things from "Long live Walter Jamison", especially the part with a character quickly aging, dying, and turning to dust with the visual scene a complete duplicate. I thought they would be able to think of something there a little more original. They did use a clearer idea here for eternal life, a scarab which sucks the life out of someone killing them and inserting the scarab into the one which is what's keeping them living eternally. And they show that to us here In "Long live", they did not show the eternal living procedure or even make the story clear, they just had him mention seeing an alchemist and falling into a coma not remembering what actually gave him eternal life.
ReplyDeleteI kinda liked the story with him discovering the same actress looking the same age in films from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and I liked the touch of her seeming mother actually being her daughter.
I do understand your question though about why she didn't share the eternal life scarab with her daughter. From what I saw, it looked like it was because she was shelfish, and she didn't treat her daughter well, such as her snapping after her "kill for life" (which is what I just decided to call the procedure), she snapped "if you want to live another day, you will clean up this mess!"
I think this episode raises too many questions the more one would think about it. Like what keeps the scarab alive and how did the main chick give birth in the first place? Wouldn't the effects of the scarab influence the baby while she was pregnant or how often must she use it? Likewise, if she was so selfish, why even have a kid?
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