Hocus-Pocus and Frisby

While many episodes.have serious plot lines pushing us emotionally into anxiety as the plots climax or represent watching others in settings we can't readily identify with, this takes a more lighthearted approach with a character we can identify with, the boastful man with questionable credibility. Andy Devine is the perfect one for the part, projecting a harmless story teller who's all tall tale. YET the plot twist makes perfect sense, requires little stretch on our part. It takes deft writing to pull this off, and most of the other less serious episodes depict over-the-top or eccentric people who are almost caricatures. And contained in this pleasant plot is a subtle moral point. Not your typical Twilight Zone but very enjoyable.

For me, in 2019, to watch contemporaneously the legends of yesteryear is a privilege and joy. Andy Devine was, excuse me, devine! Almost and perhaps as good as Buster Keaton in th TZ episode Once Upon a Time. Both were a thrill to see and I so enjoyed to experience their boundless talent!

One of the most droll and more humorous episodes of the Twilight Zone starred Andy Devine who essentially played himself, a guy given to telling some real tall tales. Around the crackerbarrel of his country store, Andy delights a lot of his peers which include such rural types as Dabbs Greer, Howard McNear, and Clem Bevans.

But apparently through whatever kind of telepathy they have, some aliens have heard about the legendary exploits of Andy and think he is a worthy specimen to take back to their planet and study. When Milton Seltzer and the other aliens capture him, Andy is most reluctant to go and does have a unique way of escaping and discovering their weakness while doing so.

Moral of this marvelous Twilight Zone tale is you never know who's listening in, so keep it real.

Hocus Pocus and Frisby is a light-hearted, delightfully humorous episode of The Twilight Zone that sees Rod Serling giving us his take on that old fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Andy Devine plays Somerset Frisby, owner of a country store and the biggest mouth in the county, the man given to telling tall tales in which he has seen and done everything. Somehow, Frisby's wild yarns have come to the attention of visitors from another world, who fail to realise that the stories are pure fabrication; they whisk Frisby to their flying saucer with the intention of taking this most brilliant specimen of the human race to their planet for further study.

Frisby narrowly escapes when he discovers that the sound of his harmomica is deadly to the aliens. For once, Frisby has an amazing story that is absolutely true, but will anyone believe him?

I always loved that scratchy voiced guy in all those westerns. He was the sidekick (Jingles) in the Wild Bill Hickock show back in the fifties. In this he has the perfect vehicle for his wonderful bragging character. He is harmless and no one believes him, but he is non-flustered and goes on anyway. When you have a guy like this, there's no challenging because the details aren't there to quibble with. Of course, in this episode, he is taken on board a space ship by a group of aliens who have no sense of humor and believe everything they hear. They don't have the word lie in their vocabularies. As it turns out, he is so insufferable that they can't handle him; and then, of course, there is the secret weapon. See this just to watch Andy.