The Ray Bradbury Theater (TV Series) There Was an Old Woman (1988) User Reviews

Resist to the End and Beyond

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 24 March 2015]

I may have to read the story because there is no rhyme or reason to this. An elderly woman lives in a house full of clocks and other artifacts. She has been alone pretty much all her life and her experiences with death have been highly traumatic, especially when her one lover was taken. So she has made up her mind to never let death take her. One day an entourage from the funeral parlor come with a big wicker basket. She sits with death. They take her body, but her spirit is left behind. That spirit goes to the funeral home while she is being autopsied and demands her body back. I'm not sure what Bradbury envisioned for her. Is she a ghost or is she corporeal. One thing for sure is that she is in a state of suspended existence and seems to control this. Of course, one needs to look at the quality of life for her. She has made her life one of combat and sustaining her being. One of the strangest things I've ever seen.

"Madam, the body is yours."

[classicsoncall · 6/10 · 4 January 2022]

This is a rather macabre story, one in which the principal character, Matilda Hanks (Mary Morris), insists on being impervious to death, vowing to an uninvited guest that 'death is ridiculous'. The 'guest' or intruder as it were, is apparently there to dispute Tildy's claim, and even though we never see her body in the wicker basket coffin removed by four men from her home, the only obvious explanation is that she's already dead and on her way to the funeral parlor with her ghost left behind to continue the argument. I think the story would have been more straightforward if Tildy's granddaughter didn't react to seeing her the way she did, since the woman would have known her grandmother was dead. Seeing a ghost might have caused such a reaction, but within the context of the program, Tildy looked very much alive. So it's with this ambiguity that the story proceeds until it becomes obvious to everyone, Tildy included, that she can't reclaim her former life despite her furious protests. This is just a very bizarre story, and if meant to keep the viewer off balance, it generally succeeds.