Beachhead - Recap

At nearly four o’clock on a forgotten Tuesday morning, architect David Vincent returns from a business trip. Realizing he has been driving too long, he turns onto a rutted dirt track, following a sign towards Bud’s Diner and the promise of hot coffee. When David arrives he discovers Bud’s Diner years closed and so does the only other thing he can: settles into his seat for a short nap.

Moments later an eerie red light and strange whirring awaken him. Outside the windows of his car, in a nearby field, a strange craft descends from the sky! The round vessel has no jets, no propellers, and yet it descends slowly and carefully to a landing spot in the nearby field...

Act I
Six o’clock finds David Vincent at the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department. He speaks to Detective Lieutenant Ben Holman, telling him the saucer landed in the field off a dirt road that turns from Highway 166 and has a sign pointing to Bud’s Diner. Lieutenant Holman is skeptical. He asks an association to “show him in” and David’s partner Alan Landers enters the room. Landers drove down to see if he could help after the police woke him with a call asking whether he had a partner named David Vincent traveling on business in the area. Holman notes the time and says that everyone is tired. He recommends David leave his car there and ride home with Alan or even with one of Holman’s men. David won’t be put off; he grows irate when he sees Holman slide the notes into a desk drawn and insists he do something.

David guides the lieutenant and his business partner back to the scene. The faded signs now say that the dirt track leads to “Kelly’s Diner” and the field where David saw the saucer land is empty. Nothing around suggests anyone has been there in years. David asserts that he’s no crackpot and insists he really saw what he claims he saw. Walking away, he arrives on a small ridge just as a hunter in the nearby gully shoots a bird. Lieutenant Holman and Alan Landers follow Vincent when they hear the shot; Holman complements the man on his shooting and then tells him why he and the others are there. The man says he and his new wife are camping for their honeymoon and have been there two days. He points out his camper truck and David notes a curious thing: his pinky finger is strangely stiff, as if he cannot move it. Holman asks if he saw anything that morning and the man says he did not. David asks how he could know, since it was so early and the man replies that he was awake preparing to go fishing. He didn’t even, he claims, see the car David Vincent was driving. Holman thanks him for his help and asks if he’ll be around; he says he was planning to return home that day but can remain until evening. Holman comments that it’s a short honeymoon and the man agrees, but claims he must return to his store. Finally, Holman asks for some identification and the man hands him a wallet containing a driver’s license that identifies him as Brandon. When he extends the wallet David notices the same stiffened pinky. Holman leaves, as an afterthought congratulating the man on his wedding.

That night David returns as the young couple prepare to leave. He spots Mrs. Brandon and demands to know whether she changed the diner sign. She doesn’t know what he’s talking about; Mr. Brandon approaches and tells her to get in the car because “it’s past time for me.” And he tells David to go away, but David wants to see his hands. The men tussle briefly and Brandon eventually gets the better of David. As he prepares to smash David’s head with a rock, he begins... to glow! Reddish light streams from his exposed flesh and he looks at his hands in shock. Then he races to the pickup. David barely recovers consciousness as the truck hurtles directly for him!

Sometime later, David wakes up in the hospital. A nurse asks him what he remembers and he starts to recall the truck. She tells him not to try to remember more and offers him pills to help him get back to sleep. She tells him that if he won’t take them they’ll be injected intravenously. When David lifts his wrist he sees that his name bracelet reads “Arthur Gordon.” Survival instincts kick into overdrive; David is certain the hospital is a front and that the aliens have captured him! He pushes past the nurse only to run into a burly orderly who forces him back onto the bed. The nurse approaches with a hypodermic needle and David, crazed with fear, breaks free into the hallway. Orderlies approach from all directions; David grabs a bench and sends them ducking backwards with a feint before smashing through a window. Before he can escape the orderlies seize him and the nurse injects him. As he loses consciousness he sees Lieutenant Holman and his partner Alan approaching.

Act II
The following morning finds David in a wheelchair in the hospital solarium. The orderly pushes him to a nice spot and leaves him; moments later, his partner Alan appears. Alan explains that he selected as small private hospital to reduce the chance of negative publicity. That is also why he gave them a false name. He’d tried to explain this when David was admitted but painkilling drugs were too strong and David remembered none of it. Alan tells David he was in a car accident; his car went off the road and he was thrown from it. He also tells David that he can go home that evening and to take at least two weeks off. Finally, he offers David some magazines to read. David tells Alan that the man and woman from the camper were aliens, and that there was something wrong with their skin and their hands. Alan tells David they’ll talk about it when he returns that evening to drive David home, and leaves. David rolls his wheelchair away in frustration, and after he does so, an old woman rolls her chair to where he was. She seems to be interested in him, and she seems to have curiously misshapen fingers...

Later, Alan drives David back home. He tells David that it wasn’t easy but he got the address of the honeymoon couple from Holman. They live at 285 Front Street in Kinney, which Alan tells David is a small town located between San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield. Alan also tells David he wants to believe him. David thanks him and exits the car for his apartment.

Sometime later David is again roused from sleep by a glow. But this time, the glow is fire! His apartment is on fire, with several areas already involved. Grabbing a throw rug, David makes a futile attempt at extinguishing the blaze before dropping it and grabbing a coat rack. For a moment, he sees an old woman by the door, framed by two blazing uprights. Then a beam falls and she’s gone. Smashing the window with the coat rack, David climbs onto the balcony and leaps to the ground from there. Firemen have arrived and David tells them about the old woman, suggesting that she might have started the fire. The firemen return moments later without the woman or even evidence she was ever there, and David’s suspicions stir back to life.

Act III
David decides to visit Kinney, a tiny town with just a handful of businesses and homes. David passes a garage and the Hotel Palomar – no vacancy – where a woman hails him. She introduces herself as Kathy Adams and says she runs the hotel. She also tells David the town’s population is now about twelve. David asks after the Brandons, whose Front Street address is that of the hotel. She has never heard of them but invites him to check the register. She adds that if they were guests of Mr. Kogan they might not have signed the register. David asks who Kogan is and Adams admits that Kogan heads an investment group that is buying up the town; she thinks to turn it into a retirement community.

David asks how one buys an entire town, and at that precise moment Sheriff Carver appears, saying that all it takes is the right town and a lot of cash. He adds that Kinney used to be a going town until the state closed the hydroelectric plant, and that there are a few holdouts, but he’s confident they’ll sell. David asks Baker whether she will sell and she tells him she already did, after her husband died. She’s staying on as a caretaker. Sheriff Carver stays inside the hotel for some lemonade as David and Adams walk outside. There David asks what Kogan’s clients do in Kinney and she allows that she does not know. She suggests they might hunt or fish, and tells David there is a wooded lake a few miles north, or the river on the other side of town. He says goodbye and walks off.

Inside Sheriff Carver phones Holman’s office. Holman isn’t in but Carver passes on a message “Tell him he was right. That psycho of his did show up down here.” Carver says he’ll keep an eye on David, then hangs up and returns to his car.

Outside, the sheriff crosses the bridge and stops in front of the hydroelectric plant to confirm that the gates remain locked, then drives off. He does not see David emerge from beneath the bridge where he hid to evade the nosy policeman. With Carver gone, David approaches the gate of the hydroelectric plant. Signs warn trespassers that they will be prosecuted and proclaim the place property of Kogan Enterprises. David forces the gate and squeezes through, crossing the yard to a locked door. Nearby he finds a heavy steel pulley and a rag, with these he knocks the lock off the rusty chain and enters the generating facility. Inside David surveys the rusting power generation gear in the quiet gloom. Then he walks down a spiral staircase to the equipment floor. He does not notice a small blue glowing lens set beneath the landing where it can survey those on the stairs...

In a control room elsewhere, men in blue jumpsuits prepare strange equipment. Clear plastic tubes. Odd mechanisms and gear clutter a table. A line on the map glows and a voice advises “Bakersfield Control” that “Kinney Station” signals a “red alert”. The map shows the southwestern United States and several lines that connect Bakersfield to other points, including the glowing line to Kinney.

Several of the men hurry outside and board a semi-trailer. Gates bearing the name “Kogan Enterprises – Home Office” and in smaller letters “Bakersfield, California” open to disgorge the vehicle.

David continues to explore the power station, and finds strange machines. Although he does not know it, they are completed versions of the machines the technicians at “Bakersfield Control” labored to assemble. Each is a free standing pedestal topped by a control panel and two crystals. From the pedestal arm-like projections reach halfway around a circle and above each mechanism a clear tube large enough to fit an adult human hangs. When David puts his hand near the controls, the crystals glow. Then the tube begins to descend. He snatches his hand back and the mechanism deactivates.

David flees back to town, unaware that a semi-trailer bearing the Kogan Enterprises logo is just twenty miles from Kinney. When David sees the sheriff he ducks behind some buildings and finds his way into a restaurant. There two young women dance and an old man with an earpiece watches. With some effort David attracts the old man’s attention; the man reaches into his shirt pocket and turns down the radio so he can hear. David asks for a phone and the man points to an instrument in the corner that has not yet been disconnected.

David calls 555-5235 to reach Alan Landers. He tells his partner he’s in Kinney and has found proof of something. Alan balks and David urges him to come right away because if he waits, somehow the proof will vanish. He finishes by suggesting the aliens may be all over the planet and saying he needs a witness, then tells Alan to wait for him at the hotel on Front Street.

Act IV
Mrs. Adams enters the restaurant and introduces the people David has already met: Mr. Kemper the owner and the Ackerman girls, who live on the edge of town. She offers him coffee and tells him Deputy Carver is looking for him. David looks to the door but Adams reassures him that Carver already looked in the restaurant and it would be some time before he looked again. When she hands him coffee David notices her pinky finger is curled around the cup, not stiffened.

Adams tells David that Carver came to town around the time Kogan began buying property. She also tells him that what Carver said doesn’t bother her, even the part about David seeing things. David sharply asks where she heard that and she tells him Carver told her, and that she’s been through it before with her husband. He saw things, too, for months before he succumbed to a heart attack. David asks what he saw but she won’t discuss it. He asks her to sit and listen while he tells her a story she won’t believe. Elsewhere, the semi-trailer is six miles from Kinney.

Vincent finishes his tale, suggesting the aliens need the tubes to regenerate somehow. He believes that if Kogan finishes buying Kinney the aliens will have a foothold there, and wonders how many other towns like this there are in the world? Adams doesn’t know what to believe, but asks David to tell her what she can do. He asks her to have Landers meet him at the restaurant without tipping off Lou Carver. She agrees to make a phone call to her aunt. On the other end of the phone, Adams’ aunt is the old lady from the hospital and Vincent’s apartment house!

Adams tells Kemper she’ll close up; that she’s waiting for a friend. Somewhat bemusedly, he agrees and says good night. Adams turns off the light and returns to the table, where Vincent muses on how life can change so fast. Adams says the same thing happened to her husband, and Vincent muses that what happened might not have been a heart attack – the aliens might have ways of arranging things like that! She suggests that it could happen again, to David, but he says no – the apartment fire was their last safe shot at eliminating him. If he died now, especially under mysterious circumstances, people might begin to wonder if there was truth in what he said, and investigation might follow.

Carver rattles the door and calls out for Kemper. David and Adams stay quiet and he leaves after a few seconds. Adams suggests Alan Landers won’t come but David is confident his partner will come. Outside, Alan Landers does pull up at the hotel, very nearly hitting Adams’ aunt. He apologizes and she dismisses it, then tells him that David wanted to meet him at the power station, and to leave his car here.

Inside the restaurant, David thinks he heard a car but Adams says she didn’t. She goes on, saying that nobody wanted to hear the truth from her husband; they just wanted to sell at a profit and get out of town. A lot of things, she concludes, killed him. Then she wanders to the jukebox and turns it on. David leaps up and pulls the plug. Exasperated, he asks why she did that when she knew he was listening for Landers. She says she did it to wake him up. She says he’s listening for cars that will never come and looking for face he’ll never find. Suspicious, he peers are her again, and she tells him that not all of them have the stiff fingers. Some of them learn...

Vincent flees to the hotel and sees Alan’s car.

Alan enters the power station gate and then the door. He pauses briefly to survey the scene from the balcony and then walks down the stairs.

David yells for Alan but receives no answer. After calling several times, he runs for the power station.

Alan reaches the floor of the power station.

David races for the power station but halfway across the bridge Deputy Carver cuts him off. Approaching slowly, cautiously, Carver clearly regards David as a madman who must be corralled. David wants to get to the power station and Carver tells him they’ll call Kogan in the morning, and if he gives the okay, they’ll check the place out. David knows that will be far too late.

Alan Landers sees men removing the strange equipment. He tries to leave but men corner him from all directions. They force him back, eventually trapping him within the arms of the last remaining device. The tube descends and a glow lights Landers’ face. He begins to scream...

David fights off Deputy Carver and finally escapes to the power station as a semi-trailer pulls out. He finds Alan – too late. Carver approaches him. David tries to explain, lamenting, “they did it, sheriff, they did it,” but Carver has had enough and smashes him over the head with the flashlight, knocking him out.

Townsfolk gather and Carver proclaims David “a sick fella who got a little out of hand” and conscripts two bystanders to help him load the unconscious man into his patrol car.

Epilog
The following morning Vincent emerges handcuffed from the Sheriff’s office as the coroner examines the body of Alan Landers. Lieutenant Ben Holman pulls up; it seems he and Deputy Carver are old friends from five years ago. Holman tells David that Alan might still be alive if he hadn’t wanted to believe David’s crazy dreams. He also tells David that Alan died of a heart attack, and that whatever he thinks, that’s the way it was. Deputy Carver asks Holman what he wants to do with David and Holman instructs the deputy to let David go. Carver repeats that with disbelief, but it’s what Holman wants, so Carver unlocks the cuffs and tells David not to come back. David, sadly, says there’s no reason to now. Ben Holman tells David to let it end here, and David tells him he wishes he could and then walks toward his car with heavy steps...

Share this article with your friends