Shocking questions (Ironside and Peter Gunn related)
This is regarding guys getting murdered in TV shows using electricity. I wrote this all up in a very anal-ytical way.
What happens in both of these shows doesn't make sense to me, but what do I know? I put clips on my WWW site. These both sort of remind me of what is probably the most famous electrocution scene in a movie or TV show, in the movie Goldfinger, but that is different.
http://www.ironsidetv.com/bond.jpg
The first example is from Ironside:
http://www.ironsidetv.com/ironside.mp4
The clip starts with the killer (who is wearing gloves) connecting a wire to these steps which you would use to come out of a swimming pool. These steps are metal and go down into the pool. The wire seems to have the insulation removed at the end of the cord, because there is a spark when the killer "tests" it. Later we see that the insulation *was* removed from what seem to be TWO WIRES from what is like an extension cord.
Anyway, the killer connects the wire(s?) to one of the metal poles of the "stairs." So the guy he wants to kill won't see this, he hides most of the wire in this crack beside the pool. The victim jumps in the pool, swims a lap and comes back but he doesn't come out of the pool with the stairs, he just pulls himself over the edge of the pool, splashing water all over the place. He then leans back on the stairs and gets a horrible shock and dies. (How would the killer know that the victim was going to lean on the stairs?).
The killer then unplugs this TV set which was near the edge of the pool and plugs it into a different outlet to make it look like the guy came out of the pool and turned on the TV and somehow got a horrible shock from this and then died (this makes no sense to me). It doesn't show what the killer did with the wire which was connected to the steps and stuffed in the crack.
I don't understand something ... I have investigated this stuff on the internet, and you get all these confusing explanations. For example, if I had a long electrical extension cord like would be used for cutting the grass, plugged one end of this into a normal outlet on the outside of my house, and threw the other end of the cord into a swimming pool, wouldn't this cause a short circuit and the fuses or circuit breakers in the house would immediately kick in? Some web sites suggest if you do this, the whole swimming pool becomes a total death trap. In other words, in this Ironside clip, when the guy jumped in the pool, which is presumably electrified based on these WWW sites' theories, because the metal steps go down into the pool (duh!), he would immediately be killed!
I have left a bit of the "investigation" of the Ironside show in the clip which runs a couple of minutes.
This whole thing brought to mind a similar method of "execution" in this TV movie based on Peter Gunn, the 1950's detective show, which is equally confusing:
http://www.ironsidetv.com/gunn.mp4
This clip to me is totally dumb. This guy goes for a swim, the killer sneaks into the yard behind a bunch of plants.
He has this T-shaped metal thing (is there a name for this?) which he sticks in the ground, connects this wire to it (which is not a typical extension cord wire, it doesn't seem to have insulation on it). He throws the wire up over a power line like you would expect to see in the alley behind a house, the wire seemingly falls into the pool and electrocutes the guy swimming. Although there is a big spark when this uninsulated wire touches the power line, it doesn't show whether the wire falls into the pool (and kills the guy?) or it just falls directly on the guy and kills him.
I think this whole sequence is ridiculous. It looks like this power line is right over the guy's swimming pool and there is no way that a high-voltage power line like this would be allowed to be above the pool, as per city building codes, etc.
