Is this a movie or tv show?

[Susan]

I have a memory of something that I believe to be a movie, a short one anyhow but i can't be sure. It could be from a tv show.

I remember it beginning with voices and a view of space, it's black and white. The voices are like Gods talking, and there's some bum guy on earth who becomes their hapless victim..basically endowing him with all the powers of the world to see what happens. At first the guy (a drunk maybe who hangs out in a bar) wishes for little things, but it eventually ends in ruin where the planet is destroyed or something. The bet may have been to show that if man had the power to wish anything he wanted that he would eventually lead to his own ruination. I just remember some climactic scene at the end where the ground is crumbling...but eventually it winds up back where it started, as if they erased memory of everything that happened and he was still the guy in the bar.

Sound familiar?

[Dave Munger]

Sounds a litttle like The Man Who Could Work Miracles, or It's A Wonderful Life, or one of the Burgess Meredeth episodes of the Twilight Zone.

[Susan]

Dave, sounds like it is "the Man who could work miracles". HG Wells story. Tho i'm suprised it dates to 1936. The casting doesn't list Gods but  Indifference, Player, and Observer. Here's the plot outline:

"In this whimsical tale based on an H.G. Wells story, three gods experimentally decide to give miraculous powers to George (Roland Young), an English draper's assistant, to see what he'll make of them. Starting small (making objects disappear, turning a lamp over in midair), George soon develops grandiose dreams of eliminating war and illness and creating a utopia on Earth. But first he has to get people to believe him. Meanwhile, despite all his other powers, he can't get the shop girl (Joan Gardner) he adores to love him back."

I want to think it started in a bar and now I recall more about the movie. I remember there was a girl who worked in the store and I think he made her freckles dissappear when he was testing his powers little by little, and she was self concious about them. It eventually spilled into a climactic ending.

I remember really liking this film when it saw it years ago on tv. The sad thing is i was hoping to find the title in that it might be available in our library or video store, but given the date of the movie it's not likely. And i don't have a neflix account. But i'd really enjoy seeing it again.

[Eirik]

I'm 99% sure this is a Twilight Zone (or at least there was a very very similar Zone to what you are saying), but I cannot put a face to the bum.  Don't think it was Burgess Meredith...  the guy was older (than Mredith would have been at the time).  I seem to recall at the end everything was set right by the aliens.

[Dave Munger]

The TZ episode was set mostly in a bar and had aliens. Burgess Meredith has always been exactly the same age, like Wotan or something. Title was something like "The Incredible Mr. Twirpypants", aliens make him really strong, he sqanders the gift showing off and turning the tables on bullies. After the aliens take back his powers, other aliens show up and make him a genius. This is the only BMTZ I can't remember the title of. The others are "Printer's Devil" (the worst Meredith episodde), "Time  Enough At Last", and "The Obsolete Man" (best).

The bar part made me think of this and the voices in space made me think "It's A Wonderfull Life".

[Susan]

Sounds like the movie and tv show are a bit similar which is probably why i got them mixed up. I remember the TZ episode, here was the part at the end where the power was taken away, but i remember scenes of him shocking people by just lifting incredibly heavy objects. One scene I think he lifted a woman sitting on a bench, I can't recall.  The one with the wishes granted giving someone absolute power, however, is definately the movie "the man who could work miracles"...which is what i was originally trying to think of.

Interesting how both seemed to meld themself together a bit in my mind...i was for sure the one i was thinking started in a bar bt that was how the TZ episode began. Burgess was great! Always thought that was an unusual name

[Dave Munger]

TZ episodes seem particularly conducive to this, people are always melding them together with Outer Limits episodes and other stuff. Everyone I knew used to say that the scarriest TZ episode was the one where the guy's driving at night, looks in the rearview, and there's a clown sitting there in the backseat. This is scary, and to this day I do check my backseat for clowns at night before I get in, but there was no clown in that episode, just a sexy cat woman who was only scary because of the way she'd turn up in your backseat, etc.

[JohnL]

>Title was something like "The Incredible Mr. Twirpypants",

Mr. Dingle, the Strong

[Dave Munger]

I just remembered the ending of "The Man Who Could Work Miracles", although I've only heard about it second hand. He's becomes kind of a crazy world emperor, and decides to stop the Earth's rotation for some reason. The sheer inertia of the surface of the Earth causes global catastrophe. Kind of a dig at the Bible story of the incident right after the battle of Jericho, I think. Wells was a Fabian Socialist, that's a lot like Communism.