Kraft Suspense Theatre (TV Series) The Machine That Played God (1963) User Reviews

This woman confessed to a crime only because two machines said that she did it!

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 28 October 2011]

(Some Spoilers) Based on a true story and very likely the reason that results of polygraph or lie detector tests are not used in convicting or exoneration persons that are on trial because you just can't trust the damn things!

After making a wrong turn on the freeway Peggy Merritt, Anne Francis, slammed her car into on oncoming 18 wheeler killing her husband Mike, Peter Adams, who was with her. Back home recovering from her injuries Peggy is visited by two members of the police's special investigation unit and told that she's to be indited in Mike's murder! The reason for that is that Peggy purposely drove the car into a truck, and jumped out seconds before impact, in order to kill Mike and collect the $100,000.00 insurance policy on him! Also Peggy's seven year old step-son (from Mike's first marriage) Andy, Morgan Mason, was also taken away from her and given into the custody of his grandmother Mrs. Blanchard, Josephine Hutchison, who for some reason or another had no use for her step-daughter Peggy Merritt.

Getting the late Mike's best friend defense attorney Mark Jordan,Garry Merrill,to take her case Peggy also goes on her own to get a polygraph test in order to prove her innocence. Even though Mark told her that these tests are not admissible as evidence by the court. Failing the test Peggy still feeling that she didn't kill Mike takes another one at the main police department building where she fails it again! Failing both test that were, in Peggy's mind, supposed to prove her innocence Peggy soon herself believes against all the evidence in her favor, including being an eye witness at her husband's accident, that she in fact did porously kill her husband and confesses to the local D.A L, J West, Mlachi Thrane,he crime!

***SPOILERS*** Having his hands full in proving his client Innocent despite her voluntarily confessing to the crime Mark takes the role more of a prosecutor then an defense attorney! But the person he's prosecuting is not his client Peggy Merritt but the two polygraph or lie detector machines that in fact convicted her! That's in failing Peggy and,by her mindlessly believing them, forcing her to admit to a crime that she didn't commit!

In a defense that even Perry Mason would envy Mark despite his client's noncooperation did exonerate her of the crime, 1st degree murder, that she was on trail for. Thats by Mark proving a number of the answers that Peggy gave that were deem to be untrue by the machines where in fact true. Mark also proved that not only are polygraph tests faulty but in some cases can send a innocent man or woman to the electric chair or life behind bars by convincing him or her,like Peggy Merritt,that they committed a crime by them themselves believing them! Despite their own eyes ad experiences as well as just plain common sense in knowing full well that they didn't!

Okay...nothing more.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 5 October 2015]

When the episode begins, Peggy Merritt (Anne Francis) is driving her husband in their car. Unexpectedly, she enters the highway the wrong direction and soon there is a fatal accident. Her husband has been killed and she's about to be charged with either vehicular homicide, manslaughter or murder! Soon, she seems to be fighting EVERYONE...including her mother-in-law. So, in response to no one believing it was an accident, she decides to have a lie detector test run on her. It says she's a liar! So, she goes out to get another...and what is next is something you'll have to find out for yourself.

This is an okay episode but suffers from two problems. The ending is vague and the episode just isn't all that interesting. The acting isn't bad...just a weak plot that didn't particularly arouse my interest.

Beware of AI!

[lor_ · 15 September 2023]

Anne Francis is extremely sympathetic as the central character in this Kafkaesque story. It's not presented in an eerie or horrific fashion, but matter-of-factly with standard police procedure and a trial. In that way, it is more compelling than if hopped-up or exaggerated.

Lack of gimmicks is an important feature here: we're presented with a simple situation: Anne accidentally drives onto the wrong ramp entering the freeway, resulting in a crash into oncoming traffic and the death of her husband. She's charged with murder, as the district attorney and investigators suspect she wanted to kill her husband.

The major case against her is instigated by her volunteering to take a couple of lie detector tests, which she flunks; the machines indicating she's lying when asked she denies murdering her husband.

Those polygraph machine results end up being the crucial factors during her trial, even though they were technically inadmissible as evidence they were crucial in convincing the district attorney to charge her with the crime and they also caused her to doubt herself and ultimately submit a false confession. Only Merrills skillful questioning in her defense gets her off.

I suspect that being made as an episode of this old-fashioned type of tv series proved to make the show more powerful than if it were a far-fetched emotionally-overheated modern approach, say an Oliver Stone conspiracy-theory minded production. Namely, it really seems so clear-cut and believable that the viewer is easily put on the hot seat with Anne.

Watching it for the first time, some 60 years after broadcast, I was struck with an unexpected prescience here, as hinted by the episode's title. Long before artificial intelligence became the phrase of the year, this year, the natural apprehension of mankind about the potential for machines (eventually intelligent computers) to take over the world and displace mankind was there, now magnified immeasurably. I would guess that a new movie or tv show on this subject would take the paranoid Oliver Stone route rather than the staid but supremely effective manner of a Kraft Suspense Theatre.

Not believable

[phredator · 4/10 · 19 September 2021]

I sat down and watched this today. Anne Francis looks every bit as good as she did in Forbidden Planet.

But that's not enough to counterbalance the substantial shortcomings of the story.

We are supposed to believe that she didn't notice that she was going the wrong way on a highway. That's impossible.

I get what they're trying to do with the story but it just isn't believable. We can't believe that anyone would make so stupid mistake as she did. Asking me to believe that this woman would start to doubt herself because of a lie detector is also asking far too much.

So you've got this woman making blunder after blunder and what I'm supposed to see her as a sympathetic character? I don't know. Overall this show asks a great deal, in my opinion too much. And it doesn't offer anything worthwhile in exchange. The story is not great. The characters are not great. Nothing is compelling. In the end they seem to put lie detectors on trial and conclude that sometimes they're not accurate. This is like the great revelation of the show that I sat for an hour and a half to see?

To be sure there are a lot of shows that are worse than this. But frankly I don't think anybody should be wasting their time on this one. I'll give it a four out of 10 because the colour balance and the sound were okay. That's about it.