User Reviews

Ray Bradbury had a story called, "Kids: Grow Mushroom in Your Basement." This is a line from the backs of comic books in the fifties and sixties. These kids aren't raising mushrooms but are being contacted by a certain Mr. White who lives on the moon. They use a coiled electronic device to send articles through teleportation. He contacts them through mental telepathy. The parents of one of the boys get wind of this and begin a loving effort to get him to come clean. They realize that he is under the spell of this creature whose physical appearance has been sent to the boy. He's pretty ugly. At one point the boy says too much and is deprived of his speech. There is a level of suspense here because we wonder if there is going to be another cynical message of despair and hopelessness or is there some way to bring this to an end? It's not a bad episode and wears quite well. I enjoyed the physical appearance of the kid; it reminded me of what kids looked like when I was growing up.

A while back, I saw a wonderful episode of "The Outer Limits" called "The Special One". In it, an alien used charm to get children to do his evil bidding--to build machines and to help him in some nefarious master plan. Tonight, when watching "Many Happy Returns", I realized that this 1952 episode of "Tales of Tomorrow" MUST have inspired, in part, this "Outer Limits" show a decade later. Both are well worth your time.

"Many Happy Returns" stars Gene Raymond--a very famous actor of the 1930s who had practically disappeared from films by the 1950s. He's a father who is beginning to become worried about his young son. That's because the kid is making some weird electronics--stuff well beyond a kid's capabilities. And the boy keeps telling him that 'Mr. White' has told him how to make this machine! It turns out that the machine MAY have something to do with an invasion of the Earth or our destruction! What is this father to do?! This episode works for two main reasons. The biggest one is because it was written very, very well. You can't help but enjoy the show and get into the tense plot. In addition, the acting was quite good. Well worth your time and available free to watch from archive.org--a site often linked to films and TV shows on IMDb.