Something Completely Different

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If there's one thing I really enjoy it's a good anthology show. Series like The Twilight Zone (already featured here), The Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt, Black Mirror, Monsters... can't get enough of them. But some are without question better than others, and almost every one of these series has its bad episodes. So which is better? Which is the best? Well, there's really only one way to find out, isn't there?

So I've undertaken to watch selected episodes from, so far, twenty different anthology series and compare them against each other. Series range from science fiction, speculative fiction and fantasy to horror, and everything in between. Some of them I had never even heard about, never mind seen, before I began this journal. Over the course of the project so far I've come across some absolute gems whose existence I was entirely unaware of, as well as some with so many turkeys they could probably supply the whole eastern seaboard for Thanksgiving.

Episodes are taken at random, using a random number generator, so even the series seen as being the best - the likes of your Twilight Zones, Outer Limits, Black Mirrors etc - may stumble at times if I happen to select a bad episode. This will make it fairer and more equitable, as otherwise I could just go straight to the best episodes of each that I know will score high, and tip the balance unfairly in their favour.

The format? Glad you asked. Oh, you didn't ask? Well I'm going to tell  you anyway.

There will be three separate section, with the third one broken into two parts. Why you ask? Wait till I tell you, I answer. Don't be so impatient. Section one is called "The Classics", for obvious reasons, and will feature the shows I, and probably you, know best; the ones already established in this era and the ones that I can, hopefully, reasonably expect to reward me the most with more good than bad episodes.

Section 2 is called "Ye Lesser Mortals " (shut up) and features shows I know of, or have seen the odd episode of, which have been running for some time and can be seen in one way to be nearly the descendants of the classics. Sort of.

Section 3 is "New Kids on the Block" and covers all the other shows, mostly the newer ones, ones which only began in the twenty-first century. Because I have more shows of this type than in the other sections, I've split this into two separate parts, as I mentioned above (see? I told you I'd explain it if you just waited).

Each section will feature fairly detailed synopses of an episode from each show, with my own comments and a rating. At the end of the round the shows will be ranked and then fit into a chart, which will show which of the series impresses me the most, which is at the top, and over the course of a few rounds it will be interesting to see if the positions are maintained or not.

Comment as usual is invited, but not that much expected. At worst, it should hopefully provide an entertaining read, and might bring back memories of certain shows to some of you. For others, it may encourage you to try out some of the shows here, and for still others, give you a reason to roll your eyes and stick on your headphones and shake your head in a "he's at it again, for the love of all that's holy, when will he stop?" kind of way. Spoiler: answer is - never.

Okay then, I can't resist using an obvious pun so:
Let's get this show on the road.

"Doo-doo-doo-doo Doo-doo-doo-doo" etc...
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ROUND ONE, SECTION I: THE CLASSICS


Title: "Shades of Guilt"
Series: The Twilight Zone
Season: 1 (Second reboot)
Year: 2002
Writer(s): Ira Steven Behr

Storyline: A man who refuses to help a black man who is being pursued by attackers at night, and drives off and leaves him to his fate awakes the next morning with unexplained pain, manifesting itself in cuts and bruises on his body. He then sees in the newspaper (it's like a printed, solid form of the internet kids: work it out) that the man he left to be beaten up was in fact beaten to death. He's now wracked with guilt, literally. The pains continue and get worse, but now he starts to exhibit a more frightening outward sign: his skin is darkening, and he's becoming a black man. Not only that: THE black man, the same one he left to die. Oh, you can see it already can't you? I bet some of his last words are "I'm not black! Don't kill me!" or something along those lines. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. His wife doesn't recognise him (duh) and his dog attacks him and as he runs out of his house his neighbour, who of course does not recognise him either, shoots at him, as you Americans do.

The cops are soon after him, and old Matt McGreevy begins to find out what life as a black person is like. Taxis won't stop, his credit card is no good, people look suspiciously at him. He has the perhaps not entirely brilliant idea of going to the house of the dead man, John Woodrell,  and looking as he does his, or rather, Woodrell's brother can't believe it's not him. He asks to speak to his, that is, Woodrell's wife, hoping that if she can understand, if she can forgive him, he may change back. The brother is dubious, also disgusted when McGreevy says that if he had known John Woodrell was a college professor he would have helped. As if that somehow makes a difference. But she can see through him. He's not sorry, only desperate to be changed back. She asks him the most pertinent and damning question she can, and the only one that matters: if her husband had been a white guy, would he have helped him? McGreevy's silence is her answer and she turns away.

The end scene then plays out as you might expect. Wandering, friendless and persistently and knowingly black, he's jumped by some white guys who kick the shit out of him, and when a white motorist happens upon them and he asks for help yadda yadda yadda. The ending writes itself. Oh no wait it doesn't. My mistake. What happens is that the scene resets. He's in Woodrell's body, but kind of not, as it's him in the car and this time he drives off but then changes his mind and comes back, saving Woodrell. And thereby himself. Okay, not that bad really if a little confusing.


Comments: All right, not quite what I had expected but I do have questions. One, what was John Woodrell doing out in the rain, walking so close to his own house if he knows, as he must, that the area is so bad? And how are the Woodrells able to live in such an obviously whites-only area? He doesn't run far, so it's not like he's miles away when he's attacked.

Second, at what point does the bodyswap reverse, as it were? When Woodrell is attacked by the skinheads, his demeanour is more McGreevy's to me - okay he doesn't say "I'm white", so I was wrong there but he doesn't act like he expects to be attacked. So when does time reset? Hard to suss it. I thought this was another white guy stopping for him, then realised it was McGreevy himself, but how can he be in two...

All right, my head hurts. I would have preferred to have seen him stuck as a black man and having to learn to live with that, see the world through other eyes. But the writer took the easy way out and gave us a happy ending. Meh. By now, walk in my shoes, see the world through my eyes, get a new perspective stories have been done to death, and while this has a certain charm it's nothing new at all. I guess it got its message of "we're all brothers under the skin" over tolerably well, though the writer does kind of bash you over the head with it. I thought it might have been more effective had the white guy not realised he was black, till he saw himself in the car mirror as he pleaded with another white guy to save him. Meh. Meh I say!

Rating: :3stars:


Note: where I can get them I'll post videos of the episodes.

No, no need to thank me, honestly. Cash will do.

There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust it. We are in control - what? We're not in control? Form 1775A? What form 1775A? Listen mate, I'm a fucking Controller, right? I don't have time for your bureaucratic red tape and bloody forms - what? Until I fill in the appropriate form I am not authorised to take control of anyone's television? Since when? Now just you look here a - hello? HEL-LO?

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Title: "Beyond the Veil"
Series: The Outer Limits
Season: 2 (Reboot)
Year: 1996
Writer(s): Chris Brancato

Storyline: Eddie Wexler has had enough of being abducted by aliens, so he decides to end it all, but is rescued by paramedics when he makes a 911 call. Taken to a psychiatric facility, the only one set up to deal specifically and solely with alien abductees, he meets another man there, who is called Quasgo and tells him that he too has been regularly abducted. He says there is a "traitor" in the place, an alien in human guise. Eddie becomes friendly with another abductee, a girl called Courtney. Eddie begins therapy; he's told by the doctor in charge, Sherrick, that he will experience "hallucinations", and he starts seeing aliens conducting experiments on him. But are these just hallucinations, or is something more sinister going on?

Well, it's The Outer Limits: of course something more sinister is going on!

Dr. Sherrick is very brusque and unfeeling, seems to be pushing everyone and when he pushes Courtney Eddie stands up for her. Suddenly he sees the doctor as an alien. Nobody else seems to, though, and he's quickly sedated. (Let me just throw my hat into the ring here: they're ALL aliens, and he's on a spaceship, maybe the last human left alive? Meh, probably wrong but there's my guess. Or maybe he's an alien and they're trying to deprogramme him?)

Anyway Courtney visits him and gives him a piece of paper she has taken from Sherrick's office, which seems to have alien writing on it. Quasgo tells him he's not mad, despite what Sherrick says; there are aliens here, and they must expose them. Eddie decides to escape and take Courtney with him, but when they go to find Quasgo he seems to have killed himself. When Courtney is prevented from leaving due to the hold Sherrick has on her through her family, she ends up being killed in one of the sessions, and Eddie, furious, desperate and bereft, kills Sherrick, throwing him down a flight of stairs.

Then it turns out it wasn't Sherrick who was the alien, but some other doctor guy who hasn't featured in the programme in any way so far, and Eddie ends up in a loony bin. Jesus Christ.

Comments: Fucking awful. I thought I had it worked out (as I said above) but man was I wrong. The ending was terrible; a guy who hasn't featured in the episode up to now is suddenly unmasked at the end, like a character shoe-horned in at the last minute in a bad mystery novel, and he's the alien. What the actual blue jumping fuck was that about? How Chris Brancato, who wrote and created Narcos, Godfather of Harlem and First Wave could pen this drivel is beyond me. The cinematography was great, the atmosphere evoked, the tension built up but in the end it all fizzled into less than a damp squib and left me feeling completely betrayed and pissed off that I wasted my time watching this. I could have written four better endings, and in fact now I have an idea for a story based around a similar theme.

Rating: :1stars: (and it's lucky to be getting that!)

Luckily for you, no video available.  ::)

WARNING! If you watch this one there is a lot of sexual content and literally full frontal nudity in it. Be warned. Or, you know, not. ;)

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Title: "On a Deadman's Chest"
Series: Tales from the Crypt
Season: 4
Year: 1992
Writer(s): Larry Wilson

Storyline: Danny, the cocksure frontman of rock band Exorcist hates the fact that his bandmate, Nick, has got married, and wants the new wife out. His groupie girlfriend shows him her snake tattoo, which appears to be alive, as it sticks out a tongue at him (don't ask me from where; use your imagination or watch it) and tells him the guy who did it is a "magician". She's going to introduce him to Danny, and takes him to a strange backstreet tattoo parlour on the wrong side of the tracks. The girl leaves him and Danny enters the place alone, but can't find anyone until a big guy appears. He sneers at Danny when he says he wants a tiger; the tattoo artist says everyone's skin has a story to tell, and his talent is to bring it out onto the surface.

Danny isn't best pleased though when the tattoo is finished, as it depicts Scarlet, the new wife of his bandmate, and some sort of dragon thing. He storms out, furious and aghast. The tattoo guy watches him as he departs, refusing to hand over his money. He smiles "You'll pay later." On his return, Danny argues with Scarlet and then with his groupie girlfriend (I think she may be called Vendetta? Not sure), accusing her of setting him up with the tattoo artist, though she swears she had nothing to do with it. She then helps him get it removed, but it comes back, and seems to come to life.

Vendetta (let's just call her that for handiness' sake, okay?) tells him ominously that if he gets rid of Scarlet for real the tattoo may vanish, and as she has already intimated to him that Nick, the guitarist and the real force behind Exorcist, is thinking of going solo, he gets even more angry at her, while at the same time trying to patch things up with Nick. Then he goes and brutally murders Scarlet. Later, he seems to see the tattoo bleeding, reflecting Scarlet's bleeding face as he killed her, then on stage it seems to be swelling, rising within his chest as if something is trying to get out...

... and then a dragon bursts, Alien-like, out of his chest. Well of course it does. Except maybe it's in Danny's mind, because when Nick, having heard that his wife has been murdered by the singer, bursts into his room, Danny has carved out the piece of skin that had Scarlet's face on it and is holding it in his hand, with a big gaping hole in his chest. Right. Always said tattoos were a bad idea.

Comments: Pretty stupid really. I mean, yes, at the end it's left up to you as to whether all the pulsing, changing and eventually the emergence of the dragon was in Danny's mind or whether it actually happens, though given that there's no corpse of a dragon in the room one would assume the former. It's a pretty poor stereotypical look at a rock  band, with Danny on the edge really from minute one and just plunging further down the rabbit hole into madness, and there's no reason given for why Vendetta hates Scarlet and encourages Danny to kill her, other than that she just hates her. Poor writing, and a very stupid ending.

And here was me, thinking it was going to be about pirates...

Rating: :2stars:


(See? I told ya!)

"Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But, there is, unseen by most, another world, just as real but not as brightly lit. A darkside."

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Title: "Red Leader"
Series: Tales from the Darkside
Season: 3
Year: 1987
Writer(s): Edithe Swensen

Storyline: A sleazy real estate broker is not exactly crying over the death of his partner, or ex-partner in the firm. Jake got into debt and Alex "helped him out" with a loan, which ended up handing all of Jake's stock to his partner. Now that he's dead, Jake's widow has nothing. All her stock, held through her husband, is gone, her car has been repossessed and there is no windfall coming to her. She's hardly heartbroken either: she admits she only married Jake for his cash, and now that he's gone and she's lost everything, she turns her charm on Alex, but he's not interested, knowing the kind of woman she is.

After she's gone, the building starts to shake. Earthquake? But no: a drill starts to pound through the floor and there's an unearthly red light coming through the crack it's making. A moment later, Jake steps out of it, looking somewhat the worse for wear, and tells Alex he's escaped from Hell, though only temporarily. He's come looking for the books - the right books, not the ones Alex and he showed IRS when audited. The real deal, that shows what crooks they both are. He needs these, in order to gain the respect he believes he's due Down Below, and in order to rise through the ranks and become what he calls a Minion, which we can only assume is a sort of lieutenant or manager. There's a big construction gig going on down there right now, and he's not being trusted with any of the big stuff. He wants to show Satan that he has the right - or perhaps that should be the wrong - stuff.

Alex isn't too keen though. He's done some shady deals with Jake over the years, and he doesn't want those broadcast all over Hell. He refuses, trying to shoot Jake, but then, Jake is already dead, so that doesn't exactly work out. Then it seems Jake's time is running out, as a real Minion arrives and starts to drag him back. Seeing his chance, Alex throws his ex-partner under the bus, laying all sort of good deeds at his feet, trying to make out that he was a good guy, and does not deserve any sort of promotion in the ranks of evil.

While they're arguing, another man appears, this one called, with appropriate awe and reverence by the Minion, Red Leader. Of course this is the Devil himself and he reveals that Jake did not escape, Red Leader let him go in order to provide him the opportunity to meet with Alex. Oh yes, Red Leader is very interested in Alex Hayes! He offers him a top job, authority over millions, plenty of opportunity to skim, but Alex isn't fooled. He doesn't, he says, belong in Hell and as he's still alive this Red Leader can't take him against his will. Red Leader leaves, but he assures Alex he will be back. When he's gone Jake's widow enters and, seeing the gun Alex had tried to shoot Jake with, picks it up and shoots him, and kicks him into the hole which leads down to Hell. So it looks like he's going to be taking that job after all!

Comments: Ah yes! This is more like it! I can't believe that, of all the anthology shows, the one I rate least has come up with, so far, the best episode. I never have time for Tales from the Darkside, but I have to admit they pulled it out of the bag with this one. Some shitty acting, definitely - Jake's reappearance from Hell doesn't even faze Alex; he never once says I must be dreaming or anything, and when the widow comes back she remarks on the hole in the ground, yes, but basically ignores it after that. Plus what is it with that door? It sounds so loud and ominous, like a door on the Enterprise turned up to ten! But overall, a good morality tale, and not entirely predictable. I like the nod back to A Christmas Carol when Red Leader tells Alex "You've been working on your resume for some time now." Class.

Stories utilising damnation and the Devil can't, even by the 1980s or 1990s, be said to be anything like original, but this one is handled in a semi-original way, sort of looking to the corporate world as the embodiment of Hell, so kudos on that. Everyone bar the widow works well. Jake, as the eternal second-rate guy wanting to lord it over his own empire, being in his wheelhouse for once; the Devil (Red Leader) working out the details of his offer to Alex, even the Minion who goes after Jake, all very good. The widow almost lets it down; of them all she's the only one really serious. Even Alex can't keep a straight face. Good interaction. The idea of using Hell as a place where the more evil you are the more promotion you can earn is a clever one, and using goodness as a way of "losing the interview" is good.

Rating: :4.5stars:

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Title: "Nosedive"
Series: Black Mirror
Season: 3
Year: 2016
Writer(s): Charlie Brooker, Rashida Jones, Michael Schurr

Storyline: In a world of the - probably not too distant - future, Lacie, like everyone, is obsessed with rating on phone apps, and getting ratings. Everyone wants to be rated five stars, and most are. The quest for positive feedback consumes the lives of everyone on Earth, but this of course is a two-edged sword. Get enough negative feedback and you are toast. One of Lacie's co-workers, Chester, is being ostracised for his breakup, with everyone "on the side of" the other party, and nobody is rating him. He's slipped to a score of 3.1, unheard of and socially really dangerous in this image-important world.

Lacie wants to move to an upscale area, but the high price tag is off-putting, However, if she can raise her rating to 4.5 she will get a discount. This won't be easy though and she will have to start moving in more rarefied circles to meet the "quality people" she needs to "boost" her rating in time to meet the requirements for her new house. Her chance comes when her old friend Naomi, now a model or actress or something, invites her to be her maid of honour. She knows that there will be all top A-listers at the wedding, and although her brother reminds her that she and Naomi were less than friends when younger - Naomi was very mean to her and slept with her boyfriend - she can't turn down this chance and so pretends he doesn't know what he's talking about. Hell, the girl lives on her own private island! Getting to 4.5 will be a breeze!

Ah but maybe not. Things start to go wrong for her as soon as she leaves her house. She  bumps into a woman, who immediately gives her one star (the horror!) and then at the airport her flight is cancelled, and losing her temper and using profanity gets her docked until she's at 3.1. There's not only no way she can't fly now, she is instructed by airport security to leave the airport! So now she has to rent a car, but because of her reduced rating she can only get a piece of crap. Still, at least she's on her way. Until the car's battery runs out and she discovers that it's such an old car that the charging station doesn't fit it. She then has to hitch-hike and nobody will pick her up as she is now down to 2.8. Eventually a truck driver stops - she's 1.4, and for a moment Lacie considers not taking the lift, but she does and the trucker, a woman called Susan, tells her how she lost faith in this whole rating system, how empty and hollow it revealed itself to be, and how she no longer gives a damn about ratings.

Naomi calls Lacie and tells her not to come to the wedding as she's now only a lowly 2.6. This was not unexpected by me, but Lacie seems to be surprised. She decides to go ahead and crash the party anyway, wanting to deliver her speech in order to get the votes she needs. Of course it all goes wrong: she's downvoted to zero, especially when she picks up a knife and has to be arrested and thrown in jail. There, bereft of the cameras in her eyes (were there cameras in her eyes? I think there were cameras in her eyes) and her phone, she is free finally to tell people what she really thinks about them, not what she thinks they want to hear; free to think, rather than just rate, to actually express her opinion without the fear of what it will cost her.

Comments: Black Mirror is seldom less than wonderful, and this is another case in point. Brooker shows us in all its stark, naked, supremely stupid reality the kind of world we're heading for, where our consumerist, image-conscious, ratings-obsessed slavery to social media ends up dumbing down the human race till all we are in the end is a statistic on someone else's phone. People are now discriminated not by colour or race, but by rating. Shows you how empty, hollow and really faceless and grey Facebook and Instagram and all that shit really is. I hated this for the image it portrayed of society, or rather for showing me the truth, but I loved it for the very same reason. If there's one man who tells it like it is and does not give a shit, it's Charlie Brooker. Excellent story, even if the behaviour of the characters made me grind my teeth. I imagine I was supposed to.

Slightly disappointed in the ending: A bit downbeat but with a clever and important message. I would have liked to have seen Lacie spill out Naomi's secrets and that resulting in all her friends downvoting her, making her as miserable and as much an outcast as Lacie, perhaps losing her husband.

Rating: :5stars:

(Isn't it delicious irony that I have to rate this episode?)  :laughing:


(Incidentally, while looking for the video - only found a clip - I came across one entitled "Nosedive ending explained"! Are people so thick that they need someone to explain the very obvious ending of this episode to them? Was it not self-evident? No, don't downvote me, please! I need this job!

I had a convoluted points system all worked out, but then, like the guy who has his speech typed up on flash cards and decides at the last minute, fuck it I'm winging it, fuck it. I'm winging it.

Well, not quite. I'm just going to rank the episodes based on the ratings and on what I thought of each (which is pretty much, though not always, the same).

So the only one to score
:5stars:
is Black Mirror, flying into the lead
Followed by
:4.5stars:
which I awarded - and nobody more surprised than meself - to Tales from the Darkside. That takes second place then.

The Twilight Zone is the only one to get
:3stars: which puts it in third place while
Tales from the Crypt, even though a pretty crappy story, did make me laugh a little (mostly at how ludicrous it is) and you have to award points for the T&A don't you? What? The Titles and Animation. Um. Anyway, that scrapes into fourth with
:2stars: and right at the bottom of the pile with a single
:1stars: - which it hardly deserved - is The Outer Limits.

Our chart, then, so far, after round I looks like this.

5. The Outer Limits
4. Tales from the Crypt
3. The Twilight Zone
2. Tales from the Darkside
1. Black Mirror

Analysis:

The  Outer Limits:  Interesting to see the old stager being last. I was never a complete fan of The Outer Limits (much prefer The Twilight Zone) but even so, I had expected the show would perform better right out of the gate. Mind you, it was a terrible episode, and to add to that, it was from the rebooted 1980s series, not the original one from the 1950s, so maybe we won't be too hard on the series until we see how it does in future battles.

The Twilight Zone: Quite surprised to see this down so far. I wasn't entirely impressed with the story but I did think the series would have made a better showing. It just shows that sometimes things like innovation and originality, even star power can push an episode higher than it perhaps deserves. Again, we're talking about a reboot here, one of many, this from the current century. I nevertheless expect this show to do better in future.

Tales from the Crypt: And I thought this one would be much lower, as I rated it a lot lower myself, but again as I say in the section above, certain elements were in its favour.  We'll see if this continues to be the case as we go on.

Tales from the Darkside: Very surprised this is so high, as I have never rated this show, but I have to admit, sometimes they come up with gold, and this was one of those times. Held its own better than I had expected. Will it continue to surprise me? Stay tuned.

Black Mirror: No surprise though that this won. I'd almost always expect this show to come top, though if it comes up against some of the classic Twilight Zone episodes it might have a battle on its hands! Oddly though, here the valiant opponent was Tales from the Darkside! Who would have thought?

All right then, time to move on.


ROUND ONE, PART II: YE LESSER MORTALS

Shows covered here

Tales of Tomorrow
Monsters
Amazing Stories*
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Night Gallery
Creepshow:
Dimension 404**

Both Creepshow and Night Gallery presented me with a problem, as each use a two or three tale per episode format. I didn't think it would be fair to put up more than one episode against one of the others, and anyway, which one would I focus on? I could have a really good one and a really bad one, and how would I work that out? So in the end I decided just to choose one segment from an episode, which is how I've gone for it here. Those segments will be shorter than the other shows' episodes yes, but as any girl will tell you, size is not everything.

What? When did this happen? Why was I not told???

* I see there has been a reboot of this, so I will be covering both if they come up on the RNG

** This only had six episodes so won't last long, but we'll include it for as long as it lasts.

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Title: "The Miraculous Serum"
Series: Tales of Tomorrow
Season: 1
Year: 1952
Writer(s): Theodore Sturgeon, from a story by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Storyline: Dr. Dan Scott, a biochemist, believes he has invented or discovered a serum which, using the human pineal gland as its basis, is able to repair any defect in or damage to the body. He's been trying it on animals but now he wants a human subject. His boss, head of the hospital in which he works, is dubious; apart from anything else, patients have rights, and Dr. Barker can't authorise anyone to be used in an unproven clinical trial! When a girl is dying, with no hope, he decides what the hell, might as well. Can't do any harm. He secures Carol's permission and the serum is injected into her.

She's very quickly no longer dying, very much alive and up and about. Hands up anyone who thinks this is not going to go horribly wrong? Of course, Carol has been said to be "adapting", and she's adapted all right: to the discarding of morals and manners. She saw someone with money, she needed it, so she stole it. There's no sense of ethics here, no understanding of the concepts of right and wrong. Not only that, she's stronger than ever, able to touch Barker's hot pipe (ooer!) without so much as flinching or sustaining any burns. Barker is afraid that Carol is now progressing, regressing, evolving or devolving towards complete amorality and selfish need, coupled with super strength and no concern for others. This does not sound like a good combination. He wonders if an operation might sort it, but Carol is having none of it, and makes it clear Barker had better not stand in her way. Scott is less worried, and can't see the danger his boss can.

Carol escapes and we hear that she is getting into the top levels of government in her search for power. She comes back, tries to entice Scott to go with her, help her in her quest for world domination, but he is aghast and she coldly leaves him. The two men discuss knocking her out with gas so that they can take her to their hospital and perform the experiment which will (they hope) return her to normal. And it does. The end.

Comments: I don't know if they're all like this, but it's weird to see the show sponsored by a watch company, and then spend nearly three minutes blatantly advertising their product. Quite annoying actually, very cheap. But I guess that's how it was back then. I do find it funny that in the very first scene Barker buzzes his intercom and asks his secretary to find Dr. Scott, and literally a second later he bursts in to the office. Later, when the girl is dying, he does the same, this time sending a nurse, and again seconds later he's there! What, was he waiting outside to be called, serum in hand? I also find it amusing that the serum is injected, and then Barker says he can't hear her heart, but then he can, and he exclaims "She's alive!" Well, yes: she was alive a moment ago. It's not like she's been brought back from the dead or anything. A little early to be celebrating and congratulating his colleague I think!

I must say, at its heart this is a horribly misogynistic story. Its underlying message - in fact, to hell with underlying: it screams it in hysterical huge red letters ten feet high! - is "don't let women get any sort of control or they'll ruin the world!" Nobody considers that what Carol had in mind for the world might have been good? And why had the subject to be a woman? Wouldn't a man, bent on power, have worked just as well? And be more likely to have been affected in that way? Really, quite bloody awful I have to say. Not impressed. As for the experiment to turn her back: they had no idea whether it would work or not, but the unspoken moral is that if it killed her, it would still have been preferable to allowing her to continue to become what she was turning into.

I hope that fucker with the watch company isn't in every episode or I'll end up getting very annoyed. THREE god-damn segments with stupid watch adverts: one before the episode, one halfway through and one at the end. Bloody fifties!

Rating: :1stars:

Title: "The Mother Instinct"
Series: Monsters
Season: 1
Year: 1989
Writer(s): D. Emerson Smith

Storyline: A woman who is in a wheelchair is feeding and talking to her plants in the conservatory when her daughter comes to visit with her no-good husband, who appears to be violent towards her. Yeah, I can see where this is going already. Sorry, sorry. Nelson has come looking for money, but the mother refuses. She's tired of bailing out this lowlife gambler, and when he threatens her daughter she jumps out of her wheelchair and pins the guy to the wall. Amazed, her daughter asks how? And she tells her it's the juice of her melons (ooer!) that she drinks, the enzymes in the mixture rejuvenate the body, but only for a short while. When he sees firsthand the effect, wheels begin to turn in Nelson's greedy little mind; golden, sparkly wheels as he sees what money could be made from such a venture.

He offers to go into business with his wife's mother, but she turns him down flat. He's not done yet though. If she won't team up with him he'll steal the melons himself and make the juice, then he won't have to share the profits with anyone. His wife is of course reluctant, but she's weak and easily led, and in awe of her horrible husband, and so she helps him. In the conservatory as they try to harvest the melons something comes alive though, and starts attacking them, and they barely get out alive. The next morning, her mother shows her what she calls giant bloodworms her father brought back from the Amazon (no, nothing to do with Bezos!) which she says can change any plant they interact with. It's not the melons that are special - without the bloodworms they're nothing - it's the worms themselves. She foresees all sorts of medical advances due to them, but guess who's been listening in at the door?

So the next night he steals two of the worms - a breeding pair - and tells his wife he no longer needs her. The mother is there though, and gloats as she tells him she knew he was listening; she set it all up so he would steal the two worms. Unfortunately, he's not just stealing two worms, he's stealing two children, and their mother might have something to say about that. A huge bloodworm rears up, three or four times his size, and takes him out. That's the end of him and his wife is free of the bastard. As her mother warned him, "don't ever mess with the mother instinct!"

Comments: Okay well I wasn't quite right (I assumed the plants were going to come to life and kill the guy to protect the mother) but it was close. Good twist though, and great to see the arsehole getting his comeuppance. Good story, not totally predictable, good ending.

Rating::4stars:

Title: "Gershwin's Trunk"
Series: Amazing Stories
Season: 2
Year: 1987
Writer(s): Paul Bartel and John Meyer

Storyline: A man answers a knock at his door in the early hours, to be confronted by a detective who says he saw him dump a body off the Brooklyn Bridge only a short time ago. We've seen the composer trying to mop up blood off his carpet before the detective arrived, so we know he's right. Flashbacks show him splitting up with his partner, Jerry, and being subject to writer's block, unable to come up with any of the tunes he's supposed to have written for a new musical. At the same time, his wife decides she's had enough and leaves him. I don't blame her: I hate the guy already and want to strangle him with the wire from his own piano!

His maid suggests a psychic she knows, and though Jojo resists it as nonsense, he's finally desperate enough to take the chance and go see her in the hope she can help him regain his mojo. Sorry. Seemingly against her will, she gets possessed by the spirit of George Gershwin (well duh; the name is in the title huh?) and he begins writing stuff which Jojo then presents to his director, passing it off as his own work. He loves it, but Alan, the stage pianist, who knows Jojo and is aware he is the less talented of the partnership, thinks it's not his style and that he must have stolen it from someone else. Meanwhile the possession is taking its toll on Sister Teresa; she doesn't look well, but Jojo continues on, uncaring, only interested in his songs and not in the least bothered about the health of the one who is making him a success.

When Alan says he knows what he's up to and he's going to blow the whistle on him, Jojo takes a heavy candlestick and kills him. Now, obviously, we're moving back to the present, or just hours before it, as the composer carries Alan's body to the bridge and dumps it over, unaware he's being watched. He manages to bribe the cop, who suddenly has a lapse of memory. However he does tell Jojo that should his show not be successful and bring in the money he expects - of which the detective is in for fifty percent - his memory is liable to suddenly come back. Jojo is not bothered though; he knows his show is going to be the biggest and most long-running hit in town for years to come.

Meanwhile, he discovers that Jerry is getting married to his ex, which does not go down well. Even less so when he learns they have been carrying on for over a year behind his back. In revenge, he ensures his show is held back one night, to allow Jerry's to open; he tells the cop that his success will taste all the sweeter after Jerry's failure. Unfortunately for him, he's not the only one of the ex-partnership who's been visiting Sister Teresa. Oh yeah: Jerry has the very same songs in his musical, and since he opened first, there's no way Jojo can now open his show, or it will look like he's ripping him off. Speaking of off, so is the deal between him and the cop, and he's headed to jail.

Comments: I'm not overfond of musicals, so this doesn't sit too well with me, but it's a half-decent story. I would say though that Gershwin's music is very specific and recognisable, so how this guy thought he would pass the great master's compositions off as his own without raising some suspicions is odd. He's a thoroughly unlikeable little runt, a cut-throat only out for himself and his career, and speaking of being a runt, how did he manage to hoist a body heavier than him up to the railing of the bridge and over? It should have been next to impossible. Another question: why is the cop there at the bridge? That's never explained. Not that bad overall though I guess.

Rating: :3stars:

Title: "The Tale of the Vacant Lot"
Series: Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Season:5
Year:1995
Writer(s): Gerald Wexler

Storyline: A distinctly Arabic-looking tent appears out of nowhere and Catherine, an athlete who is trying - and failing - to make the team is given a pair of shoes which the attendant tells her will "make her fly" and help her achieve the ambition she's been aiming for. She has no money though, so the attendant, who calls herself Marie (but come on: she's probably the Devil isn't she?) says she can trade. Catherine has nothing of value other than a ring given to her by her grandfather and she doesn't want to trade that, so enigmatically Marie says she will take something that has no value to her. She doesn't tell Catherine what that is, but points out, reasonably on the surface anyway, that if it has no value she won't miss it. Oops. Pitfall ahead.

She takes the shoes and Marie vanishes, along with her tent. Of course the shoes begin to make her successful, but suddenly she's a lot less nice, a lot sharper and snappier to her friends. On returning home, she thinks she sees a mark of some sort on her cheek, but when she looks again it's gone. When Eric, the captain of the football team seems to hit on her, but then clearly is already engaged, she runs off, to find the tent has reappeared. This time Marie gives her a whole outfit, again asking for the ring, again refused, again saying that she will take something of no value to Catherine. Again, she is mean to someone, this time her sister, Joyce, and for a split second she sees her face all burned up and horrible. I should probably mention at this point that Marie's face is almost completely covered in a veil and hood, only her eyes visible, and you can clearly see her skin is disfigured.

Okay well she appears in the ladies to Catherine and spoils the surprise by removing her veil and yeah, she's full-on Darth Vader there. Except for her eyes, she looks like a burn victim. Actually, she looks like someone got two faces, one clear and unblemished, one ravaged by fire or acid or something, cut them in two and stuck half of one on top of half of the other. She offers Catherine sought-after-like-gold-dust rock concert tickets, but when Catherine sees her face and hears the desperation in her voice, she refuses the tickets and runs out - straight into Eric. Suddenly the tickets are in her hand, and she can't resist asking Eric if he wants to go. He of course jumps at the chance. But now she has nothing to wear - perish the thought that she should wear something Eric has already seen her in! So it's back to Marie, who supplies her with clothes, but this time does not want to trade. She is, she says, about to get everything she wants.

Joyce, though, has followed her and it seems she has made her own bargain with Marie. This suddenly frightens Catherine, as she sees her little sister looking all tough and grown-up and, like her, sharp and snide, all her goodness and gentle nature gone. Not only that, a few minutes later she and Catherine both look like the thing from the swamp, as obviously Marie has transferred all her ugliness to both of them. Returning to the tent, Catherine sees that Marie is restored to her former beauty. She tells her that she was once like her, wanting things she couldn't have, not happy with her life, till she met an old woman in a tent like this (well, this tent, obviously) and now that she has what she wants - Catherine's life, which she says she did not value - she needs nothing else. Catherine's only chance now is to work the spell on some other greedy girl, in the hope of getting her life.

But Catherine has one last ace to play. She says she may deserve what's happened to her, but her sister does not, and she offers the precious ring, that Joyce's life be returned to her. Marie agrees, smug, now that she has got everything she wanted, but as soon as she puts on the ring she starts to transform again and then vanishes, along with the tent. Catherine and Joyce return to normal, and though she's lost the tickets, Eric doesn't care, and they go out anyway.

Comments: Right. You could see kind of where it was leading, but the ending left a lot to be desired. Why did the ring do what it did? I thought her grandfather was going to have turned out to be some magician or something. Not explained. Otherwise, not too bad really. But it could have been so much more. The thing Catherine didn't value could have been her goodness, her sweet disposition, and her being prepared to hand over the thing most precious to her in order to save her sister could have been redemption. Instead, it just destroyed Marie for reasons. Meh.

Rating: :3stars:

Title: "Last Rites for a Dead Druid" (2nd sequence of 2)
Series: Night Gallery
Season: 2
Year: 1972
Writer(s): Alvin Sapinsley

Storyline: Note: as mentioned, each Night Gallery episode was broken into two or more segments, and I'm only taking one segment per episode. This is the second in episode 18 of the second season.

A woman finds a statue in a junk shop which she exclaims looks just like her husband (it doesn't; it looks nothing like him - I don't know what they're trying to pull here) and he is not impressed at her spending his money on useless junk. He wakes to find the statue standing over his bed, but when he "wakes" it is gone. Did he dream it? His wife certainly thinks so. He's not so sure though, and when he goes out into the garden the next morning and the statue is there, he's less than relieved, as there are what appear to be footprints leading away from it towards the house.

On researching the statue further, he finds that it's of an ancient druid, known as Bruce the Black, reputedly a sorcerer and worshipper of Satan, who had the power to turn people to stone. He also finds out that the thing is missing one part, a sort of weapon it was holding. He's less than pleased to hear that his wife's friend Mildred, whom he detests and who picked out the statue, is coming to dinner. Completely to his surprise he ends up making a pass at her, after first talking to the statue and telling it it is nothing but a hunk of rock and is going back to the shop at the earliest opportunity. His wife, of course, is not present when he makes his move, but he feels like he has been... manipulated? Controlled? Used?

Then he looks into the flames of the barbeque and sees the face of Bruce the Black laughing at him. He goes glassy-eyed and tries to sacrifice the neighbour's cat on the fire but the maid sees him, screams and breaks the spell. That night the statue appears in his bedroom again, and exhorts him to kill his wife so he can have Mildred. He goes to smother her, then comes to his senses. The statue vanishes, and he runs outside to smash it up. There's a flash of light and his wife comes down to find him transformed into the statue, with the live figure of Bruce the Black lying on his back, grinning.

Comments: Yeah, this kinda thing might have flown in the 50s, but even in the 70s this is lame with a capital lame. It's very badly put together, the dialogue is so stilted it could be later sold to a circus performer to get around on, and the ending is, well, dumb. Not what I'd expect from Serling, especially post Twilight Zone. I know he didn't write this one, but still. Poor.

Also, research, man! Druids did not worship Satan: they were into the old gods, mostly nature stuff. Bah.

Rating: :1stars:

Title: "Drug Traffic"
Series: Creepshow
Season: 3
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Mattie Do and Christopher Larsen

Storyline: Due to high pharmaceutical prices and the cost of medical insurance, people who need lifesaving medication often have to cross over the border and get it in Canada. A congressman is fighting to change this, and is with a group of people returning from Canada, among them a woman who seems very sick. Border control's suspicions are far from allayed when the young woman vomits up a bunch of blue and white pills. They are less happy when they discover well over the limit in prescription drugs in the handbag of the woman's mother, some of which are actually prohibited.

While in the waiting room the young woman goes to bite another woman, but the congressman sees her and intervenes. The young woman runs off. She starts searching for food, and seems to be in a bad way, her stomach rumbling, sweat running down her face. She falls to her knees behind a desk and something happens. There's a tearing sound. While her mother is being interviewed by the border guard, a kid comes across the woman's body, minus the head. A moment later the head appears, attached to some sort of alien jellyfish-like appendage, floating in front of him. It attacks.

Shortly after, another man off the bus is attacked, and the thing goes on a feeding frenzy, killing everything in its path. Including my interest in this bloody awful tripe. My god what rubbish. Worst yet, and that includes Tales of fucking Tomorrow and the awful Outer Limits episode. So anyway, the border guard and the congressman are about the only two left alive, other than the mother, and they go after it, get the body, chop it up and that kills the, um, floating head thing.

I'm sorry to say, that's not the end of it. Dear god why won't this episode just die? There's some racist talk goes on between the two men, along the lines of "Fucking immigrants huh?" then the mother decides to top herself, using the shattered window as a guillotine and then the dead head of the daughter takes over her mother's body and then goes back to the bus and meets the Creepshow host and you know what? I've had it with this. Watch it at your peril.

Comments:Cheap horror schlock, with no attempt to justify or explain what was going on. Note: I've looked it up and apparently she was a Thai spirit called a krasue, which at least shows some research was made, but the idea that some doctor across the border was able to see this, and said "oh yeah I have pills for that", the idea it could be controlled by drugs is, frankly, too ludicrous for words. I think the story tried, in its inept, hamfisted and bloodstained way, to get across a message against hatred for immigrants, mixed up with putting differences aside to fight a common enemy, but it got lost in all the blood, gore and stupidity.

Rating: :1stars: (if I could give it half a star I would, but it doesn't go that low so this will have to do, though it's far more than it deserves)

Title: "Cinethrax"
Series: Dimension 404
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Will Campos, Dez Dolly, Daniel Johnson and David Welch

Storyline: A cinema buff takes his niece to the new showing of a hip movie which purports to be in something called "Cinethrax". Nobody knows what it is, and Dusty doesn't care; in fact, he's brought what he calls shifters - glasses that turn 3D back into normal 2D. He's worried that Chloe is getting too tied up in fads and social media, and wants to "keep it real", but then, he's a lot older than her. On entry to the cinema, everyone is given special glasses to wear, so they can, as the slogan blares, "embrace the experience", but Dusty drops his in a bin. He goes to get popcorn while Chloe gets the seats, but when he returns she's hooked up with friends, and though this is supposed to be their night, it's clear she wants to spend it with her friends, so he leaves her to it. The movie begins, everyone gasps as the "Cinethrax" explodes on the screen (immersive 4D motion? What the hell is that?) and Dusty sits there, bored.

Until he sees something nobody else does, something pulsing, moving behind the screen, like... something alive? As he watches, something comes out from behind it, a long, slimy, wormlike thing that goes questing along the ground, but nobody else seems to notice. Then it attacks him and he goes crazy. Removed by security, of course nobody believes him, not even Chloe, and she says she wants to stay even if he goes. She tells him she's outgrown him and he needs to let her go. Security takes him to the projection room, where they try to convince him to put on the Cinethrax glasses, but he refuses, and the three of them turn into some sort of monsters, attacking him. Trapped in the janitor's closet, he manages to get a message to Chloe to put on the shifter glasses, and when she finally does she sees what he sees.

Huge worms (or the many tentacles of one huge worm) are clamped onto the faces of everyone in the cinema. She screams, but her friends exhort her to join them (like, totally!) and now they're all after her. Grabbing a replica sword one of the other audience members had brought in (don't ask: think the kind of people who dress as hobbits and elves to watch Lord of the Rings movies. In public) she fights her way through them but is overpowered and forced to put on the Cinethrax glasses. As the worm reaches for her, she stabs it with the sword. It retreats, howling in pain, and every one of the audience reacts the same, as if they have also been stabbed. She smashes her way into the projection booth, sees Dusty is tied up and is swiftly captured herself.

The cinema guys tell her that Cinethrax (the worm) is a space alien who has come to Earth to, um, unite everyone. Seems it's some sort of hive mind deal, connecting people and then letting them share each other's experiences. But is that what it's doing, or is it enslaving mankind? Answers on a slimy postcard, please... As they force Dusty to wear the glasses Chloe, somewhat forgotten, grabs a piece of the window she shattered when she broke through and jams it into the beast's eye. They all react in pain. Then the cinema guy grabs Chloe - with a long, disgusting, wormlike tongue! - and drags her towards him, shining the light from his - I guess Cinethrax's - eyes into hers, and she sees.

When Dusty breaks the connection by the brutal expedient of a fireaxe to the head of the cinema guy, Chloe and he go to escape, but it's too late. She has seen, and she no longer fears, And outside, the world is burning as everyone sees. There's nowhere to go now. Cinethrax is everywhere. With no options left, Dusty joins the hive mind.

Comments: Yeah I hated the ending. I could see where it was going and all through the episode I thought how are they going to escape, and then they did. But they didn't. I guess you have to give it points for avoiding the hero-saves-the-day ending, but still, it's bleaker than I had expected. Does make it stand out though.

Rating: :4.5stars:

Use your own sporting analogy, but for us on this side of the pond, it's pretty obvious that once you get away from the top teams in the Premier League - your Liverpools, your Arsenals, your Chelseas - there aren't going to be that many great matches to be had. Which is, of course, bollocks: sometimes the "minnows" provide the best matches of the weekend, and who can forget the FA Cup? But when you move away from the top anthology shows, the ones we had in part one (mostly), the chances of the quality slipping are quite likely, and with the odd exception, that's what happens here.

So we have no
:5stars:
ratings and quite a few
:1stars:

Bottom of the list is shared by Creepshow, Night Gallery and Tales of Tomorrow, with
:1stars:
each, while there are
:3stars:
for Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Amazing Stories.
Nearly topping the list with
:4stars:
is Monsters but just edging it this time is Dimension 404 with the highest rating
:4.5stars:

That presents me with something of a problem. I have two series on the same rating and three others on the same, lowest, rating, so how to choose?

Well, for pure misogyny and a really terrible ending I think I have to award bottom place to Tales of Tomorrow, and no, it doesn't get a pass for being a story of its time. Serling did great stuff in the 1950s, so that's no excuse. Speaking of the man behind the most successful anthology franchise in history, he doesn't do too well with his next project, but is Night Gallery worse than Creepshow? It's hard to say, but awful as the latter was, and despite the - surely unnecessary - amount of graphic violence (to say nothing of the casual xenophobia inherent in the script), I will give them this: they did their research. Even if I didn't realise what the thing was at the time I watched the episode, and it seemed nonsense to me, it is based on Asian mythology, so that has to count for something, whereas Night Gallery's writer clearly knew nothing about druids. I bet he thinks they existed in the sixteenth century or something. Horrible as Creepshow was, there was some sort of basic resolution to the story, whereas Night Gallery's was just ridiculous and made no sense.

So I somewhat grudgingly shift Creepshow into fifth place. That brings us to Amazing Stories and Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Both utilised a sort of witchy theme, with the latter bringing in elements of some kind of dark genie, but I would have to say the ending of AS was better than that of AYAOTD? so in general I think AS gets the higher placing, despite all the annoying musical numbers. That puts it in third place, with Monsters obviously in second and then Dimension 404 well ahead in first.

7. Tales of Tomorrow
6. Night Gallery
5. Creepshow
4. Are You Afraid of the Dark?
3. Amazing Stories
2. Monsters
1. Dimension 404

ROUND ONE, PART III: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART ONE

This is now where I move on to the shows I either never heard of, heard of but never watched, or only watched the odd episode of. What I'm saying is, I'm going to be a whole lot less familiar with these shows than I have been with those in rounds one and two. Generally, these are what would be termed, for me anyway, new shows, as almost all of them began in the twenty-first century, and in most cases are currently still running. Let's see how we do.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Room_104_teaser.png)
Title: "Itchy"
Series: Room 104
Season: 3
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Mark Duplass
Storyline: This series appears to rotate around the eponymous room, and the stories of those who stay in it. In this episode we have a guy who seems to be suffering from some sort of skin condition, and has been advised by his doctor to come to this hotel and stay in this room. The idea seems to be to get away from all external stimuli that might be contributing to his rash. Why this hotel in particular I don't know. But it seems that he's been told to use a tablespoonful of bleach (!) in his bath, and notes that the rash appears to be reacting to it, turning into kind of scabs or pustules on his skin. Hell, I knew from the title I wasn't going to enjoy this; guess I'll just have to stick with it. Can't be as bad as "Drug Traffic", right? Right?

He mentions that he has been having the feeling that maybe there are suppressed memories of some traumatic event in his childhood that might be manifesting themselves in the rash. Apparently he's been suffering from this for years and has seen psychiatrists, dermatologists, all sorts of experts, with no luck. That night he has a dream where he's trapped in a cave or something, and creatures outside are trying to hurt him. He talks to his mother and she tells him of a camping trip they took when he was four years old, and in which he seemed to have been abducted or got lost. He doesn't remember any of this. She tells him it was a campsite where apparently people went to see aliens. This seems to him a huge breakthrough: he must have been abducted by aliens. It's the only thing that makes any sense. He thinks the rash is clearing up: it was a symptom of the trauma of being abducted, and now that he's faced it, all will be okay.

Right. How's that workin' out for ya dude? Next thing we see is him breathing heavily and running a bath, into which he pours almost the entire bottle of bleach! The rash, far from receding, has accelerated and got worse. Spoke too soon, as if anyone watching this is surprised. Quick guess: he's an alien who's being returned to his natural form after having been left with a human family to study them. Probably wrong, but let me throw it out there anyway. Okay, back to the episode. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't help but makes it worse. Oh, maybe he's been impregnated with an alien baby that is about to... all right, Trollheart. Enough guessing. Nobody cares.

He decides to end it all, but before he can hang himself he gets a call from his doctor, whom he's been in video contact with throughout the episode. The doctor says he has worked out what's wrong and that he can cure him. A few moments later he's knocking at the door. He administers the injections and the guy goes into convulsions and YES! I WAS RIGHT He literally explodes and the "doctor" reaches into his shattered chest and grabs his "babies" out, two alien offspring, and off he goes. Excellent.


Comments: A very good almost-one-man-play with perhaps a rather predictable ending. If you watch it, beware the gore at the end: it's pretty messy. Good overall.
Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://i.postimg.cc/vZTY2PnW/image-2022-07-24-210843550.png)
Title: "Takedown"
Series: Creeped Out
Season: 2
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Emma Campbell
Storyline: Well this is going to be fun. The subject matter is wrestling, and I hate wrestling. Not that I'll let that impact my rating - hah! low rating without even watching - huh? Oh. Um, didn't realise you were still there. This? No no: an unrelated matter, I assure you. Nothing will pre-bias my ... low rat - are you still there? Look can you just go please? It's very distracting. Thank you.

Better see what this is like, I suppose. Says it's for kids, but then so was Are You Afraid of the Dark? So let's see before we pre-judge this with a low rating - oh come on! I heard you go! What do you mean you came back? Forgot your what? Right, right, just get it and please go! I have work to do! I don't know, some people.. What? No, no, nothing. Nothing at all...

Alexa is a good wrestler (see: I told you!) but when she's selected by her team coach to go up against the boys she believes she has not the confidence or skill to compete against them. Her friend believes in her, but when she gets a weird unsolicited text message telling her she has been chosen, and must text back the gift she wants, she's a little nonplussed. The text warns that the gift will be taken from someone else, and if she doesn't choose something, the person sending the text (who calls herself Trudi) will hide under her bed and take something else. She blocks the number but it texts her again. Weird. Shouldn't be able to do that.

That night she thinks about it, and texts back that she wants physical strength. Immediately a reply tells her that her gift has been sent. The next morning she has great strength, but another text advises her that a gift has been taken from her. She worries what it might be, but still asks for more strength. There's no response. The next day Lincoln, the top wrestler is taken ill and so a spot is up for the regionals, and she intends to take it. That night while she's in the garage with her father the jack slips while he's under the car he's fixing and it falls on him, but using her new strength she is able to lift it off him, much to his amazement.

Alexa's friend has been watching Lincoln, and thinks that she may have been given his strength, as he is flinching whenever she lands a blow on one of her opponents. She shrugs it off though, despite what the text said. And again, she asks for more strength. I'm not sure what she is thinking here: she's already stronger than anyone; how much more strength does she need? But when the final match to decide who goes to the regionals is played, it seems Lincoln is back in business, and what's more, he's got her sense of tactics. She's not the only one Trudi texted. Now that she relies on brute force without strategy, she's easily beaten.

But that's not the worst of it. Now her friends start weakening, possibly dying. She has to text Trudi to take it all back, but the warning notes that one gift returns means all gifts returned. Lincoln tries to stop her, of course, but she manages to send the text and all is restored. Unfortunately her father then reveals that, though she thinks he always wanted a son he did not. He tells her that he used something similar - chain letters, god I remember them! - to ask for a daughter instead of a son.

And now, everything has been undone. And he no longer has a daughter, but a son.


Comments: A good and unexpected ending that raises the story a little above bleh, but here's the thing: the creators of this series stated that they were heavily influenced by Amazing Stories, and this is just "Gershwin's Trunk" rewritten, with a chunk of Are You Afraid of the Dark?'s "The Tale of the Vacant Lot" thrown in, so boo guys, minus points for originality. Also, is that a thing in America - mixed wrestling teams? Young teenage girls allowed to be grappled by - required to be grappled by teenage boys? Would never fly here. Sounds ridiculous.
Rating: :3stars: (only due to the rather decent ending, really)

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51FZ4WEN60L._AC_SY445_.jpg)

Okay, this one breaks the pattern. Not only is it from the 1950s, but it was in fact never screened! You can buy this on DVD but otherwise YouTube is your only man. Let's see what it's like; maybe there's a reason why it never made it to the televisions of America. Ooh look! It's Boris Karloff hosting. That's got to be a good start.

Title: "Summer Heat"
Series: The Veil
Season: 2
Year: 1958
Writer(s): Rick Vollaerts
Storyline: In the searing heat of a New York summer, Edward Page sees a woman attacked in an apartment from his window, but when he calls the police and they open up the door the apartment is entirely empty. (Trollheart's Theory (™) *: it happened in the past and somehow he's seeing it now, or it's going to happen in the future). The cops dismiss it as "just the heat" but when Page gets anxious they decide to take him in.They get him committed, but the doctor in charge believes Page is sane, and that he saw something. He sends Page home. Turn the page, what? Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist.

Meanwhile, a woman rents the apartment and it's clear that what Page saw happening is about to occur now. Of course, when the cops get the call they assume Page is the culprit. He did, after all, give a detailed description of the woman, the apartment, the scene. And he's just returned home. But there's one thing in his favour: when he described the apartment, it was unfurnished, empty. So how could he know what the furniture would look like, where it would be placed, what she would look like? Still, this is an old-style cop in charge, and he's not going to let anything inconvenient like facts get in the way of putting Page away, even when his sergeant expresses serious doubts that Page could have done it.

What about fingerprints? Have they even taken any? Page's would not be here, and that would surely help exonerate him (though he could have worn gloves I guess, but they haven't mentioned anything about prints) and how is he supposed to have got into the apartment? They take him to the station - I thought they were arresting him but they have him going through mug shots - and then he remembers the killer had a cauliflower ear. Suddenly, the two cops believe him and they go off to check this description against known offenders. They find the guy, and Page is able to show them that the woman he murdered bit the guy before he could kill her. Rolling up his sleeve, they see the bite mark on his arm and they know they have their guy.

The cop, the doctor and Page are all left with the unsettling knowledge that somehow Page saw the crime before it was committed.

* Trollheart's Theory is my attempt to, at any point in the episode (but ideally as early as possible) suss out how it's going to end.

Comments: Now this is how to write  a story! And only six years after Tales of bloody Tomorrow! Yes, I sussed it out quickly enough but the story was well-written and presented, and within the context of the show, again, quite believable, something you could see on The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits maybe. A very impressive start. Why wasn't this greenlit, eh?

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://cdn.wallpapersafari.com/28/4/y9ljwK.jpg)
Title: "The Girl Who Cried Monster"
Series:  Goosebumps
Season: 1
Year: 1995
Writer(s): Charles Lazer
Storyline: Goosebumps is based on a series of books written for children by R.L Stine (any relation to Franken? I'm here all week, sorry) so you might think this won't be too scary or adult, but then, Are You Afraid of the Dark? is for kids too and that... was not too scary. Well then, a girl who delights in torturing her little brother with stories of monsters encounters a real one in the library, but because of her reputation nobody will believe her. So Lucy decides to hide in the library after hours and get a picture of the librarian, who she has seen transform into a monster who eats insects. Unfortunately she rather stupidly uses a flash and so is easily detected when she takes the picture, and now she's on the run with the monster after her.

As he's the librarian though, he knows where she lives, and comes to call, but she won't let him in. He has come ostensibly to return her backpack, which she left behind, and after trying to get in he leaves it on the doorstep. Showing its age now, as Lucy has to get her parents to take her into town to get the film developed (ah tis well I remember it!) but when she comes out with her photographs who's there but the librarian, who takes the photo when she drops them on the street. Seeing him, her parents invite him over to dinner, to Lucy's horror. However, in a very clever twist it turns out that her parents are both monsters, and they eat the librarian. Can't have him spreading rumours about them. Having finished him off, they tell Lucy and her brother that soon they too will grow to be monsters, just like their parents.

Comments: Surprisingly good. I didn't suss this one at all, didn't even know where it was going. Not entirely original, but clever.

Rating: :4stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTljYTYwYTktNjhjMC00MmQxLWJjODktYjIzYTViYWZhZTE4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDg4MjkzNDk@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Offervilje" ("The Ultimate Sacrifice")
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Kjetil Indregard

Full and fair disclosure here. As you may have sussed from the title, this is not in English. Bloodride is in fact a Norwegian series, and if you want to watch it you're going to have to deal with subtitles. That said, the subbies are good, easily read and highlighted, and it's well worth watching.

Storyline: Okay, from what I read this series follows a set of passengers on a bus, and each episode focuses on the story of one of the passengers. That story is also linked to a holiday for some reason. This one concerns a woman who, while riding the bus, suddenly sees her hands begin to bleed. The action changes to a guy going for an important interview with the CEO of  finance company (I think that means he's a journalist interviewing the CEO, rather than trying to get a job there, but the translation does not make that clear) then flashes back to five years previous, as a family arrive at their new downsized home, a cottage in the country. The mother (the woman in the story) does not look happy but her adult children try to tell her it's not so bad. They meet the neighbours, who seem friendly, but Molly, the mother, thinks they're weird and a little pushy when they offer to help them sort out the cottage.

They don't expect many to turn up but a crowd does (all holding small animals and seeming a little too attached to them?) and the work is done in no time, as they settle down to a barbeque. (Trollheart's Theory: these are cannibals). While out jogging she sees two of the women, pets in their arms, head through the forest and while she watches in horror one sacrifices her cat, stabbing it with a knife. In shock, she steps back and is discovered. The two women seem to debate between themselves, then decide to take her into their confidence. They tell her the town is built on an old Viking burial ground, and we all know how Vikings loved to sacrifice animals to their gods. She's told that one of the townsfolk took his dog, which had cancer, to the spot where Molly saw them do in the cat - it's an old sacrificial stone, apparently - and shot him. The next day he won the lottery. So now everyone thinks the stone works, and they sacrifice their pets when they need good fortune.

Not cannibals, then. Damn. Much, much worse: people who kill innocent animals to satisfy their greed. Scum.

The women warn her that the stone could change her; if she thinks she can get anything she wants with it, she may lose control. She tests it by catching a rat and splattering it on the stone, then legs it to the shop, buys a scratch card but only wins a small amount. The women tell her that in order to get a proper reward the animal has to have a bond with her. They own a dog, so yeah, you can see where this is going now. After callously killing the dog she goes to buy a lottery ticket. Meanwhile her daughter is frantically searching for her dog while Molly sits at home greedily and anxiously watching the draw for the lottery. She almost has is, getting increasingly excited as number after number comes up, but then the last one is wrong, and she's furious. No jackpot for her!

The women laugh at her when she rages. They know, they can tell that though it was her daughter's dog she didn't love it. I mean, who could kill a pet they loved so easily for mere money? And now you can see where we're headed. They did mention when they told her about the stone that the Vikings sometimes sacrificed humans so... She decides to tell her husband, and leads him to the stone. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say she's prepared to sacrifice him for her precious jackpot. She doesn't seem the sort to really entertain remorse, or to let anything stand in the way of her goals, and the women did say the more she loved something, the more money she would get.

So she does it. She goes to the sacrificial stone with her husband and attacks him. The scene changes. We're back with the guy and his interview with that CEO. He asks if there is any subject he should avoid (he's clearly a journalist) and he's told to avoid asking her about how she made her first million. Back to the past we go. Molly is about to kill her husband when Katja, her daughter, comes upon them. They struggle. Molly tries to kill Katja but her daughter in desperation, fighting for her life, picks up a stone and smashes into into her mother's head. Cut back to the present and it's Katja who is the CEO, a big white fluffy cat on her lap which she pets constantly like a female Bond villain.


Comments: This was really good. On the surface, a version of the old sacrifice-in-the-woods-Indian burial ground idea, but cleverly used. The script kept me guessing to the end, and even then I wasn't sure who was going to be in the chair until she turned around. A good morality tale with a chilling ending.
Rating: :5stars:

That takes us to the end of round three, so how did the shows do?

We have one
:5stars:
two with ratings of
:4.5stars:
One with
:4stars:
and one with
:3stars:

Overall, you'd have to say that, perhaps suprisingly, these shows did better even than the first round! Let's sort them out then.

Of the five series here
Creeped Out scores lowest, but still manages a respectable
:3stars: putting it in fifth place.
Next up is Goosebumps, which gets a rating of
:4stars: and takes fourth place.
Both The Veil and Room 104 get
:4.5stars: but which is better, and how to separate them? Both have their strengths: R104 has a somewhat unexpected ending, and is a single-character play (almost) while TV has that certain 50s charm about it. Oh, decisions, decisions! Does the presence of Boris Karloff swing things in favour of the older show? Well no, not really, as he's more a Rod Serling figure, just narrating and introducing the show, so really it could be anyone.

You know, I really can't separate them so I'm going to award them joint second place and move the other two below them up. That means of course that Bloodride, despite not being in English (which never really means much to me anyway and would not be a factor) as the only one to earn top marks of
:5stars: takes the top spot.

4. Creeped Out
3. Goosebumps
2. Room 104/The Veil
1. Bloodride

That, then, brings us to the final part of the first round. As I said, I'm splitting up the newer shows into two separate sections, as there are so many of them. Here's the second of those.

ROUND ONE PART IV: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART TWO

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Rlstine-hp-hero.png)
Title: "Long Live Rock and Roll/Death Metal"
Series: The Haunting Hour
Season: 3
Year: 2013
Writer(s): Brandon Auman
Storyline: So we're back with R.L. Stine, he of the Goosebumps writing, and these stories are supposed to be more in the adult vein, but we'll see. With a title like that you'll be completely unsurprised to find that this one concerns a young rock band, and in this rock band the lead guitarist is, shall we say, not great, and his bandmates are considering replacing him. Holden goes to a music shop he's seen a flyer for, and there the owner, who calls himself Sir Maestro, sells him a superb guitar for almost nothing. However, he does make him sign a contract. Well, there can't be any harm in that, can there? Even if it's written in red ink?

Of course he's suddenly the reincarnation of Hendrix, or pick your favourite guitar idol kids, but there is a problem. Rather like the Creeped Out episode, his skill seems to come at the price of the loss of same by the other band members, who suddenly can't play. Maestro appears as they're practicing, and offers the other two his fifty percent discount flyers. Later, he appears in Holden's room and tells him they have a deal. He wants Holden to play for him... forever. Yeah that wasn't red ink was it, and he's no music shop owner. Predictable with a capital P. Now Holden realises who he's - literally - dealing with, he needs to stop his friends from taking up Maestro's offer and selling their souls too.

He gets to the shop but it's too late: they have already surrendered their souls and are now playing in the band of the dead. Holden then does a Charlie Daniels in reverse and challenges the Devil (what? Oh come on now!) to a contest; if he wins, he and his friends go free, their contracts annulled. If he loses, he becomes Satan's apprentice. It's a guitar solo contest, and he can't use his magic guitar. The first to miss a note will lose. Things are not going well for Holden till the Devil - alright, alright! Sir Maestro! Happy? - gets a little too exuberant and a string breaks. This means he loses the challenge and the three are free. He disappears in rage.

Comments: Meh. Couldn't be more formulaic. Been done hundreds of times. The ending is okay, but still, I stand by my meh.
Rating: :3stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Mastersofhorror.jpg)
Title: "Imprint"
Series: Masters of Horror
Season: 1
Year: 2006
Writer(s): Shimako Iwai/ Daisuke Tengan
Storyline: An American returns to Japan seeking the woman he fell in love with, and promised to bring back to America to live with him. But when he visits one of the whorehouses and another of the girls says she knew her, she gives him the bad news that she is dead; hung herself in despair when he did not come back. The girl he is talking to now has a disfigured face, that way from birth, which has made her life in the whorehouse doubly difficult. She tells the American that the woman he loved, Kimono, was kind to her and became her friend, and spoke of him often. She tells of how the other girls hated her because Kimono spoke of having a wealthy family, and how they framed her of a theft in order to satisfy their sadistic desire to torture her.

He won't believe it though, and tells he he wants to know the truth. It turns out she framed Kimono, having stolen the ring herself and then left evidence that her friend had stolen it. Then, after she had been tortured, this woman, jealous of her and saying she could not abide kindness, strangled her. She uses somewhat specious logic, that she, being evil, would have dragged Kimono down to Hell with her by the simple virtue of her having been her friend. She thinks that by killing her she sent the other girl to Heaven.

But though he's distraught, he still thinks she's leaving something out, and a voice in the air says "Tell him the truth". So she tells him the real story of her life. Not one of a mother who was a poor but kind midwife and a father who took his own life to save the family from having to care for him, but a drunken, raging and violent alcoholic who savagely beat his piss-poor wife, who provided abortion services. She herself was born and then dumped in the river, but against all odds survived, and the mother decided to raise her, at which point the girl found out just how cruel and evil the world is. A Buddhist monk raped her, kids reviled her for her deformities, and she grew inured to the sight of dead fetuses she carried in a basket as she dumped them in the river for her mother.

Finally, her own father raped her, and she killed him. As she gets to this part of the tale the girl convulses, as if having a fit. A moment later, um, a hand punches out of her head with, um, a mouth in the palm and it, um, spits out a nail. Right. Of course it does. Apparently this is her sister - vestigial twin? Conjoined? Don't ask me; I'm just trying to keep up with this (and keep my breakfast down: it's very gory) - whom nobody but her mother knew about. She reveals that her parents were brother and sister, and that it was her "twin" who wanted the ring Kimono was accused of stealing. But she admits she was the one herself who decided to kill Kimono. Incandescent with rage and grief, he shoots her but she doesn't seem to go down, then changes for some reason into Kimono and pulls out her brain. Yeah. Again, of course she does.

He ends up in jail, natch, and it looks like he is sharing the cell with the ghosts of the two women. And of course, he's flipped completely.

Comments: Just the one: WTF? I will never get Japanese/Asian horror.
Rating: ?

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/IntoTheDark.png)
Title: "Midnight Kiss"
Series: Into the Dark
Season: 2
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Erlingur Thoroddsen
Storyline: A man is killed in his shower by a masked intruder, who slashes his throat and then, as he lies dying in his bath, throws a handful of coins at him and films his death. Meanwhile his friends are off on a holiday. The only girl in the group tells them about the "midnight kiss game" where, at midnight on New Year's Eve, the idea is to find someone you don't know, kiss them (consensually) and then decide if you want to stay with them (but only till sunrise) when, if you do, anything goes.

The killer is on the prowl at the party house, killing the kids one by one but I have to say I'm getting very bored and frustrated with this. Basically it's been about a half hour going and though there was a death at the beginning and one about ten minutes ago, the rest of it is being taken up watching men dancing in a gay club. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but where the hell is all this leading? God I'm so bored! I think one of the guys who's getting married to another guy is still jealous of another guy he used to go out with - I really don't care. This is all way too long and boring and uninteresting, and if it doesn't pick up soon it's going to give Creepshow a chance to move up the chart, cos I'm going to score it lower than I did when I did the hatchet job on that show!

You know what? I'm getting the sinking feeling this is a basic slasher thing, without any supernatural element, and if so it knows where it can go. The problem I have is that horror can encompass anything from vampire and zombie to low-grade slasher, and while, looking down the list of episodes here I can see some which would have a supernatural bent, I also see many that do not. And I think I've rolled one that is not. Let's stick it out for a bit more and see if I'm wrong. No I'm not. It's a basic gay revenge fantasy slasher porn thing. What it has to do with the tradition of "midnight kiss" eludes me entirely. As does my desire to watch any more.

Right that was utter garbage. What a waste of time. Fuck that.
Comments: The next one had better be decent.
Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Love%2C_Death_%26_Robots_Logo.png)
Title: "Ice"
Series: Love, Death & Robots
Season: 2
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Rich Larson
Storyline: Sibling rivalry raises its head on an ice planet (no, not a nice planet - a planet made of ice) where one brother is very much inferior to the other. It's a little hard for me to get a grip on what's happening here, but it seems to be the idea that frost whales (?) swim beneath the ice and then periodically surface, cracking the ice. At that point the kids all run across it. Or something. Have to say, I've yet to see any robots but however. Of course there are drugs involved. As the frost whales hit and the ice buckles up, they all run, but the older brother doesn't make it and falls. Everyone leaves him but his younger brother picks him up and carries him the rest of the way. Then when they're heading home the older brother walks fine, showing that - what? He pretended to be injured so his brother would be able to play the hero? Weird.

Comments: I have no idea what that was about. Robots? What robots? The idea of the frost whales was good, but the story didn't do it for me personally.
Rating: :2.5stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BN2YwMWQ1YTUtMzkzOS00YWZlLThhNTctMjAwMGRlZDgxMTAwXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Iron River, Michigan"
Series: Monsterland
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Emily Kaczmarek
Storyline: A girl goes into the infamous White Woods, where numerous girls have vanished or been murdered, because why not? Elena's a teenager and she knows it all. Her friend, Lauren, whom she is only using when it suits her (she makes her hide in the closet while she has sex with her boyfriend, for god's sake!) finally stands up to her, and tells her she is not going into the woods with her, she can go alone. And she does. The next day Elena is not in school and when Lauren gets home the police are there. Elena is missing. The cop questions her but she's afraid to say she let her friend go into the White Woods alone, so says nothing.

It's ten years later. Lauren is marrying Elena's ex-boyfriend, Peter; they grew close over their shared grief for the disappearance of Elena, and eventually that became more than just mutual support. At the dinner (it's a rehearsal for the wedding) the guests talk about the White Woods. Seems the girls who went missing were all found later minus their heads. The killings were blamed on the Lumberjack, a boogey-man constructed by the myths, and presumably melding the fact that the murder site is a forest with the lack of heads. The conversation turns to the recent discovery of another victim, also sans head.

One of the bridesmaids, Abby, seems to think Lauren is trying to take Elena's life over. Given that she has been missing (presumably dead, and also headless in the White Woods) for a decade now I'm not sure where that comes from necessarily, but Lauren is setting her hair the same way that Elena did and is using her pet name "El". L is for Lauren, El is for Elena. Not really a huge red flag there I would have thought. But Abby seems convinced that not only is the body that has just been found that of Elena, but that Lauren murdered her. Again, I say, it's a hell of a logical leap really.

The scene rolls back ten years. It appears what Lauren remembers is not how it happened. She did go to the White Woods with Elena, and they smoked a joint, but when she turned around Elena was gone. She was only scaring her though, and they began to fight. Lauren knocked Elena to the ground, she hit her head, yadda yadda yadda you know how it goes. She found an axe on a tree stump and decided to shorten her friend so that it would look like she was just another victim of the mysterious Lumberjack.

Now, at this point I don't know if that's what happened, or it's just what Abby thinks happened, as the scene shifts back to the two girls discussing it. A little ambiguous there I think. Abby at any rate decides to test her theory by calling her mother, the old drunk, and trying to shake her composure. She says that there was dirt on Lauren's coat when she came back in that night and she found Elena's scarf in her bedroom. Lauren relates another tale, similar to the one (I guess imagined by Abby) we've seen, but with one important difference: she says when Elena vanished and started taunting her, she suddenly screamed and Lauren ran out of the woods.

Nobody believes her, and Abby pays off her mother; she's served her purpose. Everyone's pretty quick to jump to the same conclusion without any solid proof, and Lauren runs into the woods in her wedding dress. There she meets an old crone who guides her to her hovel, which, um, seems to be made out of a tree. There she meets Elena, still alive but unable to talk due to her vocal chords being frozen from exposure. The old crone has taken her for her daughter, and is treating her as badly as Lauren's mother treated her. The crone gives Lauren the option of replacing her; Elena may go if Lauren stays. But she leaves her there and returns to her home.

Comments: Pretty good story, a real adult macabre fairy tale with a suitably dark and unexpected ending. Why she didn't just pick up the axe and kill the old crone I don't know - she was old and weak - but I guess she wanted Elena to continue to suffer, and she wanted her life. She wanted her to know what life with an uncaring mother had been like for her, to experience it for herself.  Not quite supernatural, but certainly better than any of the last few shows anyway.
Rating: :4stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMDQ0MTBjM2MtODFmYi00MmU1LWIxYTYtMzRiZGRiMTE5Zjg3XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Essence"
Series: Two sentence Horror Stories
Season: 2
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Megan Rosati
Storyline: Two young girls strike up a friendship in the beauty salon where they work, and above which they both live, one of them being homeless. In the night, Mina wakes up and finds her body covered in sores and pustules, then awakes in reality to find it was just a dream. Wasn't it? Later she sees the manager, Jessica, who had fired her but been overruled by the owner, talking to a woman in the street outside, and an exchange takes place. Looks like something in a tube - a drug maybe?

Mina's friend gets sick, and this is going to sound crazy but let's go anyway. (Trollheart's Theory: are the girls' essences (ooh yeah it's called that isn't it?) being somehow harvested by the salon to be used in what's called their VIP treatments for the wealthy clients? Is what the woman outside passed to the manager the "essence" of maybe her daughter? Buying the essence of beauty?) Mina goes to get proof, having come, it seems, to something of the same conclusion I have, and sees Jessica open the press where the VIP product is kept. She takes out a large box, out of which some sort of smoke or vapour rises. She then scoops something out of it, filters it into a bottle and then eats it. Mina then goes to take a photo, but like another stupid person we've seen in another show, she uses the flash, which of course gives her away.

It can be seen now that what Jessica is eating appears to be sections of skin, this harking back to her VIP girls - the ones who administer the treatments, and who never seem to last long - developing skin irritations that cause them to scratch off flaky skin, which is then carefully collected and swept up. Having seen her take the picture, Jessica offers Mina a deal. She tells her the "essence" keeps her young and beautiful, and she, Mina, can have the same if she cooperates.

The owner is now in the bedroom of Mina's friend, Tran, and tells her that Mina has been fired. She is gone. But she has sent the picture to Tran, who gasps when she sees it. Three weeks later she's now a manager and she has Cora tied up, harvesting her skin - and only her skin - so that the VIP treatments can continue.

In case you're wondering and saying "that was more than two sentences!" here's what happens, apparently. The episode begins with one sentence, in this case "I always admired her looks." At the end it completes with the second sentence: "Then I found out who she ate to get them."

Comments: A great little comment, both on what women will pay to stay young and beautiful, and also on how a blind eye will be turned if it's exigent. I guarantee there's a large percentage of the VIP customers who could be told exactly where the ingredient for their serum comes from and would shrug and say "oh well, as long as it keeps me beautiful!"
Rating: :5stars:

Not much in the way of high ratings here, but let's see what we got.

I can't even rate Masters of Horror, as it completely confounded me. I had no idea what was going on, but it needs to be in the running so it will obviously go last. It's just beaten into fourth place, then, by the godawful Into the Dark which barely manages a very begrudging
:1stars:
Faring slightly better in third is Love. Death and Robots, which, despite the story being a bit hard to follow, had some pretty cool anime and gets a rating of
:2.5stars:
Hardly a ringing endorsement, I know. Much better are the top two, with Monsterland reaching a high of
:4.5stars:
and taking second place while Two Sentence Horror Stories, to use an annoying American euphemism, knocks it out of the park and gets the highest possible rating
:5stars: taking first place.

5. Masters of Horror
4. Into the Dark
3. Love, Death and Robots
2. Monsterland
1. Two Sentence Horror Stories

Now that we've completed round one, we need to rank all the shows in order, so it's time to count up the stars and see how many each got, and place them accordingly.

:5stars:

Black Mirror, Bloodride, Two Sentence Horror Stories

:4.5stars:

Tales from the Darkside, Dimension 404, Room 104, The Veil

:4stars:

Monsters, Goosebumps, Monsterland

:3stars:

The Twilight Zone, Amazing Stories, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Creeped Out, The Haunting Hour

:2.5stars:

Love, Death and Robots

:2stars:

Tales from the Crypt

:1stars:
The Outer Limits, Tales of Tomorrow, Night Gallery, Creepshow, Into the Dark

This of course means we have some shows sharing slots, and while I would prefer to separate them, as I found, some are so good, or bad, that I really can't. So instead I'll put them alongside each other, but this will not be a cumulative effort: as soon as one good show has a bad episode or vice versa, their ranking will be subject to change. In other words, in order to keep a high, or low, place, every episode will have to be of the same high, or low, quality. To put it simply, these shows will only be as good as their last episode.

For now then we have six slots being shared by a total of 22 shows, which will, hopefully over the next round or two, separate out to fill up the empty slots.

22 - 8: Empty as yet

7. The Outer Limits, Tales of Tomorrow, Night Gallery, Creepshow, Into the Dark

6. Tales from the Crypt

5. Love, Death and Robots

4. The Twilight Zone, Amazing Stories, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Creeped Out, The Haunting Hour

3. Monsters, Goosebumps, Monsterland

2. Tales from the Darkside, Dimension 404, Room 104, The Veil

1. Black Mirror, Bloodride, Two Sentence Horror Stories

ROUND TWO, PART I: THE CLASSICS
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/The_Twilight_Zone_%281959_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-The_Twilight_Zone_%281959_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross"
Series: The Twilight Zone
Season: 5
Year: 1964
Writer(s): Jerry McNeely, based on a short story by Henry Slesar

Storyline: A perennial loser and permanent nobody meets a man in hospital after he goes in to have his hand fixed, having punched it in frustration into the door of his ex-girlfriend's house. The man has a bad cough, and after failing to empathise with him on how that's worse than a broken hand, the man suggests a bargain: they swap ailments. Salvadore Ross, thinking the guy is nuts, agrees but is amazed to wake later that night with his hand fully working and in no pain. However, he does have a nasty cough. The guy in the bed next to him though now has no cough but does have a broken hand. He is aghast; he didn't do this (who did?) and now a broken hand, at his age? It'll never heal. He pleads with Ross to swap back but he refuses and checks himself out of the hospital with nothing more than a bad cough now.

Realising he has the power now, he talks to an old rich guy and convinces him to pay him a million dollars for his youth. The man laughs, thinking Ross is insane, but agrees, in principle. That seems to be all it takes. The next time we see Ross he is indeed older, richer, living in the apartment which had belonged to the old guy. This is not enough for him of course: now he has to get back to being young. He tries to persuade the bellhop to sell him one of his years, but on principle the kid refuses. He does only offer him 250 dollars, mind you, though that's about four times his salary. Nevertheless, not interested. This may not be as easy as he had assumed it would be. Perhaps not everything is for sale.

Or is it? Maybe the price just wasn't right, not enticing enough. Bumping it up to a thousand dollars changes the bellhop's mind - after all, it's just one lousy year. What difference does that make to a kid of 19? Ross pays him and tells him to spread the word: some old guy is offering big cash for a year off people's ages. Soon enough he's back to his own age, and goes looking to patch things up with his girl. Her father still doesn't like him. (Trollheart's Theory: the father is in a wheelchair. He's either going to be tricked into or will agree - for some reason - to swap places with him and end up unable to walk). When the girl comes back home she is so impressed by the way Ross has cleaned up his act that she agrees to go to dinner with him.

Ross however soon finds out that a pig in a suit is still a pig, or something. There are qualities you can't buy, or force on people. He's a loser, with a loser's mentality. He even says to her father, when asked the most important question any father can ask of the suitor to his daughter, does he love her, that he wants her. It is, of course, far from the same, and he finds this out when she again turns him down. His fancy clothes, his manners, his money mean nothing to her. If he's not gentle, kind, compassionate - if he doesn't love her, what's the point? So he comes to a decision: he'll pay her father 100,000 dollars for his compassion.

The next we see of him he is a changed man: attentive, loving, gentle. He asks the father for permission to marry, but unfortunately the man who was gentle and loving has now sold that quality to Ross, and he shoots him dead.

Comments: Well I didn't get it right, but there you go. A pretty clear object lesson in two points: one, that you can't always buy everything you need - a man is more than the sum of his parts - and two, that a kind and gentle nature is often the only bulwark standing between some of us and great evil or violence. A clever story, typical of this series, and while it has a somewhat abrupt ending (and a predictable one, once you see her father is suddenly covered with a blanket across his legs in the wheelchair, which he previously was not) it's  a good episode.

Of course, like most series of this nature, the explanation for how Ross can do what he does is never forthcoming, nor even hinted at. As was said once in a Simpsons episode, yeah well when something like that happens, a wizard did it. It's just generally accepted: this is The Twilight Zone, after all, and it quite often provides no answers.

There are plenty of questions though, such as has Ross has this power all along, and if so, how has he reached this age without discovering it? As a child, would he not have wished for things and made bargains? What is the message, the moral we're supposed to take away from this? Clothes (do not) maketh the man? Once a bad guy, always a bad guy? Or is it more subtle, that kindness, gentleness and compassion are all that keep a man like her father from committing murder? You'd have to wonder what will happen to her father? He will presumably be arrested, but how is he going to explain himself to his daughter? Why did he shoot Ross? Will she ever be able to forgive him? Will she shoot him?

I'm disappointed in the characterisation of the girlfriend, who really doesn't distinguish herself as anything other than a prize to be attained, and lets herself down, in my opinion, by falling for the "new" Salvadore.


Rating: :4stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAwNjE3MDU5M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzI1ODUxMQ@@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "The Brain of Colonel Barham"
Series: The Outer Limits
Season: 2
Year: 1962
Writer(s): Sidney Ellis/ Robert C. Dennis
Storyline: As man prepares for a Mars landing, NASA is looking at the idea of sending a robot, but as robots can't make independent decisions, they're considering putting the brain of a disabled astronaut, the eponymous Col Barham, in the body of the robot. Barham is close to death anyway, and agrees, even though his wife is bitterly opposed. But this is a chance to live forever, a shot at immortality, and Barham is not going to let it pass him by. Not like he has much to live for, he believes.

After the operation, his wife considers her husband dead; she is not interested in "that thing", whatever Barham has now become. And what has he become? He refers to his psychiatrist,  Major McKinnon, as a "mortal", and seems to have no emotions. When the lab technician refuses to bring his wife to him, the brain of Barnham zaps him and he is suddenly under his control. He tries to take Jennifer forcibly to her husband but the Major interrupts him. But now he no longer cares about her: he has bigger fish to fry. Worried that it's becoming too powerful, Major McKinnon recommends the termination of the programme, but he is overruled.

The Brain is growing, and it demands Doctor Rahm "remove" McKinnon. When he says he'll have him transferred, that's not good enough for our friendly neighbourhood Brain, and it sends him to kill the Major. The doctor shoots, but he's an automaton now, and can't operate independently, so he just fires in a line and misses McKinnon. While the general and his scientists argue over how powerful the Brain is, Jennifer goes to visit it. When she's joined there by the rest of them the Brain reveals that McKinnon is in love with her and that's why he wants the Brain destroyed. But it quickly drops this tactic and shows the contempt it now has for "mortals". It's in full-blown megalomaniac mode now. The general agrees it's time to terminate the operation.

Only one problem with that: this operation has no intention of being terminated. McKinnon fights his way back into the control room, where Jennifer is trapped, and together they manage to blind the thing's sensor while the general fires a rifle from across the way and destroys it.

Comments: Meh, your standard man-donates-brain-to-science-and-becomes-a-god story. Reasonably predictable, though the idea of a mission to Mars so far back is intriguing. I mean, The Twilight Zone was more concerned with getting to the Moon. Not bad I guess.  Much of it seems to have been copied from the earlier episode "The Architects of Fear" and even from the next one, "The Man With the Power". The similarities are more marked when Barham's wife refuses to see him, saying that "thing" is not her husband, in something the same way as happened in "Architects", although in that one she assumed her husband was dead, but close enough to feel like they were cobbling the story together from those two episodes. And given that it's only a year later, no real excuse can be accepted here.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://flxt.tmsimg.com/assets/p184195_b_v7_ae.jpg)
Title: "Showdown"
Series: Tales from the Crypt
Season: 4
Year: 1992
Writer(s): Frank Darabont
Storyline:  A gunfighter is on the run from the posse. When his companion is too weak to continue and falls off his horse, he shoots him and continues on. When he reaches the next town a Texas Ranger is waiting for him, and they face off against each other out in the street. Billy is faster and the Ranger falls dead. In the saloon he meets a snake oil seller, who tells him about his "wonder tonic" that can sharpen the senses, speed up the reactions, everything a gunfighter needs. The peddler offers him a free sample. He takes it, and suddenly starts seeing all the men he killed, alive again, facing him.

Turns out the peddler is also dead, caught in the crossfire of one of Billy's robberies. All the dead guys try to convince Billy he too is dead, but he won't believe it. A few moments later they all disappear, and then a tour party comes through. The guide tells the party that this here saloon has its very own ghost, Billy Quinntaine, fastest gun in the West. One of the kids holds something on his shoulder that Billy can't fathom, with music coming out of it like there was a little band of men inside it playin' or something. The guide tells them that Billy did kill the Texas Ranger but that the posse were there, too, and they shot Billy dead from the windows.

Walking outside, Billy realises he is now in the future, a future he doesn't recognise, and is in fact dead a long time. He calls to the ghosts of the dead gunmen, but nobody answers. He's left all alone. Then he hears the voice of the Texas Ranger calling him out, and realises he is now doomed to repeat the final gunfight and his death all through eternity, never knowing any rest. He must face his own death... oh no wait he doesn't; he just gets to join the rest of the cowboys in the land of the dead.

Comments: Excellent story, though it kind of was done before, not necessarily in a Wild West setting. Bit disappointed with the ending; seemed unnecessarily happy when it could have been bleak. This is definitely where the episode falls down for me. Instead of giving us a "he did bad things so now he has to spend eternity on his own", he gets to ride off with - well, not his buddies: the marshall is among them, but other cowboys - simply because he accepts his death. Sort of sends very much the wrong message, to my mind.


Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/Talesdarksidetitle.JPG)
Title: "Barter"
Series: Tales from the Darkside
Season: 4
Year: 1988
Writer(s): Jule Selbo based on a story by Lois McMaster Bujold
Storyline: Sigh. We're in the world of I Love Lucy (which I don't) for some reason, and a strange man bearing somewhat of a resemblance to a young Sinatra calls at the door, asking for something ("moneya" - money?) and then collapses. Oh no right, it's ammonia he needs. I suppose he's an alien. Speaks weird, as if he is learning the language. Yeah of course he's an alien, and he wants ammonia - something to do with gravity equalisation, who knows? In return he has some gadgets but she's not interested until he shows her how to "turn off" her noisy son, who is learning to play the drums.

Unfortunately, when the alien disappears the gadget blows a fuse, so her son is left in stasis. I wish there was something that would leave this fucking episode in stasis! Anyway let's get it over with. Thank the Great Pixie it's not an hour long, but even so, twenty minutes seems like eternity. Sigh. Right then, head down, let's go. They buy up all the ammonia they can in order to entice the alien back, and back he comes, but for some reason he now wants to have the son as his helper for three years. Look I don't know, all right? I'm just trying to get through this with my sanity intact. They replace the ammonia with bleach, he fades away, they steal the gadget and start the son up again. Unfortunately, there's no stop button and so Little Nicky keeps drumming without stopping.

The alien reappears, and now they have to trade. So the son goes off with the alien yadda yadda I want those twenty minutes of my life back. Oh never mind: I'd just waste them.

Comments: Jesus fucking Christ on a trampoline scoring a touchdown while the sky turns green and the sea turns pink! What a piece of crap! I've shit better writing than that. You guys have read my stuff and you know that's true! See, this is the kind of thing I expect from this series. We may have started with an uncharacteristically good, even excellent episode in round one, but you can be damned sure it was an aberration. I knew I hated this show!

A slightly dark ending to what is supposed to be a comic episode, but hell, I don't care. Get it away from me! Get it AWAY!
Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "Metalhead"
Series: Black Mirror
Season: 4
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Charlie Brooker
Storyline: In a post-apocalyptic (?) future, three people break into a warehouse to steal I guess some medical supplies for one of their friends who is dying. But a robotic guard dog thing kills two of them (literally blowing the head off one) and the third only escapes when the car she is in, perched on a cliff after being chased by the robot dog, goes over with the thing inside. She legs it. The robot dog extracts itself from the wreckage and goes after her.

She climbs up a tree, and with its damaged leg from the crash the dog can't get up after her, so it sits down to wait her out. From the tree she throws sweets at it, waking it up from its power down and counting till it goes to sleep again, I suppose trying to run its battery down? Not sure. Anyway, after multiple attempts it seems she succeeds, and the thing has run out of power. She jumps down from the tree and legs it again, the dog motionless on the ground. We learn her name is Bella.

She makes it to some sort of building, looks like a fort or compound, but no way to get in and nobody around. She looks through a letterbox and sees keys on the desk, and tries to hook them with some wire. Behind her, the dog powers back up and comes in search of her. She manages to snag the keys and gets into the building, but it appears she was actually looking for the keys to the car outside, which is, not surprisingly, locked. No car keys. She explores the building. Finds a seriously dead body, mostly just a rotted skeleton. She takes a gun it was holding and in its pocket finds the car keys. The dog arrives at the building, keys the pad, enters.

It takes a knife from the kitchen (guess its gun must be damaged) and goes through the house looking for Bella. She lies in wait for it with her shotgun. However she doesn't shoot it (maybe they're impervious to bullets, being armoured and all) but throws a can of paint over it, blinding its sensors, then sends it the wrong way and runs like fun. She gets to the car but it won't start (battery flat maybe, though the radio does play so I don't know: out of gas?) and the dog, zeroing in on the music, comes after her. She gets the drop on it and blows it away, but not before it can stab her in the leg. As it dies, it throws out a cloud of shrapnel, something it did at the start. She realises she's dying, and cuts her own throat after making one last radio call to say she's sorry but she tried.

The final scene shows what they were all trying to get from the factory, what they died for: a consignment of teddy bears. Jesus. I'm crying here writing this. What a poignant and unexpected ending, Brooker does it again.

Comments: Oh my fucking god how does he do it? The kicker slams you right in the stomach. All killed in the forlorn and desperate hope of getting a replacement teddy bear for her friend's dying son. Absolutely unbelievable. I think the idea here is that there's either been some sort of war or zombie apocalypse and the few survivors left have to try to forage what they can, but the big factories and warehouses are protected by these robot dogs, examples of which I've seen in real-life as companies are beginning to use them.

Presumably, with no humans left to direct or control them (or deactivate them) the robot dogs are continuing to follow their programming, protecting the merchandise and going after anyone who steals or tries to steal it, only one sentence in their robotic minds.

Not only far and away the best episode of Black Mirror yet, but easily the best of any of the shows I've watched up to now. Just amazing. Would rate it higher if I could.

I don't understand how some reviewers seem to have missed this. The implication is clear: Jack, who was mentioned at the beginning having only days to live, is a small child, and the bear was to be for him, to help him in his final days, make them more bearable (sorry). But few people seem to have got it. It was blindingly obvious to me, but the comments I've read make it clear it isn't so to a lot of people. One of the most heartbreakingly human stories I think I've ever watched.

Rating: :5stars:

I've decided in future (hah!) to wait to do the rankings till I've finished the round. It's just really double work otherwise.

And so, on we go...

ROUND TWO, PART II: YE LESSER MORTALS

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/TalesOfTomorrow%2COpeningTitle.PNG)
Title: "Past Tense"
Series: Tales of Tomorrow
Season: 2
Year: 1953
Writer(s): Jack Weinstock, Willie Gilbert
Storyline: A man lies dying in a hospital in 1910, desperately mouthing the word "penicillin", but nobody in 1910 knows what he's talking about. He's dying of pneumonia, easily curable now but back then a death sentence. His doctors muse over the fact that the man has no friends, nobody has come to visit him, and nobody knows who he is beyond his name. We see back into the past, where Harry Markel is building a time machine. Tired of being poor and struggling as a doctor, he wants to learn the secrets of the future and make himself rich when he brings them back. His housekeeper sees the machine is taking him away from his patients, and thinks he's going mad, and tries to smash it up, but he stops her. She vows to destroy it though.

Oh wait I'm wrong. He's going into the past, taking drugs which won't be available there for decades and plans to sell the patent on them. He gets to 1923 where he convinces another doctor to allow him to use this new wonder drug, penicillin, on a terminally ill patient, against the wishes of his director. Unfortunately the drug does not work and the girl dies. Back to the drawing board. This time his housekeeper believes he has gone back in time, but warns him he is messing with forces he can't understand and he should not interfere with the past. Of course he doesn't listen to her, and off he goes.

Unfortunately when he arrives back in 1910 he's arrested as a quack, as there is no record of him as a doctor, so it's believed he's impersonating one. When he starts babbling about a time machine that does it, and he's carted off to the funny farm where, having contracted pneumonia and where penicillin is unknown (even though he has some on him) he dies.


Comments: Decent little time travel story. I must admit, I thought the housekeeper was going to smash up the machine while he was in the past, preventing him getting back, but to be fair there were no malfunctions with the machine at all. It was simply that nobody took him seriously, and then he fell victim to a malady that today would be easily cured, but which in 1910 was lethal. His claim about wanting to gift the world the wonder drug rings a little hollow though: he originally tried to sell it for a quarter of a million in bearer bonds, and when he was turned down and the drug didn't work in his subject, only then did he start offering it for free, more as a way to prove he was telling the truth than as any philanthropic gesture.

Still, a lot better for our second look at this series. Perhaps there is hope for it, after all.

Rating: :4stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Monsters_%281988_%E2%80%93_1991%29_poster.jpg)
Title: "The Vampire Hunter"
Series: Monsters
Season: 1
Year: 1988
Writer(s): Edithe Swensen
Storyline: Trollheart's Theory: I bet this is about a vampire hunter! Oh look ! I was right! He's retiring though, bored he says, and heading off on a vacation, so when a young pretty woman comes to him, telling him that she fears her brother is a vampire, and only the great Ernest Chariot can help her, he's not impressed; he's an old man, and sexy girls don't have the same power over him that they used to, so he blows her off. Um. Should that be the other way around? Perhaps not. His young protege, though, is not about to let a lovely girl like that down, and takes on the case. But he's been led into a trap. The vampire is not the girl's brother but her lover, and more, one of the vampire hunter's enemies. He is setting a trap to lure Chariot to him and kill both him and his apprentice. Who, by the way, isn't very good at his job.

All is not as it seems though. Chariot returns, having made enquiries as to the young lady's story, and found everything not quite right. He is worried when he hears his apprentice has gone off, and fears the worst. The girl returns, telling him that the vampire is waiting for him, but he is not allowed bring any of his hunting weapons. And... basically nothing happens. He goes there, kills the vampire with the help of the girl in the end, and that's it. What a crock.

Comments: Fucking awful. Completely by the book, no twist, no surprises, no interesting ending. Just terrible. My god what rubbish. There's SO much you can do with vampires, so much more with a retiring vampire hunter. None of which was used here. Lazy, lazy writing. Didn't even try to play it for laughs, which might have worked. Up its own arse.


Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/AmazingStoriesTVseries.jpg)
Title: "Welcome to my Nightmare"
Series: Amazing Stories
Season: 2
Year: 1986
Writer(s): Todd Holland
Storyline: A kid who is obsessed with horror movies finds himself in a very different movie theatre, where everything is real. He is at the Bates Motel, wearing Vivienne Leigh's dress and being pursued by Norman Bates. He escapes, and so his penchant for horror movies is gone, and he learns to live in the real world. Jesus on a fucking rocket to the Moon. ::)  >:(

Comments: What can I say? Rubbish. Absolute garbage. I could have pulled a better story out of my aaahhh sod this. The only thing amazing about this story is that it somehow got screened.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/AYAotD_logo.png)
Title: "The Tale of the Renegade Virus"
Series: Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Season: 4
Year: 1994
Writer(s): Andrew Mitchell, Gerard Lewis
Storyline: Trying out an experimental virtual reality game, a kid finds the computer has been infected with a virus, and he sees the personification of that virus while he's in the game. The virus tells him that when the game shuts down it will remain in his brain, and so it will be carried into the real world. His only chance is to escape from the game before the virus program activates, but that's not as easy as it sounds. Or as interesting.

Turns out his brother installed the virus, somehow, but now it's taken over and even he can't deactivate it. But then he does. The end. Sigh.

Comments: Shows a very bog-standard understanding of computers, and viruses; written no doubt by people who either think they know about the subject or believe people in general know so little about them that they'll believe anything they're told. Utter rubbish.

Rating: :1.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Night_Gallery_DVD.jpg)
Title: "The Painted Mirror" (2nd segment of 2)
Series: Night Gallery
Season: 2
Year: 1971
Writer(s): Gene Kearney from the short story by Donald Wandrei
Storyline: An old thrift shop owner is having his premises upgraded, mostly due to his new modern-thinking partner. He's more an man of the old world. A friend of his brings in an old mirror which he buys. It's been painted over, so he sets to work scraping the paint off, and eventually uncovers a painting of some sort beneath it. It seems almost alive, and when the new owner attempts to buy the old owner out, his friend entices her dog into the mirror, having seen the cat enter and leave it. Some sort of portal then. Nah, not in that colour though mate.

Anyway the woman, the partner who wants to modernise everything, runs after her dog, ending up in a time of dinosaurs. Quickly, the two outside paint back over the mirror so she's left trapped there. You can only feel sorry for the dinosaurs!

Comments: Pretty major league stupid really. I mean, the idea is basically sound - a mirror being a gateway into the past - but the woman just walks through it as if it's a door, as if this is the sort of thing she does all the time. She never once questions the fact that a simple mirror has become something she can walk through. Even when she gets into the mirror, she never even looks around and says where am I, how can I be here or anything, just runs around calling for her damn dog while the dinos assemble for dinner. Awful acting, from a well-known actress too (Zsa Zsa Gabor) who should at least surely be able to put some sense of wonder, disbelief or horror into the experience? And no epilogue, no closing narration, nothing. Very short too: about maybe 15 minutes. 15 minutes too much though.

Rating: :1.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Creepshow_TV_Series.jpeg)
Title: "Times is Tough in Musky Holler"
Series: Creepshow
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): John Skipp and Dori Miller
Storyline: A bunch of people are being held in jail, until the woman in charge sentences them all to be "sent above" for their crimes. They're tied to chairs and seem to fear the light filtering in from above. Vampires? Pretty weak ones if so. The  ex-mayor of the town is one being sentenced, and he's trying - and failing - to talk his way out of it. They're being called traitors, and accused of murder, rape, all sorts of things.

A voiceover tells of how the town, Musky Holler, was suddenly and unexpectedly the centre of an influx of zombies - "the earth spitting out her dead" - and how the mayor seems to have stopped the National Guard from being called in, taken advantage of the power vacuum. As the prisoners rise up to the surface we see it's a sports arena they emerge into, their heads and shoulders just visible through holes cut in a huge triangle, as a voice on a PA accuses them and spectators boo.

Another voiceover notes how the mayor brutally repressed any attempt to stop him, created his own private police force, and then, having subdued the zombies, turned them loose on his enemies in a sort of Mad Max Thunderdome-style arena contest. And now that's what happens to him and his fellow accused. The zombies are released from the traps and crawl over to the triangle, eating, it looks like, the faces off each of the accused. And, well, that's it.

Comments: Disturbing. Yes, you can imagine the horror of the people who were subjected to this under the mayor's reign, but do two wrongs make a right? Are they not just dragging themselves down to his level here? And what's going to happen with these zombies? They still have them in traps? Weird. And gory.

Once again, we have no explanation, nor an attempt at one. "The earth spitting out her dead", sure, but why? Much as I hate zombie movies and series, I know that in general there's some sort of history behind how the zombies came to be what they are - nuclear war, alien attack, virus that got out of hand, contaminated food - something. But here, no. Nothing. In fact, to be perfectly fair, the zombies aren't called zombies, just the dead, so it could be said it's reanimated corpses who are - oh yeah. Zombies. Right.

Well, it still makes no sense and it leave me with a feeling of needing a shower.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Dimension404Title.jpg)
Title: "Impulse"
Series: Dimension 404
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Will Campos, Dez Dolly, Daniel Johnson, David Welch
Storyline: A gamer who dreams of making the big time is introduced to someone who gives her a liquid called impulse, which speeds up her reactions and makes her the best gamer ever. But if comes (what a surprise!) at a price. Suddenly her life is moving too fast - bits are missing; she finds herself with a baby and has no idea how she got it, or whose it is. And that's not all: she also has two other kids. And is married to her boyfriend. Oh, and the world has been destroyed in some nuclear catastrophe.

This seems to be as a result of too many people chugging impulse, which has screwed up the world for everyone - including the President, who "snapped back", as they call coming out of an impulse trip, with his finger on the button. Now anyone who uses impulse - slackers - are blamed for the current situation and thrown out of the compound into the wasteland that waits outside. Val is now the sheriff of the community, and after telling her dad in the past that she didn't want his boring life of working and kids, she's now stuck doing exactly that. But when she gets a chance to game, she forgets the time and is not on guard duty when her deputy tries to get back in, and something ("death lizard"?) kills him.

Unable to face the miserable grind of the life she is now forced to lead, and more, knowing she is one of the ones who is responsible for it, she leaves and heads out into the wilderness. There she meets Kojima, the guy who sold her impulse. He offers her a full shot of impulse, which will keep her in the game forever, till she dies. Thinking of her husband and kids though, she declines, and goes back to the settlement, but they won't let her in. Then the "death lizards" attack. Turns out that's just a name: they're humans - cannibals, slackers who were thrown out of the community. After her husband lets her back in, they all run for cover in the hills (literally, run for the hills, huh?) but she stays behind to face the attackers, the leader of which is Kilohertz. She uses the big bottle of impulse Kojira gave her to give her Matrix-like speed and dexterity, and takes them all out, but dies in the process, saving her children, her husband and the entire settlement, acting like the sheriff she's meant to be, and finally taking responsibility for her life.

Comments: Excellent story, and a fitting end to a really good series with few if any bad episodes. Sadly there has been no second season, and almost five years down the line now, doubt there will. This had elements of things like The Last Starfighter and The Matrix, melded with tropes from western movies and zombie/post-apocalypse ones. A fine episode indeed.

We do however need to address the burning question, that of the "finger on the button". As a child, and young person, I used to think this was exactly what it sounded like: there was a big red button on the President's desk in the Oval Office, and I used to wonder what would happen if he accidentally hit off it? Of course, we know that's not how it works at all. The nuclear codes are carried around in a briefcase and need double and triple authentication before being used, and even then it's not an automatic process; men and women have to turn keys that initiate the launch of missiles.

All of which means that the basic premise for the ruin of the Earth upon which this is predicated, is, not to put too fine a point on it, shaky. If the President of the USA (or Earth, possibly, can't remember if it says) "snapped back", the worst he could do would be to open the "nuclear football" and issue the codes, but that command would surely have to be checked and re-checked by his staff, to prevent just such an event? After all, taking impulse out of it, if the most powerful man in the world went mad, or was drunk, or high, and issued the codes, there have to be safeguards against that sort of thing happening. Again, either poor research or insulting people's intelligence.

But not enough of a niggle to make me dock it half a star.

Rating: :5stars:

Before I move on, let's just check back on the episodes viewed so far and see if they've got better, worse or stayed the same.

The Twilight Zone: We've gone back to the heyday of Serling's show, when he was running things, and I'd have to say, "wizard-syndrome" aside, a much better episode, and more in keeping with what I expect from the flagship of anthology shows.

The Outer Limits: Not much of an improvement, but at least it's not "Beyond the Veil"! Standard computer-tries-to-take-over-the-world story, the only thing worse or more predictable would be little green men from Mars. Meh.

Tales from the Crypt: These stories are usually entertaining at least, and while the first one was, frankly, silly to the max, this second trip into the Cryptkeeper's dungeon is much more satisfying. I do like it when shows like this mix in a western theme, and I feel they did it very well here.

Tales from the Darkside: Vindicating my view of this show, and returning, as it were, service to normal, after the unexpectedly great first episode, this is, to be fair, total and utter trash. It makes no sense, it roots itself - for no reason I can ascertain, except perhaps to try to ingratiate itself with the viewers of the time - oh no wait: it's a 1980s show, not a fucking 1950s one! - in some parody of I Love Lucy, and it basically fails on every level. It's not a funny story, it's not a clever story, and it's not even understandable. It is - how did I put it earlier? Oh yeah: total and utter trash.

Black Mirror: If the first episode was good, this is superlative. It's very unlikely that this show will ever be off the top, or if so, that it will remain below the number one slot for long. Brooker and his team have an almost uncanny grasp on the future, almost as if they ... have seen it ... for ... themselves...

Tales of Tomorrow: While using time travel is a well-worn plot device now for a science fiction writer, we do have to look at this episode through the prism of history, and realise that "Past Tense" was actually written years before H.G. Wells' famous novel was turned into a movie, popularising time travel, so perhaps it's a little ground-breaking for 1952. At any rate, it's a vast improvement on its first effort.

Monsters: On the other hand, after a fine opening episode this series fell badly, with the most boring and predictable, and indeed pointless story I've seen so far. A very poor showing.

Amazing Stories: The same can be said about this series, which didn't start off well but has presented us with a story so awful that its original effort looks actually better than it did prior to this!

Are You Afraid of the Dark? Hardly, with such a peurile and badly-researched story. A serious fall for this series too.

Night Gallery: Didn't do much better, but at least there was a small element of humour in seeing Zsa Zsa Gabor hunting her poodle in the Jurassic Age. Not much of an improvement though.

Creepshow: Anything would be better than "Drug Traffic", but whereas that revolted and shocked, this just kind of left me feeling... guilty? Ashamed? Basically not a terrible story but handled, I feel, poorly.

Dimension 404: Keeps up the high standards and shows them how it's done. Another fine episode from a series that should have been renewed. But wasn't.

So overall we have 5 shows out of 12 which have improved or at least held their quality, one of which has all but reached its apex. We have 3 shows that have dove to the depths after performing so well in the opening round, and we have 4 that are certainly better than their first attempts, though only because those first attempts were so awful.

ROUND TWO, PART III: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART I

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Room_104_teaser.png)
Title: "The Internet"
Series: Room 104
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Mark Duplass
Storyline: I wonder are all these episodes involving someone on a phone call? This is the second one where the action has taken place entirely (or almost entirely, in the case of the previous one) on one side of a phone conversation. This, I have to admit, is not what I would call genre: it's not fantasy, it's not science fiction, it's not even speculative fiction. In one very important way though, it's the worst kind of horror, as an aspiring author who has a meeting with a prospective publisher finds that he has forgotten his manuscript - forgotten his computer, in fact - and has to phone his mother to see if she can send the files to him. His mother is completely at sea with computers, so the guy faces that most unimaginable of horrors for any computer nerd, that of trying to instruct someone who knows nothing at all about them how to use one.

Of course, it ends in tragedy, and his entire manuscript, which he has been working on for years and calls his life's work, ends up getting deleted. He then loses it with his mother, and in the process finds out that he is in fact not her son, but adopted. A girl his mother took pity on and stayed with her before he was born was his mother, and she disappeared. So in the end he learns a deep truth about himself and suddenly confides to the woman he has known as his mother, and whom he will continue to know as his mother no matter what he has been told, that he worries his book is not good enough. During the episode, she has been putting down his efforts, more a case of not understanding than undermining really, but now he's afraid she's right. As they reconcile, he begins to write a new one in his head, based on what he has just learned.

Comments: For a story which, on face value, has little to say, this is a powerful example of a young man coming to terms with his own talent and ambition, while also learning there are more important things than his career, and gaining a new respect for the mother he has always somewhat belittled. The synopsis on Wiki makes it seem pretty boring - In 1997, a young Indian man desperately tries to teach his mother, over the phone, how to use his laptop to send a copy of the novel he has been writing. She accidentally deletes his novel, so he tells her to take it to a computer shop so that the staff can try to retrieve it - but this is far more than the sum of its parts.

I do have one quibble though. Unless it's different with Apple Macs - and I come from a PC world (sorry) so I don't know but I would assume it can't be that different - the erasure of the book is essentially impossible. The mother is instructed to ctrl/command A, to select all text (first of all this couldn't be done for his whole book, just the first page, which is all the computer would see, so at best he'd lose the first page) then ctrl/command C to copy it. She mishears, and hits command V, which is paste. Now, with nothing copied there is nothing to paste, so nothing should have happened, yet she says "all the writing has disappeared", leading us to believe that the file has been deleted. But how? There couldn't be anything in the clipboard, as the computer has to be switched on, so it's not going to retain anything in the buffer. So she's basically pasting nothing, so what should happen is, well, nothing. It's a pity (unless I'm wrong about the Mac part but I don't think I am) as it forms the central core of the plot. If she had accidentally hit delete or backspace, yes, that would work, but just "pasting" nothing in would simply leave the file highlighted but nothing would happen. You could, theoretically I suppose, delete the folder the novel is in, but again you'd have to hit delete and computer software always asks the essential question: "Are you sure Y/N?" so you always have the option to back out. Sadly, it does seem again to be a story based on faulty or badly-researched information.

That (rather major and important) problem aside though, a great little human story.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://i.postimg.cc/vZTY2PnW/image-2022-07-24-210843550.png)
Title: "Kindlesticks"
Series: Creeped Out
Season: 1
Year: 2018
Writer(s): Bede Blake and Robert Butler
Storyline: A nasty babysitter who gets her jollies by scaring the kids she's sitting for by telling them tales of a horrible monster who takes children who don't go to bed gets a taste of her own medicine when Kindlesticks, a spirit who protects children, pays her a visit when she tries to mistreat the kid she's currently babysitting. Her accomplice, Chaz, who has been playing the role of "the Night-night man" (brilliant name, Esme! Must have taken you all of a second to think that one up!) runs screaming from the house, leaving her to face the danger alone.

But then it seems that whereas Kindlesticks usually just wants to scare people - "he likes to play", Ashley says - now he wants revenge because Esme has terrified so many kids. When the spirit grabs Ashley, Esme has to finally stand up and risk her own safety to rescue him. When she finally stops being selfish and admits how bad a babysitter she is, and promises to change, Ashley is returned to her.

Then it turns out it was him doing it all along, just to teach her a lesson. However there is a twist, as when the parents return they make it clear Ashley is a girl, and so the child Esme met was... Kindlesticks!

Comments: A decent cautionary tale again, this time about a selfish girl who does not look after her charges, and how her own nastiness is turned on her. Sort of A Christmas Carol-like in ways, with a decent and unexpected twist. Not bad.

Rating: :4stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51FZ4WEN60L._AC_SY445_.jpg)
Title: "A Chapter of Genesis"
Series: The Veil
Season: 1
Year: 1958
Writer(s): Sidney Morse
Storyline: A man is dying and his family gather around; one of the sons has stayed while the other comes back from his adventures, and there is tension between the two men. There doesn't seem to be any love lost there. Jamie, the younger one has come home to see if he can get his hands on his father's money when he dies, and is not ashamed to admit it, being something of a prodigal it seems. But the will leaves everything to John, the older brother, who then produces a will of his own. Oh joy. Which will is the correct one? Jamie's copy of the will is the most recent, so it's acceptable in legal terms.

Jamie reveals that he intends selling the farm and putting his mother into a home, but Johnny is not having that. Jamie, however, seems not quite to understand the situation, saying the house is his (surely not till his father is dead) and kicks John out. John promises he will challenge the will, and when he sees the ghost of his father, who advises him "Look in Genesis: Chapter 27" he finds that it says... nothing. He's kicked out of the house by Jamie, who rather histrionically pulls a gun on him. John then realises that the Bible he has is not the family one, which his mother says is in the attic.

But Jamie has the same idea, and is searching the attic when his brother encounters him. They struggle and John is knocked down, but he realises that Jamie has found the Bible, inside of which is another will, which leaves the house and all assets to John, and post-dates Jamie's one, foiling his plans.

Comments: Yeah not bad. A bit obvious but decent enough I guess. Better than some I've seen recently.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://cdn.wallpapersafari.com/28/4/y9ljwK.jpg)
Title: "The Cuckoo Clock of Doom"
Series: Goosebumps
Season: 1
Year: 1995
Writer(s): Billy Brown, Dan Angel
Storyline: When his father buys a new cuckoo clock and warns both his children never to touch it, a boy sees a chance for revenge on his annoying little sister, who is always making his life miserable. But when he snaps the head of the cuckoo he gets a shock, as it seems he has been thrown backwards in time. His father had told them that the clock was rumoured to have been built by a mysterious old man a century ago, and carries a curse which will be enacted on anyone who messes with it.

Okay that's pretty good. I thought it was going to be a Groundhog Day thing, that he'd keep reliving the same day over, but no: he's now six years in the past. Which leaves him with another big problem. Six years ago his dad had not bought the cuckoo clock, so it's not there for him to fix. And if he goes six more years back by tomorrow morning, he'll be, well, a baby at best, maybe an embryo. Then he remembers the antique shop where his father bought the clock, so sets off for there. But when he gets there it's closed for holidays.

On the way there, a strange man asks him pointedly if he "has the time"? (Trollheart's Theory: this is him from the future, trying to sort out his past). His father comes for him and brings him home. The next morning he's a baby, but his father seems interested in going to the antique store. That suits Mikey, who manages - somehow, though he's a baby; well, more a toddler I guess, as he can walk unaided after a fashion - to reset the cuckoo and thereby reset time. He returns to his own age, but as he climbed up the clock as a baby he knocked off one of the plates on the side of the clock, which represent years. It was 88 he dislodged, and as his sister was born in 1988 when he returns to his own life she has never been born. Score!

Comments: A decent enough story, with one major flaw. If Mikey broke the cuckoo in his own time, then it should not have been broken back when he was a child, assuming all of time reset and not just for him. Which it did, as his parents get progressively younger and his birthdays play out at the proper ages. Also, his sister disappears once he hits six, so how could the cuckoo be broken if he, um, hasn't broken it yet? Nice to see the little annoying sister get her comeuppance.

Have to ask though, what the fuck was the deal with the strange old man asking if he had the time? If you're going to put something like that into your story, Mr. R.L. Stine - and assuming they didn't just ignore it for the TV version or hadn't enough time to explain it - then it needs to mean something. You can't just throw in red herrings like that for the fucking fun of it.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTljYTYwYTktNjhjMC00MmQxLWJjODktYjIzYTViYWZhZTE4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDg4MjkzNDk@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Rottefella/Lab Rats"
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2021
Writer(s):
Storyline: Having invented a new wonder antidepressant, the owner of a big pharmaceutical company is incensed when he finds that the prototype is missing from the safe where he put it. Frisking all his close employees, with whom he has been celebrating, Edmund vows nobody shall leave until the prototype is found. Frisks are negative, so the rooms must be searched next. While that's being done, Edmund locks everyone in the lab, telling them they can easily free themselves if the one who opened the safe uses the same combination to open this door. That will of course prove their guilt, but until someone owns up and uses the code nobody is getting out.

And so begins a sort of Twelve Angry Men situation, where paranoia reigns as accusations are spat and secrets spilled, and everyone suspects everyone else. It's a little The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street too, with nobody trusting anyone else. One girl is suspected of sleeping with Edmund, while his wife, who makes the accusation, is told that if she suspects him of cheating on her, that's a good motive to steal his life's work. Violence, naturally enough, quickly erupts as the only two men - three women and two men - in the cage come to blows, the one accusing the other of making the breakthrough discovery by piggybacking on his years of research, the other sneering at him and saying he had to start all over, that the other guy's work was useless.

Abdi, the guy who broke the code, is laid out by Philip, and Edmund, watching on the CCTV, seems not to care that he might die. He makes his security chief recheck the credentials of all five, including his wife, who is among them. Philip suffers from a facial tic when  under pressure, which gives the whole thing quite a horrific aspect. Meanwhile, a cage of lab mice gets knocked over and they're roaming the cubicle. Turns out Edmund is no squeaky-clean altar boy either: he induced his staff to invest in the company just as he was about to file for bankruptcy. Two of them later committed suicide. He's revealed as a heartless greedy man, who can't even remember his own wife's birthday, or be bothered to buy her a present - the secretary does that. So nobody is under any illusions that he is not prepared to let them all stay there till they run out of air or food, rather than lose his meal ticket.

Now he ups the ante, filling the cubicle with gas. With the added threat, one of the girls comes up with a plan. Everyone writes down a combination, and they mix them up. Whoever wrote the correct combination - and is therefore the thief - will remain anonymous, but they'll be able to get out by trying all the combinations, one of which will be the correct one. But Edmund intensifies the gas flow, so they have less time, and eventually the girl who came up with the plan has to go for it, putting in the correct code, revealing herself as the thief. (Trollheart's Theory: they're all now going to push him into the cage and leave him to die). Oddly enough, he doesn't report her to the cops or anything, probably has to do with the fact that he's riding her I guess. She turns out to be the daughter of one of the employees who took their own lives due to Edmund's treachery.

She actually has the prototype on her, having used a little sleight-of-hand during the search to plant it on him, and then take it back, but he susses it at the end and takes it. On returning to his lab his wife is waiting with a gun, and forces him into the cage! Yes! The rest of them come behind her and now the gas is turned on. (Trollheart's Theory II: She's changed the combination to her birthday, which he won't know). He tries to plead with them, but she tells him she's changed the combination. Eight digits. Her birthday. Yes! Again. Of course he doesn't know it, and that's the end of him.


Comments: Damn good little story. Not only does it shine a light on the questionable practices of big pharma, it also gets in the old "hell hath no fury" idea at the end. Nice.
Rating: :5stars:

ROUND TWO, PART IV: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART II
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Rlstine-hp-hero.png)
Title: "The Perfect Brother"
Series: The Haunting Hour
Season: 1
Year: 2011
Writer(s): Erik Paterson and Jessica Scott
Storyline: Two brothers are pushed to the limit by their demanding parents, especially their mother, who seems to think nothing less than perfect every time is acceptable. When the older of the two, Matt, falls in the bedroom he seems to start slurring and having problems walking, then that night Josh, the other brother, wakes to find him staring silently at him, as if frozen. (Trollheart's Theory: one of the brothers is an android/replica/robot, made so that he'll push the other to greatness?)  Matt falls again, this time in school, and though it's recommended by the nurse that he be taken to hospital, his mother refuses, taking him home instead.

At home, the parents discuss "the experiment", and that it is a failure, and time to abandon it. Matt's father says he's taking the boy to the hospital, but wont' let Josh go. Josh redials a phone he saw his mother use, expecting it to call the hospital, but instead a voice asks for username and password, and when he can't supply them, hangs up. He talks to his mother but she shuts him out - literally. She is removing the clothes from Matt's bedroom and pushes him out of the room without any explanation, saying what's done is done. Josh traces the phone number and goes to the location, which is decidedly not a hospital. It's some sort of warehouse or factory, where experiments appear to be going on.

Demonstrating if nothing else that this place doesn't exactly give much consideration to security, he's able to explore and he hears a woman scream, sees figures restraining her behind a curtain, runs. He comes across a line of people (patients?) on trolleys being fed some sort of yellow liquid through a drip, and here he finds his brother. He also finds his parents, apparently signing away all their parental rights to Matt. But even when he discovers his brother is a robot (yay!) he declares he's still his brother and he will not leave him. Of course he fails, and Matt is taken away. Then the kicker: it turns out that his parents, and everyone else, are robots too. They only wanted a human around the house to do the chores, and even Josh was just an experiment. Now he's being sent back in a box marked "defective- return".

Comments: Fair enough. I had it sussed early, but not completely. The coldness of the mother gave her away. So are they on an alien planet? Or has Earth been taken over by robots?

Things I thought might have happened, but didn't: I kind of thought both brothers were going to turn out to be robots, the one (Matt) supposed to be training the other.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Mastersofhorror.jpg)
Title: "The V Word"
Series: Masters of Horror
Season: 2
Year: 2006
Writer(s): Mick Garris
Storyline: So here we are again. Well, the last - being the first - of these I tried was horrible, disgusting, disturbing and completely incomprehensible. Let's hope this is better. Kerry and Justin, two bored kids, head to a funeral home where the cousin of one of them works, hoping to see dead bodies. Entering - the door not being locked - they look for the cousin but can't find him. On the way back, as they decide to leave, somewhat spooked by the eerie atmosphere, they find one of the coffins open, and empty. Could have sworn it was closed when they came in! Now the door is locked and they can't get out!

They hear music, and despite their reservations decide to track it to its source, which turns out to be an ipod hooked to speakers in a room. This one, though, has blood all over it. They also find a dead old lady. Backing out of the room, they come across a door marked EXIT and find a collection of dead bodies on trolleys, blood on the floor, blood on the walls. Then they come across the body of the cousin, freshly dead. A moment later one of the covered corpses rises, and hey presto, it's a vampire. He kills Kerry but Justin escapes by smashing the window and leaping from the ledge. For whatever reason, even though it's night, the vampire does not follow him outside.

The police won't help him duh - 911 think he's crank calling them - and his useless father is, well, useless, so there's nothing much he can do. He falls asleep, and wakes up some time later to find Kerry knocking at the door. Considering how much these two are into horror you would think he would have sussed his buddy is now a vampire, but no, he lets him in. So now we have two vampires. And an extremely unobservant mother, who doesn't seem to see anything odd about the way her son is falling half asleep on his feet, looks pale and exhibits all the signs of being a vampire. She doesn't even call the doctor when she finds him cold as ice, just sends him to bed. The dog, of course, knows something's up and growls at him, but both she and her daughter ignore it.

He tries to kill his sister but can't, so he heads to the house of his no-good dad, but finds himself unable to even kill this scumbag. Kerry then appears to tell him he has to kill, and if he does, it may as well be the man who cares nothing for him or his mother or sister. Justin still resists, so his friend slashes his father's throat and tells him to drink. But he can't, and runs off instead. He meets the master vampire (the one that was in the funeral home) who it turns out is a disgraced former teacher who was fired for paedophilia. He tries to get him to feed on his little sister - he wants him to be like his dad - but possibly doesn't realise he's nothing like him.

Anyway, he draws blood in a syringe from the sister and injects it into Justin, but instead of going for his sister when released Justin sticks the needle into the master vampire's eyes to blind him, and then he and Kerry cut off his head. After making Kerry promise to leave his family alone, and get as far away as possible, he has him tie him down and waits for the sun. Kerry, meanwhile, heads to New York.

Comments: Decent enough vampire story. Has a few of the tropes, and mixes in some pretty nasty human  behaviour to identify with vampires. Also kind of steals the ending of 30 Days of Night, but overall much better.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/IntoTheDark.png)
Title: "Treehouse"
Series: Into the Dark
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): James Rodan, Todd Harthan
Storyline: Last time I looked at this series I was very disappointed to find no genre story at all, merely gay porn masquerading as slasher horror, so let's hope this is better. My expectations are, however, quite low. Given the premise that each episode is based around a holiday, this is linked to International Women's Day, so we open on a woman sitting at the top of a mountain having a picnic, seemingly, but she's alone and more to the point, looking much the worse for wear. She is drinking what hopefully is red wine, though it looks like it might be blood (!) and picks up a knife. There are marks on her arms and a cut on her lip. Whether this means she's been attacked and has done in her attacker, or whether this is self-harm I at present do not know. Back in time we go and she seems to be working under some celebrity chef, who is - surprise, surprise! - not very nice. The link from her picking up the knife at the picnic and then cutting with it, or another one, in the kitchen under the chef is quite clever. I guess we're talking about a Gordon Ramsey deal here, though when he talks to his daughter the guy seems decent enough. Is the "bastard in the kitchen" persona just for the cameras?

Well anyway Peter goes away for the weekend and meets what can only be called a very strange guy who runs the local bait shop, on the way crossing paths with a bunch of women who look like they're in the middle of a hen party. It appears he's staying with his sister, who's the DA; whether that is important or not I don't know. Sometimes writers just seem to throw in these details for no reason. I always prefer if I write something that it has something to do with the plot, because otherwise what am I doing? Trying to fill up a word count? Anyhow this is interesting. In his sister's (possibly the family) house he sees paintings their late father produced, and one shows the scene we saw at the opening: a girl sitting cross-legged alone at a picnic. I really hope that has something to do with the plot, as does his apparent sighting of what I think might be a black goat, which then disappears. The maid is odd too, but again whether or not that will figure in the story, your guess is as good as mine.

You know, it's odd but when I caught sight of the synopsis - which I tried to avoid, as I want to approach this without any preconceptions - I got the impression this was a revenge thing, that Peter had been a bastard to women and they were going to get their own back on him, but so far he seems a nice enough guy, apart from his performance in the kitchen, which, as I say, could be all show. The guy from the bait shop, Lonnie, who is either an ex-boyfriend of his sister, or at least some friend of hers from school,  calls the house, which seems odd enough, and there's some strange reaction by Peter to knives in a drawer, possibly to tie in with that opening scene again? I don't know; I'm just guessing here. I have no theory, don't know where this is going, if anywhere. His discovery of a toilet which seems to be full of blood (and possibly human organs?) throws me further: is he seeing these things or imagining them? One of the girls from the hen party - excuse me, Americans: bachelorette party! - comes to call, looking for candles and torches as their power has gone. Something seems to pass between them, and she is damn pretty, but she walks off with the gear, dropping a hint she might however be interested.

Again, whether it has anything to do with the story or not, the maid seems to have a very long tongue, and her eyes are funny. She looks quite old but doesn't act it. Stick a pin in that for now I guess. Out running the next day Peter bumps into the bachelorettes, as he's checking out the old treehouse he and his sister used to stay in at the summer, though now it has an odd face carved on it, like one of the trees in the Godwood in Game of Thrones. Okay I don't know what that is about, but I'm ready to make a slightly informed guess about something here. He's found there are no razor blades in the bathroom, and the maid is cutting potatoes with one of those peeler deals, and looking like she's having trouble doing so, plus the knives, remember, were all put away in a drawer. Putting these facts together with the opening scene, can it be that the sister is self-harming, may even have attempted suicide? He hasn't seen her for three years, he says, and the maid seems very cold towards him, possibly angry that he wasn't there for his sister when she needed him? Meh we'll see.

He invites the girls back to the house for a meal, the talk turns to children and the pros and cons of having them. Peter must feel a bit odd; it's like being at a girls' night out without being a girl, like being an interloper who has no business being there. Okay they're very clearly a coven; they have tattoos, they're very forceful in their femininity, they talk about the sisterhood, and there's that symbol face thing on the door of the treehouse, which I bet they put there. And Agnes, the maid, is talking strangely like she's the leader or grand witch or whatever. Now Peter is stumbling, so did they drug him? The next thing I'm going to write is that he wakes up in the treehouse with the women around him. I don't know if that's what's going to happen, but I see it going that way. No, in fact he wakes up beside one of the girls. He hears music downstairs and what sounds like screeching, and finds an old-style gramophone playing old-style music while a peacock listens. Um. Right. Going back upstairs he finds the girl, Morgan, gone from his bed and then there's a thumping on the door and a weird looking creature walks in. He retreats up the stairs but can't get back into the bedroom; Morgan says she is trying to open the door but can't, and seems to be in distress, while he finds he can't move as the witch-creature advances up the staircase towards him.

Fade to black. When he wakes up he's chained to the bed, Morgan is there beside him and the creature is behind her, but she doesn't seem to be bothered and starts to taunt him, telling him he left his wife and yeah I assume now this is going revenge fantasy, though he doesn't seem any worse than most of us. I hope it turns out that he did something really bad, because otherwise this is going to seem very much overkill and disproportionate. Right, yes the creature thing is that girl he met first, the one who came knocking at his door in the night, and it seems she has a beef with him, something about her sister, whom he may have assaulted when she was young? Well, seems she developed a heroin habit - was it due to him? She then cut her wrists and it seems this girl is blaming him for that, perhaps with reason. Let's see. One of the other girls - oh it's Morgan - sets up a crossbow and loads it, aiming at his, um, nether regions. If anything was happening there, it sure ain't now!

And yes, finally, the shock revelation: they're witches. Well, duh! You'd have to think though that witches would have recourse to a more effective death than a fucking crossbow in the dick! I mean, it's hardly revenge of the sisterhood, is it? They say the fact Peter can't move is because of a spell they cast, but they could have achieved the same effect, without being witches. A simple drug dropped in his drink would have done the trick, and anyone can set up a crossbow! Surely they've more respect as witches? Now for some reason they're shaving him and cutting his finger and toenails. One of them puts a snake onto his wrist - or is it? Once it's on it turns into a metal representation of one. Now they're conducting an interview, as if one of them is him. Oh right I see now: they're re-enacting one of his interviews where obviously he made a pass at the interviewer. Okay I got it now. The head witch says they're going to castrate him, and they've painted his nails. They're going to turn him into a woman, aren't they? So he can see what it's like to be treated like shit by men. Damned if they're not.

Well that was unexpected! He broke free by goading them into using the crossbow, and shooting off target, and now he's on the run. He doesn't get far, but he does get to call Lonnie (when 911 is inexplicably busy!) so maybe the weird guy is going to come to his aid? At least there would be a point in his having met him then. Yeah here he comes, but one of the girls meets him and tells him all is okay. He doesn't quite believe her though, and pulls a gun. Now it seems Agnes is his mother, and she takes the gun from him, clearly in league with the witches, to nobody's surprise, and sends him away. In the process it is revealed that Lonnie is Peter's half-brother, the bastard son of Agnes and Peter's father. She tells the witches to finish the job.

Back inside, Peter is in a cage now and then he's dressed as a woman and the witches hunt him, the crossbow now mobile. He makes his way to the treehouse but finds there a load of clippings about him being a sexual predator; there's also bloodstains on the table and a knife. Running back out he sees his sister and jumps into her car, telling her to drive. I'm just going to guess that she's part of it and is going to bring him back to the witches. Yeah, the hard look she gives him when he tells her they're blaming him for the girl's suicide - she's in on it, deffo. Well, sort of: she was helping them but it seems she wasn't aware of how far they were going to go, and now she's being dragged out of the car along with her brother. Now he's nailed to a table with symbols being painted on him and a snake is going down his throat... then it seems he wakes up. Was it a nightmare? A premonition? Scroogelike, he's back in his own bed and seems to be unhurt, dressed in his own clothes and, most importantly, alone.

Cautiously, he advances out of the room holding the ultimate weapon - a shoe! What does he think they are? Insects? They had a crossbow, he has a shoe. But there's nobody there. The phone rings, it's the witches. They tell him his sister is okay, but if he tells her what happened she'll think he's crazy as she will have no memory of it, and they also warn him that if he ever touches another woman, they will come for him. Oh and it turns out they weren't witches after all - just drugs and pyrotechnics, and the sister was in on it fully. After such an experience, believing he has barely got away with his life, and that the "witches" will be keeping an eye on him, Peter resolves to be a changed man.

Comments: Well I'm glad I gave the series a second chance. The first episode was trash but this was fantastic. Really well-written, hard to anticipate and a great denouement in the end. And I knew I recognised Peter: that's Jimmi Simpson, William from Westworld. Yes an excellent story altogether, thoroughly enjoyed it. Almost an English version of a story I'd expect to see on Bloodride.

I will say there are aspects that were not explained. The opening scene was obviously the girl who committed suicide, the knives in the drawer then were from Peter's chef range, put there deliberately I guess to kind of goad him. I don't know what the blood in the toilet bowl was: I could have hazarded a home-made abortion but no mention was made of one. The length of Agne's tongue, which was really focused on, seemed to go nowhere and the idea that his sister was a DA made no impact whatever on the story, except I suppose to show she had done well in life. Now, if he had assaulted her, his own sister, then maybe both her participation in his
"being scared straight", so to speak, might have made sense, as would the toilet bowl blood thing, had she been pregnant, plus her being mentioned as being the DA. But none of that happened, so kind of shrug really.

The revelation about Lonnie has no impact at all on the story; he could have been her son without having to have been the son of Peter's father, too. Obviously I see now why they needed the crossbow, but they took a chance, didn't they? If they didn't intend to actually kill him, that was a real quarrel loaded into the thing, as we see when Morgan shoots it at him and it misses but buries itself in the wall of the bedroom. Anyone accidentally setting that off would have killed him. You'd think they would at least have used a prop, something off a stage or something, maybe one with a floppy rubber head? Dangerous, to say the least.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Love%2C_Death_%26_Robots_Logo.png)
Title: "Lucky 13"
Series: Love, Death & Robots
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Philip Gelatt, based on the short story by Marko Kloos
Storyline: A rookie space pilot is assigned a ship which has to date seen two crews die, but come back intact itself. Its code is 13-02313 - thirteen at the back, thirteen at the front, and the digits all add separately up to 13. So it's not exactly popular. On her first mission, landing marines on an unfriendly planet, they are ambushed and Colby takes heavy fire. However thanks to some clever flying and trickery she makes it out alive. From then on, "Lucky 13" becomes the only ship to make it back from nineteen sorties, and Colby begins to think the legend or curse is dead.

But eventually her luck runs out. They're hit by enemy fire and have to crashland on the planet. When she is forced to set the self-destruct and abandons the ship, the countdown runs but "Lucky 13" does not explode. The enemy gather around her, firing, and thens the ship explodes, taking them all with her. Colby gets promoted, a medal and a brand spanking new ship, but misses her old warhorse.

Comments: Meh. It's all right I suppose, nothing terribly special though. Animation is first class; I thought it was live-action when it started.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BN2YwMWQ1YTUtMzkzOS00YWZlLThhNTctMjAwMGRlZDgxMTAwXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "New Orleans, LA"
Series: Monsterland
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Mary Laws
Storyline: A doctor working with children is accused of sexually abusing them, and when his wife says she will stand by him, this determination melts under his admission that he needs help. She was ready to fight the allegations but now he's said they're true, and she realises she doesn't know her husband at all. A rock comes through the wife's window and she goes to confront a jazz trumpeter who has been playing outside, but when she threatens him his eyes go black and he seems to turn into some sort of monster. She lashes out at him and he goes down. She drags  him into a nearby crypt and leaves him there. He escapes though and bites her, then goes smashing the windows with, um, the notes from his trumpet.

The next morning, her son arrives. He tells her that when he was a kid, something happened when they were at the Mardi Gras parade. She remembers it as him telling her a monster was chasing him, but he reminds her - or tries to - that he had told her it was his stepfather, who has now been accused of all the child abuse. She however was not ready to hear that. She had been plucked from poverty and obscurity by the handsome rich doctor, and the price of her new life was silent acquiescence, turning a blind eye and a deaf ear, pretending it wasn't happening. George, her son, tells her the truth is destroying him and he needs her to admit to what she has done. But she can't face it, and he runs out. She sticks an icepick into her ears to deafen herself to the trumpet music, but she can still hear it, as I guess it's in her head till she decides to look the truth in the eye.

Comments: In the end, not a bad story, quite brutal in its way, but it took a long time to get going and I had no idea where it was headed. Plus the jazz trumpeter drove me mad.

Rating: :3stars:

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Title: "Elliot"
Series: Two Sentence Horror Stories
Season: 2
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Stephanie Adams-Santos

First sentence: "I don't have many friends."

Storyline: Elliot, a transgender boy, is finding it hard in school. They won't even let him use the boys' toilets as he has transitioned from female to male. Hiding out in the basement he comes across a lady janitor (who is clearly the Devil, duh) who loans him a special musical instrument, which, she says, when played will make people feel what he feels. In return she takes one page of the music he has written. When the girls start annoying him, he plays it and they go crazy, covering their ears, sobbing and saying they're sorry.

The janitor tells him she will give him the instrument, the ocarina, in exchange for his entire songbook. He says his whole heart and soul is in that, but she just smiles, and he gives in. Of course, the instrument does nothing like what the "janitor" said it did; it hurts, maims and perhaps even kills people. He goes back to her to give the thing back, and finds a load of kids hanging in lockers. The janitor appears, telling him there is a hook for him; the ocarina has captured all his rage and pain, and this will be used when the next kid comes looking for salvation. Meanwhile, his body will become a husk, like those of the other kids.

He decides the ocarina has done enough damage and smashes it, while the janitor rages at him. As soon as it's destroyed, the kids in the lockers fall out of them, still breathing, and the creature vanishes. Elliot now has at least two friends who understand him.

Second sentence: "That's why I keep their bodies in the basement."


Comments: Classic sell-your-soul-to-the-devil story with a nice little twist. Liked this.

Things I thought might have happened, but didn't I thought Elliot might have turned the ocarina on the "janitor", giving her back all the pain and anger and hurt she had had stored up in it and blasting her to atoms.

Rating: :4.5stars:

So that's round two done, and how are we looking in terms of ranking?

:5stars:

Black Mirror, Dimension 404, Room 104, Bloodride, Into the Dark

:4.5stars:

Tales from the Crypt, The Haunting Hour, Masters of Horror, Two Sentence Horror Stories

:4stars:

The Twilight Zone, Tales of Tomorrow, Creeped Out

:3stars:

The Outer Limits, The Veil, Goosebumps, Love Death and Robots, Monsterland

:2.5stars:

:2stars:

Creepshow

:1.5stars:

Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Night Gallery

:1stars:

Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, Amazing Stories

Before we get to the new rankings though, a quick check.

Shows at the top, sharing a rating of
:5stars: remain the ones you'd expect: Black Mirror and Bloodride, but Two Sentence Horror Stories has slipped off the top with this round's episode and has been replaced by not one, but two other shows: Dimension 404 I'm not surprised about but the big shock is Into the Dark, a real resurrection. The last episode was way way down the bottom and barely rated at all, this time it's right at the top with the leaders, an incredible turnaround for this series. Also rising into the top tier is Room 104, not as huge a leap, as last time that was just outside the leaders, but now it has joined them. That then makes five shows instead of three sharing top place. The two big ones continue to fight it out, neither giving way and two new shows staking their claim.

Just below them, of the shows that at the end of round one had racked up a rating of
:4.5stars: we have two of them having moved up, so there is room for other shows to take their place. They do, but the ones that were there and did not move up have in fact moved down, with Tales from the Darkside slipping badly and The Veil dropping (sorry) too. Replacing them are Tales from the Crypt, moving up, The Haunting Hour and Masters of Horror, the former emulating Into the Dark almost, and climbing from the very bottom, where it was not even rated last round. Joining them is the descending Two Sentence Horror Stories.

As far as the shows which, at the end of round one, were on a ranking of
:4stars: each one has fallen, and one has plummeted to the bottom, with new shows therefore taking their place: The Twilight Zone, Tales of Tomorrow and Creeped Out all climb, Tales of Tomorrow in particular making a great comeback from the bottom of the pile, the other two rising from the previous level.

There's a rise for most of the shows who now occupying the ranking position of
:3stars: now too, with The Outer Limits rising from the bottom, whiel The Veil, Goosebumps and Monsterland all fall down a level. Love Death and Robots moves up one level.

Further down we find Creepshow, all on its own but at least having advanced from the very lowest level to reach the rating of a not terrible
:2stars:

Are You Afraid of the Dark? plunges almost to the bottom, but Night Gallery rises very slightly, both now standing at a rating of
:1.5stars:

And right at the bottom, sharing the lowest possible rating of
:1stars: we find Tales from the Darkside, falling from the rarefied heights of the second level, similarly with Monsters and Amazing Stories, having attained the halfway point last time, falls all the way to the basement.

Show that improved then, versus those that have fared worse since round one:

Improved:- Into the Dark, Room 104, Dimension 404, Tales from the Crypt, The Haunting Hour, Masters of Horror, The Twilight Zone, Creeped Out, Tales of Tomorrow, The Outer Limits, Creepshow, Love Death and Robots, Night Gallery.

Disimproved:- Two Sentence Horror Stories, Amazing Stories, Monsterland, Monsters, Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Veil, Goosebumps

This, then, is the new chart. I've just split it up as best I can, based on the merits of each episode from the series.


23 Tales from the Darkside
22 Amazing Stories
21 Monsters
20 Are You Afraid of the Dark?
19 Night Gallery
18 Creepshow
17 Monsterland
16 The Outer Limits
15 Love Death and Robots
14 Goosebumps
13 The Veil
12 Creeped Out
11 Tales of Tomorrow
10 The Twilight Zone
9 The Haunting Hour
8 Tales from the Crypt
7 Two Sentence Horror Stories
6 Masters of Horror
5 Dimension 404
4 Bloodride
3 Room 104
2 Into the Dark
1 Black Mirror

ROUND THREE, PART I: THE CLASSICS

I'm starting a new section, if you care. You can see it below.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/The_Twilight_Zone_%281959_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-The_Twilight_Zone_%281959_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "Little Girl Lost"
Series: The Twilight Zone
Season: 3
Year: 1962
Writer(s): Richard Matheson
Storyline: In the dead of night, a father goes to answer the cries of his young daughter, but to his amazement and horror - and that of his wife, who joins him - though they can hear her she is nowhere in sight. When the family dog, who has been yapping outside in the garden, is let in he goes right under the bed - and vanishes too. The father calls over a friend of theirs, a physicist, who determines that there is a dimensional portal under the bed. He reasons that the child must have rolled out of the bed, fallen under and gone through the portal, as did the dog, probably scenting his mistress.

After physicist guy figures out that they can track the kid - sort of - through what he believes to be the fourth dimension, they locate her and call the dog, but the dog can't find its way back. So the fool father reaches in and then falls in. From there he calls to his daughter and the dog, trying to bring them to him. He does, just in time, as the fissure is closing. The end,

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Meh, I thought he and his daughter might be left in there, or alternatively, he might have thrown his daughter through back to their own dimension but been trapped there himself.

Things I liked: Not much; I suppose the idea - though it's not mentioned, I just think it works - of there being an actual monster under the bed, even if the monster in question is an undiscovered dimension, works quite well. About the only thing in this episode that does.

Things I didn't like: Pretty stupid story. I particularly was annoyed by the fact that, in the kid's bedroom as they can hear her cry and are looking under the bed (doing that thing we all do: we know we've looked already and ascertained that what we're looking for is not there, but we don't believe our eyes and we look again) NOBODY thinks to look in the fucking wardrobe, which, if this wasn't the show it is, would be the place you would think most likely the kid had got to. Wandered into the closet, and now trapped in there. But no: the father even runs PAST the damn thing and neither considers the possibility that their daughter might be in the wardrobe. Idiots.

Comments: Overall a pretty poor story I feel. Given that it's a Matheson short story, I'm perhaps a little surprised, and also given that it's season three, which would have been right in the middle of the rich vein this series enjoyed around that time, with episodes such as "I Sing the Body Electric", "Kick the Can", "To Serve Man", "Five Characters in Search of an Exit", "The Little People", "It's a Good Life"  and "Dead Man's Shoes", I find this a curiously dissatisfying return for us to The Twilight Zone, and a damp squib to start our third round. As the man said, meh.

Rating: :2.5stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAwNjE3MDU5M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzI1ODUxMQ@@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Re-generation"
Series: The Outer Limits
Season: 3
Year: 1997
Writer(s): Tom J. Astle
Storyline: After his son is killed, a scientist plans to clone him using a new technique his company is pioneering. Dubious at first, his wife allows herself to be implanted with the cloned cells, but as she nears her time, and Graham begins his run for the senate, she starts to worry. How will people take it when this new baby grows up and looks identical to her dead son? What will Justin - Rebecca is determined the child will not be named after her dead son but has not yet chosen a name - think when he sees pictures, apparently of himself, older, around the house? How will they explain it? Graham dismisses her concerns, but given that he is now a public figure he must share them. That kind of thing can ruin your political career before it has a chance to even get going.

As the pregnancy progresses, Rebecca starts to feel that she is seeing things through her unborn baby's eyes, though the doctor - who works for her husband's company and was the one who performed the insemination - insists it's all in her mind. It's soon impossible to dismiss this though, as Rebecca makes it very clear she can communicate with her baby. The doctor starts to pay attention. It seems the brain cells that were used for the cloning process have retained memories, and are operating independently of those in the foetus.  However as these memories come back to him, our little Justin-to-be is getting very agitated inside of mommy and wants out!

Or is he reacting to the presence of his father? Rebecca seems to think so, and as Justin's memories flood into her she sees she's right: Graham was responsible for her son's death. It was an accident, but still, now she knows her husband has a temper that led to the death of their son. She decides to leave him, but then has a premonition - presumably through foetus Justin - that Graham is going to push her down the stairs. She runs for the attic instead, and when Graham comes up shoots him with shotgun.

In a weird kind of coda or postscript, we see then that the doctor is carrying an embryo clone of Graham in her. Yeah. Right.


Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Got to say, had nothing here.

Things I liked: The basic idea, so far as it went, was probably not terrible. Best I can say really.

Things I didn't like: Most of this episode really. The scenes of the embryo inside Rebecca's stomach were particularly disquieting.

Comments: A pretty dumb story with a terrible ending. The actual idea - the child trying to tell his mother that his father was responsible for his death - was okay, but then the guy gets shot for it? It wasn't even deliberate. And he wasn't - so far as I could see - menacing or stalking her, Jack Nicholson in The Shining-like, when he came up to the attic, just trying to calm her down and reassure her. And for that he gets two shells in the belly? But the kicker was the ending. Stupid to the max. What was he going to do? Marry the doctor when he grew up? Please. Or was this supposed to hint that they had been having a affair?

Rating: :1stars:

(https://flxt.tmsimg.com/assets/p184195_b_v7_ae.jpg)
Title: 'Til Death
Series: Tales from the Crypt
Season: 2
Year: 1990
Writer(s): Jeri Barchilon
Storyline: Oh god: it's about zombies, isn't it? A struggling hotel owner in Haiti realises that the land he wishes to build on is a swamp, and it's going to cost him a lot more than he has. He turns to the rich heiress who has just arrived, complaining about everything and quite obviously up herself. In her he sees a meal ticket, and sets his sights on her. Unfortunately for him, she is not interested, seeing right through him. He has an ace up his sleeve though; he knows a local witch, who gives him a love potion, warning him that one drop will make her love him, two will make her his forever. It doesn't seem to work at first, but then later that night she calls on him and, well, it obviously is working.

Unfortunately he hasn't been listening and gives her too much of the potion, which first sends her into convulsions and then kills her. We don't need a Trollheart Theory here: it's pretty clear what's about to happen. And it does: she rises from the grave, still in love with him. Over a short period of time she begins to decay, though she doesn't seem to realise it herself. In horror, he shoots her, but of course she's already dead so that doesn't help. He runs off into the night, ending up in the swamp where he's sucked down into the quicksand. But she pulls him out, and he manages to set her on fire and kicks her into the swamp where she disappears.

As he staggers back to the house, he's running the night's events over in his mind when there's a knock at the door, and there she is! In desperation (she's pretty much a skeleton in a dress now) he drinks poison. But the witch brings him back, and now he's stuck with his dead wife forever. Oh, and the head of the doctor friend she chopped off is animated too, for some reason.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Nothing really, other than the witch bringing him back to life. Don't understand that at all.

Things I liked: Nothing. I fucking hate zombies.

Things I didn't like: Pretty much all of it.

Comments: What the living fuck? I understand the idea, but then the witch brings him back from the dead - not explained how - and then there's the head of the doctor grinning away with a bad pun on his lips? What's that supposed to mean? At its heart (sorry) a very predictable story which ends up more or less exactly as you would expect, and then has this mad little coda stuck on the end. Weird.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/Talesdarksidetitle.JPG)
Title: "If the Shoes Fit"
Series: Tales from the Darkside
Season: 1
Year: 1985
Writer(s): Armand Mastroianni/ N. Ward/Louis Weber
Storyline: A candidate for governor checks in to a hotel, sharing his "wisdom" with the bellboy that politics is a game: doesn't matter about the issues, he says. Give people a good time and they'll vote for you. He's not interested in talking about his policies - probably because he has none - and is the consummate flim-flam man, hoping to coast into the governor's mansion on the votes of good-old-boys and impressionable girls.

He starts to hear circus music, then instead of his suit being delivered to the hotel he finds a clown's costume, which the bellboy seems to think is not strange at all; in fact, he helps him into the suit. But when his campaign manager calls to take him to the rally, there is no bellboy and his suit looks normal. Then he, um, ends up in a circus ring with a clown car. Right.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Not a clue.

Things I liked: Nothing.

Things I didn't like: Everything.

Comments: This is stupid even by TOTD standards, and that's saying something. I get what they're saying - politics has to be taken seriously, you have people's lives and livelihoods and futures in your hands and all that, and some - most - politicians will get there by whatever means they feel best serves them, but it's heavy-handed to the max and just ridiculous. Plus I hate clowns.

Rating: :1stars:

Wow. Well, it's been a poor crop so far and a bad start to round three, hasn't it? Let's see if the ever-dependable Black Mirror can turn the tide for us...
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "Hated in the Nation"
Series: Black Mirror
Season: 3
Year: 2016
Writer(s): Charlie Brooker
Storyline: The most hated woman in Britain is killed in her home. A journalist who was less than sympathetic when a wheelchair-bound woman, protesting about an uncaring government's attitude towards the disabled, set herself on fire, is universally reviled by everyone she meets, and nobody is going to miss her now she's been murdered. But it's up to DCI Karin Parke to catch her killer. She's been assigned a Shadow (whatever that is; we're not told) called Blue Colson, and between them they begin investigating. The dead woman, Jo Powers, had a husband but he is in hospital with knife wounds himself, and he says that she killed herself though he tried to stop her. The duo visit the person who sent a offensive cake to Powers, but toxicology have cleared it of having any drugs or anything, so that seems a dead end.

Then a rapper called Tusk who was a complete bastard to a nine-year-old kid who was trying to emulate him suddenly starts having a fit screaming "get it out!" and is rushed to the hospital, but while undergoing an MRI he dies, messily, and something is retrieved from his head. It turns out to be an ADI, an Autonomous Drone Insect, apparently a tiny robot replica of a bee which (as species appear to be going extinct all the time) we're told at the beginning of the episode has been "activated for summer", so probably some sort of robotic replacement for bees, which presumably are no more. This same insect is found in Powers' head, at her autopsy. The doctor there tells Colson and Parke that the amount of pain it would have caused in the brain, where it had burrowed into, would certainly be enough to have made someone desperate enough to kill themselves.

So perhaps the husband was telling the truth. The pair go to the company that makes the bees, Project Swarm, and now we learn that yes, bees are extinct and these little robots fill in for them, pollinating flowers and building hives (though they don't make honey of course). As the behaviour of a bee is to burrow into a flower, Karin wonders if this might be what happened with the ADI (they only seem to know at this point about one; nothing is mentioned of Tusk's death as yet) that they found in Powers' brain. The director of the project, Rasmus Sjoberg, dismisses this, saying the bees are not controllable, and it would be virtually impossible for someone to hack one and take control of it. But then, there's that word: virtually.

When they get back to base they find out about the rapper. Shaun Li, from the National Crime Agency, tells them about the ADI found in Tusk's head, while Blue finds out that the whole ADI thing is linked to an internet unpopularity contest, where people vote to see who is least liked and the unidentified host promises to kill them by 5pm that day. Using the hashtag #Deathto, people choose who they want killed and this person or organisation arranges it. They work out who is getting the most votes and go to try to stop her being killed. Blue contacts Sjoberg and asks him to monitor the area for any of his ADIs which might go offline, so that they'll know if one has been compromised and taken control of. He says he believes he has a way to trap them if that should happen.

As they move the woman to a safehouse, Rasmus calls to say that not one, but an entire hive of ADIs have gone offline - thousands of the little robotic bees, and very close to where they are. And then.

Not thousands, but millions. Every single hive has been compromised, and a massive swarm descends on the safehouse. The sheer weight of them smashes the windows and they're inside the house now. The three take refuge in the bathroom, plugging the gap under the door, but they get in through the ventilator and swarm into the body of the woman, sending her into convulsions and killing her.

It now comes out that the government is using these ADIs a a mobile surveillance system, so the visual sensors they use to track the flowers have been hacked - or used - to generate facial recognition of their intended victims. Now the Prime Minister - never the most popular guy - is top of the list, so he's shit scared he's going to be killed before teatime. Shaun suggests moving him to a secure location, and shows him how the army can blow up the hives, so that he's safe, but then the hives don't seem to go down that easily, and the reconstituted ADIs attack the army men, killing them all. Meanwhile Blue discovers embedded in the chip of the ADI that killed Jo Powers a manifesto written by a Garret Scholes, who has just become their prime suspect after a former employee testifies how she had been internet shamed and had cut her wrists, but he had saved her. He's obviously got a bone to pick with those who spout hate speech anonymously, and wants people to take responsibility for what they do.

Using the geotag on the selfie in his manifesto they track him down, but he has already left, however they do recover a drive with his toolkit on it, enabling Rasmus to lock him out and regain control of the hives. But... embedded in the code they find the details of everyone who has voted on the site, who are now the real targets of the ADIs. Karin wants the deactivation to be delayed, in case it triggers the endgame, but Shaun forces the issue. As soon as he does, everything goes to hell. Every hive is activated, and billions of ADIs set out to kill everyone on the real list, the list of those who spat hate from the shadows and took part in a game which resulted in the deaths of three people.

In a postscript, after the massacre by the ADIs, Blue Colsson is believed to have killed herself, blaming herself for being tricked into setting off the trap, but in reality she has tracked Scholes to some South American country and it's assumed she kills him, as her last message to Karin is "got him."

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Not an idea

Things I liked: Everything, almost.

Things I didn't like: The fucking song at the end.

Comments: Ah yes, Brooker does it once again. Can always rely on that man. Pulling victory from the jaws of defeat, though really, one out of five is not good, but this almost makes up for it. Another perfect example of this man's attempt to warn us all where we're heading, how social media is going to become the greatest evil in the world - if it has not already done so - or at least  how it can be used for great evil. Or maybe he's just pissing everyone off. Either way, it's a harrowing tale of how sniping from the shadows can ruin people's lives, how easy it gets to join in, and how little responsibility people take for that. Also contains a strong and not too heavy-handed ecological message. Bravo.

Rating: :5stars:

I think it's fair to say that, the wonderful Black Mirror apart, round three so far has been a total shitshow. Nothing good (other than "Hated in the Nation", which was, as always, excellent) and a string of
:1stars: ratings. As someone once said, worst. Round. Ever. Let's hope we see a major improvement in part two.

ROUND THREE, PART II: YE LESSER MORTALS

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/TalesOfTomorrow%2COpeningTitle.PNG)
Title: "The Duplicates"
Series: Tales of Tomorrow
Season: 1
Year: 1952
Writer(s): Richard M. Simon
Storyline: A man looking for work responds to an ad in the paper, somewhat enigmatic but promising great salary. When he goes to the interview he finds that the man there seems to know all about him, and has in fact had him under surveillance for the last year. He says he was the one who had him fired from his previous job as an engineer, to ensure he would be available, read, desperate for this job. He promises the experiment he asks him to "volunteer" for will not harm him, and he will be paid a fortune - a quarter of a million, in fact. He's dubious, angry at having been used, but curious too. He's introduced to scientists and army personnel (always the military huh?) and told an attempt is going to be made to contact alien life. A planet has been discovered, seeming a duplicate of Earth.

It appears our men of science- and particularly the military - don't like that. They believe that if the other duplicate Earth isn't stopped then both planets will annihilate each other. What evidence they base this on we may hear, but so far it seems like scaremongering and sabre-rattling. At any rate, the mission is for Calvin to travel to the other Earth and poison the food or drink so that his duplicate will die, and then the cycle of duplication will... stop ... what? How do they work that out? Lord almighty. Anyway, Calvin ain't having it. He's no murderer. But he's convinced - well, pretty much bribed really. To be fair, he folds quickly enough.

Oh now there's a twist. It seems this isn't Earth at all but, um, Jupiter. Right. Well let's ignore for the moment the fact that Jupiter is a gigantic ball of gas and that nothing could live there as there is no solid surface - this is 1952 after all. Still a good twist, somewhat similar to The Twilight Zone's "Third from the Sun". Trollheart's Theory (I think this is probably wrong but I'm going to say it anyway just in case): I think maybe he's a duplicate from Earth, who has already infiltrated Jupiter and left some sort of poison in his own house, and now he's returning home?

Anyway, off he blasts and it's Earthward ho! He does the deed and heads back home, gets paid and goes back to his house. Ok, revising my theory: the Earth duplicate has also been sent on a similar mission, poisoned his food and/or drink and his wife is dead. Yeah I can revise my theory if I like. I can do what I want to: it's my thread. Wanna fight about it? On, um, Nintendo? Moving swiftly on... Back home he shows his wife his cheques, which certainly cheers her up, but then when he apologises for being away last night she tells him he was right here, and yes, he's taken the drink he poisoned on Earth, and that's the end of him. Nice.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Other than the identity of the planet, sussed most of it.

Things I liked: The twist at the end

Things I didn't like: Even at this early stage I think it should have been common knowledge that Jupiter could not support life. I suppose they didnt' want to use Mars like everyone else, but why take a gas giant? Bad planning. Also, the idea of flippantly sanctioning the murder of an alien, dressing it up as "eliminating a shadow", is a disturbing look into the mind of a world power who probably see lesser countries as not important and ripe to be destroyed. I didn't like how first our man was against it, then he was easily swayed and when he performed the deed he seemed elated, only interested now in the money. On a similar theme, I didn't like how, when he realised he had been poisoned, he tore up the cheques and flung his wife away, completely selfish. Sure, he was going to die, but did he not care about her? The money would set her up for life. Mind you, she was a bit of a battleaxe, but still.

Comments: Without the usage of the planet Jupiter as the setting this would have been quite a decent story. It's a nice twist, as I say, and in fairness not held back to the end, which is an interesting ploy. The writer clearly expected that the average American would not know anything about Jupiter, and would accept its being home to a race of humanoids on trust. It's poor writing though, and does insult the intelligence, certainly now. As I said above, the casual sanctioning of murder is alarming, though not surprising, given the type of people we are. The ending is good, and overall this is one of the better episodes I've watched of this series. An interesting but perhaps coincidental point is that the first transmission of this episode was July 4 1952, Independence Day in America. Hmm.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Monsters_%281988_%E2%80%93_1991%29_poster.jpg)
Title: "Half as Old as Time"
Series: Monsters
Season: 2
Year: 1989
Writer(s): Thomas Babe, based on a story by Taenha Goodrich and Jake West
Storyline: A dying archaeologist visits his daughter in the desert, who is carrying on his work investigating the myths of the local tribes. He has a brain tumour and now wants to find the secret of the "waters of life", the fabled fountain of youth which he believes they know the location of. And so does she: she's discovered it. But when she brings him there the local Indian chief is not happy, telling her she broke a promise, and that the sacred waters are more important than one human life. Not impressed, the doctor drinks. Immediately he's younger, stronger, straighter. Come on, do I need to say where this is going? The de-aging is unlikely to stop and he'll end up as a baby duh.

The process soon reverses though (so much for my theory!) and he's old and crippled again. The Indian though offers him a deal: his daughter's life for his own, eternal youth at his command if he sacrifices her to the god of the cave. So he thinks, I'm cool with that (though she, rather unsurprisingly, is decidedly not) and stabs her to death. Drinking the water which is now mixed with her blood he is again young, and planning to have the water analysed to uncover the secret of how it works (and no doubt envisioning making a pile of cash at the same time) but of course there's a catch. Now that he has drunk the blood water and made the sacrifice to the god of the cave, he is in his service, and is turned to stone, to live forever, and no doubt regret that decision.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Well, you read it above: I thought he would keep getting younger and younger till he regressed to an embryo.

Things I liked: The usage of Native American beliefs, the contention by the Indian that his god cares nothing for sins, or good and evil. "That," he tells the rapidly-petrifying doctor, "is for the god of your churches." The idea of a god being terrible and powerful, something to fear. The inevitable attempt by the doctor to try to profit from the discovery he has made.

Things I didn't like: More casual killing. The stone that "slid" away to allow entrance into the cave was obviously on rollers: it moved like a Star Trek door!

Comments: Another good episode. Things are beginning to get back on track. I like it when the Old World meets the New, when old beliefs are at first ridiculed by Men of Science, only for it to become all too clear that Shakespeare was right about there being more things in heaven and Earth and so on. Obviously, fountain of youth stories have been told for centuries, perhaps longer, but this one puts a nice twist on it. A good ending, if a little telegraphed when the Indian says "you will live as he (the god) does" and since the god is a stone idol...

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/AmazingStoriesTVseries.jpg)
Title: "Dynoman and the Volt!"
Series: Amazing Stories
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Peter Ackerman
Storyline: When Dylan's grandfather comes to stay the kid finds him irascible, mean and snappish. He's on a stick and just after an operation, and things don't go any better for him when he's forced into retirement. Meanwhile, Dylan is losing his best friend as Brady gets interested in girls and doesn't want to do Halloween anymore. Dylan is crushed; a comic nerd, he's not exactly beating friends off with a stick, and has been waiting to try out his homemade Batman costume, and now his friend won't be sharing that with him.

Then something arrives for his grandpa - a ring he ordered from a comic sixty years ago and which never arrived. Dylan is stoked to find out that Grandpa Joe is, or was, also into comics, and they suddenly have a shared interest he never thought they would. He tells Dylan about his own favourite superhero, Dynoman, and that this is a replica of the ring that gave him his powers. However when the kid says try it out, he grumps that you can't believe in that crap, and Dylan storms off. He changes his mind though when the ring works. He's super strong, super fast and he's not only able to go back to his job, he's keeping the place going.

After Dylan falls out with Brady, Joe agrees to go trick-or-treating with him, but when a large order has to be filled at the mill, he takes it upon himself and forgets all about Dylan. His son, Dylan's father, goes to the mill to chew him out about not only letting Dylan down but pretending he's a superhero. He tells Joe that as a father he was never there for them, that he's a selfish man. When he has gone, his son having given him till tomorrow to move out, his leg suddenly goes again. Back at the house, Dylan remembers when Joe related the tale of The Volt, Dynoman's arch-enemy, who took the power of Dynoman's ring and used it against him. Looking at the table Joe smashed in the garage earlier, Dylan sees the fragments are all glowing, and knows he can have the power too.

Now he's The Volt, and out to be the legend that his grandpa was at school. Joe has told him a tall tale of how he and the football team put the Principal's car on the roof (they didn't, it was a serious exaggeration) and now Dylan intends to do just that, to make himself popular again. But just as he gets it onto the roof his helmet falls off and his powers are gone. He falls into the car, which is teetering on the edge. The door locks and he can't get out. Grandpa Joe comes to rescue him, but in disgust he has taken off his ring and left it behind: no more superpowers. He manages to grab Dylan but gets pulled in too as the car goes over the edge. Suddenly, it stops falling. Looking down, to their amazement, they see Dylan's dad, Joe's son, wearing the ring and holding up the car while flying!

Now that all three have sampled the powers of the comic book hero, the family is knit together better than it ever was, and they bury the ring as they no longer need it.


Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Really had no idea

Things I liked: Just about everything, other than the rather unlikely late delivery!

Things I didn't like: Nothing.

Comments: Right, that was brilliant. Finally, Amazing Stories comes up with one that deserves the description, and it only took another, what nearly thirty years? This comes from the reboot from 2020, and if this is an example, given what I've seen of the 1980s original, it's come on in leaps and bounds. This was a very clever story centered around the archetypal comic book nerd, with a strong subtext of a family falling apart, and it worked beautifully. What's also great is that there are three generations dealt with here, from the young kid Dylan only beginning his life really to Grandpa Joe, who is close to its end. In fact, in reality, the actor playing him died soon after, and the episode is dedicated to his memory. This could have been cheesy and played for laughs, but it was handled senisitively but without being poe-faced or preachy, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/AYAotD_logo.png)
Title: "The Tale of the Prom Queen"
Series: Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Season: 1
Year: 1992
Writer(s): Chloe Brown
Storyline: Classic "White Woman" story: a girl who was on the way to her prom was killed by a car hitting her in the fog, and every year her ghost appears. Or so say two guys who meet a girl in the cemetery, a girl who used to live there but is now only visiting. The two guys are ghost hunters, and are looking for the girl's grave, as prom night is this weekend. They research the story and find that not only did she die, but her boyfriend, who had been supposed to pick her up but had never got the message, crashed his car into the river in grief. The three decide to try to contact the boyfriend, Ricky, and tell him to pick Julie up, so she won't have to haunt that spot any more.

Trollheart's theory: some small hints make me think the girl in the trio is Julie, the ghost made flesh or something? She uses outdated language and seems to be impressed by a microfiche reader, saying she's never seen one before. Given that the accident is reported to have taken place in 1956, this might fit in. Anyway, they take a boat out on the river, under the bridge off which Ricky is supposed to have driven his car, and try to contact him. Seems they manage it, as suddenly the water is seriously agitated, as if something underneath is trying to get out. They leg it, well, paddle for it, and make it to the shore, when the disturbance vanishes.

They gather at the graveyard the next night, and sure enough the ghost comes calling. But one of the guys doesn't believe it (he's a sceptic, so why would he?) and it turns out he's right: his mate has got one of his other mates to dress up to fool him. He's not impressed. But then the ghost car turns up, and suddenly the girl turns into Judy and it looks like I was right. Ricky is waiting for her. She tells the two guys she couldn't leave the cemetery unless someone was with her (for some reason) and then as they helped her solve the mystery of why Ricky hadn't collected her, she was able to sort it all out. Now she doesn't have to wait for him any more and need no longer haunt that road yadda yadda yadda saw it coming.
Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Nah, pretty much had it sussed. Not hard.

Things I liked: Nothing particularly. The trick near the end was amusing.

Things I didn't like: How is it she was in modern dress, and more to the point, how was she fucking solid? I mean, it's not as if the guys walked through her or anything.

Comments: Meh, standard story of the White Woman with a small twist, but you could see it coming. Not too bad I suppose.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Night_Gallery_DVD.jpg)
Title: "Satisfaction Guaranteed" (4th segment of 4) (Note: this episode segment was originally "Witches Feast", but for whatever reason that was removed and replaced by this segment, and it's the one I have on my hard drive so we'll have to go with that.
Series: Night Gallery
Season: 2
Year: 1971
Writer(s): Jack Laird
Storyline: Short and sweet here (well it is segment four of four) - a man ostensibly looking for a secretary taxes the patience of the owner of the agency, whose motto is - you guessed it - satisfaction guaranteed. However he rejects all the applicants she send in to him, until a young filing clerk enters, and he declares that the girl is just what he's looking for. The owner protests, saying the girl has no secretarial experience, can't even type, but when the buxom girl bends over in front of the filing cabinet, he smiles and writes out a cheque, opening his briefcase from which he extracts a plate, knife and fork, and says he'll eat her here.
Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Hadn't a clue

Things I liked: Not much; played for laughs but highly disturbing.

Things I didn't like: Casual sexism, cannabilism. And this replaced "Witches Feast", which seemed to run under the same idea, so not sure why this was acceptable and the other not, unless the slight tone of humour here swung it.

Comments: Interesting. It's clear the guy is a bit odd, but not easy to work out what exactly his deal is. He has a somewhat pampered air about him, that of a man used to getting what he wants, with a certain devilish smile too. And he's quite fat, so in retrospect maybe you might have figured it out. I certainly didn't.

Also, the woman in charge of the agency doesn't seem to bat an eyelid when her important customer says "I'll eat her here!" Is she used to this kind of behaviour from the man? Is this an "extra service" the agency provides? She gave no indication of it prior to this. And is she now going to allow a human being, one of her employees, to be eaten? You can only take is as (sorry) tongue in cheek, but still, it's macabre to the max.

Rating: :4stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Creepshow_TV_Series.jpeg)
Title: "Pesticide"
Series: Creepshow
Season: 2
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Frank Dietz
Storyline: A really annoying and arrogant pest control guy turns out to also be immoral, as, having eliminated the bugs from a house, King slips back with a jar of cockroaches and sprinkles them surreptitiously on the floor to guarantee further business. He's also unnecessarily cruel, killing spiders in the garden for no reason. King likes to kill insects; he gets off on the power. But when he's asked to perform a totally different kind of vermin control, he baulks initially. A man has vagrants living on his property, property he wishes to renovate for big money, and he wants these trespassers gone. Murdoch offers King a fortune, and even the low morals of the pest control dude are overcome, and he agrees.

However his nerve goes as he's about to tip the poison into their stew; just then he is attacked by one of the vagrants and the vial slips from his hand, into the stew. He fights the vagrant off, but then has weird dreams where Murdoch grins and tells him he failed, sprays him with something and takes back the briefcase full of money (but then he wakes and it's still there) and something like a giant rat attacks him. The next morning, he goes to the site to see paramedics and police there loading bodies into an ambulance. He drives off.

Later, he is attacked by a mosquito the size of a dog, though again this vanishes as if he had hallucinated it. But as he tries to phone Murdoch - and can of course get no answer - he is again attacked, this time by a huge spider which is on the roof of his van. He wakes up in the office of the psychologist whose house he was supposed to be fumigating, and confesses to her what he has done, says he needs to talk and she's someone who listens to people. He has formed the idea now that Murdoch is the Devil. And then he falls asleep, and when he wakes up he's the size of a bug, and she squashes him. There's a ring on the doorbell and it's Murdoch, asking if she needs pest control? Uh, what?

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Sort of telegraphed that he would end up as a bug.

Things I liked: The fact that he got his comeuppance.

Things I didn't like: Jesus lord help me! Bugs! Bugs everywhere! :yikes:

Comments: The basic idea is sound: the guy who hates insects gets his comeuppance, but the giant insects could be put down to a tortured mind and a vivid imagination maybe, while how he shrinks to the size of an insect is less clear. I mean, I guess clearly he sold his soul to the Devil by taking on the job, so maybe this is him collecting, but it's all a bit slipshod and weird.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Dimension404Title.jpg)
Title: "Bob"
Series: Dimension 404
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Will Campos
Storyline: On the way home for Christmas, an army psychologist is intercepted by the NSA and taken to perform one last mission before she goes. She is asked - ordered - to provide therapy to Bob, the NSA's top analyst, who has been having problems which has hampered their tracking of a dangerous terrorist. The twist: Bob is a sort of massive human brain and computer in one, a sort of organic HAL 9000, and he's depressed.

Turns out that he's become too empathic; knowing the secrets of every single person on the planet has made him lose focus, and when due to his inability to locate the terrorist a bomb goes off in the subway, the NSA decide to take him offline, essentially killing him. Bob doesn't want to die alone, so he asks for Jane to talk to him, which she does. She asks him if he had one wish what would it be, and he says he wishes Santa Claus was real. But now that he is officially terminated by the NSA, he is free to do what he likes, so he basically arranges to give everyone gifts, finds the terrorist, fixes the US economy - in effect, becomes Santa Claus himself. And because he has taken control of the entire NSA, including America's military capabilities, he can't exactly be disobeyed. So Bob has his dying wish, and Jane gets to spend Christmas with her family in the end, courtesy of the NSA. And Bob.


Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Really had no clue.

Things I liked: The human aspect of the story, considering it was about essentially a computer having a nervous breakdown and dying.

Things I didn't like: The massive brain. Just looked, well, icky.

Comments: As cheesy Christmas stories go, this one is pretty good. There's a lot of humour in it, but pathos too. Not a lot of action, but then it's basically a two-person episode, with a few supporting characters floating around. It's refreshing to see a scenario where a computer (as such) faces a crisis and doesn't go mad or destroy the world, just, well, sulks I guess. And therapy, the benison for all the world's ills, comes to the rescue, though in fairness the relationship ends up going both ways. Jane learns why she has such issues with those in need, and faces her own weaknesses. A silly story, but perfect for the "holiday season" and while in effect it's a remake of Miracle on 34th Street, but with a gigantic computerised brain in the place of a vagrant drunk, it's hard not to like this.

Rating: :5stars:

Well, somewhat to my surprise, after a totally awful start, part II pulled it out of the hat as the young guns showed the old hands how to do it, mostly. What about the even younger guns though? Can Part III continue this revival, or will it sink back into the morass Part I had us drowning in? Only one way to find out!

ROUND THREE, PART III: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART I

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Room_104_teaser.png)
Title: "Phoenix"
Series: Room 104
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Xan Aranda and Ross Partridge
Storyline: Okay well this is another telephone conversation, so this must be a recurring motif in the series. A woman who should be dead, a passenger on an airliner that crashed and is believed to have left no survivors, is sitting in a motel talking to her boyfriend. Then someone knocks on the door, telling her they know who she is. She tells her (through the door) that she knows she was on the flight and survived, and that the press will soon know. (Trollheart's Theory: this woman is the Devil, or Death maybe, or an angel, or God, come to claim her, as she in fact did not survive). The woman's name, she says, is Liza, and she has brought food and drink, but Joan does not know what her angle is. Maybe she wants to get the story of the miracle survivor and sell it to the tabloids?

But that's not what she's here for. Before Liza came in Joan was on the phone, as I already mentioned, to her boyfriend, but she's married with kids, and now Liza tells her she has a choice to make. Which life does she want? The one with her husband and kids - who now think her dead, and will continue to think so unless she enlightens them - or the new one with her fancy man? Liza tells her time is running out, she has to choose. As Liza berates her about how maybe her husband and children might be better off without her, tells her she was never the wife or mother she thought she could be, she snaps and attacks her, strangling her. Seems a bit extreme to me, but we'll see.

Liza is of course not dead, not even bothered by the cable Joan strangled her with, and as Joan comes back out of the bathroom she tells her she has a choice again, but she, Liza, cannot help her. The room begins to flicker and Liza vanishes into the white glow, Joan is back on the aircraft as it crashes. Then she's back in the room, at the starting scene. And, um, fade.

Comments: Have no idea what to say. I had it all figured out, and I think in ways I was right. Liza was an angel, maybe, sent to show Joan she had a choice, but what that choice turns out to be we're not told; why she supposedly survived when nobody else did, what happened in the room, all shrug. Completely pointless and very disappointing ending. You can infer a few things from the clues, but there's no confirmation. No, didn't like that one at all.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://i.postimg.cc/vZTY2PnW/image-2022-07-24-210843550.png)
Title: "A  Boy Called Red"
Series: Creeped Out
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Bede Blake and Robert Butler
Storyline: A man and his son come to stay with his sister, as the marriage is going through a bad patch and he has been thrown out. Vincent's aunt shows him a well down which, she says, his father's best friend, Red, fell when he was young, and the incident had a terrible effect on the father. Indeed, when he sees his son near the well, Andrew goes loopy. Down in the cellar, Vincent finds a strange floating white sphere which gives off smoke. When he touches it, he is transported back in time to 1985 and meets his father and his aunt as children. Freaked, he runs out and back to the sphere, which sends him back to the present.

By talking to his father as a kid he is able to discover more about him, including that his stammer vanishes when he plays video games, and that he was into Star Wars as a kid. But when young Andrew calls him Red, he realises that he is the friend his father lost down the well. As they bond, he realises the best way to connect with his father in the present is to help him beat the high score on Asteroids that he was so obsessed with as a kid. They manage to do this and things are better between them. But the time-ball or whatever it is is shrinking, and Vincent realises that it's losing power, fading, and that soon he won't be able to go back to the past- or worse, come back to the present! 

The ball is now floating deep inside the well, and surely with only enough charge left for one more jump, the final one back to his own time. But if he goes down the well to touch it he will fulfill the future by vanishing down the well, causing his father (as a kid) to lose all hope and all his good work in the future will be undone in the past. Or something. So he resists, realising he will be trapped in the past, but unwilling to let Andrew, as a kid, see him vanish. Then the ball reappears outside the well, giving him time to say goodbye to Andrew and go back, where he finds everything has worked out between his parents, who are not split up now, thanks to his interference in the past.

Comments: Sort of a quasi-Back to the Future idea here, with the son showing his father (as a kid) how to enjoy life and making a sacrifice that turns out not to be a - oh, I don't know. A nice little feelgood story I guess, with plenty of loose ends left hanging.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51FZ4WEN60L._AC_SY445_.jpg)
Title: "Food on the Table"
Series: The Veil
Season: n/a
Year: 1958
Writer(s): Jack Jacobs
Storyline: A sea captain returning home after he and his crew have battled an infestation of poisonous snakes from Florida has his things sent to his home but heads to the local where he flirts with the barmaid. (Trollheart's theory: He's put one in his trunk and sent it home to his wife as he has a mistress and wants rid of her). When his wife goes to the pub he is less than pleased to see her and sends her home. Hey, maybe she'll be the one to put the snake in his bed. When he gets home he makes no bones about the fact that he's sick of her and only  married her for her money.

She goes to unpack his things and - lo and behold! - a snake bites her. The captain kills the snake and his wife appears to be all right. She wonders why he saved her, when he could have left her to die, solving all his problems. Maybe he does love her after all? Or maybe he's just kicking himself that he didn't think of it then. Later, when he hears a local widow has come into a huge windfall, he begins to think further about what his wife said, and to plot and plan. He goes home and tells her that she must come with him on his next voyage, where he poisons her. WHen she overhears him refusing to change course, as he said he would if she wasn't any better, he admits he poisoned her, just before she collapses and dies with a curse upon him on her lips.

Back home, it's time to look up that rich widow, once a suitably acceptable period of mourning has passed, but to allay suspicions he resists the idea when his friend suggests he might marry again. But the ghost of his wife is haunting him, determined he will pay for his evil. It doesn't take long for him to crack, to be fair, and put himself in the frame, though nobody can prove it. Nevertheless, his wife has her revenge when his new ship is sunk, in clear weather, with him being the only casualty.

Comments: A decent ghost story. Meh.

Things I thought might have happened, but didn't: Given the title, and the idea of the snakes, I assumed that she was going to have somehow managed to get one in, or  one would have got into, his clothes/food/bed, and he would die from a snakebite. I mean, other than that, what's the point of mentioning them at all. They're just, well, red herrings I guess.

Rating: :2.5stars:

(https://cdn.wallpapersafari.com/28/4/y9ljwK.jpg)
Title: "Shocker on Shock Street"
Series: Goosebumps
Season: 3
Year: 1997
Writer(s): Dan Angel, Billy Brown
Storyline: A girl whose father is the special effects/monster creator for a series of horror movies gives her and her friend a tour of his workshop, then springs a surprise on them: the new fairground ride based on the Shocker movies is operational, and they're to be the first to try it. Oddly, when she asks if her mother can come too he gets very defensive, angry even, and refuses. He also locks a door out of which green light leaks, telling them both sharply that it is off-limits. Obviously nothing at all worrying about that!

They're warned by the eccentric inventor not to get out of the car on any pretext, no matter what happens, and - again, not at all worrying - he gives them, um, laser guns to use if they get into trouble. A little into the ride it stops, and her friend, Marty, decides there's no point sitting around in the dark, so he gets out. Probably going to hazard that's a bad move. Still, what else are they going to do? The car is motionless, and even pushing it will not move it one inch, so they both begin to walk through the ride.

They find an emergency switch and a door opens, out onto Shock Street, which her father had warned them not to walk down. They begin to explore. Here's something interesting: at the start, Erin was scaring Marty, and saying he was scared of everything, but now it seems he's the one taking all the chances. It was him who got out of the car first, him who walked onto Shock Street and began trying doors, while she kept saying they should go back. Role reversal, or is he trying to prove himself to her?

Then they get trapped in a room where a monster grabs Marty and the electric fence seems real. Ish. He says he could feel the volts going through him, but he's alive so I guess it wasn't real, maybe some sort of sensory simulation? Now they're beginning to think the monsters are real, and the laser guns her father gave them - which had scared off other monsters - suddenly no longer work and they're being chased by a monster. Then we see Erin's father is monitoring them. He goes onto Shock Street, approaches them and - shuts them down. Yep, they were both robots, built to test the ride. Excellent twist: did not see that one coming. That's why he was so indignant about the idea of a mother - there is none.

Oh but there's a final twist, when the robots of Erin and Marty are not actually deactivated as the inventor thinks they are, and in a sort of Frankenstein ending, they destroy their creator. Nice.

Comments: Started off a bit meh, but man did the twist - well, twists - at the end change things immensely! And not foreshadowed at all. Brilliant.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTljYTYwYTktNjhjMC00MmQxLWJjODktYjIzYTViYWZhZTE4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDg4MjkzNDk@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Gammelskolen/The Old School"
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Kjetil Indregard, Atle Knudsen
Storyline: A new teacher starts at a school that has only opened after being closed for forty years, and hears what she thinks is children crying, the sound coming from the basement. But when she checks there is nothing there. Her landlady, Agda, tells her she always has an odd feeling whenever she passes the school that something happened there. Agda also lodges some pretty odd people, one of whom is a guy who likes to stare at everyone. There's also a janitor whom Sanna's told retired long ago and is believed dead. After taking class the next day she again hears the crying, and this time a ghostly message is chalked on the blackboard, pleading for help.

Back home, she seems to be pursued by an old man, whom she takes to be the janitor, though her landlady tells her it's just the staring guy's father. Sanna tells Agda about the mysterious ghostly chalk, and Agda, a believer in possibilities, let's say, remarks that someone died in the school long ago, and she thinks that their soul now needs help to cross over to the other side. The other teacher confirms that while she doesn't know about any deaths, there were rumours of kids vanishing, and the principal then backs this up, telling Sanna that four kids lived out on the outskirts of town, their mother died and they had to support themselves. They just stopped coming to school, and when the authorities investigated they found that the mother had died about a year previously. This was in 1978, when the principal was a pupil at the school.

Then she sees a vision of the children in the hall, and they tell her that the "bad man" took them, and ask for her help, telling her to look at the picture. She goes out to the old house where they used to live, and there finds the place in a mess, picks up a doll, compares it with the picture, but as she's doing so the mad janitor guy appears and tells her the mother died and the children were all the spawn of Satan, and kicks her out. As she and Agda discuss it later, they find something under the frame of the picture, an ancient incantation which Agda knows; a spell to send the soul into the realms beyond, to release it from its bonds that hold it here in our reality.

They go back to the school and find the bodies of the children buried there. They perform their spell to release them. The janitor comes in, admits to having killed them but again says they were devils.

And they were.

As Sanna turns around, the innocent children are now demons, and they attack her and Agda. Woops! Looks like old janitor guy was right after all!

Comments: Ha ha! School is a perfect place to set something like this. Schools are always good for hauntings, secrets, murders and strange goings-on. Excellent twist at the end; thought it was going to be a simple release of children spirits thing, which would have been a little formulaic and disappointing, but no, they pulled it out of the bag right at the end.

Rating: :5stars:

Yes, it seems after an initial stumble, subsequent parts of the third round have all lived up to their promise and given us, mostly, good or great episodes. Let's see if we can keep the quality up as we enter the final section of this round.

ROUND THREE, PART IV: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART II
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Rlstine-hp-hero.png)
Title: "Night of the Mummy"
Series: The Haunting Hour
Season: 2
Year: 2012
Writer(s): Gillian Horvath, Katherine Boutry
Storyline: On a museum trip the kid of the curator meets a strange man, who seems to be linked to the new mummy exhibit. He is impressed with Seth's knowledge (yes I know: Set) of Egypt and offers him a job assisting him. As he makes his offer though, the mummy beside him begins to move, but just then a girl who is sweet on him comes in and gasps that she has seen the mummy's hand move. Which it did. The curator guy dismisses this as her imagination, but later puts a spell on Seth which makes him take his mother's keycard and go into the museum at night.

You know, I don't have great hopes for this episode. Smells like a typical mummy-comes-to-life-with-the-help-of-evil-sorcerer/acolyte-and-is-foiled-by-plucky-kid kind of thing, but we'll see. Not expecting a lot though. Anyhoo, back to the episode. Seth takes the ankh necklace he was looking at earlier and puts it around his neck. Behind him we see the mummy, looking remarkably animate and not half as dead as you might expect. Moments later Seth wakes up in bed. Was it all a dream? Possibly not: he finds he has the ankh around his neck, though his mother says it's a copy that the curator gave him. He however sees the mummy in the mirror, so that can't be good, can it? I mean, we've all looked in a mirror and been surprised at how old we look, but not several thousand years older than we should be!

In school, Seth experiences pain in his side, and checking he sees a scar there; he now believes he's feeling what the mummy feels. His friend shows him a brochure for the exhibition, which shows a hieroglyph of the high priest, who looks just a little too much like the curator for comfort. Back home, it seems his mother has been compromised. The curator/high priest takes them both in her car, while the friend tries to stop them being abducted. Pushbike vs SUV: it's not going to be much of a race, is it?

His mother tells him he is actually the mummy - or, more accurately, the pharaoh - who was sent into the future to protect him from his enemies. She has been his guardian, and now Seth is to be reunited with his brother from the past, one of two twin pharaohs. Of course, the downside of this means that they're both now dusty mummies, but hey, you can't make a seven-thousand-year old omelette and all that.

Comments: Okay it wasn't quite what I was expecting, though the ending left it a little bleak really considering. More comment to come in due course.

Rating: :2.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Mastersofhorror.jpg)
Title: "Haeckel's Tale"
Series: Masters of Horror
Season: 1
Year: 2006
Writer(s): Mick Garris, based on a story by Clive Barker
Storyline: Ooh, a Barker story! This sounds better already! A man whose wife has just died begs a witch to bring her back, and she refuses, but then relents: she will tell him the tale of Ernst Haeckel, and if he still wants it done after he's heard the story, she will grant his wish. It's basically a take on Frankenstein, as Haeckel, a medical student, tries to prove he can reanimate the dead. In an age where it's firmly believed only God can give life, his theories do not go down well with the faculty, a situation not helped when the experiment he is conducting goes horribly wrong and the corpse burns to cinders. Dejected, he's advised to go seek the local, um, necromancer, Montesquino, who brings back to life before his eyes a dead dog. The thing is not alive though, just reanimated, and looks pretty evil (and possibly in pain) and he quickly despatches it again.

He tells Haeckel that bringing back animals is easy, but a human being is a far more complex thing, having a soul and all. The necromancer is however not a charity, as he says; for every life he brings back he says that he loses a year of his life, therefore he charges an exorbitant fee for resurrection, one most can't afford. Haeckal wishes to learn the skill from him, but he refuses. Haeckel reckons it was all trickery anyway. He gets a letter to say his father is dying, and sets off to see him before the end. On the way he is befriended by Wolfram, a man who offers him shelter on a cold and wet night, warning him that it is not wise to sleep near a graveyard, as he had been about to do.

The man's young wife Elise - a lot younger than him - seems sad, distracted. There's no need for a Trollheart Theory here: he's obviously brought her back from the dead. You can see a picture of her on the wall, beside a man who is clearly him when he was younger. Elise keeps looking out the window, as if expecting something, or missing something. I would venture to say though that it's odd  how Wolfram is basically pushing Haeckel towards making advances to her, and I wonder if he has brought her back on the strict condition that she remain faithful to him? If not, if she breaks her vow, back she goes? We'll see, but it's strange behaviour to say the least. Or maybe it's the other way around; maybe he's the dead guy?

She seems to be trying to seduce Haeckel all right, and that night it looks like Montesquino pays a visit. Shortly afterwards Elise has a baby. Wolfram says it is not his, but that of her dead ex-husband. Then she leaves, and Wolfram gets very upset. Hackel goes after her, and they come across the dog the necromancer had, but no matter how many times he tries to kill it Haeckel can't; it's already dead. They go to the graveyard and there find Elise being rogered by the corpse of her husband, while other assorted dead people gawk. In an effort to stop it, he shoots the necromancer, but even dying there's nothing can be done. He has to wait, he's told, till the sun comes up, and the dead will go back to their graves. Talk about necrophilia. Lends a whole new meaning to the term dead horny! Sorry.

Back at the house next morning, Wolfram having been killed by assorted corpses the previous night, Haeckel sees Elise cuddling a baby which turns out to be (surprise, surprise!) a corpse baby. Then when she asks - demands really - he hold it, it bites him and now he's the one servicing her in the graveyard, while all the others, including her recently-dead husband and the necromancer, all stand around forced to watch.

Back with our original guy, the witch has come to the end of her tale, but he does not believe it. Suddenly he hears a baby's wailing, but she says she hears nothing. The house is then populated by shambling corpses, among them Haeckel and Wolfram. With a cry of terror, the guy rather sensibly beats a hasty retreat.


Comments: Very Barker indeed, but carries the stench of local folk tale twisted into horror story. Reminds me of a few of those I researched for my vampire journal, particularly "Wake Not the Dead", always good advice. Typically Barker, there is no happy ending.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/IntoTheDark.png)
Title: "Good Boy"
Series: Into the Dark
Season: 2
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Aaron Eisenberg, Will Eisenberg

Storyline: After losing her job at a magazine, Maggie is no longer able to afford to freeze her eggs, as she had hoped to, given that she's having little to no success dating. With everything falling apart around her, she decides to take her annoying boss's advice and get an emotional support dog. A pretty weird-looking dog, if you ask me. Strange eyes. I must say, I find it very unprofessional when, having got a new job in a bakery or deli or some damn thing, she meets Annie, a girl she used to babysit for and they spend minutes talking and catching up while a queue of customers forms behind her. Very rude. When she has another bad date the dog, Reuben, takes offence and basically pushes the guy off his balcony. There's some pretty bad acting from the neighbour who comes along and sees the remains of the guy. All she says is "We've been telling them for years to put a traffic light there" (they assume the guy was hit by a car, which he may have been - wouldn't have been the driver's fault as this lad would have just seemed to have fallen out of the sky!) but it's said in such a matter-of-fact, bored way, like "shrug, what ya gonna do?" There's no real emotion, no horror, no regret or remorse at the guy's death. In fact, the only one really upset is Maggie.

Look, the guy was a shit and he - maybe - deserved to be taught a lesson, but it's a bit unsettling that she doesn't seem affected at all by his death. After all, she was there and saw the body, saw the results, but all she's worried about is that her dog is okay. I can understand: she didn't know the guy and he was horrible to her, but still, some sort of basic compassion? Actually, she uses the incident to write up a story for the magazine - for which she's sort of working freelance now - and gets a scoop, so perhaps we can see where this is going. Other dogs don't seem to like Rueben either - probably realise he's the spawn of Satan - and when Maggie's landlady takes a dislike to the dog, well, she doesn't last long. Now Maggie has to cover up the devil dog's crimes. I mean, she's pretty ditzy in the first place, but this is moronic behaviour. She's getting her DNA and fingerprints all over the landlady's house, and when her disappearance is noticed, Maggie's going to be in the frame. What's she gonna do? Blame her tiny dog?

The landlady's niece comes looking for her, accompanied by a cop, who turns out to be someone who came into the shop previously and left his number with Maggie. The disappearance of the landlady gives her another big story to sell, but when she collects her paycheque there's no promised bonus, so she has a run in with her boss, who ends up firing her. He's not long for this world, then! This is kind of nonsense, though I can see the black humour in it. There's a lot left to be desired in the story however, and Maggie's reaction when she sees her boss, sorry ex-boss savaged by her dog is to smile and say "Good boy!" She's either dangerously insane or incredibly selfish and cold.

Sure, again, the guy was a jerk and he had just fired her, but did he deserve to be slaughtered by her fucking dog? And how long does she think she can keep this up? The landlady was a big enough corpse to get rid of, and she's no bodybuilder. Her boss is a much bigger guy - think like maybe Brian Cox - and they're up several floors of a building. How is she supposed to get rid of his body and get the office cleaned up before anyone else gets there?

Okay this is ridiculous. That guy must weigh, what? 250 lbs? She's at best maybe 120, 130 and yet she manages to drag his - literal - dead weight over to the edge of the roof and heave him over? Completely unrealistic. So now I suppose it's "Magazine editor ends it all as his magazine folds"? I know she had a tough life, but her smug smile as she takes his job is just, well, sickening, and I begin to hope the dog turns on her, though I feel this is going to be one of those stupid stories with no real ending. Hmm, let me try this: Reuben gets jealous of her new boyfriend, the cop, Nate, and kills him because he doesn't want to share her with anyone OR he thinks every man is a target and thinks he's protecting her OR the first time they have any sort of an argument it's six feet under for Nate. Now the cops are investigating the first death (well, not the landlady, the smug guy she went out with) so what's Reuben gonna go? Kill all the cops in the area?

And what's the deal with her eggs? I had actually forgotten about that, but it just showed her injecting herself again, so there must be some point that fits into the story. Surely she's not going to have a puppy if she gets pregnant? Honestly, the way this story is going, it would not surprise me. Very disappointed in this. Okay finally something happening: her fertility nurse seems to have been a witness to the murder of the guy in the apartment, when Reuben pushed him off the top floor, although the way the scene is going I wonder is it just in her head? It's hardly the sort of thing a nurse would do: she's shackled her to the bed and is being very threatening, and there's the sound of sirens. She did warn Maggie that the drugs might make her feel out of herself, so is this just a hallucination?

I guess it was, as now she's in the car with Nate heading home. But Nate's boss tells her that his girlfriend is linked to two murders, and before long it's three, as Reuben takes exception to Annie not leaving when she's told, and it seems he's some sort of a werewolf or hell dog or something. Now she has another corpse to dump, and still she acts as if it's really no big deal. Then she just dumps the dog, knowing how dangerous and savage it is. Someone else's problem now: she drives away.

The puppycam Nate bought her has now become the instrument of her destruction, as Nate turns on the recording on his phone and can see Maggie dragging Annie's dead body across the floor. So when he goes to arrest her, of course Reuben smashes through the door and kills him. He's revealed then to be some sort of Hound of the Baskervilles type, and she's arrested and then Reuben goes back to the pound, where another unsuspecting potential owner gives him a home.

Comments: That really was shite. Considering it appears to have been co-written by a Star Trek alumnus, Aaron Eisenberg, who played the Ferengi Nog in Deep Space Nine, and I assume his brother Will, the former should stick to acting. From a story which created sympathy for the woman in the beginning it developed into a mad murder deal where I grew to hate Maggie and just wish Reuben had turned on her in the end. Once the basic idea had been established that the dog was killing the people who pissed his owner off, there wasn't much in it other than a string of quite graphic murders and the rapid descent of a woman into madness and denial. Just terrible, in every way.

As a story supposedly written to celebrate Pet Appreciation Day, while I can see the humour, it's the sort of thing that would turn you off adopting a dog. No explanation of course as to what the dog really was, or how he got to be that way, but I suppose at least Maggie got punished for being a basic accessory to multiple murders. I expect in the context of the story, not the only ones the dog has committed and for which previous owners have been incarcerated.

Also, in a very ironic and sad way, a story which I guess sets out to champion female empowerment (through a devil dog, but still) ends up being, to me anyway, a vehicle for sexism, misogyny and ridicule of a woman who goes slowly mad, most of this through the fact that she can't get or hold a man of her own. Terrible message.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: When Annie started complaining about her boyfriend pushing her for a child she didn't want, and Maggie suggested getting a dog, I thought we were going to see another Reuben sort out her problem. I also was convinced the dog was going to turn on Maggie as soon as she upbraided it. Particularly after it had killed Annie, I thought she might say "Bad dog!" and it would go for her.

Things I liked about this: Nothing really. The black humour was okay at first but it wore very thin as a story way too long for what was in it wound doggedly (sorry) on, getting more ludicrous and less funny each minute.

Things I didn't like about this: Maggie's smug smile, her stupid refusal to accept she was being complicit in several murders, her grim determination to keep taking the dog's side. And what the fuck was the deal with her eggs? Nothing came of that, nothing at all. And what was the story with the nurse? Never established if that was real (though given she was driven away, probably not). Garbage.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Love%2C_Death_%26_Robots_Logo.png)
Title: "Beyond the Aquila Rift"
Series: Love Death & Robots
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Phil Gelat, from the short story by Alastair Reynolds
Storyline: A ship returning from deep space goes off course due to a system malfunction, and ends up light-years from where it should have been going. The captain is amazed to see a friendly face in the team that board her, a girl he knows called Greta. So they, ah, renew their relationship. Then Greta tells Tom that they are in fact far, far further from home than she had originally admitted, and not only that, they have been in suspended animation for hundreds of years. Only the other crew members point out to him the impossibility of so much time passing and Greta, not only being here, but still looking young and beautiful?

In the end it has to be explained to him; he demands it, and finds that he is in some sort of giant alien graveyard or some damn thing, and the creature that called itself Greta is a big alien spider-thing, looking after, as it says, all the lost souls who get sent off course and end up here. Everything he sees is a simulation being beamed into his mind because, well, it would snap if he knew the real truth.

Comments: Good story, again great animation.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BN2YwMWQ1YTUtMzkzOS00YWZlLThhNTctMjAwMGRlZDgxMTAwXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Palacios, Texas"
Series: Monsterland
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Mary Laws
Storyline: A fisherman who was crippled when the oil company, trying to clear up a spill, dumped chemicals on him, is sending dead fish and seagulls to them, trying to make them pay. After some of the guys crack wise about mermaids in the water, Sharko, the crippled guy, is amazed to find a dead one on the shore. He puts it in his truck and brings it home, puts it in the bath with ice, and is amazed later to find it is alive. I guess we should say she, not it. At first, she attacks him, but when he helps clean her up and feed her she calms down and they become better acquainted.

Then his not-quite-mate, Breezy, a sort of two-time loser, breaks into his house and sees the mermaid. Can't believe it. Sharko tells him he can't tell anyone, and Breezy builds a big tank for the mermaid. Some time later a girl knocks on the door, and it's the mermaid, now a human woman (or at least, in the form of one) who thanks him for saving her, and for caring about the sea, which she says nobody else does. She touches him, and he can breathe normally. Right. This is all in his mind, isn't it? Cos now he's young and virile again.

Trouble arrives in the form of Breezy and the other fishermen, who want their cut - Breezy obviously has not kept the secret - but Sharko sees them off with his shotgun. Then he and the mermaid jump into the sea together, where she kills him. No happy ending there then.

Comments: Good story, mixture of fantasy and reality, so that you don't quite know which is which as it goes along. A typically dark ending, though it could be somewhat foreseen.

Things I thought might have happened, but didn't Originally, when Breezy discovered the mermaid, I thought it was going to attack and kill him.

I also thought that when Sharko started going on about being the king of the ocean, the mermaid was going to get upset with him and become disillusioned, seeing him as under the skin just the same as every other human, wanting to dominate and control.

Rating: :4stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMDQ0MTBjM2MtODFmYi00MmU1LWIxYTYtMzRiZGRiMTE5Zjg3XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "The Killer Inside"
Series: Two Sentence Horror Stories
Season: 3
Year: 2022
Writer(s): Sehaq Sethi

First sentence: "I wanted all of her..."

Storyline: A woman wakes up in a sort of torture chamber with a cut on her head. She explores the rest of the house and finds a man going through her handbag, looking for something. The door out is padlocked. He sees the key hanging around her neck, just as she manages to knock him down and then ties him up. It emerges that he has taken the kidney due her dying father, by cheating the system. I expect now she has him here in order to make an unscheduled operation in which he will be a very unwilling donor.

She gets a phone call which appears to be someone screaming, then sees some sort of cloudy thing at the door and the next thing the guy, Karim, is fighting her, having used a broken piece of glass to cut the tape holding his wrists. He gets the key and opens the door, to find her father standing outside. Distracted, he doesn't see her come up with the syringe.

Shiraz's father wants to know what's going on. That strange smoky thing has resolved into a kind of misty smoke figure and then vanishes, then it's standing behind her, but she tells herself it's just an illusion. Her father does not want her to go ahead with the operation - oh it's a liver, not a kidney. Well okay - saying this is not why she became a surgeon, but she's determined. Karim bribed the hospital to get the lung her father should have got, to get himself moved up the list, and now she's going to do a spot of organ repossession. Her father tells her if she does this she will lose her soul, and now we can see the smoky figure resolve itself into a copy of her. She stabs him with a sedative, cutting short his protests, and prepares for the operation.

But it goes wrong and she kills the guy, taking his liver anyway. Sure, he's not going to be needing it now, is he? Unfortunately the stress has been too much for dear old dad, and he collapses and dies, leaving her having sold her soul for nothing in the end.

Second sentence: "She wanted parts of me."

Comments: Interesting take. Makes you think Shiraz is the one being held, then flips that around. And in the end it's all for nothing. I guess with them all being Egyptian it's based on some of their mythology or spirits, though I know a little about Egyptian mythos and I've never heard of a creature like that. Good though. The road to damnation is paved with good intentions. And a lot of innocent blood.

Rating: :5stars:

At the end of round three, then, some pretty stark changes in the chart.

And here it is.

23 Tales from the Darkside
22 Amazing Stories
21 The Haunting Hour
20 Are You Afraid of the Dark?
19 Creeped Out
18 The Outer Limits
17 Creepshow
16 Tales of Tomorrow
15 Love Death and Robots
14 The Veil
13 Monsters
12 Night Gallery
11 The Twilight Zone
10 Tales from the Crypt
9 Room 104
8 Monsterland
7 Goosebumps
6 Into the Dark
5 Masters of Horror
4 Two Sentence Horror Stories
3 Dimension 404
2 Bloodride
1 Black Mirror

To nobody's surprise, Black Mirror stays at the top, but after the godawful "Good Boy", Into the Dark slides out of the top 5 entirely, down to number 6, its place taken by Bloodride. Dimension 404 comes back into the top three, with Two Sentence Horror Stories also re-staking its place at the top, taking fourth position while Room 104 falls all the way down to number 9. Masters of Horror moves up 1 place to 6, while The Haunting Hour plummets from 9 all the way down to 21! Tales from the Crypt falls from 8 to 10, The Twilight Zone exits the top ten to take 11th spot, while Tales of Tomorrow falls from 11 to 16.

Goosebumps and Monsterland are two big movers in the right direction, 7 places for the former and 9 for the latter while The Veil and Creeped Out both fall. Love Death and Robots and Are You Afraid of the Dark? remain where they were, Night Gallery moves up from 19 to 12, Monsters moves from 21 to 13 and Amazing Stories and Tales from the Darkside continue to prop up the chart.

ROUND FOUR, PART I: THE CLASSICS
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/The_Twilight_Zone_%281959_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-The_Twilight_Zone_%281959_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "It's a Good Life"
Series: The Twilight Zone
Season: 3
Year: 1961
Writer(s): Rod Serling, based on a short story by Jerome Bixby
Storyline: A small town in America is terrorised by a horrible monster who can read minds and manipulate matter. He's a six-year-old boy, holding this small tiny town in thrall; everyone has to smile and be happy, otherwise, well, you just don't want to know what will happen. Everyone lives in terror of the kid, Anthony, who you just want to slap the head off, little fucker. Anything he doesn't like or agree with, he gets rid of. He can make animals into monsters, make people disappear ("send them to the cornfield") and basically do whatever the hell he wants.

One guy, whose birthday it is, loses it when he can't even play the record he's been given as a present, cos poor little Anthony don't like singing. He gets drunk, calls him a monster and implores the others to kill him, knock him out, something. But nobody has the guts. Anthony turns him into a jack-in-the-box for some reason. Everyone watches in horror, until his father asks him nicely to wish the creature into the cornfield, which he does. Everyone goes back to pretending to be happy. The living Hell continues.
Comments: Ah yes, a true classic, the kind of thing that lifts The Twilight Zone into a class all of its own. Of course the story is an allegory, a warning about the lack of discipline and teaching, the fear of allowing unchecked power to run rampant. It's almost what every one of us fears: an omnipotent and selfish and uncaring creature, who can do what he likes, when he likes, and could not give a curse how it affects anyone else. The ultimate expression of self-centred self-gratification, power without responsibility, or even understanding.

Of course, we can't really blame Anthony. Nobody has taken the time to try to explain to him why some of the things he does are bad, but then, he's a six-year old, and try getting that through to one of them! Especially when they have the power to wipe you out or make you suffer in horrible ways if you do anything to offend them. It's a parenting masterclass, perhaps, on how not to parent, and a stark warning that, if you don't teach your children right from wrong, if you allow them to do as they like and never correct or punish them, or explain the world to them, you'll end up with nothing but cold, unfeeling, selfish little monsters.
Rating: :5stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAwNjE3MDU5M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzI1ODUxMQ@@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "The Bellero Shield"
Series: The Outer Limits
Season: 1
Year: 1964
Writer(s): Joseph Stefano and Lou Morheim from a story by Arthur Leo Zagat
Storyline: A woman drags - something - up the stairs, something dead. Her husband denies his son killed whatever it is and she knocks him down the stairs, killing him. Beside him, the thing she was about to bury is, well, an alien. Next we see some scientists trying some sort of laser beam or something, shooting it from the roof of a house. The murderess from the opening scene appears to be some sort of servant or housekeeper. Richard Bellero is upset that his father, who is retiring from his position at the head of his corporation, is not passing the flame on to his own son, but has chosen another successor. Whiel he goes for another bottle, his wife fires his new laser gun at the bottle and it vanishes. The next moment an alien descends down the laser beam from the roof as if it were a slide or something. She shoots at it too and kills it.

Actually no, she doesn't. The being appears to be made of light, and comes, he says, from a universe made of light. He has created a shield around him to protect him, but allows it to drop when he is assured he is in no danger. Richard's father comes back with an ultimatum for his son: he hates, and always has hated his ambitious wife Judith, believing her to be a bad influence on his son, and he now tells her to let Richard know he can have the corporation on one condition: that he leave Judith. He makes no bones about how he hates her, but she laughs in his face.

Richard has been talking to the alien, filling it in on all the Earth's science, but Judith believes it's their ticket to fame and fortune. The alien only has an hour before he has to return to his own universe, so Richard calls his father to show him the wonder. Out of sight of her husband, Judith is given a gun by their housekeeper. She goes to talk to the alien while Richard is on the phone. She wants the shield the alien has, but he tells her Earth (or possibly this universe) lacks the vital component to manufacture one. Nevertheless, when she hears that this one he has could protect the entire planet, her determination to get it increases even more.

Richard's father will not come back - well duh, given how Judith just spoke to him! - so he goes to try again, leaving her with the alien. But the time for his departure has arrived, and he can't delay or he won't be able to get back home. So she shoots him, and she and the housekeeper drag the body down to the cellar. Having enticed Richard's father up into the lab she now demonstrates the power of the shield (calling it, modestly, the Bellero Shield) which she has of course taken from the dead alien. Astonished, the tycoon begs forgiveness of his son, but Richard storms off. While he's gone, his father tells Judith that he is not just retiring, but dying.

Oh dear! Judith realises she can turn the shield on, but not off, and now she's trapped inside it! Nothing can get through it, and they don't know how to deactivate it. The only one who has the knowledge now lies dead in their wine cellar. Trapped, she reveals her crime, that she killed the alien and there is no hope now for her. And so we return to the opening scene, which now makes more sense. But the alien isn't dead it seems (boo!) and comes up to help raise the shield (double boo!), the ingredient he spoke of being his blood. He reaches through the shield, presses the button and the shield vanishes. Then he dies.

But when Judith goes to exit, she finds she can't. It's there in her mind now, forever, and she has trapped herself behind it until she dies. Perhaps the blood of the murdered alien (yes he didn't die when she shot him but he did some time later) which still stains her hand is the trigger for her psychosis, convincing her that the shield is still there. Unsurprisingly, by the end she has wigged out utterly.
Comments: Basically a sort of rip-off of Macbeth (it says here), this episode typifies for me the problem with this show, compared to its older sister. The Outer Limits concerned itself too much with scientific theory and experimentation (look at the previous round's episode for more proof) and therefore may have appealed more to nerds and scientific types, whereas The Twilight Zone generally tended to go for more the human stories, which might be why I liked it better. This is a decent story, but there are some pretty poor parts in it, and there's also for me a sense of Poe's Fall of the House of Usher in its atmosphere.

Despite the overly scientific approach, there's some really bad science here. If the alien comes from a "universe of light", and so we must assume he is made of light, how can a simple Earth gun kill him? Shouldn't it just pass through him? How did he get here, and why is Judith's first reaction to shoot him? How can a being's blood be an ingredient in making... ah, I give up.

There is at least a good message in the episode, if you look for it, that some things are not for sale and your own sins will come back to haunt you. A nice extra one in that the alien is in the end more human than at least Judith or the maid, agreeing to help the one who is responsible for his death.

Rating: :3.5stars:

(https://flxt.tmsimg.com/assets/p184195_b_v7_ae.jpg)
Title: "Two for the Show"
Series: Tales from the Crypt
Season: 5
Year: 1993
Writer(s): Gilbert Adler/ A.L. Katz
Storyline: A man reacts how you might expect when his wife says she wants a divorce - he stabs her to death. Oh, and then, of course, he tries to hide her body in a suitcase. Of course he does. He's a respectable businessman with a lot to lose. After a not terribly observant cop investigates, finds nothing and leaves, Andy chops up his wife's body and puts it in a trunk then brings it to the train station, sending it on to Chicago. Unfortunately for him, the same cop is at the station and sees him acting in what could only be described as a suspicious manner. Forced now to take the train himself, Andy is most annoyed to find that the cop is also going to Chicago and so is on the train, sitting right opposite him.

He starts engaging him in conversation, asking him how he would murder his wife, then following him into the dining cart, then telling him he is on a drug bust and the FBI will be getting on soon - and will go through everything on the train, including all bags. And trunks. Suddenly, our Andy has lost his appetite. He goes into the luggage car and throws his trunk off the train. The cop then reveals that he's the one Andy's wife was having an affair with, but when he confidently takes the cop - and the FBI agents - into the luggage car to see his trunk, it turns out that inside it ia womans chopped-up body - but it's not that of his wife! Then the cop says it wasn't him having the affair with Andy's wife, but his wife, the cop's wife. Now he's going to blame Andy for both murders, when he has clearly murdered his own wife, and who are the FBI going to believe? A cop with an unblemished record, who led them to the corpse, or a man who has already admitted in their presence that he did kill a woman. Just not, you know, that woman?


Comments: I like this story. I wasn't sure what was going to happen when Andy threw the trunk off the train - thought maybe somehow he had chosen the wrong one? But of course there are some pretty major holes in this, and I have serious problems with the ending. The cop's whole plan hinges on Andy being there on the train with his trunk. How did he know he would be there? And were the FBI going to board the train anyway? What then if Andy had not been there? How was he to explain the hacked-up body in the trunk, which surely had his name on it? So does this whole thing not depend entirely on a fortuitous coincidence?

In fairness, if you ignore that, then it's a grisly and macabre little tale worthy of this series. Sort of takes the old "Strangers on a Train" idea and turns it on its head a little but even so quite original thinking.

Rating: :4stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/Talesdarksidetitle.JPG)

Honestly, my blood begins to chill (and not in a good way, not in the way it's supposed to) when this series comes up, as it has been my misfortune to have watched most if not all of it, and most if not all of it has been shit. So shit in fact that the odd good and even more rare great episodes stand out not because they are good, but because they break the pattern of mediocrity and me sitting there disbelieving thinking, how did this ever get passed for television?

Ah well. Time to see what's on the other side of that door once again. Oooh! I'm so scared. Scared that I might be wasting my time, that is.

Title: "Snip, Snip"
Series: Tales from the Darkside
Season: 1
Year: 1985
Writer(s): Howard Smith, Tom Allen
Storyline: I don't care if it's just twenty minutes of a shot of a steaming turd: this has to be better than the garbage I  experienced from this series in the previous round. Okay then. A struggling teacher who has been dabbling in the black arts believes he has been given the winning lottery numbers, and rings his boss to quit his job. Unfortunately, the spirits were one number out and he doesn't win. Undeterred, he goes to the address of the actual winner, a hairdresser, and tries to steal her winning ticket. Her mynah bird alerts her to his presence though, and he pretends he has a gun. Actually he says he's not going to cash the ticket but tear it up to force the holding of another draw.

He has seen her put the ticket into a music box and lock it, but when he gets the key it's not there. He can't understand it. Seems she's been communicating with the spirits too. There's then some nonsense where she goes around snipping things and it seems to cut up his clothes till finally I guess she kills him? Meh. Pretty poor really.

And more fallacies. If the lottery isn't won that's tough: it rolls over. They don't hold another fucking lottery. What nonsense. The only possible purpose destroying her ticket would have served would have been to have made him selfishly glad that if he wasn't going to win, then she wasn't either. I do wish people would research and test out their ideas. All the writers had to do was check lottery procedure and they would have seen what they do in the event nobody wins: nothing. They're hoping nobody wins: they don't want to give away millions.


Comments: I thought I had it at the end: thought she might have been Atropos, the eldest of the Norns, who cuts the thread of men's lives, but no, they never mentioned that. Just a mess really. Quite poorly written, about par though for this series.

Rating: :1stars:

The only good thing I can say about Tales from the Darkside is that once whatever rubbish they try to masquerade as a story is done, we have this to look forward to.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "Crocodile"
Series: Black Mirror
Season: 4
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Charlie Brooker
Storyline: On the way home from a nightclub, well the worse for wear, a man and a woman knock down a cyclist on the road. Fearing being sent to prison, the man makes the woman  help him seal the guy up in a sleeping bag, weight it down with rocks and throw it in the sea. Look, they don't even, so far as I can see, check to make sure he was dead. Three years later (I assume) the woman, Mia, is giving an important speech. Oh, she's an architect, apparently. Meanwhile a claims adjuster meets a road traffic accident victim to discuss her claim.

The man, Rob, visits Mia. It's the first time they've seen each other since the accident. We're talking some time in the near future here; people still drive cars but there are automated pizza delivery trucks and the claims adjuster's card is some sort of electronic device. Not tomorrow, but the day after, style of thing. Rob has come to talk to Mia about the accident; he has seen a newpaper article about the man's wife. He was never found, and she is still hoping he will come home. He wants to write her a letter, explaining what happened, but anonymously. She's not having that. So when she can't convince him to change his mind, she kills him.

She sneaks the body out of her hotel and buries it on a construction site. Meanwhile, Shazia, the adjuster visits another accident victim, this a man who was run over by one of the automated pizza trucks. She uses a thing called a recaller, to tap into his memories and confirm he's telling the truth about the accident. This also helps to identify any witnesses to his accident. It's all standard procedure, apparently. She also gives him a beer bottle to smell, as the street where he was run over is a brewery district, and she says the smell is a good aid to memory. She locates other witnesses who really can't help her, but one does turn up a memory of Mia looking out the window, and it's obvious she's seen the crash.

So now you can see where the two stories merge. When Shazia accesses Mia's memories she's going to see the murders she committed. Sorry for the spoiler: I haven't seen it and it doesn't really qualify as a theory. I just wondered when the two subplots would dovetail, and now I think anyone can see how that's going to happen. Still not sure why it's called "Crocodile" though. Guess we'll find out. Oh wait: she has to agree to have her memories scanned. She's never going to do that.

Okay this is odd. When Mia seems reluctant to answer questions, once she has remembered and admitted to seeing the accident, Shazia tells her it's a legal requirement. Also, the dentist, the one she interviewed who ended up identifying Mia, really didn't want the recaller used, but she insisted. She's indicated to her husband that Mia may not be keen to be scanned, which implies there's a voluntary aspect to it, and yet she overrode the dentist's clear wish not to be scanned, so which is it?

Right, well it seems she downplays the power of the recaller, and when she sees Mia murdering Rob she keeps a relatively straight face and leaves, but Mia knows what's up and attacks her, taking her hostage. She hooks her up to the recaller to see who else she spoke to, finds an image of her husband. She kills Shazia and takes her car back to her home where she kills the husband and then, for good measure, the baby too. But she forgets one denizen of the household, and though guinea pigs may not be able to talk, their memories can be accessed.

Comments: Grisly little story which charts the descent of one woman from an unwilling accomplice in an accidental killing to a cold-blooded murderer ready to do anything and kill anyone to keep herself out of jail. Hard to believe any woman, no matter how desperate, could slay an innocent baby, and interesting to see the role reversal between her and Rob. Though it was his idea three years ago to dump the body, and Mia was against it, now that he wants to all but confess she has become hard and cold, and is quite happy to kill him, and anyone else who gets in her way, to keep her secret. The chain of unlikely events that leads Shazia to Mia, and ultimately to the death of both her and her family, is really interesting too.

Rating: :5stars:

ROUND FOUR, PART II: YE LESSER MORTALS
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/TalesOfTomorrow%2COpeningTitle.PNG)
Title: "Flight Overdue"
Series: Tales of Tomorrow
Season: 1
Year: 1952
Writer(s): David Davison from an idea by Jim Lister
Storyline: Famous aviator Paula Bennet disappeared four years ago; her husband, Don, has been picking up strange radio signals to the chagrin of his new wife, who still lives in the shadow of her late predecessor. Sam Ruges, his friend from whom he has not heard in years, calls him out of the blue and says he wants to come over. Don remembers how Paula only agreed to marry him if she could continue flying. But when she started flying on secret experimental missions he gave her an ultimatum, and left her. Meanwhile the maid, pushed to reveal what the identity of the man Paula was going to see was, tells him that after he left she stayed on and chided Paula about leaving him, but she had her own ideas, intending to fly the Pacific, during which attempt she vanished.

Rutges arrives, and confirms it was him Paula was seeing, though strictly in a professional capacity. He tells them that she had been recruited for a top secret mission, which has only now been declassified. The mission was (wait for it, wait for it) to fly on a rocket ship to the Moon! It was a dangerous, even suicide mission, he says, and he advised her to turn it down but she would not. Unfortunately they've determined that the rocket did make it to the moon but the crew were killed on impact. Suddenly Don says he's glad Paula is dead - she was a selfish, thoughtless person only ever concerned with her own glory - and now he can devote himself entirely to his new wife. Nice.

Comments: Dripping with drama and ham over-acting, the soundtrack (every orchestral dramatic score you've ever heard in a fifties movie) is perfectly suited to this overwrought tale of one woman's obsession. It does have one saving grace, in that it turns the power dynamic between man and woman on its head, making Paula the dominant one, the one who makes all the choices, who can't even be brought into line by way of the threat of the departure of her husband. In the end, she didn't love him, but married him for his money. A refreshing and almost courageous take for the 1950s.

Although, being a bit more critical and looking closer, the idea of trying to push the female to the forefront and be all PC before it was a thing, rings very hollow. How many aviators were women in the 1950s? How many were famous? I can think of maybe two. And as for a mission to the Moon? Please. I also found the ending poor. I didn't like how Don changed so radically when he had confirmation Paula was dead. His diatribe about how she was selfish and never really loved him, and that he's glad she's dead, is to me quite disturbing and puts a dark moody pall over the final scene. Clearly, he never loved her either. Hey, wonder if he ever said "One of these days, Paula - BANG! ZOOM! Straight to the moon!"  :laughing:


Rating: :2stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Monsters_%281988_%E2%80%93_1991%29_poster.jpg)
Title: "Museum Hearts"
Series: Monsters
Season: 2
Year: 1990
Writer(s): Theodore Gershuny based on a story by David P. Beavers
Storyline: A museum curator is having his end away with a girl when his wife shows up. All three get shut in as the museum closes for the day. In order to try to reach the skylight Danny stands on a case and jumps, but falls back and goes through the crate, which has been shipped from Ireland and seems to contain some old hag. No it is not my wife! The arrogant little git reaches in and extracts the woman's heart which is, for some reason, made of stone and, again for some reason, seems to be soaking up blood and, for a third time for some reason is getting warmer, as if the blood is feeding it. Well, for that reason then. Meanwhile, unseen by the trio the woman, who is apparently called Cerrdiwin, is moving!

As they finally see her emerge from the crate, they run out and lock the chain-link gate, trapping her behind it. Dickhead has her heart and won't give it to her, afraid it will make her stronger. She takes possession of Edwina, his wife, demands her heart. Edwina tells them the gate won't stop Cerrdiwin, she is going to get them. And she does break through the gate, using some sort of magic (reckon she was a Druid in ancient Ireland), Edwina hands her her heart and suddenly she is not afraid. Nor is Cheryl, the other girl, invited in to join them. Then they call for Danny.

His bluster and bravado gone now, he's pretty scared as he's led to a kind of altar (the whole vault has transformed into like a Druid's grove or something) and then the most unexpected thing happens! The three women sacrifice him! Well I didn't see that coming! Sarcasm detector overload. Cerridwin tears out his still-beating heart, takes his I don't know, spirit I guess, and becomes a 20th century woman and the three of them walk off together, a new coven I suppose.

Comments: Not quite as bad as I remember. Still pretty poor though, and quite predictable.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/AmazingStoriesTVseries.jpg)
Title: "Vanessa in the Garden"
Series: Amazing Stories
Season: 1
Year: 1985
Writer(s): Steven Spielberg (yeah, that one, so it had better be good)
Storyline: A struggling artist is excited that he is going to be exhibiting at a major gallery, and is very much on the rise. But Fate is cruel, and takes with one hand what it gave with the other: Byron's wife, his muse, the love of his life, is killed in a tragic accident. After the funeral he burns all the paintings he has made of her, unable to look on her face now that she is gone. He spirals down into drunkenness and depression, and declares he will never paint again. The spark is gone, gone with his wife.

He discovers one painting that escaped the fire, the last one he was working on just prior to the accident, when he painted Vanessa in the garden. He tries to burn it too, but is too drunk, and breaks down, calling out for her. The next morning he has another go, but to his astonishment the painting is now missing her figure. Then he hears her calling and sees her through the window, in the garden, but when he runs out she vanishes. Later he sees her in the house, on the couch, but again she disappears. But he now realises that the attitude he has just seen her in is from a painting he did. That's burned now, with the rest, but he recreates it and there she is again.

So he realises that all he has to do to be with his wife is paint her, keep painting, keep the passion alive. Meh.

Comments: Soft and soppy love story, I would have said beneath Spielberg. Not terrible, but kind of meh again.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't:  Could have been so much better. I thought he was going to paint himself into the painting with her and end up living there with her, disappearing from the world. Meh.


Rating: :2.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/AYAotD_logo.png)
Title: "The Tale of the Hatching"
Series: Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Season: 2
Year: 1993
Writer(s): Chloe Brown
Storyline: The kids of two wealthy parents are sent to a boarding school where things are not as they seem duh. Instead of bells there are low humming tones, and the headmaster reacts with terror and pain when a watch one of the children is wearing begins to beep. The kids aren't allowed to listen to music and they all eat this weird porridge called spunge. Then one night they all start walking downstairs like zombies in response to some sort of call. The end up in some sort of control room where there are eggs (well, it's "The Tale of the Hatching", innit?) floating in water.

They follow the headmaster and headmistress and spy on them, seeing that they're some sort of reptilian creatures, who talk about welcoming the return of the Master. The two of them decide to make a run for it but are caught by the reps (ooer!) and trapped with the mother lizard. They've sussed though (as has everyone else who watches this) that the creatures are susceptible to high frequencies and they use a portable player with a speaker hooked up to blast rock music and splatter all the lizards, including the headmaster and ah I just can't go on. What a pile of crap.

Comments: Sigh.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Night_Gallery_DVD.jpg)
Title: "Pamela's Voice" (1st segment of 3)
Series: Night Gallery
Season: 1
Year: 1971
Writer(s): Rod Serling
Storyline: A henpecked husband who has killed his wife is surprised and aghast to find that her spirit is still hanging around, berating him with her shrill, shewish, nasty voice. Then he discovers that he too is dead, and it is his ghost that's listening to the ghost of his wife.

Oh, that's it. Right.

Comments: Short and sweet, but kind of meh.

Rating: :2.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Creepshow_TV_Series.jpeg)
Title: "By the Silver Waters of Lake Champlain"
Series: Creepshow
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Joe Hill, Jason Ciaramella
Storyline: A family lives in fear of the new stepdad, a drunken, workshy bum who thinks he's the toughest in the county. The daughter is obsessed with a Nessie-like monster said to live in the lake, Champy, the beast of Lake Champlain. After an argument with her mother, Rose runs into the forest and down to the lake, where she finds the mysterious beast, beached and apparently dead. She tells her friend Thomas that her father was also convinced the creature was real, and died in its pursuit, everyone thinking he was crazy. Now she wants him to have the credit for its discovery.

Unfortunately, stepdaddy dearest has another idea: this thing is going to make him rich. No matter he didn't have any part in discovering it - didn't even believe it existed - who's going to say otherwise? Thomas fights him but the guy is a Vietnam vet and the kid is well outmatched. Then the real Champy appears: that's just her baby on the beach. Stepdad makes a tasty snack and then Champy takes her kid back into the water with her, along with all evidence of her existence.

Comments: Yeah it was all right I guess. Pretty basic and quite predictable.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Dimension404Title.jpg)
Title: "Chronos"
Series: Dimension 404
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Will Campos, Dez Dolly, Daniel Johnson, David Welch

Storyline: Susan Hirch is in trouble. She's brilliant, but in order to graduate she has to write a paper, and she's more interested in watching a cartoon called Time Rider than writing. Now she has one day left. Her friend comes over and she goes to show him an episode of the show, which he has apparently never seen, and suddenly it no longer exists. Even her collection of merchandise from the show is gone. Odd things have been happening in the last few minutes: the door opened on its own, bins fell over for no reason, and she has smelled a strange aroma that her friend does not.

Suddenly, Time Rider appears. He says he's come from the future, that the cartoon that was based on him is vital to assist in turning young minds to science, and this includes the inventor of time travel, but now someone is erasing it from time. He takes Susan and her friend Alex on a time trip, four hours back into the past. There they walk in the door, invisible (so explained the mysterious self-opening door earlier; I love this shit!) and search her room for "anomalies". There they are attacked by Time Rider's arch-enemy Entropy (look, just go with it okay? The whole thing is silly but it's worth the ride in the end) who takes Time Rider's mem-eraser (anyone like to guess what its function is?) and is about to kill him when another Time Rider appears and drags him off, presumably from another time jump. Or something.

Now, as Rimmer from the double-double universe once said in Red Dwarf, from this point on things get a little confusing. So now we have, what, three versions of all three - Time Rider, Susan and Alex - running around. One of the Time Riders (not sure which one) comes hurtling out of I think a window of her house and crashes into the bins on the other side of the road, and so is explained the bins apparently falling over of their own accord. Next, Susan takes his time belt and jumps into the past, again, this time replacing the mem-eraser with her toy one, so that when Entropy uses it on Alex it doesn't function, she gets the drop on him and takes him into the timestream. With me so far? Tough: I'm barely keeping up myself.

She brings Entropy back and hands him to Time Rider. Everything connected with the show reappears, and he says cool, that's it, job done, thanks them and goes back to his own time. So end of episode, right? Well, we're only halfway in so no. Unseen by anyone, Entropy has taken off his power ring and left it on the bed, where Susan finds it after Time Rider has taken him back. She decides it should be returned to the authorities and so puts it on and they find themselves in 1995, at the headquarters of the cartoon company that made Time Rider. To her amazement everyone all but worships her; she is the one who invented time travel!

Except she's not. Not in this timeline, because she didn't hand in her paper, since she was so occupied helping Time Rider. Therefore she didn't graduate, therefore she could never study quantum physics and so on and so on so she never got to invent time travel, and now there's a temporal paradox going on, or as they like to call it here, a time breach. Meanwhile Entropy rescues himself (uh, don't ask; I think it will show it but my brain hurts) and vanishes.

Look, it really is an excellent episode. It's just that, well, when you start screwing around with timelines it's hard to keep up. I mean, chicken or egg, you know? And this is a whole lot more complicated. But Time Rider is disappointed with Susan. She lied to him, told him she had no homework before going on the adventure, when in fact she had possibly the most important homework anyone ever had to turn in: the whole future rides (sorry) on it. Now they have to buy her time (sorry again) to complete and turn in her paper.They need to distract her professor and keep him out of his office till she has time to complete and submit the paper.

But it doesn't go to plan, and she has to return to the past, but before she does she needs to use the mem-eraser so that she doesn't remember the show. And after that... well, it gets a little strange, but I think the idea is she buckles down and does the work without the show to distract her and I guess ends up completing the timeline and inventing time travel. Maybe. It's a little vague and a somewhat  odd ending.


Comments: A fun little story with a decent message about reaching your potential, played for laughs and nostalgia value but with a serious side, the idea of putting away childish things.

Rating: :5stars:

ROUND FOUR, PART III: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART I
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Room_104_teaser.png)
Title: "My Love"
Series: Room 104
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Mark Duplass
Storyline: An eldery couple check back into the motel room where they spent their honeymoon and try to rekindle the flame, but after 56 years of marriage, even Viagra is unequal to the task. But then shit gets real, as the wife passes away, and the husband's mind snaps a little. He talks to her as if she's still alive, talking to himself. (Trollheart's Theory: he's the one who's dead). He talks about how he found out she had been having an affair before they got married, and how, when she chose him, he was so grateful. Then he tells her he loves her and lies on the bed with her.

Comments: Again, not quite sure what to think. It's a touching little story for sure, but no element of genre in it at all. I don't understand the ending: did he die too? It doesn't make it clear. But it's a nice story and well acted as almost a one-man episode, like the first one.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://i.postimg.cc/vZTY2PnW/image-2022-07-24-210843550.png)
Title: "Splinta Claws"
Series: Creeped Out
Season: 2
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Bede Blake
Storyline: Lawrence loses a special present his mother intends to give to her mother for Christmas. The grandmother is very ill, in hospital, and the present is her husband's ashes made into glass. Nice. Anyway, the kid and his friend Mikey decide to stay in the store after hours when he is thwarted getting the present back. A malfunctioning mechanical Santa is said to have gone berserk thirty years ago and blown off its hands, leaving only metal claws which were never replaced, just covered over.

That night the mechanical Santa attacks the kids, even though it has pulled its plug out and should no longer be able to operate. One of the kids knocks it over a balcony with a huge candy cane, but it's a Terminator and it won't be stopped. Now Lawrence realises it's after Mikey, its wiring having been screwed up after Lawrence tried to fix it earlier. Mikey has to act bad in order to stop the manic Santa droid chasing him. He then realises he has his mother's keycard - she works in the store - that can activate the doors and allow them to escape, but Lawrence has to go back for his grandmother's present. It's a bit vague, but it appears both deciding to be naughty save them. Maybe. Who knows? Bit of a stupid story.

Comments: Clearly written to try (emphasis on try) to make Christmas a scary thing, but I've taken scarier dumps. Plus it doesn't really resolve and leaves me with a feeling of uh, what?

Rating: :2stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51FZ4WEN60L._AC_SY445_.jpg)
Title: "Whatever Happened to Peggy?"
Series: The Veil
Season:
Year: 1958
Writer(s): Stanley H. Silverman
Storyline: A girl wakes up with amnesia, with no reason for why this would be so. The doctor can't find anything wrong, and she tells him that when she and her mother went to Greenville for the first time yesterday, she felt as if she was coming home, even though they had never been there before. She says she feels as if she has to do something important, but has no idea what that would be, and mentions she heard a voice calling her, but couldn't make out who it was or what it was saying. The doctor suggests they return to Greenville, and then of course things only get weirder.

I mean, it's pretty easy at this stage to see what's happening. She's reliving, or has been possessed by the spirit of Peggy, a girl who lived here who died, and her little dog recognises her, and she knows its name. Everything seems familiar to her. The doctor suggests that Ruth is allowed to live temporarily in Peggy's house, and though her mother is against it, she is convinced by the doctor that it is the best thing for her daughter. Is it though? Now she's arranging a birthday party on the day of Peggy's birthday, and inviting all her friends, who are all grown, some of whom are married.

The whole thing is too much for Ruth's real mother, who was also invited, but when Ruth ends up almost falling down the stairs, as Peggy did - which killed her - something clicks inside her and suddenly she's herself again.

Comments: Well I don't get it. What was the "important thing" she had to do? Not fall down the stairs? But that doesn't bring Peggy back to life. Meh. Very poor ending.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://cdn.wallpapersafari.com/28/4/y9ljwK.jpg)
Title: "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp"
Series: Goosebumps
Season: 1
Year: 1996
Writer(s): Neal Shusterman
Storyline: A family move to a new house near a swamp, and the son runs into a strange guy while releasing a snake into the swamp. No, it's not a euphemism! It appears the father and mother are anthropologists, and have come here to study the wildlife. Bored, Grady (?) meets another kid and of course they become friends. Will, the other kid, starts telling him spooky stories about the swamp, saying that the previous owner went into the swamp one day and never came back. He says the swamp is so named because it puts a fever in the head which confuses the brain and makes you lose your way. While in there exploring, they come across the weird guy again, and Will tells Grady he's known to be a vampire. No, just kidding. A werewolf of course.

Grady tells his parents that people have disappeared but of course they ridicule his ideas, saying the old guy is a harmless hermit. Honestly, have you ever known a harmless hermit? That's like saying a beggar in a sword-and-sorcery novel is a beggar, when we all know they're always wizards. At the next full moon the animals are spooked, and a stray dog appears, which the family then adopt. But when a rabbit is found savaged to death the dog, Vandal, is blamed; Grady of course thinks it's the werewolf and he and Will  go look for him in the swamp, but he gets caught in a trap and the hermit takes him back to his hovel. No self-respecting hermit would live in anything other than a hovel, right? That night there's a lunar eclipse and the hermit starts baying at the moon, allowing Grady to escape.

The deer are attacked and of course the mother thinks it's the dog, but she and her daughter are quickly and rather rudely disabused of this notion when the werewolf attacks them in the shed into which Grady has trapped them for their own safety. Meanwhile he encounters the hermit in the swamp, but it turns out that the old man is after the werewolf himself, and catches it in his net. As he growls at it that it took his wife and child, and he will now have his revenge, it tears free and attacks him, and Grady runs off.

Then the werewolf goes after him, but just as it has him the lunar eclipse occurs, the full moon is blocked out and the werewolf reverts to his human form. Anyone? Yeah. Will. As the lunar eclipse ends, Will becomes a werewolf again, and attacks. Vandal takes him out though, knocking him into the swamp, where he drowns. Or does he? And why is Grady howling at the moon? And does anyone care?


Comments: Meh. Your standard werewolf story. Could see it coming a mile off.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTljYTYwYTktNjhjMC00MmQxLWJjODktYjIzYTViYWZhZTE4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDg4MjkzNDk@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Tre Syke Brodre/Three Sick Brothers"
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Kjetil Indregard, Atle Knudsen
Storyline: Erik has just been released from a psychiatric ward, and his mother has got him an apartment. She tells him she is going to sell the cabin. His two brothers call by and convince him to take a trip with them up to the cabin, one last time before it's sold. On the way they pick up a hitch-hiker and take her with them. She's not so comfortable though when she hears Erik has been in the nuthatch, and now here she is, in a cabin with him and his two brothers, both of which are loud and somewhat overbearing. Also, they've been talking about a knife sharpener their dad - now no longer with us - had, and how he used to growl "a blunt knife won't kill anyone." Yeah.

But she relaxes and says she's not scared, asking Erik to tell her about his (their) dad, asking how he died, but Erik avoids the subject, duh, as he presumably killed him, hence why he was in a madhouse. Meanwhile the mother returns to the apartment to find her son gone, and is understandably worried, as he has, after all, just been let out of the mental home. When Monika, the hitch-hiker, is told that Erik killed his father, she says she doesn't believe it: he's not the type. This angers the other two, who ask why their brother would have confessed to a crime he did not commit? As Monika gets increasingly nervous and wants to go, the other two brothers grab Erik and tackle him to the floor. One of them puts a knife to Monika's throat. The other knocks Erik out.

The mother, having received no reply to her call (and probably aware that Erik did not kill her husband) is on the way to the cabin. She's too late though. Erik tries to free Monika but his brothers stab her to death. Erik's mother arrives, and he's covered in blood. He says his brothers killed Monika, just like they killed his father. She tells him he has no brothers, and his father is  not dead, just left them. Monika is in his imagination too: he's been stabbing a mockup made of food items I think. None of it exists, just him and his mother. The rest is all in his head. Absolutely fucking brilliant.

Oh, then there's a pretty unnecessary coda, where while at the petrol station he sees his brothers again and they encourage him to burn the place down. Hmm.

Comments: Excellent story, like just about all of these so far. However as I say above, I think the last scene is completely overkill and not needed at all. I'll talk more about this when I get to do the rankings. For now, another triumph if slightly flawed.

Rating: :5stars:

ROUND FOUR, PART IV: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART II
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Rlstine-hp-hero.png)
Title: "The Weeping Woman"
Series: The Haunting Hour
Season: 3
Year: 2012
Writer(s): Harold Hayes Jr. and Craig S. Philips
Storyline: A kid is sent to stay with friends while his mother goes up north to take care of a job she has to do. While there, it quickly becomes apparent to him that there is a lot of pent-up tension in the house; the mother is on edge, the daughter keeps constantly drawing, the father is "delayed at work" so will be a week late getting home (guess he works out of state or is a salesman or something). During the night, the kid hears what sounds like crying, coming from a statue of the madonna in the room he's sleeping in. He mentions that the statue seems linked to some ghostly figure, and that night dreams (or otherwise) of seeing wet footprints on the steps, which he follows to find a woman, whom he takes to be the mother, sitting in a chair crying, but when she looks up she has the face of the statue.

The next morning he tells his friend about the weeping woman, a very pretty woman who married but her husband began to neglect her, and who then drowned her own kids (as you do) to punish him, and then to finish the job, threw herself in. The legend says that she roams the river crying for her lost children. If she's ever seen, the tale goes, you should not look her in the face or she will drown you. Back home, mom is exhibiting similar tendencies, her tension reaching breaking point it seems. Her friend invites her out for drinks, and reluctantly she goes, leaving the kids to look after themselves.

The daughter hears the song of the weeping woman (and, no real surprise, she's been drawing her) and goes towards the sound, into the room where the statue is. Suddenly the house is as if it were underwater, and the weeping woman springs out of the fridge. Well, I don't know, maybe defrost it once in a while? The kid then looks out the window, as the house fills with water, to see the weeping woman leading the other kids away and into the river. Not a good swimmer, he dives in and calls her, but when she looks at him he refuses to look at her, telling her these are not her children. She sinks back into the river and the two kids surface. She pursues them, but the timely arrival of their father, changing the "bad energy" of the house, saves them.

Comments: Yeah not bad. Kind of Supernatural -ish, relying on old folk/ghost tales, but the payoff is a little weak.

Rating: :3.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Mastersofhorror.jpg)
Title: "Sick Girl"
Series: Masters of Horror
Season: 1
Year: 2006
Writer(s): Sean Hood, Lucky McKee
Storyline: Oh crap I am not going to like this one. It's all about insects apparently! Yee-uck! An entomologist (no that's words; this is insects) who can't get a date due to her obsession with insects gets a delivery of a very strange one that she has never seen before. She hooks up with an equally strange girl who sits in the lobby of the building in which she works every day drawing, um, pixies. While they're out, that weird insect escapes and goes on a rampage. The landlady is not happy about her keeping bugs in the first place, but to Ada's surprise Misty is totally into them; in fact, her father was a professor of entomology and a role model for Ada.

While they're getting it on in her apartment though, the big insect, hidden inside a pillow, sticks out a feeler and nips Misty's ear. Ida does not see this. Next morning they're looking for Mick, as she has named the big bug, and Misty feels something sticky and gloopy at her ear. When Misty gets weak I think it's pretty obvious that the insect has laid its eggs in her or something. Yeah, Misty's eating bugs - without Ida seeing of course. While Misty gets it on with Mick, Ida gets a letter to say that the insect may be venomous and carnivorous. And now the landlady's dog has gone missing. And she's a dyed-in-the-wool homophobe, who thinks that lesbianism is deviant and a sin, and, surely completely outside of her legal rights, evicts Ida on the spot.

Back in the apartment Misty goes on a rant, screaming at Ida that she's weak and threatening to rip her eyes out, then collapses, first into almost full-blown psychosis, and then for real, falling inert on the floor.  Ida goes to the lab to research the bug, which she finds out is a parasite that - oh no! - lays its eggs in its host. She deals with the landlady, who falls down the stairs and breaks her neck. When Ida comes back there are emergency vehicles at the building, and in the apartment she sees that Misty has become a big fucking insect-woman. And then she gets impregnated too and they're both waiting for their insect babies to be born. Fuck sake.

Comments: Bloody ridiculous. Not as icky as I thought it would be but pretty damned stupid.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/IntoTheDark.png)
Title: "I'm Just Fucking with You"
Series: Into the Dark
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Greg Zehentner, Scott Barkan
Storyline: Look, I don't and never will understand not only internet trolls, who are the lowest of the low, but the braindead morons who think that what they do is funny. In the credits to this, the main character exhorts people to "execute this bitch", and to "chop off her head" and ruins someone's wedding texts, and for what? Laughs? The pathetic feeling that they're superior because they can post shit from the shadows and fuck people up? A real curse of our modern times, and hopefully this guy will get what's coming to him. Larry is on his way to a family wedding which he really doesn't want to attend, and runs into something of a trickster in the motel where he's staying. The guy just keeps saying (as in the title) "I'm just fucking with you!" But it looks like more. I know few if any of these stories seem to be rooted in the actual supernatural, but could it be that he's some sort of angel or demon sent to show Larry what it's like when people play mean tricks on you? First thing he does when he gets settled is write a nasty review of the place, but then his sister, who was supposed to meet him there, hasn't turned up and there's a news report of a big pile-up in which a "young woman" was killed. Now he's worried.

Doesn't stop him from continuing to troll, and the unbelievable lack of self-awareness when he rounds on Chester, the trickster, and says "People like you push and push but nobody thinks you're funny!" Could it be any more plain? But he just doesn't see it. In fact, at least what Chester is doing is harmless fun, more or less: Larry is deliberately trying to wreck the wedding of some girl he doesn't even know! Eventually though he decides to leave the motel, not comfortable with Chester, but when the trickster calls his sister by name, he does a double-take: how did he know her name? All he ever did was refer to her as his sister, never gave her name. So what's going on? Totally overreacting, he calls the cops. I mean, why? Because Chester used Rachel's name? Hardly a crime is it? When he rang 911 I thought he was checking to see if they could tell him if she was in the traffic accident. The cop is quickly put at his ease by Chester and now Larry may be in trouble for wasting police time.

When Chester makes out that Larry punched him - although in fact he punches himself, out of sight of the cop, Larry is arrested, but then Rachel turns up, and Chester says he won't be pressing charges, that the joke went too far. The three of them end up having drinks together, and it turns out that he does know the girl whose wedding he has been trying to ruin: she was his girl and he was about to propose when she dumped him and is now marrying his cousin. Not that that in any way excuses or justifies what he's doing to her, but at least there's some sort of reason; she's not just a random girl he grabbed off the internet. It's her wedding he's attending, as well, so that ties in I guess. Later that night Chester's biker buddy Gerald is furious to find that his Harley has been vandalised, and when Chester grins and says it was him they begin to fight. Gerald pulls a knife but Chester kicks the shit out of him and then takes the knife and stabs him through the ear. I'm going to say that somehow this is all for show, another big set-up, though I'm not quite sure how. Larry and Rachel have been watching in horror, and Chester's demeanour just doesn't seem right for someone who has just killed their best friend. In front of witnesses.

Things get weirder. Chester calls the cops and turns himself in, while Larry and Rachel go looking for vodka, which he asked for (and you don't refuse the request of a man with a knife who has just murdered someone) and then find the dead bodies of the old couple who own(ed) the motel. Chester says they killed each other, because the husband was spying on guests and the wife found out, but it seems very thin. They knock him out, but it's not long before he's up, grinning a bloody grin and holding both their car keys. No sign of the cops yet either. Oh, here they are, in the nick of time. And it's the same sheriff who responded to Larry's call originally. Unfortunately he arrests Larry and Rachel, and while he's coping with that Chester strangles him from behind. Now he has the sheriff's taser and keeps shocking Larry. He eventually throws him into his car, and then, when Rachel fears she's going to be raped, he cuts her loose and throws her keys to her.

Chester's not finished with them yet though. He's done something to Rachel's car to make sure it overheats or blows a gasket or something; basically, they're going nowhere, while he advances upon them, grinning like, well, like a madman. He gasses them both and they lose consciousness. When Larry wakes up he's in the pool on a lilo, surrounded by corpses - the old couple, the sheriff, Gerald - and Chester is talking about judgement. He makes a video and gets drugged-up Larry to confess to being the internet troll he is, and then it seems he's killed Rachel and also posted Larry's video to the wedding Facebook stream or whatever the fuck it is. Good for outing him, but did he really kill his sister? Seems a bit extreme. Maybe she's in on it? But she didn't seem to know he was this troll so maybe not.

Oh wait: now Larry's stopped crying like a baby and is laughing? Either his mind has snapped or he really does think the whole thing is funny, and as Chester pulls a gun on him and asks if he has any last requests, he suggests all three of them go to the wedding, where Chester can shoot him and roll the dead bodies of brother and sister down a hill into the wedding party? Jesus fucking Christ! What kind of sick mind wrote this?

Right, it seems he then runs the car into a wall, the passenger side airbag having been disabled by Rachel as she liked her dog to ride up front. But then it ends and a load of details come across the screen, making it seem this is a sort of "Three Sick Brothers" deal: looks as if Chester never existed, and Larry murdered everyone, including his sister. I think it implies he's still on the run. Fucking hell.

Comments: Not at all sure what to make of that. My head's spinning. So, did Chester exist at all? Was Rachel dead from the start? Did Larry kill all those people, and is he still at large? Very strange story, but I feel somewhat cheated that, either way, the troll did not get his just desserts. As I said earlier, this gave me the sort of feeling of the end of Bloodride's "Three Sick Brothers", though that was a far superior story.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Love%2C_Death_%26_Robots_Logo.png)
Title: "Automated Customer Service"
Series: Love Death & Robots
Season: 2
Year: 2021
Writer(s): John Scalzi and Meat Dept.
Storyline: In a self-contained retirement community where almost everything is automated, a cleaning robot goes berserk, into "Purge Mode", where it now identifies the owner of the property as an enemy to be destroyed. While all this is going on, a hilarious automated message system on the telephone the woman rings keeps her updated - "Uh-oh! You just triggered security mode!" and "Are you willing to throw your pet at the vacuu-bot to distract it? Press one for yes, two for no. What do you mean, no?"

She eventually manages to shoot it with a shotgun thrown in by her neighbour, after he is tased by the machine as he lines up the shot. Unfortunately, as the automated voice now informs her, the vacuu-bot has passed her information on to all other of its kind who will now hunt her down until she is dead. She and her neighbour take off, staying one step ahead of the army of marauding robots.

Comments: Bloody hilarious, and the telephone answering voice just makes it so much funnier.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BN2YwMWQ1YTUtMzkzOS00YWZlLThhNTctMjAwMGRlZDgxMTAwXkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Plainfield, Illinois"
Series: Monsterland
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Emily Kaczmarek, based on the short story by Nathan Ballingrud
Storyline: It's a tough station when your girlfriend is bipolar. Kate tried to warn Shawn off at the beginning, but she wouldn't have it and now they've been together for sixteen years. Unfortunately, the episodes continue, as Kate said they would. Only this year, she has already attempted suicide three times, the last witnessed by their twelve-year-old daughter, who has been sent away to boarding school for her own safety. And now Kate has finally done it; Shawn finds her dead in the bath.

Um, then she comes walking out of the bathroom, nowhere near as dead as Shawn thought. As all of us thought really. (Trollheart's theory: she is dead, and so is Shawn, who couldn't take life without her and killed herself too). Shawn sees the unmistakable long slashes in her arms, and jumps back. Kate doesn't seem to know what happened, and when Shawn comes back from work the next day she is sitting in the dark, in exactly the same position she was when Shawn went out. She is staring at a picture, unable to recognise it. Shawn tells her it's a picture of her mother.

Now Kate's hair begins to fall out in clumps. She wants to go outside but Shawn won't let her for some reason. She turns on music and Kate goes wild screaming, so she turns it back off immediately. And then her eye falls out. Now we learn that Kate was not dead when Shawn found her in the bath, but she'd had enough of her multiple suicide attempts and left her to die. When Shawn falls asleep she leaves her, going out into the snow, walking like a zombie. But her bones are brittle and they crack, and she falls, unable to get up again. She finds a dead bird - crow, I think - and makes her way into the graveyard, where she lies down in the snow beside a tombstone.

Shawn finds her though, and brings her back. Now she's little more than an animated heap of skin and bones, living in the cellar, while Shawn considers quitting her job in order to spend more time with her. She has clearly gone completely off the reservation and up the Rockies where she's frozen to death. Or her brain has, anyway. Mind has snapped. Only explanation.

Comments: See, this is what I hate with some stories. No explanation, no indication what happened. Did Kate die, and the rest all play out in Shawn's mind? Or did this actually happen, and if so, how, not to mention what is she going to tell their daughter? In essence, a touching story of completely unconditional love that refuses to give up, even in the face of death. But does that determination then lead to madness? Who knows?

Rating: :3stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMDQ0MTBjM2MtODFmYi00MmU1LWIxYTYtMzRiZGRiMTE5Zjg3XkEyXkFqcGc@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Erased"
Series: Two Sentence Horror Stories
Season: 3
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Liz Alper

First sentence: "There's a stranger in my house."

Storyline: A woman who is resisting being bought out by a big real estate company wakes to find her family has vanished, and all evidence of her husband and daughter is literally disappearing from photographs, as if they were never here. Rushing outside, she sees her car change, and then going back into the house she sees another woman and her child, who claim to be living there. All her pictures have been replaced with those of the woman and her child, and the bedroom her daughter slept in last night has been changed too.

Next thing her fingers start vanishing, and when she runs to the house of her friend, she too is disappearing, bit by bit. In desperation she signs the deal, but of course it's already expired so it's too late. Then she digs up the time capsule her daughter had buried in the garden, putting in the necklace her grandmother gave her, and suddenly hears the voice of her husband calling. Unfortunately, she continues to vanish until she's gone. Her husband comes out to look for her, but there's no-one there.

The development company call to offer him a new deal, and advise him to take it, for the sake of his family...

Second sentence: "I think it's me."

Comments: Well that couldn't have ended more darkly! A terrible message: give in to corporate greed and pressure or you will, literally, be rubbed out.

Rating: :2stars:

Our new chart now looks like this:

23 Tales from the Darkside
22 Tales of Tomorrow
21 Creeped Out
20 Are You Afraid of the Dark?
19 Creepshow
18 Monsters
17 The Haunting Hour
16 Goosebumps
15 Night Gallery
14 The Veil
13 Amazing Stories
12 Masters of Horror
11 Into the Dark
10 Monsterland
9 Two Sentence Horror Stories
8 The Outer Limits
7 Love Death and Robots
6 Tales from the Crypt
5 Room 104
4 The Twilight Zone
3 Dimension 404
2 Bloodride
1 Black Mirror

It can clearly be seen - and should have been expected - that The Twilight Zone, having pulled off a total classic, rises all the way to the fourth spot from last round's position of 11. Love Death and Robots makes a jump from 15 to 7, while Masters of Horror and Into the Dark fall from 5 & 6 respectively to 12 & 11. Bloodride, Dimension 404 and Black Mirror hold their positions at 1, 2 and 3.

ROUND FIVE, PART I: THE CLASSICS
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/The_Twilight_Zone_%281959_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-The_Twilight_Zone_%281959_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "Meet in the Middle"
Series: The  Twilight Zone
Season: 2
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Emily C. Chang and Sara Amini
Storyline: A man on a blind date suddenly starts hearing the voice of a woman inside  his head. She says he's in her head, and neither know how or why it's happening. Mentally, they both agree to stop talking to each other. But he can't forget about her. Their deal is quickly broken and they end up getting to know each other, um, telepathically as it were. But when Phil suggests they meet in person, Annie is very cagey and not at all receptive to the idea. When he finds out she's married he's upset she didn't tell him, but she says she is not happy in her marriage and much prefers talking to him.

Their relationship gets more intimate, until a few weeks later he says he has to meet her, at which point she panics, tells him it's too dangerous and cuts off contact. Now he's alone again, but worse than before. Before, he had nothing much to look forward to; now he's lost something precious and it really hurts. After two weeks she finally makes contact with him, asking him this time to meet her halfway between where she lives and he lives: they'll, you know, meet in the middle. On the train, they're talking when suddenly she tells him there's some creepy guy looking at her. She gets off the train and tells Phil where she is, sounding increasingly panicked.

He eventually arrives at the station where she got off and runs around looking for her, finding her smashed glasses and thinks the worst. But then she contacts him and says she thinks she's in the woods. He heads in. Finding a house - the only house - near the woods he attacks the guy who answers the door when Annie confirms this is the guy who took her. He ends up killing him, and when his daughter comes down the stairs, followed by her mother, he smiles and tells Annie it's him. She however backs away (well duh) and runs back upstairs, calling the cops. Phil is taken away.

As he sits in the car, he realises it's all been in his head, all a fantasy. He made up Annie, he has, as his psychiatrist had suggested earlier, dissociative personality disorder. Then he hears her voice again, thanking him for freeing her from her husband, and realises it was real. He has been played, expertly and callously, and has probably the rest of his life to reflect on that in jail.
Comments: A thoughtful and deep episode that doesn't pull any punches. The twist at the end is brilliant, and timed just exactly right, so that you think he was just mad after all, then comes the kicker. For a "modern" Zone, this is one of the very best ones.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjAwNjE3MDU5M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzI1ODUxMQ@@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Relativity Theory"
Series: The Outer Limits
Season: 4
Year: 1986
Writer(s): Carleton Eastlake
Storyline: A survey ship finds an uninhabited, resource-rich planet Earth can exploit, however when they begin exploring one of their team is caught and killed in a trap set by... someone? Something? The planet is supposed to be devoid of lifesigns, other than theirs, but now they're jumpy. It's a long way back to the ship. During the night their perimeter is breached. They engage the enemy and retreat to the ship. The commander is killed, but on the ship the collected samples turn out to be of gold and uranium, so they go back out the next morning to survey further. Given the alien threat, they arm up heavily.

They only find dead aliens though, and remove the bodies back to the ship for analysis and transport to Earth. With the commander dead, authority falls on the female civilian biologist Theresa, but Sears, the gung-ho security officer, stages a takeover and orders the planet be cleared of aliens: they're all up for big juicy commissions if they bring the samples home and can claim the planet, and he's not about to miss out on that. Neither are his buddies, and Theresa is relieved of her command.

Out on patrol the squad come across more aliens and pursue them into a cave, where, despite one being clearly wounded and pleading for mercy, Sears kills it. Back on the ship, Theresa finds that the aliens that were brought back are not dead, but in contrast to Sears, when it appears to be trying to communicate she listens, and gives it water. She then sets about abandoning the ship, knowing that if the macho marines come back they won't wait to be told the full story and will just kill the alien. Unfortunately as they leave they walk into the returning party. There's a standoff, but she's outnumbered: the alien is too weak to help, and also unarmed, and she probably has never used a gun in her life before. The outcome was never in doubt. She's quickly overcome and the alien is killed.

There's a nasty surprise in store for them on the way home though. A huge alien ship approaches, just as Theresa works out that the aliens they killed were children. Boy scouts on a field trip. And now their parents want revenge on those who killed their kids. It launches a probe to search through the computer's database, to find out where the alien ship came from, and then heads to Earth to exact the ultimate revenge.

Comments: Finally, the Outer Limits comes of age! I always felt this series never quite hit its stride in the sixties, but when rebooted improved dramatically. I remember enjoying the series when it was remade in the 1980s, and this is the first episode of, so far, four that I've really been able to point to and say, yes, this is excellent. And the other three were all from the 1960s.

One of the few shows that benefitted, so far as I can see, from a reboot. Less emphasis on often indecipherable science and more on humans. A stark, terrifying story that goes deep into the human need to conquer and enslave. Sometimes you can improve on the original.


Rating: :5stars:

(https://flxt.tmsimg.com/assets/p184195_b_v7_ae.jpg)
Title: "Judy, You're Not Yourself Today"
Series: Tales from the Crypt
Season: 2
Year: 1990
Writer(s): Scott Nimerfo
Storyline: A vain and rather scatty lady who is married to a real gun nut gets a visit from a cosmetics saleslady, who says she can help  her. She gives her a large gold and rather ostentatious necklace to wear while another one on her own neck seems to glow. (Trollheart's Theory: She's old and ugly, so I'm going to assume she's about to steal Judy's youth and beauty). Ha ha! I was right! It happened right after I said that. And no, I haven't seen it before, but as Homer once said, it's pretty obvious if you think about it. Her husband comes home and she's - well, now, she's wearing the old woman's clothes and jewellery, so I guess it's more a full bodyswap rather than just youth and beauty. He of course does not believe her (who would?) but she knows things only his wife would know.

Then he gets a call from his buddy, who tells him his "wife" is getting drunk at the train station and doesn't seem to have recognised him. So he goes there to see her for himself. She looks of course just like his wife, but she is smoking, and Judy don't smoke; she hates the stuff. So now he has to consider the possibility that the woman he left behind locked in a closet, the old woman, is his wife! Then he hits on a plan. He tells the woman who is now wearing Judy's body that she, Judy, the body she's in now, is dying of cancer. She has, he says, only a few weeks to live. Panicked, the old woman - let's not piss around here: the witch, right?  - gets out of Judy's body and returns it to her.

Husband and wife now return home, where the husband in a panic shoots the witch while she's still in the closet (hah! The witch and the wardrobe: all that's missing is the lion!) and she falls dead at his feet. (Trollheart's Theory II: this isn't  her husband; the witch switched her body with his at the train station - this would account for his terribly inaccurate fire when he's supposed to be a gun nut). He buries the witch in the basement and then hides her magic necklace in the safe, unable to destroy it. How did he know this was the agency through which the bodyswap was achieved?


Of course Judy can't leave the jewel alone, and takes it from the safe. Meanwhile her husband is plagued by nightmares, and goes downstairs to get a glass of water. Suddenly the witch appears, decomposed but not dead, and he runs from her, looking for his gun. As he goes to shoot her, Judy comes down the stairs, urging him to kill her, but as she looks up at him the witch tells him she is Judy, that the witch switched (sorry) bodies again, and it was his own wife he killed (well, sort of) and buried. What's a guy to do? Who to believe? He tricks the witch into revealing herself, by pretending they have a Jaguar when all they own is a Morris Minor (odd car for an American to own, I feel, but there you go) and then, in trying to force her to give his wife her body back, shoots her. That is, shoots his wife's body. As she lies dying, she effects the transformation back. Not really much help though, as that body is dying, and his wife dies in his arms.


Comments: For an episode played mostly for laughs, it has a pretty dark ending, though I suppose the way the story was going, there's not really any other way it could end. What happened to the witch, I wonder? I guess it works as an anti-gun story too, as if that idiot hadn't had a gun in the house his wife wouldn't be dead. An enjoyable if slightly off-kilter story. Or as the Crypt-Keeper would no doubt put it, a slightly off-killer story. Sorry.

Nice idea about body transference and black magic. Enjoyable, though the two main characters are a little hard to root for. The emphasis on guns was a little laboured, considering that the only part guns played in the episode were in the accidental killing of his wife. Thought there'd be more of a point.
I'm happy, and not happy with the ending. It feels out of step with the otherwise jaunty, tongue-in-cheek nature of the story, and while I was ready to castigate the writer if Judy had ben left alive after being shot, and can give them credit for not finding some way out of that, it's still unsatisfactory and an unnecessarily dark ending that sort of ruins a fun episode.

Again, though I have to ask I have to ask, where did the witch go, and how exactly is he going to explain the death of his wife to the police, or is he going to try to cover it up?


Rating: :4stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/Talesdarksidetitle.JPG)
Title: "A New Lease On Life"
Series: Tales from the Darkside
Season: 2
Year: 1986
Writer(s): Harvey Jacobs, Michael McDowell, Adam K. Jacobs
Storyline: Archie Fenton can't believe how he's managed to land a plumb apartment in the highly sought-after St. George apartments, but the guys moving him in deliberately drop his microwave, smashing it. He's upset - it was bequeathed to him by his late mother - but the super, Madam Angler, tells him microwave ovens are forbidden. He's also not to hang any pictures on the wall, use plastic bags and a few other rules. When he can't find a light switch, she shows him a panel he has to rub - a low moaning ensues which she says is just the pipes, and the lights come on. (Trollheart's Theory: the building is alive, some sort of monster or beast. Actually, given that it's called the St. George, and everyone connected with it has a dragon logo, well it's probably a dragon).

Right away, he disregards the rules, hammering in a nail to put up a picture of his mother, and the wall emits that moan again. After a moment the picture falls, the nail jumps out of the wall and it starts dripping some sort of brown fluid. When the repairmen come, they say they're fixing a wound (and this guy still does not get it, even though he mentions that the wall "bled"? How stupid is he?) and get offended when he tries to tip them, telling him "you can't buy forgiveness." Another tenant, Helen, warns him to get out of the apartment while he still can. She seems somewhat, well, disturbed. She asks for a cup of water, saying she has none in her apartment, but when Archie says she should ask Madam Angler, she quails and says she won't let them into her apartment. She tries to tell him something but the wall panel glows red and seems to roar. When Archie goes to turn off the lights as he leaves, it gives him a shock and again roars.

Having got a promotion, Archie is again advised by Helen, the other tenant, to leave, but then Madam Angler appears and more or less shoos her back into her room. She then goes through a large bead curtain to a very large waste disposal and dumps a whole plate of food in the slot. She tells an amazed Archie that her husband died eight months ago and she can't get out of the habit of cooking for two, so she always has some left over. She chides him for not providing enough garbage, and then invites him over for dinner tomorrow, refusing to take no for an answer. That night he hears Helen being thrown out of her apartment - and, it seems, into the waste disposal. Yum!

The meal Madam Angler provides Archie is huge - far more than two people could eat - and she complains that Helen ate very little, and bemoans as to how little "organic waste" that provided. She asks Archie - tells him really - to dispose of most of the meat that is left over, almost all of it really, but he takes it into his room, reluctant to waste so much food. As soon as he begins eating it though, the room goes crazy, red panel coming on, roaring, lights falling from the ceiling. The taps run incessantly, the cooker fires up, smoke fills the room. The door jams. He can't get out. Then Angler and her weird cronies come in, and tell him he hasn't been providing, and must take the meat to the disposal, which he does.

Angry at his treatment, and not believing her story that Helen has gone home to her husband, he smashes up some dishes and feeds them to the disposal unit. He adds some plastic bottles, chemicals and other nasty stuff. The unit doesn't like it, and Madam Angler tells him he is a fool. He could have lived there for a pittance for all his life, but now... a tongue snakes out and drags him into the beast's mouth, and, well, that's that.

Comments: Yeah well it was easy to suss. Never actually said it was a dragon but you could work it out. Sort of a dark-ish episode with a rather inappropriately comic ending. Wasn't really much point after five minutes, just confirmation of what I already knew. Not a terrible story; at least someone put some effort into it.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "San Junipero"
Series: Black Mirror
Season: 3
Year: 2016
Writer(s): Charlie Brooker
Storyline: It's 1987 and two girls meet in a nightclub, the one very outgoing and pretty, the other bookish and shy. Yorkie, the latter, says it is her first time here so Kelly takes her under her wing. Yorkie is too shy though and runs off. The next week she's back at San Junipero ("the party town") and looking for Kelly, who is being hassled by a guy called Wes who seems to have fallen in love with her, but it's not reciprocal. She had already invited Yorkie to sleep with her, but the shy girl had declined. This time they do hook up and end up in bed together. Yorkie reveals she's a virgin. Well, she was.

Another week goes by. She's back in San Junipero. There seems to be some sort of time travel thing going on, because she's here a few times. One time it's the 1990s, another it's 2002. She's looking for Kelly but can't find her. She goes to a place called the Quagmire, a tough club sort of thing, but she's not there. She runs into the guy Kelly was trying to ditch, and he grins and says "you too huh?" A geeky guy who's been trying to catch her attention a few times eventually hooks up with Kelly, and when Yorkie questions her about it, Kelly acts like what they had  was no big deal. She's here for fun, she says. She doesn't want anything serious. But Yorkie does. This is her first relationship, and it's not turning out how she thought it would.

When she finds her again, Kelly sees that Yorkie is sitting on the roof of a very high building. She goes up to talk to her, and Yorkie asks her what percentage of the people she's looking at down below in the street are dead? Kelly admits it's about 80 - 85%, and says she doesn't know how much time there is. She says she didn't come here looking for love, but it seems that despite that, she's found it. The two girls kiss. Yorkie tells Kelly she is getting married next week, and Kelly tells Yorkie that she's dying, has about three months left.

It comes out that (I think) they're both - they're all I guess - avatars, and that San Junipero is some sort of version of a MMORPG or Second Life or something. Neither of them are really there, physically; just their avatars. Yorkie tells Kelly she wouldn't like her if she met her in real life, but Kelly convinces her and she agrees to meet her. Seems like Kelly is very old - maybe eighties, something like that, and being escorted by her daughter? Probably not, as the girl is white. Maybe this is Yorkie? Stay tuned.

No, I don't know who she is, but Yorkie turns out to be bedridden and much older, and in some sort of a persistent vegetative state, maybe a coma. No she's a quadriplegic. I see. Then Kelly meets Greg, the fiance Yorkie mentioned earlier, as they're leaving. He tells them that Yorkie is "passing over" (dying?) and they discuss how San Junipero is a sort of therapeutic treatment, but is rationed to five hours a week unless you "pass over", which I'm now starting to think means you have your consciousness transferred there permanently, live there after you're dead, style of thing. Greg tells Kelly the reason he's marrying Yorkie is to get around the ban on state euthanasia cases, to allow her to "pass over". Her parents won't countenance it, and have cut off all contact with her since she came out as lesbian (she got in a car crash after leaving after a heated argument, which is how she came to be how she is now, and still they don't seem to care - some parents!) so Greg is giving her her escape hatch, and it's happening tomorrow.

Kelly asks Greg to hook her up for five minutes so she can ask Yorkie to marry her; she thinks Greg is a lovely guy but he's only marrying her out of a sense of duty and responsibility, to help her out, and Kelly has actually fallen in love with her. Yorkie of course accepts, and they're married. Yorkie is taken off life support, and she's in San Junipero now. Kelly goes there to see here (oh that woman with her was her nurse, right) and Yorkie tries to convince her to pass over too. She only has a few months left, so why not? Why can't they be together forever? But Kelly doesn't intend to spend eternity in a computer simulation of life. Her husband has already passed on (not over) and she is furious when Yorkie calls him selfish for leaving her behind. She tells her that they had a daughter, and her husband couldn't take living in San Junipero without her. That would be selfish. She doesn't actually believe they'll be reunited in the afterlife, but she doesn't want to live in a make-believe one either, with someone who knows nothing of the joys,  heartache, sacrifices, triumphs and pain of almost forty years of marriage. She storms off.

She tries to kill herself (sort of re-enacting Yorkie's death ride I guess) by slamming the car at top speed into some barriers, but this place is not real and she can't die here. Just as Yorkie is reaching down to help her up, her time runs out and she vanishes. Then later Kelly dies and changes her mind, and joins Yorkie in San Junipero.

Comments: I certainly didn't like the ending. Brooker doesn't usually do happy endings, so this came both as a surprise and if I'm honest a big disappointment. I can't say I particularly liked the episode really; it was quite confusing until you figured out what was happening, and then it was a kind of artificial heaven thing that really I reckon has been done before. Not up to his usual standard, that's for sure.

I read that everyone thinks this is the best Black Mirror episode. Not for me. I give it top marks for the story, but I did not like the ending. You do have to give it respect for tackling such diverse topics as assisted suicide, disability, same-sex relationships/marriages and the right to die.
But if the message is "love conquers all", hand me the sick bag.

Rating: :3stars: (first time ever)

ROUND FIVE, PART II: YE LESSER MORTALS
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/TalesOfTomorrow%2COpeningTitle.PNG)
Title: "The Bitter Storm"
Series: Tales of Tomorrow
Season: 1
Year: 1952
Writer(s): Unknown
Storyline: A storm is raging - what? A bitter one you say? Why yes. How did you - oh right. The title. Leland is working on what looks like an ancient radio and annoyed it won't work; he seems to be something of an isolationist, living on an island with his sister and niece. He's an inventor, but not a successful one. People keep robbing his ideas and getting rich on them which has of course made him bitter and distrustful. When his niece and her boyfriend turn on the machine while he's out of the room, he decides to tell them what it is. A sort of recording machine that records voices from the past. Any voice, anywhere, speaking anything can be played back. Not really sure what practical use this thing is, but there you go. He seems to think he'll make a bundle out of it.

As he progresses - or regreses, I guess I should say - further back into the past, the machine picks up some odd noise, which makes his wife scream in terror and faint. When she regains consciousness she speaks in riddles, saying she heard sounds, voices perfectly clearly, but she knows why the others heard only noise. (Trollheart's Theory: she heard the voice of God or angels). Steve, the boyfriend, worries that the storm is increasing in ferocity and the house will soon be destroyed; they must get out, but there's no access. The phone is down, and the launch is in the middle of the lake for some reason.

When he realises that Steve has risked his life to help them, Leland's bitterness begins to evaporate, and suddenly he can hear the words of God (duh) on the recorder thing. Now they all hear it, and off they fuck, getting off the island and leaving the machine behind, Leland with a new purpose in and outlook on life.

Comments: Christian propaganda clap trap. Typical Bible Belt shite. The whole idea is ludicrous, and the message it purports to convey is, to me, insulting. More over-acting, and I couldn't even find out who wrote this rubbish.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Monsters_%281988_%E2%80%93_1991%29_poster.jpg)
Title: "Hostile Taekover"
Series: Monsters
Season: 3
Year: 1991
Writer(s): Jonathan Valin
Storyline: A ruthless businessman who excels (and delights) in taking over failing businesses and chopping them up - a hatchet man, a Gordon Gecko type - is getting his information on the clients he takes over from a beautiful African woman, who seems to dabble in black magic. He mentions their "friend", who seems to be passing on the information, though she smiles ironically at the description. No prizes for guessing who his anonymous source is. The woman, Matilde, shows him a statue of a devilish creature she calls Obeah, and then later they're at his shrine, where she cuts his palm, telling him that Obeah has something special for him today. Yeah you can see where this is going can't you? No? I can. Maybe that's cos I remember it.

Anyway. She won't give him the tip he thinks is coming so he threatens her with the knife, but she laughs and says she is already dead, a zombie in the service of Obeah, Lord of the Darkness. She tells him he has been taken over by Obeah and will serve him, in this life and later, too, in death. He lashes out at her with a heavy object and she falls, and ages a few hundred years as she does, just a dusty skeleton on the ground. He of course stays around to complain to Obeah about his new working position.

Back in his office, shaken, he tries to put the incident behind him, but Matilde's voice is on his answering machine, a picture of the statue prints out on his printer and threats scroll across his screen while Matilde laughs all around him, seemingly in the air, telling him Obeah is coming for him. The janitor comes in, and shaken as he is, he offers him a drink, just happy to have some human company, someone to take his mind off what he sees as his breakdown. The janitor tells him not to worry when he asks about black magic; he says a demon has to be invited in (wrong, that's vampires) and has to be welcomed, and even then it is powerless. Unless it has a piece of you. Skin. Bone. Hair.

Blood.

The janitor tells him he has plenty of time, since he had his Fall. As the demon slashes at Laurence, remarking how he must make profit from the takeover, how his eye will fetch some cash, as will his tongue, and that he'll find buyers for every piece of him, Laurence finally knows how all those business owners felt.

Comments: Somewhat along the lines of the Tales from the Darkside we looked at in the first round, though with decidely less humour and a much more dark, violent tone. Demon is a bit stupid and over the top, but otherwise quite enjoyable and it's good to see the weasel get his in the end.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/AmazingStoriesTVseries.jpg)
Title: "Mirror, Mirror"
Series: Amazing Stories
Season: 1
Year: 1986
Writer(s): Steven Spielberg, Joseph Minion
Storyline: A horror writer is less than gracious with his adoring fans, especially one who camps out on his doorstep hoping to have his own script read. Suddenly, he starts seeing someone stalking him, a dark man he can only see in mirrors or windows, but when he turns there's nobody there. (Trollheart's Theory: this scenario has been written by the kid; it's his story coming to life). He makes it through the night and is glad to see the welcoming morning sun, feeling a little foolish at how scared he was of something that was obviously in his own imagination.

But out and about in his car he sees the stalker again in his car's mirror, and then in the mirror shades of a cop who tries to calm him down when he runs screaming out of the parking bay. In fact, he's seeing the killer in every mirror or reflective surface. So his girlfriend has to cover every mirror and darken everything that might reflect an image just so he'll calm down. She's just completed this task when a reporter and her crew arrive; he'd forgotten he had granted an interview. Then he sees the killer in the camera lens and again goes crazy. Finally he sees him in his girlfriend's eyes (duh: could have told you that) and starts clawing at his throat, as if someone is strangling him.

Now, there it would have been all right; the guy imagined a stalker who was trying to kill him, and either the power of suggestion killed him or there actually was a killer nobody could see but him. That would have been acceptable, even without clarification. But what happens next is ridiculous to the max. He suddenly turns into the killer, sees himself in the mirror, and jumps out the window to his death. Lord almighty.

Comments: A good idea but poorly, very poorly executed. Doubly disappointing, given that it's a Spielberg story. Bah.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/AYAotD_logo.png)
Title: "The Tale of the Night Nurse"
Series: Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Season: 7
Year: 2000
Writer(s): Michael Koegel
Storyline: Essentially the last episode, as although the series was rebooted in 2019 and again in 2021, these were two series of linked stories featuring the same characters and running along the same plot, which is not something I want to explore here. Had the writing improved (wouldn't be hard) by this time? Let's see. Two sisters playing in the snow outside their grandfather's house worry they have hit a woman who was walking into the house, but when they go inside their grandfather says there is no woman in the house. Where did she vanish to? That night one of the girls thinks she hears voices downstairs, goes down and sees a birthday cake on the table, which says "Happy Birthday Emily" - neither she nor her sister are named Emily - and when she turns on the light it's gone. Except when she turns around she sees it in the mirror, as well as a bunch of people shouting "Happy Birthday!" She panics and runs.

The next day she sees a girl laden down with presents fall down the stairs, and then disappear. She screams, and her grandfather tells them the story of the birthday girl. As A.J. saw, the girl fell on the stairs on her birthday, and was laid up in bed with a broken leg. A night nurse hired to look after her poisoned her, although she claimed she was innocent up till the day she died in prison. They decide to try to entice the ghost by making her a birthday cake, but instead they call forth the spirit of the night nurse. They scream, drop the cake and she disappears.

A.J. puts Emily's birthday dress on and finds herself in the little girl's place, back in time, walking down the stairs to her birthday party. She realises the dress is the device that has taken her back in time, rushes upstairs, takes it off and tells Nicki. Just then the night nurse bangs on the door, wanting to be let in to give Emily her shot. A.J. now realises that if she can go back, take Emily's place and not fall down the stairs, the night nurse won't be needed; the whole sequence of events that led to her murder will now not occur. But it doesn't work; she falls anyway and events begin to play out as they already have.

However when the nurse tells her it's penicillin in the syringe, A.J. realises that the bracelet Emily was wearing showed she was allergic to the drug, which was why she died. She wasn't poisoned. Had she known about the allergy she would never have given her the shot. She was innocent all along.

Comments: Well, I asked at the beginning whether they had got better at stories, and I don't know, maybe it's just this one writer, and it is nearly ten years on, but this was a far better story than any of the others I've had to sit through with this series. Unfortunate that it's the final one, but maybe this and previous, later, seasons improved. I guess we'll see as we go on. A very good swan song though if not.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Night_Gallery_DVD.jpg)
Title: "The Dark Boy" (1st segment of 2)
Series: Night Gallery
Season: 2
Year: 1971
Writer(s): Halsted Welles from the short story by August Derleth
Storyline: It's Little House on the Prairie time as a new schoolteacher arrives in a rural community in the nineteenth century, despite a letter she received with the warning "don't come!" and the hasty and unexplained departure of the previous teacher. The children all seen very nervous though, and her landlady tells her that the other teacher didn't like children much. When she expresses her intention to work at night in the school on her papers, the two women she's lodging with warn her not to. They say that's how it started, but will say no more.

So of course she goes. While there she sees a young boy looking in the window, but when she approaches him and beckons him to come in, he runs off. The women are concerned when they hear this. Next day a reticent father says he's been forced to send his son to school - it's the law, he grumps - but enigmatically makes the teacher promise not to send his son up on any ladders. The next night she sees the dark boy again, finds out his name is Joel and he's been in the same class for two terms, so must be a bit slow. She sees a plaster on his head and reasons he fell off a ladder. Joel is, of course, a ghost, and further, the son of the farmer who brought his other child to school. She talks to him and confirms Joel fell off a ladder and was killed. Now he haunts his father, but won't talk to him.

The women tell her that the other teacher was run out of town for having said she had seen the boy's ghost, and now they expect she's going to leave too. But they ask her to stay. She says she'll see Joel once more and then decide. Then she falls in love with his father, so I guess she isn't going anywhere. Together she and he manage to exorcise Joel's ghost by inviting him to come home with them, whereupon I assume he goes to his rest and no longer haunts the place.

Comments: Yeah not bad. A bit simplistic, but I've seen worse.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Creepshow_TV_Series.jpeg)
Title: "Time Out"
Series: Creepshow
Season: 3
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Barrington Smith and Paul Seetachit
Storyline: In World War 2 as France is liberated soldiers help themselves to stuff from houses, and one guy brings home a huge armoire. How does he get it home when he's a simple soldier without any personal transport? Ask the Creep, it's his story. Anyway at his funeral his grandson is warned not to go into the armoire, but his mother's cat does and when she opens it she finds only a little pink collar lying in a pile of dust. Fast forward another ten years and Timmy is all grown up and at college. He gets a delivery from the estate of his grandmother, which is (anyone?) the armoire, and a note with the key to it. The note tells him whenever he needs time, to go into the closet and he will find it, but always take the key and never get greedy, as stolen hours are not free. Right.

So when he's late for an exam he goes into the thing and finds that time runs backwards for him, so that when he comes out it's earlier than when he went in. Not quite a time machine, as such, but a sort of DST on steroids, and controllable: a way to turn back time. He doesn't notice that he has now grown a beard. Time moves on. He's married, passed the bar and is using the armoire to ensure he gets all the work done that's sent his way, so much so that in four years he's a senior associate at the law firm he started at. But he hasn't heeded his grandmother's warning, has he? He's getting - he's already got - greedy, and now we're just waiting for him to forget that key, when he'll be stuck in a timestream that does not stop.

Something else that doesn't stop is his newborn baby's crying, and he has grey hairs and his eyesight is weakening, then he has a stroke. His doctor advises him to cut down on the long hours; he has the body of a man ten years older than him. He finally listens to the doctor and his wife, puts the key aside, but when he hears he's not in the running for senior partner he's tempted to give it one more go, but unfortunately for him his pocket has a hole in it and the key falls out. He doesn't realise this of course until he's inside, so he's unable to get back out. And that's the end of him: ashes to ashes and all that.

Still, there is a final, perhaps unnecessarily cruel twist, as his son, finding the key on the ground, opens the armoire, steps in and the door shuts behind him.

Comments: Yeah this was pretty cool. Again you could see what was going to happen, and for a moment you think maybe the kid will save him, but then  this is horror, and nice things don't happen. A good allegory for men who live to work, work to live, and miss the important things in life.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Dimension404Title.jpg)
Title: "The Matchmaker"
Series: Dimension 404
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s):Will Campos, Dez Dolly, Daniel Johnson, David Welch

Storyline: A guy who just can't get a date - or at least, can't find his soulmate; it's not like he's ugly or shy or anything, he's a real catch I guess - decides in desperation to try a new dating app recommended by his flatmate. Make-a-Match promise 100% compatibility guaranteed. Adam's sceptical but gets matched with a girl who seems to be everything he's looking for, right down to her bird tattoo and the pink streak in her hair. Amanda seems too good to be true. Of course she is, but why? Well, after two months with her he's besotted and tells her he loves her, against the mysteriously worried advice of his flatmate. She gets very cold and sharp, tells him she's not ready for that sort of commitment and throws him out.

He refuses to go though, so she takes out her phone and hits X on him. A moment later two bruisers burst in and drag him out and he has to fight his way free of them. He goes to tell his flatmate, who zaps him, and the next thing he knows he's facing some woman having an "exit interview". Turns out he's not real. He's a genetically-grown clone, specially designed in the Make-a-Match labs to be perfectly compatible; made to the specific requirements of his intended partner. In other words, he was designed for Amanda, but he hasn't worked out, so now he's back in the returns department, since a law of congress prohibits his termination.

He's shown into a room where there are four other clones of him (he's version 5.0) who have all dated Amanda and all been rejected after some time. As he watches his replacement being created he switches places with it, and almost makes it out but is caught and returned. Eventually he's had enough of being treated like property (even if he is) and he leads a rebellion. The clones capture and kill the creator  and head out into the world, living their own lives on their own terms, Adam forming a band with all his clones.

Comments: A beautiful dystopian, Brookeresque love story about conformity gone mad, asking the very pertinent question: if everyone can have the perfect partner, what's there left to work at in the relationship? What is there to strive for in love? If Shakespeare was wrong, and the course of true love can be made to run smooth, why bother? Or as Kryten once noted: it's those cute little flaws that keep a guy interested. Or a girl. Also a nice undertone of anti-slavery and a warning about the corporate monopolising of dating sites.

Rating:  :5stars:

ROUND FIVE, PART III: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART I
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Room_104_teaser.png)
Title: "Fur"
Series: Room 104
Season: 4
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Mel Eslyn
Storyline: It's animated this time, but don't expect Love Death and Robots levels of animation: this is more like 80s cartoon comedy. Think maybe Scooby Doo or Pink Panther, that kind of thing. Kinda flat but quite colourful. Two young girls are hiding under a bed which may be in a hotel possibly, as it looks like a maid is going around cleaning, probably unaware that they're there. Presumably they're not meant to be. Seems like they're having a girls' night or something, looks to be taking place before they head off to college maybe. I think one has reached puberty while the other has not yet. Oh right they're sisters. They call one of the local jocks whom one of them has fallen in love with after seeing his picture in the high school yearbook. Eager to impress, they both start drinking; pretty obvious they haven't drank before.

I think this is set in the 1980s, as one of the girls is using a Walkman. Honestly, if someone says "totally" one more time I'll start loading up a shotgun. Jock guy gets a bit too pushy and isn't happy when his advances are not accepted, and either hulks out utterly or it may be a metaphor for how threatening he has suddenly become to the girl. You never know with this show. She kicks him in the crotch and now she's becoming some sort of superhero, so I think yeah, probably metaphors for their puberty, and as they fight in typical superhero mode, is this an allegory for her first sexual encounter? The younger sister, who has been in the toilets all this time sulking, comes out and tries to take on the hulk, but she's no match for him. Until suddenly she hits puberty (or it hits her) and now he has two of them to contend with. They, um, merge into one superbeast and beat the shit out of him. I guess the moral is that, I don't know, sisters together against the world? Fuck knows.

Comments: Yeah I guess I see the metaphors here, but it's a bit annoying. Didn't enjoy that one at all. I suppose it had to be animated, as it would have been possible, but much more expensive, to try to stage this in real life. Meh.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://i.postimg.cc/vZTY2PnW/image-2022-07-24-210843550.png)
Title: "Shed No Fear"
Series: Creeped Out
Season: 1
Year: 2018
Writer(s): Denis McGrath
Storyline: A nerdy kid sees his jock friend rush into a shed, armed as if for battle (dustbin lid for a shield, baseball bat as a sword) and checks inside, finding a load of junk but not his friend. Suddenly some sort of dark shadow flits over the roof of the shed, a portal opens and he is dumped into a pool near an abandoned hotel, where he finds Dave's baseball cap, but no Dave. Returning to the shed (the hotel was just a short distance away) Greg finds Dave, who is trying to clean the shed out for his aunt. The shed belonged to his grandad, and he's worried about what will happen if his aunt goes in there alone, so he has to get rid of the ghost or demon or incorporeal entity, or whatever it is. Greg agrees to help him.

This time they both get dumped out into the pool out of town, but Greg has managed to photograph the entity. It seems that it doesn't want any of the stuff in the shed removed, and Dave tells him his grandfather was a real hoarder, always collecting junk. Seems somehow he picked up an elemental shade along the way, as Greg finds out the next morning in the library. Dave tells the football team he's done with them, and Greg discovers that the thing is susceptible to light.

And so they flood the place with light and the shade fucks off. The end.

Things I didn't like: If I ever catch hold of the stupid girl who "narrates" the opening and closing sections she'll be sorry. Not a scrap of emotion or feeling in her voice, and she speaks as if she's looking down, mumbling, not interested. What a crock. Between her and the stupid fucking Curious they can stick it up their collective arses.

Comments: Jesus Christ that was awful. So much I can say about it. Like, why did they have to set up some elaborate pulley system with a fucking  joystick and a disco ball? Why not just bring some spotlights and turn them on? Why had they to... ah, ferget it. This was bloody awful. And what the hell was the shade? Where did it come from? Christ on a bike.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51FZ4WEN60L._AC_SY445_.jpg)
Title: "Girl on the Road"
Series: The Veil
Season: n/a
Year: 1958
Writer(s): George Waggner
Storyline: A man comes across a woman stranded at the side of the road, and determines her car has run out of petrol. (Trollheart's Theory: this is a "Hitch-Hiker" episode from The  Twilight Zone, innit? She's dead, or he is. My money's on her) Naturally, on the way to get gas John takes the opportunity to take Lila for a drink, surely fancying his chances. Suddenly though she gets spooked, and demands they leave. This has been, it seems, precipitated by the barman making a call which looks to be passing information to someone about her presence, someone called Morgan, someone she would rather not know where she is. She promises to meet John that night and explain everything.

I guess we can assume Morgan is some sort of gangster or hoodlum (is there a difference?) from whom Lila's running away? John meets her, and she starts telling him about Morgan, who is much older than her, but she's talking in the past tense now and I'm pretty sure she's dead. When Morgan turns up and says Lila won't be turning up, John grins and says she's already here, but when he turns the girl is nowhere to be seen. Morgan tells him to forget about her and just drive on, but he goes to the sheriff's office instead and reports the girl's disappearance. Unfortunately he only knows she's called Lila, as she never gave her surname.

The mystery deepens. The local sheriff can't help, obviously, with such sketchy details, the garage mechanic who's supposed to have driven her back to her car earlier with gas doesn't recall her - in fact, he says he's hardly sold any gas at all today - and now the chauffeur for Morgan is lurking around like a henchman from a bad gangster movie. Oh, and now he's punching the shit out of John, so maybe he is a gangster's henchman. John doesn't seem so bad for someone who just got seven shades of shite knocked out of him, adjusts his tie and after hearing from the mechanic that Morgan is a local bigshot, pillar of the community style of guy, he drives off.

He goes back to the bar and confronts the barman who sold them out on the phone, but he's not talking. Some gratuitous violence though is always good for loosening the tongue, and he gets both Lila's surname (Kirby) and her address before he leaves the guy in a heap. Her mother tells him Lila is upstairs. Damn! Not dead then. So much for my theory. Oh well. Now Morgan is in the house, and he tells John that ... Lila is dead! OH YES! I WAS right! TROLL-HEART! TROLL-HEART! TROLL-HEART! (All right, all right! Calm down, no need to TROLL-HEART! I SAID calm DOWN! All right, that's better). Morgan, it turns out, is in a wheelchair, a result of his having been in the accident with Lila, and tells John that Lila has appeared twice before, always drawn to Lookout Point, where she died. The mother has clearly lost it, thinking her daughter is still alive.

John heads to Lookout Point himself and finds, as Morgan said he would, the crashed and crumpled remains of the red sports car he had seen Lila driving only that morning.

Things I liked: The way Morgan being in a wheelchair was not revealed until the end, quite effective.
Things I didn't like: How easily John shrugged off what looked to have been a fairly brutal attack; the way at the start he told Lila he would push her car off the road so that it would be safe while they drove off to get gas, but in fact all he did was move it a few inches, making absolutely no difference; he needn't have bothered.

Comments: If I hadn't seen "The Hitch-Hiker" already I would think this was brilliant, though in fairness this predates the Twilight Zone story, so I have to give it the credit it deserves. I think I only sussed it because I had seen the other story; otherwise it doesn't make it too obvious, so a very good story indeed. Also echoed somewhat in the episode we reviewed of Are  You Afraid of the Dark?, with another slain woman coming back, though in that case she did have a plan. Overall, really good and further proof that this series should have been aired; I really don't know why it wasn't.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://cdn.wallpapersafari.com/28/4/y9ljwK.jpg)
Title: "Vampire Breath"
Series: Goosebumps
Season: 2
Year: 1996
Writer(s): Rick Drew
Storyline: During a search for their birthday presents, two twins come across a door in the cellar they never knew was there. Entering, they find a long underground tunnel (is there any other kind?) which itself leads to another door, behind which they find a coffin. Well, given the title, what would you expect really? They also find a flask with some sort of gas or liquid in it, and labelled underneath on the base, VAMPIRE BREATH. It seems to open itself and, unseen by them, the gas floats out of the bottle and into the coffin behind them (they were about to leave, showing remarkable prescience for teenage kids, when they found the carboy, but were facing away from the coffin, towards the exit door). The coffin opens, and out steps the vampire.

They run, but he easily catches them. It's then though that they realise that he has no fangs! The vampire is aghast, ashamed, enraged, but without his teeth he can't puncture their skin and drink their blood, and isn't quite so scary. He says  he must have taken his fangs out (as you do) before going into his coffin, and believes that recovering the bottle wherein his vampire breath was will help him remember for some reason. He demands to know where it is, but the kids try to cut a deal with him. He has to let them go if they help him. He, however, is not about to make any promises, and scares them into helping him anyway.

They find it, but refuse to hand it over till he agrees to spare them. In the ensuing struggle they both fall into the coffin, which tips over and again for some reason ends up careening down a slope into the depths of the house like some sort of mad toboggan ride. Here they find another young girl, who appears to have been trapped here. Oh yeah, they also find a bunch of coffins, so there's more than one vampire. Nice. She tells them that vampire breath is the source of all vampire powers. They store their breath in the bottles in case they get wounded, so they can restore themselves. It also holds all their memories, which is why the vampire up top wanted his, to remind himself where he had put his teeth. But they seem to have dropped the bottle on the way down, so now all three of them go to look for it.

Then the vampire comes down looking for them, but when they throw the breath to the new little girl, she inhales it and reveals that she, too, is a vampire. In fact, she's the one who robbed the main vampire of his breath. As the two struggle, the twins take their cue - finally - to run. The master vampire defeats the girl one, inhales his breath and is renewed. He turns her into a cockroach, and sets after the twins. As they head back upstairs their parents return, and - oh you're not going to believe this - it turns out the vampire is the kids' grandfather, that their parents are both vampires and, when they reach the age of thirteen in a few hours, they will be too. Sound familiar? Remember "The Girl Who Cried Monster"? Jesus fucking Christ. What a rip-off.

Also, vampires can't turn people into insects. They can, in some stories and legends, transform themselves into various things - dog, wolf, bat obviously - but not others. They're not fucking wizards, guy! DYR, yeah? Do Your Research.

Things I thought would happen, but, um, did: As this unfolded, I thought to myself "the parents must be vampires too!" But then, that would be so like that other story. They wouldn't do that, would they? Ah, but they did.

Things I didn't like: Apart from this being a total copy of that episode, the two kids in it can't act for shit. I know they're kids, but they can't emote. At all.

Comments: Right, well that was a blatant copy of one of the first episodes, so while had it been original that would have been a great twist, it's just plagiarism now, so I have nothing more to say about it. Pathetic. Actually, I'm not sure how this works. All stories are based on Stine's books, so are we saying here that this McGrath guy just made a teleplay out of one, and if so, can we then blame Stine for essentially writing the same story twice? Either way, someone's in my bad books.

Rating: :1stars: (I would have rated it higher, but as it was just copied it gets the lowest one possible)

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTljYTYwYTktNjhjMC00MmQxLWJjODktYjIzYTViYWZhZTE4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDg4MjkzNDk@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "Bad Writer"
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Kjetil Indregard
Storyline: A rich girl who's an aspiring writer and seems to think all her friends love her ends up eavesdropping on a conversation between her housemates where they badmouth her and decide to kill her. Yup, that's where we are. Already. This is Bloodride, after all. Still, this is a bit intense and surely unlikely so Trollheart's Theory is that it's in her head, she's writing it, and somehow it's all going to end up going pear-shaped and maybe she will kill the girls? I guess we'll see; it's never easy to try to predict where this show will go, but the idea of three girls suddenly and off the cuff deciding to commit murder is, well, odd, even for Bloodride. I reckon there's more to it. Add into that the advice she got at the writing class - "pick someone you hate and put them into your story and kill them" - maybe deep down she hates herself? Enough trying to figure out the ending: let's go on.

The flatmates invite her to the picnic on Saturday, and she agrees. She pretends she has not been in the house long enough to have heard their discussion, and so they believe her to be completely unaware that they are planning to do away with her. She tries to get out of the room, but as her boyfriend enters she sees one of the girls pick up a knife from the block and throws boiling water at them all, legging it out to her car. There her boyfriend tries to calm her down, but she believes he too is in on it and stabs him with her car keys, then runs off down the road. Coincidentally (surely not) the car she flags down is being driven by Alex, a guy she met at the writing class. Maybe it's his story? He had said he had written something, but wouldn't let her see; said it was crap.

Okay, revision on the theory. This guy Alex has been maybe stalking her, or trying to get to know her, but she has been ignoring him.  As a result, he has taken the advice of the teacher and put her in a story to kill her, one he's written. Or she doesn't even exist, only as a character in his story. Right (write?) that's it. No more guesses from me. Let the chips fall where they may. He drops her at the  police station, but before she can report the attempt on her life the girls are there, one still holding a knife, clearly looking for her. She runs out and hides in the car park and luckily they don't find her. Then she falls.

All right, I think I guessed correctly, because as she falls we see fingers typing on a keyboard and she sees Alex's van. Now she realises she accidentally picked up his story and she's about to read it, and though I have the video paused I would bet a month's wages that she is about to read something like "the girl falls on the ground as the other girls move off" or something. Let's see.

Yeah, I got it. Now she does too. She realises Alex is writing about her and making all these horrible things happen to her. But you know what? She's a writer too, and two can  play at that game. She gets her laptop  out and begins to write. Goes a little overboard though, and has his laptop eat his hand. Right. Then she calls him, tells him who she is and what she's doing, but when he admits that he had intended to save her at the end of the story, she relents, rewrites his hand back on, and they begin to write together.

But then it turns out someone else is writing the story, and both get killed; it turns out to be the teacher who was holding the writing classes, Alex is her husband, then Olivia and Marcus turn up, it gets very confusing. The writer, Anneslise, stabs Olivia but then goes to delete the scene and finds she can't, it won't delete, and that's the end.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: The whole thing was a little hard to predict, but I could have seen something like maybe the two of them in the bar suddenly beginning to vanish from the waist up, screaming, and as they pop out of existence another, unseen and unknown writer shaking his or her head and saying no that's not working: have to start again. I also would have thought that if Annelise's computer had crashed, or she had spilled wine on the keys so that they stuck and the backspace or delete key would not work, might have been a better way to explain the ending.

Comments: Although the idea is good and I did suss it, this is the first Bloodride episode where I feel the story got totally lost along the way. I mean, how are you supposed to take the ending? That it was Annelise who was writing all along, and the others were just characters? But if so, how come one is now dying, her supposed daughter-in-law? And why did the delete key not work? I have to be honest, I'm confused and a little disappointed. Perhaps, despite my initial expectations, the title is appropriate?

Rating: :3stars:(for the first time ever)

ROUND FIVE, PART IV: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART II
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Rlstine-hp-hero.png)
Title: "I'm Not Martin"
Series: The Haunting Hour
Season: 3
Year: 2014
Writer(s): Mitch Watson
Storyline: An annoying brother tells his younger sibling, who is in for tonsil removal, a story about another boy who was to have his foot amputated in 1952 and who  switched charts with a kid who was also to get his tonsils out. The ghost of that kid wanders the halls of the hospital, he tells his brother, looking to take someone's foot and crying "I'm not Martin!" What a cunt of a brother. The story of course stays in Sean's head, and when his mother and the prick of an older brother have gone he lies awake, listening for the limping tread of the kid who lost his foot.

And then, he hears it!

Making his way shakily to the door, he looks out and sees... nothing. So he goes back to bed. But then the sound begins again, and this time the doorknob rattles. Diving into bed and pulling the privacy curtain around him, Sean is confronted by the kid, and he does indeed have one foot. But he tells him he's not here to hurt him. He's not evil, he says, the hospital is, and beckons for Sean to follow him if he wants to keep his foot. The kid tells him that once the hospital has a part of you you can never leave, and he directs Sean to a door, through which he seems to pass into 1952. A nurse approaches him and tells him he has surgery in the morning. He tells her he's not Martin, but she won't listen. He runs off but is easily caught and strapped to the bed.

It's the fifties though I guess, and they made things crappier back then, as he's able to break the restraints He manages to get to to a phone (looking at the rotary dial in confusion asking "Where are the buttons?") and calls the police. They promise they're on the way, but they ring back and sell him out to the creepy nurse. They bring him to the operating table but then... he wakes up and it was all a dream. Sigh.

Comments: Very strange story. The behaviour of the staff made it almost cartoonish and impossible to believe, but the kid's contention that the hospital was evil is never realised or explained, which is a pity, because on the surface it's not a bad idea. A living entity disguised as a hospital building, using its doctors and nurses to harvest limbs... but it goes nowhere and ends up being the manic ravings of a child's imagination. Boo. There's a little stupid attempt at a coda at the end, but it's so ludicrous it's not worth mentioning.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Mastersofhorror.jpg)
Title: "Pick Me Up"
Series: Masters of Horror
Season: 1
Year: 2006
Writer(s): David J. Schow
Storyline: A bus driver deliberately runs over a snake in the road, and kills it, but a strange wanderer appears after the bus has gone and picks up the snake, saying to it "You ain't' dead yet" and walks off with it. Meanwhile, further up the road the bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere. One of the passengers, Stacia, a girl who seems to be getting over a failed marriage, a little tough nut with a knife for protection, heads off to find the hotel which is about twenty miles in the distance. Half of the rest - a girl and a guy - take a lift from a truck coming the other way.

Walker, the wanderer, turns up and strangles the driver with the corpse of the snake, then shoots one of the two left behind; Marie, totally paranoid and wary of everyone (and in this case, she's right to be) runs off screaming. Wheeler, the truck driver, seems pretty unhinged too, trying to get the clerk at a store he stops at to use his gun on him, forcing it into his hand (with the clip removed), then telling him he's a big disappointment when he refuses the gun. Bunch of fucking psychos it would seem. Birdy, the girl who took a ride with him, is flirting with him and it appears he locks her in the back of his truck. Meanwhile Marie is being tracked by Walker through the forest.

The guy travelling with Wheeler convinces him to go back to the bus, concerned that the driver and passengers have not turned up and rendezvoused with them as they had arranged, and of course they find them dead. Wheeler seems amused. We see that Birdy is hanged in the back of the trailer. He now kills the guy, slamming the door of the luggage compartment down on his head, and when he finds the girl tied to a tree in the forest he snarls at her that she didn't think he was trustworthy (which, let's be fair, he's not - he's a fucking killer!) and wouldn't take a lift with him. He leaves her and penetrates deeper into the forest.

Stacia, the only real survivor from the bus, has found the motel. Meanwhile Walker hitches a ride with some rock biker chick and her punk boyfriend, the latter of which Wheeler finds dumped, dead at the side of the road as night falls. Not surprisingly, given it's the only accommodation for miles, everyone eventually ends up at the motel. Walker is in the room next to Stacia, torturing the girl who was in the van, Wheeler arrives and Stacia is trying to get room service to come up and fix the shower but there's no answer (possibly because Walker killed the concierge).

Now the two killers meet, and I would assume they're both after Stacia. The girl Walker was torturing has expired, so he's bored with that and about to move on. Stacia, however, is not as easy a target - remember, she has a knife too - and slips away, with the two serial killers then heading after her. Unfortunately for her, Wheeler has a cop's badge (probably taken when he killed one) and thereby convinces her he's a cop. If he is, you have to wonder why she doesn't ask what the fuck is he doing driving a truck in the arsehole of nowhere? But she accepts a lift from him; it's raining hard and it's dark and she has no idea where she is, and all I guess she knows is that one guy is definitely a killer, and probably coming after her.

Seems Wheeler is pissed at Walker because the other guy is encroaching on his territory, taking his victims. He knocks Stacia out and when she comes around she's handcuffed, so probably has sussed now that Wheeler is not a cop. A short time later they pick up Walker, and the two start discussing what sort of killer each is. Stacia tries to play one off against the other, but that doesn't work so she manages to stamp on the brake. Neither are wearing seatbelts and both go through the windscreen, smashing out onto the road, while she, harnessed in the seat, screams as the truck jackknifes and goes over on its side.

The two killers then start fighting over her as she tries to free herself. They beat each other to a standstill, then sirens sound. She loses consciousness. Next we see both killers strapped down in an ambulance, carrying on their fight till Walker says to Wheeler they could do a lot with an ambulance like this. Unfortunately for them, and for Stacia, these two paramedics are also serial killers, and kill both. As for Stacia? Well, they're saving her for later!

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Honestly, the way it was set up at the beginning I thought Walker was going to be some sort of spirit of animals, maybe snakes, sent to avenge their deaths. I thought when he approached the bus driver with the snake and started messing, using it as a microphone, that it would suddenly come back to life and attack the driver. I was seeing a completely different direction for this.

Things I liked: Fucking every second
Things I didn't like: Nothing

Comments: That was fucking brilliant! A bit of a stuttery start, but once it got going it was pure gold all the way through. Serial killer with a great dash of dark humour; reminded me a little of Wolf Creek. Stupid, super ending, completely unlikely but fit so well in with the overall mood of the piece. Loved this.

In fairness, is this genre horror? The answer has to be no. There are no supernatural elements at all to it; it's just two serial killers fighting over their turf. So kind of not really even horror, more a slasher thing. But what makes it so much more palatable is the easy sense of dark comic relief running through it; each killer is certainly presented as deadly and violent, but there's something almost - endearing? - about them, like two boys fighting, or the bosses of two rival gangs duking it out, with everyone else in the story mere collateral damage. The ending is as stupidly unlikely as it can be - FOUR serial killers all in the one area? - but the charm of the story is so compelling that you can forgive that.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/IntoTheDark.png)
Title: "My Valentine"
Series: Into the Dark
Season: 2
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Maggie Levin
Storyline: In the world of female pop divas, it seems there's a question about two of them who look, sing and act the same (and sing the same songs) - which is the original? The supporters of one, Trezzure (pronounced "treasure"), come to heckle at the debut concert of the other, Valentine, then the manager who apparently stole her songs and made this Trezzure a star arrives and starts giving his side of the story. He of course maintains that Valentine wasn't good enough and they split up, and later he met Trezzure and "created" her. Things take a turn for the worse when Trezzure turns up herself at the gig, which has now become a lock-in. Kind of literally, as the manager guy has jammed the exit door. There's also another couple sitting in a car arguing; they're the support band, but right now I'm not clear on what they have to do with the story.

Manager guy seems to have admitted to Valentine that she is the original, as he, rather insultingly, asks her to work with him on Trezzure's second album - presumably, he's used up all the songs she, Valentine, had, and now he needs new material, which would indicate that his new star can't write for shit. From what I can see from the flashbacks, both her and her producer, Royal Brigguns (seriously? Hey, there's a girl named Trezzure, remember!) were both pretty much broke and it was his manipulating her to the top that made them both rich. Then she left him but his fortune was made. She bowed out for a few years - I feel the guy may be abusive and controlling? - and he moved on to his next target, making this Trezzure girl into a copy of Valentine. Ironically, of course, everyone now thinks she is the original and that Valentine is copying her.

Okay clearly he is a psycho, and the worst type of manipulating pig there is: he hurts Valentine and threatens her, then whines for forgiveness when he thinks he's gone too far, making himself the victim. And like most girls in that situation, she falls for it. That's all when they were together, but there's no reason to think the same isn't happening with Trezzure. Now the mask slips, back in the present, and he threatens Valentine: if she doesn't stop playing "his" music, there'll be trouble. But not legal trouble - this is more violent, as he pulls a knife on her and her bandmate. He's a total narcissist, and there's no reason to believe he hasn't done this sort of thing many times in the past, using women and then dumping them (or being dumped by them, in Valentine's case) and starting again with a fresh innocent victim, copy and paste.

Valentine's friend goes at him, and he stabs her. Rather than let Trezzure call an ambulance though, he stands and watches her die: "I'm kinda curious," he says, his eyes cold as the gulf between stars, "to see what it's like when someone dies." Proving either how scared she is of him or that she's totally braindead, Trezzure does not take this as any sort of sign that she's dealing with a psychopath. When he snarls as the girl dies that he wishes he had recorded her last breath, I think maybe she's getting an inkling of who she's with, the depths of his depravity. I really hope he gets what's coming to him. Meanwhile outside it seems the other couple are just there to provide a sort of frustration level; with the door locked and them, um, otherwise engaged, nobody can hear Valentine's frantic screams for help. I mean, if that's all they're there for, I have to wonder why they're in the story at all? Unless they do something later, there might as well be nobody there to hear.

While Royal goes to sort out the bartender, who had the temerity to ring 911, Valentine tries to show Trezzure how alike they are, how he's using them both, and you can see she's wavering. Valentine tells her they should call a truce and get out of there before he destroys them both. I'm thinking the end scene is going to be the two of them performing together - Valentine's Trezzure? Anyway we'll see. But right now any hatred Valentine had for the other girl has turned into both pity and sympathy, as she can see where Trezzure's life is going: it's the same path she was forced along, after all. Surely now, when Trezzure sees Royal has killed the other guy (and this time he does record his final breath, the sick bastard!) she can finally understand this was no accident, as he tried to make out the killing of the girl was? Surely it's beginning to sink in now that the guy is a narcissistic killer and enjoys this shit? Surely her eyes are going to be opened?

Yeah, finally. Though fucking Royal pain in the arse goes into victim mode, saying she made him kill the guy, he did it for her, but I think maybe there's some backbone emerging here? The clouds are clearing and perhaps an alliance is about to be forged between the two women? I fucking hope so, because if she swallows any more of his self-serving bullshit it'll be me who'll choke. Okay Valentine now tricks Royal into showing he doesn't care about Trezzure, wants to get back with her, that she wrote all the songs and Trezzure almost knifes him but just then the useless couple for some reason arrive in the hall and of course Royal don't like that, and he attacks the guy. Now, for the love of all that is holy, while his attention is occupied and his back is turned to you will one of you fucking women ACT???!!

Yes! Finally, Trezzure snaps and bashes the fucker's head in with a microphone stand. My god I could not have stood another fucking word from that smug, self-satisfied cunt! Right but rather than be a two-person sisterhood now that fucking Royal is dead, it seems Trezzure intends to continue using Valentine's songs, and has threatened her with legal action. So now what? Duel to the death to see who's the real diva? Last pop star standing? Bitchmatch? Ah, no: seems Valentine just caused Trezzure to get electrocuted (something to do with the wet floor, wet from all the blood I guess, and a microphone) and now I guess she's going to say she's Trezzure and the woman lying dead on the floor is Valentine? That's how I see it anyway. Minutes to go. Yeah that's what happens. She takes on Trezzure's identity and nobody is any the wiser.

Comments: well I really enjoyed that. This series started off badly but overall it's been better than I had been expecting. This tackles the way bright young things can be manipulated, used, even created and destroyed by unscrupulous record executives, producers and starmakers. I'm sure there's a lot more fact than fiction in this. It does somewhat treat all the dead people a little lightly - we had, what, four murders? No, five. I imagine they were all blamed on "Valentine", who was also killed, and so the cops would have been satisfied. But still, the real Valentine's best friend was brutally killed and she seems to have forgotten about her pretty quickly once she had the chance to take back her fame and live the kind of life she wanted, and had been cheated out of.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Love%2C_Death_%26_Robots_Logo.png)
Title: "The Witness"
Series: Love, Death and Robots
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Alberto Mielgo
Storyline: A woman who has witnessed (heard) a murder in the apartment opposite her hotel goes on the run when she realises the killer has seen her. What's really odd here is that the dead woman looks exactly like her, right down to the smeared lipstick. (Trollheart's Theory: somewhat like the opening episode of The Veil, this is going to be a precog thing, where she is the one to be killed, but it hasn't happened yet? She's seen it in the future?) She phones the police but when she does not leave her name it seems unlikely they will investigate. She takes a taxi, unaware that the killer has taken one too and is following her.

She ends up at the brothel where she works, but is terrified to see the killer has been brought into it too by one of her co-workers or maybe bosses. She runs off the stage and back into her dressing room, then to the office of her boyfriend (or boss) who is totally out of it. She takes his gun and as she leaves runs into the killer. She legs it with him after her. She ends up in the apartment as he comes up the stairs, she takes out her gun and... yep I was... oh wait. SHE kills him, and then looking out the window sees another him, having witnessed her killing the guy. Okay. That was clever.

Comments: Played at a frenetic pace, really gives you the idea of the woman in a panic, but you can tell there's something not quite right; he's not pursuing her as a killer but as if he has to explain something. And then it all turns one-eighty. Liked that a lot.
Rating: :5stars:

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Title: "Newark, New Jersey"
Series: Monsterland
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Mary Laws, based on the short story by Nathan Ballingrud
Storyline: It's Christmas, and a father buys a doll for his daughter, but all is not well. He avoids accompanying his wife to some sort of counselling session for people who have lost their children, though he says their daughter is not dead. Maybe in a coma? Maybe taken away by Social Services? Guess we'll find out. Okay we just found out: she went missing. Brian took his eyes off her when they were in a shop, when the cashier dropped his change, and when he looked up  she was gone. She's been missing for a year and half now. Through therapy he remembers the licence plate of a car that was nearby, and brings it to the police. They all know him there, as they've been investigating his case for sixteen months without any leads, but they're dubious about the provenance of this new information.

Leaving her group that night, Brian's wife Amy thinks she sees a little girl in a tutu running along and pursues her, believing her to be her daughter. All she finds though is some junkie sleeping rough with a mannequin head in a pram, into which seems to be pushed a knife? Amy is now convinced her daughter is dead. The relationship is fracturing like stage glass, as one parent tries to face reality while the other is determined to keep hope alive. Amy tells Brian she is having an affair with her grief counsellor.

Brian goes out to a bar and meets a young waitress who tells him she abandoned her child, and pretends she is dead, revelling in the sympathy. They dance, and almost kiss, but when she goes to get change for the jukebox and drops it, something clicks in him and he runs out. On the way home he too sees what appears to be his daughter, and runs after her. This leads him to a dumpster where he finds a naked alien? Ah, he takes it with him back to his house where he and his wife look after it. The creature can only speak in a sort of clicking tone, somewhat like the sound a pigeon makes. They seem to think it's an angel, and are surprisingly sanguine about its existence.

The creature feeds them both some of its blood, and they start to feel very odd. This kind of ties in with a story the waitress told Brian, where she was given a drug called "angel's blood", which, when she took it, altered her perceptions until eventually she got so disoriented she just threw up. Brian goes to punch out the grief counsellor, and on his return he and Amy make love for the first time in ages. The creature comes down, observing them, and slits its throat, showering them with its blood for some reason and suddenly they're in an empty auditorium where they watch their child dance on the stage. Which I guess helps them come to terms with the loss of their daughter. Or something. Fucked if I know.

Comments: Right. The synopsis on Wiki says there was an event called "The Fall" (there's a child's voice doing narration, which may have mentioned this at the beginning, but it's hard to make out) where several creatures, believed to be angels, fell to earth, nobody knows why. So I guess this one Brian and Amy encounter is one of them, and I can see how it's a kind of catharsis for them, but the mechanics of it elude me. Fucking weird story, at its heart I believe about coming to terms with grief, particularly that of the loss of a child, but damned odd.

Rating: :2.5stars:

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Title: "Fix"
Series: Two Sentence Horror Stories
Season: 2
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Kristine Huntley

First sentence: "My sister needs to talk."

Storyline: Jackson is convinced by his boyfriend to travel to see his sister Sophia, an addict who sold family heirlooms to support her habit after their parents' death. He goes to the cabin where they used to spend summers as kids, and the old animosities flair. In his sister's bedroom drawer he finds what looks to be a book of black magic. Trollheart's Theory: She's sold her soul - or possibly his - to some guy with horns and a tail in exchange for maybe getting clean? Or, she's used black magic to clean herself up. Jackson's boyfriend worries she may have joined a cult, and that night Jackson himself sees the water in the shower turn to blood, but then it changes back, so was he imagining it?

Hearing sounds from her room, screaming and a dark growly voice, Jackson breaks the door down and looking up sees a pentagram-like thing on the ceiling. He faints, and is dragged away by unseen hands as Sophia stands by. He wakes up in the kitchen, to see his sister tuck into a tasty meal of worms, and she tells him she has given her soul to Flauros, a demon they used to be told about in church (what a gay name for a demon huh? But YES! I was RIGHT!*) and who has now sorted everything for her. The commotion last night was a ritual binding her and the demon together.Sofia's full-on demon girl now, and when he tries to get her out of the house she just laughs, breaks his arm and he has to lock himself in his room.

She tells him (from outside the door) that he has to confront his pain, and I'm going to assume here that it is actually him who is responsible for the car accident that took their parents, When she tricks him out of the room she pushes him down the stairs, and he awakes in the middle of the binding ritual, as she tries to get him to accept Flauros (come on now, seriously?) but he keeps his Christian faith and burns her with the cross he keeps around his neck, driving the demon out. I bet it says "Oh you're mean!" as it leaves in a huff.

Turns out our Jackson was the junkie originally, and that was how Sophia got started. He apologises, says he'll be here for her now, but it's too late. She vomits up a bunch of bugs and a moth or a black butterfly or some disgusting thing anyway, and dies. So Jackson overdoses beside her, but he doesn't die, and then it turns out the demon stuff was all in his mind; Sofia was dead when he arrived, having overdosed before he got there.

* Ah, no. I wasn't.

Second sentence: "She's been so angry since she died."

Comments: Great little story. Didn't expect the twist at the end, though I thought the parents' car crash was a bit of a red herring, was sure that was going to figure in to the reason why they had lost touch, that one or the other was to blame. A bit weak really, that Jackson cut her off because she sold their dad's watch, but I guess really it was guilt that did it, guilt that his sister had turned to drugs because of him.

Rating: :5stars:

23 Tales of Tomorrow (Down 1)
22 Creeped Out (Down 1)
21 The Haunting Hour (Down 4)
20 Tales from the Crypt (Down 14)
19 Tales from the Darkside (Up 4)
18 Monsterland (Down 8  )
17 Creepshow (Up 2)
16 Goosebumps (No change)
15 Night Gallery (No change)
14 Amazing Stories (Down 1)
13 Are You Afraid of the Dark? (Up 7)
12 Monsters (Up 6)
11 The Veil (Up 3)
10 Room 104 (Down 5)
9 Bloodride (Down 7)
8 Two Sentence Horror Stories (Up 1)
7 Into the Dark (Up 4)
6 Love Death and Robots (Up 1)
5 The Outer Limits (Up 3)
4 The Twilight Zone (No change)
3 Black Mirror (Down 2)
2 Masters of Horror (Up 10)
1 Dimension 404 (Up 2)

We have a new number one, as for the first time Black Mirror fails to get top points and slides to number 3 - for now - while Dimension 404 keeps up its perfect record and takes that top spot. Screaming in at number 2 to replace Bloodride, which also slips for the first time, this round to 9, is Masters of Horror, making a leap of 10 places. Room 104 has a bad showing and falls all the way to 10th place, while Tales from the Darkside is finally off the final position, moving slowly in the right direction. Going the other way, the biggest faller is Tales from the Crypt, dropping a massive 14 places.

Before I go further, a short commentary on what I think of the various shows I've watched.
Obviously, two of these I know quite well, so

The Twilight Zone certainly has its poor episodes, and I've come across one or two of them here, but I know it has mostly gems that are just waiting to be unearthed, so I have no problems continuing with it in the expectation that I will come across more good than bad. I've written plenty about this show already in its own journal, so there's not much more to say. Let's have a look at the episodes I've seen so far though.

We kicked off with "Shades of Guilt", which was all right, if a pretty heavy-handed racism story involving some sort of vague notion of time travel or something. This was from the 2002 reboot, and although not the most stellar way to open the whole project, not that bad. Off we went then, back into the sixties for the decent but not totally remarkable "The Self-improvement of Salvadore Ross", a little predictable but decent fun. Again no explanation was offered, and I guess none was needed. Stayed in the sixties then for two more, the first a major disappointment to me, especially considering it was written by a science fiction icon, but I didn't think much of "Little Girl Lost" at all. But then the series showed its pedigree with a stone cold classic, the wonderful "It's a Good Life", about which nothing more need be said. If nothing else, this proves that, while there are of course bad episodes, The Twilight Zone can do good, often excellent in the sixties as easily as in the 2000s and later, sometimes better in the former than the latter.

We then came forward in time, to 2020, for the last (so far) take on the series, where "Meet in the Middle" was much better. Like most TZ episodes, this one offered no explanation for the ability of the two characters to mentally contact each other, but it was a good episode with a fine, unexpected twist.

The Outer Limits gives me more of a pause. The original ones from the 1960s seem very long-winded, complicated and overly serious. From what I've seen so far anyway, the writers did not seem to tap into the same vein of easy relaxed sometimes even comic relief that those on the older show did. They concentrate more on explaining all the fun out of everything, being scientifically accurate and use for too many concepts people back then - and even now - are not at all familiar with. As a result a lot of their stories come across as dry, dull and often predictable. They also went for the one-hour format, which in their case seems to have been a mistake. I know I said a half hour is often insufficient for a Twilight Zone episode, but this just proves how little I know. If one of these Outer Limits episodes was cut to thirty or even forty minutes, it might be snappier and more attractive. As it is, they seem to drag on and on unnecessarily. So maybe Serling got it right.

There is some improvement when we get to the reboots. The episodes from the 1980s and 1990s tend to lean a little more on the side of storytelling rather than exposition or explanation; in The Twilight Zone, events are rarely explained. Things just happen. A wizard, so to speak, did it. And while that may leave us with a feeling of frustration and lack of closure, we live with it because the stories are so good. So Salvadore wotsit can give years of his life to people? How? We don't know. It's not explained, not even a hint, not an attempt. But the story doesn't suffer for that (unless, like me, you're a rabid nitpicker) - we know what to expect and we shrug. In ways, we'd probably be happier if The Outer Limits adapted the same line, but they don't. They have to go on and on with the explanations till you really just want to say "look dude, I don't care. Maybe a wizard did it, yeah?" To which the hypothetical writer would frown "What wizard?" Mind you, so would Serling, as these are both long before The Simpsons, but Serling would understand the concept of everything not needing a solid and believable explanation. After all, these are flights of fantasy.

I think the reboots make the stories more human, concentrating more on the characters than the mechanisms of the plot. In some ways, obviously, the new writers (who may even have written for the other show) have looked not to the old series but to its elder sister, and thought that's how we want to tell our stories. And mostly, it works. There's - so far, anyway - a marked difference between original Outer Limits and 80s/90s Outer Limits. The time has been cut somewhat to around the forty-minute mark, and that works too. In a lot of ways, you could say that 80s or 90s Outer Limits is almost an amalgamation of 60s Twilight Zone and 80s Twilight Zone, with little, other than the voiceover and the "controller" left of the original series. I suppose the producers are looking back not to see how it was done and emulate it, but to see how it was done then and trying to avoid making the same mistakes.

For all that though, these are the two elder statesmen (if not the actual oldest, the most well-known and venerated) of the speculative fiction anthology series, and each deserves their place here. It did not start well, though, with the incredibly boring and annoying "Beyond the Veil", from the 1990s reboot, then things dipped even further with "The Brain of Colonel Barham" - just bloody awful, and a pretty poor ending. That was from the sixties original, and things continued to disimprove with another from the same era, the supposedly-Macbeth-inspired "The Bellero Shield", which only for me served to reinforce the contention that this series did not have a strong grasp on its audience, and did not know what they wanted. The godawful "Re-generation" just, well, sucked. Finally we got a decent, nay, brilliant episode in "Relativity Theory", though we had to travel to the 1990s again to get it.

Tales from the Crypt: Being an adaptation of the original comic book series, this survives on a few factors. One is the always hilarious and pun-filled introductions by the Crypt Keeper, as well as his parting shot after the episode has finished; the animated turning of the pages of the comic book which then become real figures (this process reversing at the end) and the mostly horror-tinged aspect of the stories. Some are silly, but I haven't really been able to discount them for this. Tales from the Crypt does not pretend to be the successor, or even child of the Big Two: in some ways, it is perhaps the bastard child, or the problem child. It goes its own way with no respect paid to the traditions of its forebears. It is, as I say, grown from comic stock, whereas the other two are purely television fare, though they might look back to the old pulp magazines, but that's only in passing. All of the episodes here have been already published in the comics, so it's a television outing for a story that has already been in print.

Perhaps because of this, or perhaps despite it, Tales from the Crypt is able to take more of an irreverent look at its subject matter. Although the episodes were being tried out for the first time on TV, they had already been read and accepted by the comic-book world, so to the fans of those they weren't saying anything new. As you might expect from a show so titled, Tales from the Crypt tends to shy from science fiction (though there may be some episodes; I've only watched a few) and remain mostly rooted in the present, telling tales of horror and gore, possibly fantasy, that need little if any justification or explanation. Rather than being "a wizard did it", this show goes for the idea that "a demon/ghost/vampire/werewolf/insert as appropriate did it", and that's enough for its fans.

Another thing Tales from the Crypt does is nudity and sex. In general, few of the main shows tend to involve that at all, but this one gleefully portrays naked bodies and sexual acts - where and when appropriate - perhaps harking then back to its original comic book foundations, where just about anything went once the Comics Code was abandoned. In general, I've found the stories vary between  good and very good - rarely have I come across a really terrible one, so far anyway, and it's hard to call one meh, again so far. The show can be a bit visceral - it is basically a horror anthology after all - but somehow it's all done in a fun way, with quite a sense of humour, even if that is gallows humour. Sorry.

This was exactly what drove our opening episode, "On a Deadman's Chest", which, despite my initial expectation given the title, had not a single pirate in it. It was damn stupid, but it was great fun, and the rumpy-pumpy added to the sense of cheeky enjoyment. Overall, then, a good enough start. But it kept going with "Showdown", a pretty excellent pastiche of western and ghost story, with a healthy dose of retribution and even redemption thrown in, then "Two for the Show" was clever and funny, which are not two things that usually go together when you're talking not only of murder, but dismemberment. A loose misogynism in the story, true, but you had to laugh, and it ended well, even if there was a big enough plot hole to drive a Mack truck though, as I once said.
There was a blip then in the truly awful "Til Death", which got totally tangled up and, like one of its main characters at the start, fell into a swamp but, unlike her, was unable to rise again and just sort of flailed about looking for some way to end the story.
Finished up then with the hilarious "Judy, You're Not Yourself Today", pulling in magic and witches and bodyswaps, poking fun at gun ownership but ending with a surprisingly bleak denouement, like a shower of ice cold water after being at the beach. Still, four out of four really.

Tales from the Darkside: I have never liked this show. I found the opening a real case of ham (voice) acting, and most of the time it roundly fails to deliver what it promises. With a title like that, you would think it would be like Tales from the Crypt, a horror series, but it's really not. I feel it tries to do Twilight Zone and fails miserably, takes bits from Tales from the Crypt but doesn't know what to do with them, and probably looks enviously at other shows like Monsters and Two Sentence Horror Stories and wishes it could be them. I've found the writing mostly poor, often laughable, and of the episodes I've watched here (five so far), although there was a surprisingly good start with "Red Leader", with a quirky mix of damnation, scandal and comedy,  it quickly plummeted to the depths I expected with "Barter" - quite possibly one of the worst episodes of ANY of the series I've watched here yet - stumbled on into "Snip Snip", which wasn't much better, felt queasy and vomited out "If the Shoes Fit" all over the new carpet and finally fell over its own feet and collapsed in the heap that was "A New lease on Life", which to be fair was not awful, but only because the two before it were so very much worse. This show is for me, as more or less expected, floundering and really has yet to recover. Perhaps it will, but I'm not holding my breath. Pun intended.

One thing I will give it - two actually: the simple idea of reversing the colours at the start to make the picture negative actually works, and makes a creepy effect, and the door then opening from there back into the real world as the episode begins is good too, although shouldn't that be the other way around? A door leading from the real world into that of the Darkside? And what a pity they didn't take a leaf from both Tales from the Crypt and Creepshow by repeating the process at the end. How cool would it be if in the last frame a door opened in the episode, a door leading from the Darkside back to our world?

Other than that though, it's been a poor crop and I don't see it getting any better. Frankly, I fail to see how this show was even commissioned, other than as one of a slew of series desperately trying to cash in on the popularity of perhaps the re-runs and then rebirths of both The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. "We can do that!" said the executives at whoever the damn hell makes Tales from the Darkside - what is it, Tribune Broadcasting? Well no, actually, sorry guys, you can't. Not even close. Even stranger that horror supremo George A. Romero was at the helm for this. Night of the Living Dead, indeed. Dead boring.

Black Mirror: What more need I write about this superlative series? Here is a perfect example of how to look at how the old masters did it, and not only do it as well, but better. More staggering that the mastermind behind it is a comedian, Charlie Brooker, and even perhaps more amazing that it's a British show, a show which trounces almost all the competition off the screen. Yeah, even the Big Two. I've yet to come across an episode that has disappointed, and Brooker seems to have not only his finger but his entire hand on the pulse of modern life, correctly - it would seem - predicting how humanity is going to evolve towards an even more selfish, self-obsessed, materialistic way of living, and how computers and the internet are going to not only be central to, but perhaps even run our lives.

His stories are almost invariably dark, teach some kind of moral if you want to look for it and learn (or ignore) it, and give the very definite impression that he's laughing like some deaths-head over all of us, perhaps a figure like Eddie from Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast, controlling the Devil himself while the world burns. I feel his attitude is a sort of acerbic, sardonic ennui and fatalism with the world; he knows what's happening and he knows there's nothing he or anyone else can do to stop it (would YOU give up Facebook or your smartphone?) but it sure provides him with fuel for his bleak tales of humanity on the edge. If there's a twenty-first century successor to Rod Serling, it has to be this man. I almost just assume each new episode I watch is going to be brilliant, and so far I have not been disappointed, leading to its being top of the chart for most of the run of this project so far.

Kicking off with the glorious "Nosedive", pairing his acerbic humour with a wry nudge of the shoulder to show where we could be, and maybe are, going, it very quickly for me reached its zenith with the powerful and heartbreaking "Metalhead", then powered on into the incredible "Hated in the Nation", still earning top marks. A slight break (but still top spot maintained) as we reached
"Crocodile" and then something of a blip as we ended in the rather sickly sweet but still acceptable "San Junipero." Even though one or two of those episodes is less than perfect, they still run rings around almost all from any of the other series. I'll be surprised if I come across a bad one.

Tales of Tomorrow: I suppose we have to make some allowances for it being so old (1952), possibly the oldest of these type of anthology shows, with some ideas predating those of even the venerable Twilight Zone, but even so, this is poor. The format is annoying, with about five of the twenty-odd minutes of each episode being taken up with advertisements and demonstrations for the products of the sponsor, one of which comes right in the middle of the episode, which really breaks the mood up. The stories, thus far, are poor. The acting is so-so, with a few faces we would come to remember, the dialogue is generally stilted, as you might expect from a fifties show, and over all hovers the ever-present shadow of religion; at this point in at least America, and probably most other places, few if any television writers would dare question the existence of God, the American God, the Christian God, so we get a lot of sort of propaganda for the Church here, which I could do without.

"The Miraculous Serum", the first episode we tried, was just awful; a terrible story that really put women down, with a horrible message about keeping the distaff in their place, and what will result if they are set free. "Past Tense" was better, with a time-travelling backdrop and a half-decent premise, a bleak ending and a sly dig at the pharmaceutical industry too. "Flight Overdue" was just awful; a stupid story with some very worrying elements, as I outlined in the comments to the episode, and yet again a bleak ending. "The Duplicates" was a slightly better story but with a very disturbing idea. Finally, the turd on top of the shit cake, "Bitter Storm". What can I say that I haven't already? So that's Tales of Tomorrow: not a good start and I fail to see how it can get any better. Add to this the fact that despite the fact that I'm supposed to have downloaded both seasons I only have less than half, so some of them are not available to me, and it's not a good picture going forward.

Monsters: I'm very familiar with this show, having watched it on the TV years ago, and I see it as a sort of combination of the best elements from Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone, with a bit of Creepshow thrown in for good measure. Monsters does not limit itself to horror, tackling science fiction and fantasy stories in equal measure, and while the episodes here vary wildly in quality, I know there's enough good stuff in there that if I keep plugging away I will unearth it eventually.

The opening sequence always gets me, with the monster family groaning about there being nothing on TV, and then Monsters starting and they say "Oh great! Our favourite show!" It's a nice disruption of the happy, cosy American nuclear family, and it works well. Unfortunately that's it for the monster family; they're not back at the end to talk about the episode or even just walk up to the TV and switch it off, which I think would have been a good touch. Nevertheless, the stories I've seen so far have not, to be fair, imbued me with confidence, even though I know it's only a matter of time. "Mother Instinct" started us off, and it's a decent take on a kind of Little Shop of Horrors idea; it does at least put both the women in the story in the positions of power, reversing the trend which usually saw the man being the hero and the woman either saved or badly dealt with, as in some of the episodes from Tales from the Crypt and The Outer Limits.

Then we got the godawful "The Vampire Hunter", which still annoys me so much I don't even want to talk about it, followed by "Half as Old as Time", which at least had Nils Lofgren in it, while "Museum Hearts" was, to be honest, not a lot better; at least in this one there was again a sense of girl power, and a philandering man got his just desserts. And we finished on "Hostile Takeover", which was a lot of fun, with some surprisingly gory bits at the end. Always a good sign when the Devil shows up!

Amazing Stories: I'm surprised by this. I seem to remember watching and enjoying these on TV, but so far the ones I've randomly selected have been a huge disappointment. Maybe I was just easier to please back then, or maybe I've just been unlucky and got the really crap ones. Whatever the case, the opening sequence is well put together, in a way that practically screams Spielberg! Stories are a different matter. The first episode I got, "Gershwin's Trunk", was not without its charm but was without much of a plot. Pretty poor and its setting in 1940s Hollywood didn't sit well with me. Mind you, it was a modern classic compared to "Welcome to My Nightmare", which was just, well, awful in every conceivable way. The only really decent one so far has been one from the 21st century reboot, "Dynoman and the Volt!" while silly, explored some deep questions and had a lot to say. Despite actually being written by the Big S himself, "Vanessa in the Garden" I found to be boring and predictable, and a little too sugary sweet, while "Mirror Mirror" was, well, just stupid to the max. I sure hope they pick up soon. Assuming something better is waiting in there.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: I can't see the appeal with this show. The idea of the kids all sitting around telling ghost stories around a campfire wears thin very very quickly, and you start to really hate them. The stories, luckily, make up for that. Not. So far we've had "The Tale of the (they're all called that so I'm going to leave it off the next titles, because I'm lazy. And yes I realise that I've now written more explaining how I'm going to save time than I would had I just written the full titles out!) Vacant Lot", which was a kind of genie/wish-fulfilment sort of deal, with a relatively okay message but nothing special, then "Renegade Virus", which was truly awful, so much so in fact that I felt insulted. They just plundered the idea of the white woman story for "The Prom Queen", and "The Hatching" wasn't much better, but at least it had a certain sense of fun about it. The one episode that made a valiant effort to save this series was "The Night Nurse", which was truly excellent. It was also the last in the series, so perhaps that's a sign. Anyway, in general I'm not expecting much from future episodes, but we'll see.


Night Gallery: Despite the impeccable pedigree of having Rod Serling present it, I've been disappointed with this so far. I like the premise, that every story is represented in a painting in the gallery, which can only be seen at night. Probably. Serling presents well, as he always did, but he seems a little lost and out of place here. The opening episode I looked at was "Last Rites for a Dead Druid", which to me belonged more in the likes of Tales of the Unexpected or Armchair Thriller, very poor. "The Painted Mirror" was just unbelievably awful, not even possible for Zsa Zsa to save this piece of tripe, while "Pamela's Voice" was just annoying. I did enjoy, on one level, "Satisfaction Guaranteed", though it's hard to be really comfortable laughing at the idea of cannibalism. "The Dark Boy" was too long and too Little House-like, as I said, and generally, that one aside, I think Night Gallery suffered from a case of trying to cram too much into each episode, or segment, with some of them a mere ten minutes long. What can you do with ten minutes? How has Serling not learned his lesson from his time on The Twilight Zone? Of course, I may just have been given the worst episodes, or segments of episodes, but I wonder.

Creepshow: Despite its link to Stephen King and the comic of the same name, I also have failed to be impressed with this show. The first episode I watched did not go down well. "Drug Traffic" was horribly violent and gory, and like many of the series here, the two women came to a sticky end. It had a relatively nice twist on right-wing versus left, but really it was just a splatter flick condensed into thirty-odd minutes. Very odd minutes. "Times is Tough in Musky Holler" attempted to profit off the boom in zombie action drama, but mostly failed, leaving the actual zombies right to the end, and it had a poor message of revenge and the abused becoming the abusers, while "Pesticide" was just, weird really. Mind you, "By the Silver Waters of  Lake Champlain" was just stupid. "Time Out" attempted a decent take on time travel, which mostly worked, but the ending was too unremittingly bleak for me, and it left a bad taste. Overall this series has been another disappointment, but I guess we'll see as we go on.

Dimension 404: One of the few new series that really bore watching, a worthy student of the Big Two and maybe even Black Mirror to some extent. They were able to secure the services of Mark Hammill as the narrator, which I feel was quite a coup, but sadly the show lasted only one season, and even that was only six episodes. The opening sequence is quite Twilight Zone/Outer Limits, and I believe it's based on an old radio programme, Dimension X, but the stories are well-written and clever, most needing only two or three characters. The first episode we looked at was "Cinethrax", involving the invasion of an alien species via the movie screen, and somewhat like Brooker's masterpiece had a dark, dismal ending, while "Impulse" looked to the far future, creating a post-apocalyptic world linked in with overzealous gamers, and was a story with a very core moral of taking responsibility. It was only one of the few series to feature strong female leads, as did the next one, "Chronos", though this was very much played for laughs. Another time-travel story, this time connected via the world of a Saturday morning TV cartoon show, "Bob" told a Christmas story with a difference, while "The Matchmaker" was really pure Black Mirror, envisioning a time when the perfect mate could be not only found, but constructed, and how that fed into the idea of slavery.

It's a pity Charlie Brooker and the writers for Dimension 404 never got together: imagine what they could have come up with. But there is only one episode left now, so while Dimension 404 swapped the top spot with Black Mirror, it will be hard to see it maintain this performance when the episodes run out. Still, it's proven a powerful contender, easily knocking the big guns aside while still paying its dues to them.

Room 104: While seeming at its heart to be a shoo-in, as I noted, I found out quickly that, good though the stories are in this series, they only occasionally feature SFFH elements, with some of them simple human interest stories. The first episode, "Itchy", , with its theme of a man unknowingly carrying an alien baby inside him, caught my attention right away, while the next one, "The Internet", has no such genre credits, dealing entirely with a guy's attempt to have his mother send him on his unpublished novel and in the process ending up with it deleted. Cute, but not genre in any way. "Phoenix" does at least qualify, with its ambiguous tale of the lone survivor of a plane crash being visited, I think, by an angel, but even less genre than "The Internet" is "My Love", a simple story of two people growing old together and how one copes with the sudden death of their partner. The last one I watched so far, "Fur", was, not to be too unfair to it, bloody awful. And animated, into the bargain.

Nevertheless, despite an initial thought of dropping it, I've decided to keep going with it and see what sort of stories are to come from this strangest of hotel rooms. Time will tell.

Creeped Out: There's really nothing about this that creeps me out, and the idea of having some kid wear a Halloween mask and wander around whistling as some sort of device intended to scare does not work. I think they call him The Curious. I don't care. I'm not. Curious that is, except as to how someone thought this would be a chiling way to introduce each episode. In fairness, they do follow it up at the end, having him take some sort of trophy, something pertaining to the story, and then wander off, probably for tea and some evening telly. Anyway, it's pretty clearly aimed at kids, as the first episode I looked at, "The Takedown", shows. Being set in the world of wrestling, this was on a bad footing with me from the beginning. It was okay I guess but nothing terribly special. After that we had "Kindlesticks", which tried harder, but really went nowhere. Good twist at the end I guess, then "A Boy Called Red" was another Back to the Future style thing, reasonably well written, while "Splinta Claws" was just silly, but good fun. A demonic robotic Santa: what's not to like? A lot not to like though about "Shed No Fear", which was dire to the max, and promised so much.

Overall though I wasn't scared once (not a prerequisite of this project I know, but when you have a show called Creeped Out you'd think there might be some chance that you'd be, you know, creeped out, and I wasn't). Maybe later, though I doubt it.

The Veil: This is interesting, in that it's a show that was never aired, which is a pity as it's not terrible. Boris Karloff does a good job introducing the stories in a kind of Roald Dahl way, before there was a Roald Dahl way, and though the stories themselves are nothing to write home about, they beat the likes of Tales of Tomorrow, which comes from a similar era, into a cocked hat. Or any hat. The first one I tried, "Summer Heat", had a good idea, about a man who can see things before they happen, and was essentially a kind of one-character deal, while "A Chapter of Genesis" took the age-old idea of the family feud after the funeral as the dearly departed's will was contested to new heights (or depths) and threw in a ghost to liven things up. "Food on the Table" was just stupid and went nowhere, while "Whatever Happened to Peggy" might reasonably have been titled "Whatever Happened to the Story?" It finished (so far) strongly with "Girl on the Road", which seems to have inspired the later Twilight Zone episode. But for all its failings, and allowing that it was made on the cusp of the 1960s, just as The Twilight Zone was about to burst onto the scene, it could have done well had it been released.

Goosebumps: Another one for the kids, based on the books of R.L. Stine, it started well with "The Girl Who Cried Monster", which had a lot of humour in it and a good twist at the end (did not see that one coming), and to be fair it kept up well, with "The Cuckoo Clock of Doom" once again retreading the old Back to the Future idea, though adding in an interesting twist too, and I quite enjoyed "Shocker on Shock Street", with its own shocking (sorry) twist. And then another one. But it all kind of fell down then with "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp", which more or less did exactly what it said on the tin, and didn't leave room for any twist. Well, none you couldn't see coming a mile off anyway. It then blatantly ripped off one of its earlier stories (or the ending, anyway) with the lump of crap that is "Vampire Breath".

Bloodride: This was a pleasant surprise (well, not really pleasant, but you know what I mean). The first show in the project - the only show in the project indeed - not in English, Bloodride is produced in Norway, and has an interesting premise. A bus driver gets on a bus at the beginning of each episode, looks around and the bus is empty. He starts up the engine, adjusts his mirror and suddenly the bus is full. One of the passengers is then the focus of the story. It's quite dark (well, did you ever know a light-hearted Norwegian drama? Lilyhammer doesn't count) and again pretty much stays in the horror sphere, as you might expect from the title.

The first one I looked at really whet my appetite for more, as "The Ultimate Sacrifice" (I'm not going to bother with the Norwegian title; it's in the original review) blended pagan rituals with human greed and family ties, and ends darkly, as does the next one, "Lab Rats", featuring a very paranoid scientist and with a good twist at the end, while "The Old School" is perhaps the creepiest of them so far, possibly one of the creepiest of all the series, a real ghost story with a very bleak twist and a powerful, unexpected ending. Rounding it off then with "Three Sick Brothers", perhaps they've saved the best to last. Or maybe they're all going to be this good. But the idea here of one man seeing two brothers who don't exist as a way to absolve himself of the crimes he commits is a masterstroke, and not something I could have seen coming. The last episode I checked out, leaving only one, sadly let the series down slightly, as "Bad Writer" unfortunately lived up to its title, and was frustratingly confusing, with too many false endings.

It's sad that again this is, so far anyway, only one season of six episodes, but if you don't have a problem reading subtitles (mostly they're clearly legible though on occasion it can get frustrating when the subtitler obviously hasn't given any thought to how they'll be read against all backdrops) this is a series that is well worth tracking down. Hopefully they'll make a second season.

The Haunting Hour: Another from the mind of R.L. Stine (he of Goosebumps) and I find I'm getting mixed results with it. The first episode I came across, "The Perfect Brother", tried an interesting take on humans vs androids",  and the next one, "Long Live Rock'n'Roll", had a certain charm about its tale of a deal with the devil, kind of echoing the legend about Robert Johnson, but as with Goosebumps this comes across very much as a "scary show for kids", which I guess is its target audience. "Night of the Mummy" though was just bad, although it did have a decent twist at the end, while "The Weeping Woman" was okay but essentially an old Mexican or Cuban or something legend used in the tale. Another kind of "White Woman" style of thing. Like I say, mixed results. The most recent, "I'm Not Martin", was just a complete shambles, and that's being kind to it.

Into the Dark: I almost abandoned this after the first episode, but have decided, like Room 104, to stick with it and see where it goes. Since that first one, it's been a mixed bag, with the first one being nothing more than a slasher movie, so after "Midnight Kiss" I was ready to dump it, but went on cautiously and found "Treehouse" to be much better, with its tale of witches who weren't witches, then things took a bit of a nosedive (no pun intended, Charlie!) for "Good Boy", as we followed the murderous adventures of a girl and her devil dog, and on into "I'm Only Fucking with You", which I still haven't quite made my mind up about. As the tour guide said in The Simpsons, almost, lots of murders in that one! We've so far completed the run with "My Valentine", which was a very enjoyable look at the darker side of being a pop star and how women are used. One thing that has come through quite strongly here is that in general, this series seems to be mostly about female empowerment, so perhaps if that's the case the title was a bit poorly chosen? At any rate, it's paying some dividends.

Masters of Horror: Now this is a different kettle of disembodied eyes! First of all, the stories are mostly mini-movies, mostly an hour long (though some are longer), written by, as the title suggests, masters in the field. The first one I tried almost turned me off the series it was so gory and terrifying, not to mention incomprehensible, but I got past "Imprint" and found "The V Word", while not anything that great - standard vampire story really - a lot more enjoyable, and with some humour, which was totally absent in the previous episode. "Haeckel's Tale" was a kind of nineteenth century retelling of something I think I read once by Byron maybe? Essentially a tale of ghouls and necrophilia, quite disturbing and again with not a hint of humour about it. The last one, so far, "Sick Girl", was just terrible, and involved my least favourite creatures, insects. Ugh. Supposed (it says here) to be a comedy but I didn't find it that funny. The series finally came up trumps though with the darkly hilarious tale of two feuding killers in "Pick Me Up".

Love, Death & Robots: You have to admire some of the animation here, but of course that shouldn't be the sole metric. If the stories aren't good, it really doesn't matter how they dress them up. The first, "Ice", was not the greatest to be honest, and other than its setting on an alien planet and the augmentation of humanity, was basically a story about two brothers trying to outdo each other. It was ok, but "Lucky 13" was better, even if it was also a pretty simple story based on a military pilot and her ship. "Beyond the Aquila Rift" had some of the best animation I've seen in this series so far; it was so good that for a moment I thought they were mixing in live action. The story was a little loose, a ship getting lost in deep space while some alien caretaker looks after it and all the others drawn there, but the randomiser saved the best for last for me in the hilarious, cutting and very clever "Automated Customer Service", which just had me nodding and smiling all the time. "The Witness" had an intriguing premise, is all I'll say.

It's interesting that this is the only one, other than Masters of Horror, of the series where the format can be completely different from episode to episode, which perhaps keeps it fresh. I'm happy to check out further episodes.

Monsterland: I was quite impressed with this. The first episode, "Iron River, Michigan", was very well written and diverged from what seemed to be a standard murder story into something much more bizarre and frightening, with a sense of revenge and an unexpected ending. I didn't like "New Orleans, Louisiana" at all, not least for the annoying jazz trumpeter, but I kind of didn't quite get it. I mean, I did, I just did not understand the ending. The episode dealt with a difficult subject, not only child abuse but ignored or unseen child abuse, perhaps even tacitly approved? "Palacios, Texas" saw a rather silly tale about a mermaid, though there was a more realistic - and somewhat shocking - ending, while "Plainfield, Illinois" was just ridiculous: one of them dies and yet doesn't and won't die, and the other keeps her alive in the cellar? Yeah. The last one I've done, "Newark, New Jersey", just confused me.

Two Sentence Horror Stories: I wondered how a show would manage to stick to this format, but there is a slight cheat in that the first sentence is written, then the episode unfolds, and the second sentence is the final word, as it were, encapsulating in one sentence what happened in the episode. I enjoyed "Essence", the tale of an unscrupulous salon owner literally using her staff to stay young and beautiful, while "Elliot" did not appeal to me so much; the idea of the devil giving them a tool with which to take their revenge, and the kids hanging in the lockers - just didn't really sit right with me, though it was a decent story. "The Killer Inside", once it revealed its twist fairly early in the episode, had little to offer though and as for "Erased"? I just found that sad. What sort of message was the writer trying to send here? Much better was "The Fix", with its misleading conclusion and huge twist at the end.

So that's what I thought of the series I've selected, having seen at this point five episodes from each. Some will need to be replaced soon - Dimension 404 and Bloodride - so I'll have to find other series, but that won't be till after the next round.

And, speaking of that...

ROUND SIX, PART I: THE CLASSICS
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Title: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Series: The Twilight Zone
Season: 5
Year: 1964
Writer(s): Ambrose Bierce
Storyline: It's 1862 and a man is being hanged from a bridge by the US Army. The rope they use is so long though that he plunges right into the river and sinks to the bottom, and is able to free himself. When he surfaces he seems to hear everything more clearly; insects on leaves, water in the river, the voices of the soldiers on the bridge (speaking in a kind of slow, guttural manner). Seeing he has survived (duh) the soldiers begin shooting at him in the water, but for professional soldiers they're crap shots and miss him. They even try hitting him with a cannon. And miss. Eventually he gets pulled into rapids, which take him away from the soldiers.

Finally he gets to shore and is elated to find he's alive and has escaped the noose and the subsequent attempts by the army to shoot him. I have no idea where this is going, but look, unless he now encounters giant insects, finds he's gone back/forwards in time, meets his doppelganger or ends up living inside some giant's bottle, I don't know how this is going to be seen as a Twilight Zone episode at all. They're going to have to pull off something really spectacular in order to get me onside here, and you know, I don't think they're going to manage it. Now he's off and running through the forest, and we have four minutes to go in the episode. WTF, as they say, is going on here?

Finally it seems he reaches his own house and his wife comes out to meet him as he runs towards her. Now, the only thing I can imagine here, in the few minutes left to this fucking endurance test disguised as a Twilight Zone episode, is that he never made it out, he's dead or dying and is imagining all this while he swings from a rope on the bridge? If not, you got me. Or, to be more precise, you lost me. Yeah right, that was it. He's just died, hanged on the bridge, and all that was in his mind. Jesus fucking Christ. Or perhaps I should say, zut alors! Total shite, or le merde complait.


Things I thought would happen, but didn't: There might actually be a story here.

Things I liked: Fuck all

Things I didn't like: The stupid idiot who hanged the guy with about ninety feet of rope! How did they expect to hang him if the rope was long enough to drop him into the river?

Also, the really annoying jazz music when he surfaces. The Twilight Zone is not known for its music (unless it's creepy incidental music) and a song seems completely out of place here, out of step with the ethos of the show.

The fact that the guy, having surfaced and (slowly) realised that the soldiers are now aiming at him in the water, doesn't think to dive back below and waits for the first shot before he swims off.

The interminable wait to see if something - anything - was going to happen.

The lack of almost any dialogue. Did not contribute to the story and in fact made it seem far longer than it was.

Comments: This is very atmospheric and very eerie. There is literally not a word spoken for about the first five minutes of the episode; an almost ambient feeling pervades the opening scenes, almost peaceful. Quite surreal. Overall though this is one of the slowest, most boring episodes of this show I've watched to date. I mean, it's stretched to infinity. We're halfway through and the first scene is still playing out, with even now very little in terms of dialogue. Very annoying. Fucking song is back. Shut the smeg up.

The idea to have no dialogue, or hardly any, for me backfires here. It makes scenes such as his supposedly swimming the river and running through the forest interminably long and boring. Serling introduces this as having been produced in France by a French director and crew, adn man does it show. And yet, he also says it won the Cannes Film Festival for 1962. For Most Boring Piece of Crap, maybe.

Rating: :1stars:

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Title: "The Guests"
Series: The Outer Limits
Season: 1
Year: 1961
Writer(s): Donald S. Sandford
Storyline: A man runs away from something that looks like a pair of upturned buttocks, and collapses. A young man driving by finds him lying in the road and goes to seek help, but the buttock-thing turns into a big house and the man vanishes, collapsing into a pile of dust with a despairing expression. The young man finds a pocket watch, with a picture of a young girl in it, then sees the "house" and goes there to see if he can get help. The door spookily opens by itself, and inside appears to be deserted. He does however find a half-smoked cigarette, still burning, and then a young woman asleep in a chair by the fire, and it's clearly the one whose picture is in the locket, but she jumps up once she sees him (or the watch) and runs off.

He then sees a door which appears to  give off some sort of ominous vibes and looks out of place with the rest of the house, kind of like a door in a hospital or something. Suddenly three more people appear - two elderly, a man and a woman, and a young woman, not the same as the one who ran away. But when he tries to solicit their help they seem unwilling, not even bothered, and when he asks to use the  phone he's told there is none. They all act very strangely - one of the main questions being was the old man very old? Randolph, the elderly man, tries to say it's nothing to do with them, but the oldish woman (his wife?) dismisses this. Flora, the younger woman, seems agitated and asks him again if the old man was very old. He shakes her off, angrily going to see what help he can obtain for the old man who, so far as he knows, is still lying in the road back there.

Then Tess, the first young woman he met, the one in the picture, the one who jumped out of the chair, returns and says he's very kind but he will not find kindness here. She confirms the picture in the watch/locket is her, but says the old man is dead, and has been for some time. When he tries to leave the house though, he is suddenly gripped by some powerful force and dragged against his will up the stairs, towards some sort of alien thing, like a flower or something which appears to be at the top of the stairs. The others watch, in a sort of mixture of horror and acceptance, as he is forced up the steps.

The thing speaks to him, saying this is its universe and it needs to know if he knows the missing factor in the equation. (Trollheart's Theory: the house is a crashed spaceship and this alien needs some sort of code to get it moving again, though I have to say this guy doesn't exactly look like a rocket scientist). Okay well instantly I'm wrong, as it seems this dude is trying to reduce the human experience into one simple equation, but is missing the part of it he needs to solve the thing. Or something. It says there are positive and negative sides of the human condition to be balanced out, but there is one important element missing. Oh crap: it's going to be love, isn't it? Don't let it be love. I bet it's love.

Anyway he tries to resist and the alien sends him back downstairs. The other people - other prisoners in the "house" - tell him it's only a matter of time; he will submit eventually. They tell him they have all been there since the 1920s, and that he, like them, will never leave. He tries to prove them wrong, but the door he came in is no longer there. To quote Roger Waters, twenty years later, "there must have been a door there in the wall when I came in!" But it's gone now.

An observation: don't know if it's relevant, but none of these people are very nice. Randolph is a smarmy git, who was about to have to face charges of corruption in his company when he was trapped here. Flora is an actress who lost her livelihood when talkies came along, and the other woman (who is Randolph's wife, we discover) seems to delight in the pain and confusion of others. Only the unnamed woman who was in the chair seems out of place here, like someone who does not belong.

As if reading my mind, Wayne now points out that they're all cruel and seem to be enjoying each other's discomfort, other than the girl in the picture. He walks down long corridors, surely longer than could fit in this house, and finds rows of identical doors, each of which lead nowhere. The girl follows him, and eventually the obvious happens. After they've kissed (no, that's all they do: this is 1961 remember!) she says she will show him the door out of the house. And she does. It leads out into a garden (with a worrying amount of tombstones in it, I must say) and then he gets all weird with her, talking about "don't interrogate the wind" and shit like that. She tries to get him to leave, but he won't - she's afraid he will be trapped here. Then she runs back into the house and he, naturally, goes after her.

Next he's in front of the alien again, which tells him that the others are not trapped; each has their own door which leads out of the house. Each knows where the door is, but none of them  will use it. Wayne heads downstairs and demands to know why they're pretending they're trapped, why they don't use their doors, but they keep up the pretence, saying there is no way out of the house. Tess confirms this; she says now the alien will never let him leave. She says that here time stands still, but once anyone steps outside their true age catches up on them. This is what happened to the old man - her father - Wayne found outside. When he declares he'll stay with her here forever, she runs outside to show him that she's an old woman, and, well, basically crumbles to dust. Kind of kills the romance, don't you think? Maybe they should see other people, huh? Do nothing on the spur, you know how it is. The alien then lets him leave, having determined that the missing factor in the equation is (and who would have guessed it?) love. Jesus on a frog racer heading into pole position!


Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Like I said, I thought this was going to be a crashed spaceship, not a crashed story idea.

Things I liked: The piano music Flora was playing; it was really emotional and deep.

Things I didn't like: The "tonight on" sort of preview at the start; makes it hard to get a handle on the story and often gives away important information before you get to see the episode. I think The Outer Limits was the only one of the anthology shows to do this (though not from the very first episode), which may tell its own tale as to its effectiveness, or lack of it.

Comments: My god, if The Twilight Zone episode dragged, this one all but went backwards! Far too long, for what was in the story, and very dark and claustrophobic. Put me in mind, for the second time with this series, of "The Fall of the House of Usher". Terrible, predictable ending and just nonsense really. Once again this show makes its episodes far too cerebral, far too long and far too fucking boring. I could not wait to get to the end, and when I did, there was no real payoff. A combination of a mystery horror and a fairy tale, with the worst elements of each.

Rating: :1stars:

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Well, it's been another shaky start - in fact, a total fucking disaster for round six so far. Let's see if the wily Crypt Keeper can liven things up a bit. Or should that be deaden things up? YAH-HAHAHAHA!

Title: "Escape"
Series: Tales from the Crypt
Season: 7
Year: 1996
Writer(s): Al Katz, Gilbert Adler
Storyline: During the end of World War II, a German POW is happy to sell out his mates in order to gain privileges, but when he returns after having caused his fellow prisoners to be shot, the camp CO is not interested in honouring any deal made by the officer Luger  talked to, who has now been reassigned. Unaware that he's working with the British, and given that he has a reputation for having broken out of one of the most secure prisons in England, Luger is approached by other prisoners to help them escape. He goes of course to Major Nicholson with the information, but the CO is not impressed. They've seen a heavily-bandaged casualty be brought in, and now Nicholson tells Luger that this is one of the survivors of his last so-called escape, who can blow the lid on his collaboration with the British. The Major intends to use his testimony to discredit Luger.

One of the other officers, who, like Luger, realises the jig is up with the war and is more than happy to spend what remains of it in relative comfort here in the camp, prevails upon him to help him silence the returned prisoner, thereby keeping Luger's secret and allowing him to thwart future escapes. He approaches one of the nurses distributing supplies from an ambulance and intimates that Major Nicholson is breaking the rules, and she seems shocked. Luger and his confederate make their way into the hospital and suffocate the patient, but he proves harder to kill than expected. Luger cuts his throat and legs it, but the patient has enough strength to write Luger's name in his blood on the window, where everyone can see it when the alarm is raised and they're all herded outside.

In the end Luger is betrayed by the other officer, who it turns out is a British officer, and Nicholson rather cowardly shoots Luger, remarking that he has been played at his own game. What a heap of shit.


Things I thought would happen, but didn't: The Crypt Keeper would come through. Sigh.

Things I liked: Virtually nothing

Things I didn't like: The ridiculous way this was set up and the ending. And the beginning. And the middle.

Comments: There's some real star quality here: Nikolas Grace, Martin Kemp and Roy Dotrice. I must say, I'm a little confused about the CO's attitude towards the German prisoners Muller helped get shot. He calls them "three good men", but in a POW situation, and especially as the war is drawing to a close with the Nazis clearly on the losing side, I really doubt any British officer would consider Germans good men.  His vendetta against Muller makes no sense. He may hate the man, but instead of allowing him to be used as a pawn, a way to stop the prisoners escaping, he's prepared to humiliate and expose him, losing a valuable asset, simply, it seems, because what Muller is doing is not the "done thing". Unlikely, to say the least, especially for a practical army officer.

Also unlikely that an ambulance tech, told by a German officer she does not know that one of her own, a (presumably) highly-decorated and respected officer, is contravening the Geneva Convention, would suddenly want to help. I mean, for one thing, the Geneva Convention never meant anything to the Nazis, and even if he is breaching it now, so what? What's it to do with her? Why should she care? But she does, and gets involved. Again, as if.

In fact, let me break down how bad this was.
First: a British commanding officer, whose subordinate has made a deal with a German POW to stop escapees, refutes the deal.
Second: This same CO mourns and/or sympathises with and over the deaths of enemy soldiers.
Third: He goes out of his way to set up an elaborate plan to kill the German POW, ignoring all military convention (the guy is an officer, after all).
Fourth: Knowing full well the war is by now officially over, he still kills the German. It's now murder if it can ever be proved.
Fifth: He enlists ANOTHER officer to help him trick and kill the man, IN A FUCKING BRITISH PRISONER CAMP!
Sixth: He willingly puts the life of a wounded German POW at risk, just to catch Luger.

Other elements of the story went nowhere. The nurse? Nothing came of that. The patient? Killed, but nobody cared. Luger's name scrawled in blood on the window? Luger's dead now so who cares? Plans to escape? War's over, buddy.

And, most fucking damning of all, this story has NO genre credits. It's not horror, it's not fantasy. It could just as easily be an episode of Tales of the Unexpected, Ripping Yarns or any other non-genre anthology show. It's a war story, pure and (extremely) simple.

And while we're at it, although it's later revealed the other German officer is actually a British one, why, when Luger thinks he is a German, do the two escape in the coffins when both have confessed to the other that they don't want to escape? Worthy of being an episode of Tales from the Darkside. Yeah, that bad.

Rating: :1stars: (I would give it a lower rating if that were possible).

Oh, crap! Speaking of that show, now it's up to it to try to turn things around. Don't hold your breath!
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/77/Talesdarksidetitle.JPG)

Title: "The Trouble with Mary Jane"
Series: Tales from the Darkside
Season: 2
Year: 1982
Writer(s): Edithe Swensen
Storyline: Okay this does not look good. The first few lines of the synopsis on Wiki (which I usually avoid in case it gives anything away but happened to catch despite myself) describes it as a "humorous take on The Exorcist." I fucking hate The Exorcist, and humorous or not, I doubt this is going to go down well. But can it be any worse than what's gone before? So we;re in the bedroom of a possessed child yadda yadda, but the mother has called in some pretty amateur exorcists, basically scammers. The wife doesn't want to take on the cse, but the lure of fifty grand has turned the husband's head.

The idea however of having the demon move from the girl to a pig - yeah, you heard right - goes astray when she prevents them getting near her, and they need to draw a pentagram on her forehead for the exorcism to work. The husband is not beaten yet though, trying to summon an even more powerful demon than the one in Mary Jane. Surprisingly he does this, and now there are two demons in the girl. But this girl ain't big enough for the both of us, as the two demons begin to bicker and argue about who gets to stay, each trying to out-demon the other, each claiming to be the more powerful.

Then they both leave the body of the girl and end up each in one of the bodies of the man and his wife. Christ almighty. Saw it coming.


Things I liked: The idea of the two demons fighting for possession of the body was good, but they didn't develop the concept the way I think it might have been done.
Things I didn't like: Everything else

Comments: The downward spiral continues. Will nobody rid me of these turbulent stories? That was pretty awful. Not a lot more to say really. I can't believe this was written by the same author who gave us the hilarious "Red Leader"! I man, I can see the general same vein of humour going through it, but she swung and missed on this one, and badly. I suppose at least there was a little thought put into it, so rather amazingly, of the four I've watched so far, this was the best. Though that's not saying much.
Rating: :2stars:

God save me! Surely Black Mirror will be better. Come on, Charlie! Rescue me from this morass of mediocrity! Help me, Charlie Brooker! You're my only hope!
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg/500px-Black_Mirror_%28British_TV_series%29_logo.svg.png)
Title: "Be Right Back"
Series: Black Mirror
Season: 2
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Charlie Brooker
Storyline: After her husband is killed, Martha  is signed up, without her knowledge, by her friend to a new software system that can mimic the responses of people and allow them to feel like they're talking to them. Using online public information it copies the mannerisms of dead people. Though she thinks it's sick at first, when she becomes pregnant she decides to try it. She's been told that if she wants, she can give the programme access to her husband's private emails so it can get even more like him, and then when she does this Ash is able to call her (well, the software is) and talk to her and keep her company.

Then there's another level, where a blank lump of synthetic flesh can be imprinted with her husband's image and personality, to basically I guess grow a new person, a replica of him. But once he's "grown", she finds it hard to get to grips with. Well, you would, wouldn't' you? I mean, if she - as she presumably will - has sex with him, is she technically cheating on her late husband? So many ethical questions. Well, obviously not such a problem, as she's now shagging him.

Quick theory here: I think at the end, she's going to be killed, or die anyway, and he's going to order up a copy of her, leaving them as two kind of not-really-people living a new life together while the people they're based on are dead. Maybe. Anyway, her sister turns up, and you now have to wonder how she's going to explain the fact that her husband is back alive, as such. In the interim, she gets him to hide. How long's that going to work for? Now little things about Ash begin to annoy her: the way he doesn't sleep, the way he can't be cut, doesn't know to stop her drinking when she's had enough, doesn't know her sister. His unreality gets to her eventually; everything he does is based on the knowledge he has of Ash, and so there's no real way for him to surprise her or act outside of the normal behaviour exhibited by the original. Eventually she just loses it and kicks him out.

But he can't go 25 metres from his activation point - the bath - unless she is with him, and so he has to stand outside the house all night. She quickly sees, if not the funny side then certainly the futility in having put him out - where is he going to go, anyway? - and brings him back into the house. She decides to take him to the cliffs, where they had been talking before, when he was just a voice on the phone. It is, or was, a popular spot for suicides, and you can now see where this is going. She's going to push him off isn't she? She's decided she'd rather live with the memory of who Ash was than try to recreate him and live with that person.

She tells him to jump, but then we see him break down - or pretend to - and then it's years later and her daughter is bringing him cake up into the attic, where he's being kind of stored. Tres weird.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't:
Things I liked:
Things I didn't like:

Comments: Finally. Black Mirror never lets me down. Ever. A really touching little story about who we are, more than the sum of our parts, and how we deal with grief. If we could all just bring our loved ones back when they die, would we grieve at all? Would death lose its sting, would loss end up bereft of all meaning? And would we then get colder, more dismissive of grief, death and indeed life? A clever if somewhat disturbing ending, and another first-rate story from the man who never disappoints, and Black Mirror saves part one of round six in the dying stages.

Rating: :5stars:

ROUND SIX PART II: YE LESSER MORTALS

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/TalesOfTomorrow%2COpeningTitle.PNG)
Title: "The Fatal Flower"
Series: Tales of Tomorrow
Season: 2
Year: 1952
Writer(s): Frank de Felitta
Storyline: Scientists may be clever, but this one is major league dumb. He is actively trying to create - get this - a huge, man-eating plant! Why? Not the foggiest. Something to do with food supply, but how he thinks this is going to help I don't know. I mean, hasn't he seen Little Shop of - oh, no. Not made yet. Well, what about Day of the Trif - ah. Well, you don't surely have to watch films about alien plants taking over Earth to know that what he's trying to do is a really bad idea, and can only end in disaster. But, like most (mad) scientists, he can't be reasoned with or dissuaded from his course. Of which he, or someone else, is surely soon to be the main one. Course, that is.

There's some nonsense about one of his helpers buying a letter from the scientist. They're in Brazil or somewhere,  very warm, and mail only comes through every three months. The new guy wants something to occupy his mind and offers to buy one of the scientist's letters for ten dollars, which is fine until he won't tell the doctor who it was from, acting all mysterious and saying he has paid for it so that it's his. The two come to blows, and the doctor ends up being pushed into the man-eating plant.

He puts a lock on the plant house door and tells the other guy he's fired. Well, I mean, what did the guy expect? He had a physical altercation with his boss, and only a few weeks on the job. The doctor though realises that he may have inadvertently handed over a letter from his wife, and as he tries to get the other guy to confirm or deny this - and is told he hasn't even opened the damn thing yet - his heart, not the best, begins to give him trouble. He offers to reinstate his inferior, but the guy is laughing like a lunatic, and it's no deal. Then the doctor starves the plant (remember the plant? I personally had almost forgotten about it, but no, it's still there, struggling to find its way through the plot. Rather like myself) for three days until his nemesis rather stupidly stands in front of it, brandishing the letter in triumph. Well, at least the plant isn't hungry any more!

As the doctor opens the letter, having extracted it from his assistant's thrashing hand, he finds it to be a note from his employer introducing the guy who just became plant food. His heart giving out now, he too falls prey to the plant. Fuck them both: it's welcome to them, and also the writer of this piece of shit.

Things I didn't like: The melodramatic acting. Each guy could have been a pig, they hammed it up so much. Completely unbelievable. And how stupid are they both to sit in front of a GIANT FUCKING MAN-EATING PLANT? I mean, hello?

Comments: This series just gets worse! That was the most confused and unlikely story I've seen in a while. The whole idea of someone paying for, and then refusing to return, a fucking letter is so ludicrous as to be all but laughable. And the entire plot was built around that! God almighty.

Rating: :1stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/Monsters_%281988_%E2%80%93_1991%29_poster.jpg)
Title: "Small Blessing"
Series: Monsters
Season: 3
Year: 1990
Writer(s): Peg Haller and Bob Schneider
Storyline: A mother is desperately trying to get her baby to sleep, so when she falls asleep herself and then wakes up and he is in the land of Nod, she is terrified that the butcher, delivering meat to her, will ring the doorbell and wake him up. But he doesn't, walking in the door, which he warns her is a bad idea to leave open, as there is a psycho killer on the loose. Well of course there is. He remarks on how much meat she's ordered, but she brushes him off.

(Trollheart's Theory: this one is not hard to guess. All that meat (raw meat), a killer on the loose and we haven't seen her baby's face yet, only seen him from behind? Surely he's some monster, demon, feral thing who is the killer?) When the husband comes home she has again fallen asleep, and little Eric is nowhere to be seen, but she points him out, clinging to the ceiling. The father does not seem surprised by this, and says he has brought something for his child. It's a football, but Eric bites and deflates it. We can see now he is a monster, with sharp teeth and a demonic face.

When the two parents go to check on him he is gone! The mother panics, worrying about what the neighbours will do when they see the child? Organise a mob, no doubt, she thinks. And not to search for him. Look, either the father knows more than he's saying or he is thick as shite, pretending his kid is normal when he quite obviously is nothing of the sort. The two fight over him, and the husband leaves in a huff. Meanwhile the butcher comes in through the back door and - surprising me at least - he's the mad killer, not the kid! Nice twist. Then little Eric breaks out of his crib to come and rescue mummy, see off the mad butcher and everything is right at home.

Things I didn't like: How blindly stupid the father was, making excuses for his demonic kid.

Comments: Another excellent episode. I thought I had it sussed, and I did, to an extent, but I did not see the twist. It's a bit stupid that the father is so blind/thick, take your pick, but the episode is played for laughs and really works well. Bravo!

Rating: :5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/AmazingStoriesTVseries.jpg)
Title: "The Wedding Ring"
Series: Amazing Stories
Season: 2
Year: 1986
Writer(s): Stu Krieger, Steven Spielberg
Storyline: A put-upon waitress is told she'll have to come in on her day off, to facilitate the manager going off with the younger, prettier waitress. The boss is a right prick, and everyone, from staff to customers, treats Lois like garbage. It's her anniversary, too. Without a present for her, her husband takes a wedding ring he finds in the prop department where he works. Having put the ring on she suddenly changes, becoming much more passionate, more assertive.

Herbert finds out that the ring he took used to belong to a notorious murderer, a black widow who killed all three of her husbands. The owner of the store had intended to use it to decorate a wax dummy he has of the woman, but now it's missing. Meanwhile, back in the cafe, the new Lois  is making her presence felt in no uncertain terms. She teases her miserable boss in a clingy new outfit, then quits. Coming home, Herbert is greeted by a meat cleaver flung at the door (Lois says "it slipped!") and coming into the house sees a massive collection of knives his wife has bought. He begins to feel even more nervous.

Realising his wife is now possessed by the spirit of the dead murderess, Herbert tries to get her to take the ring off, but no dice. She attacks him with a knife and chases him around the house, until finally he manages, with the aid of a stick of butter to get the ring off her finger, and the spirit leaves her. Still, looking at herself now, at her new image, she loves it, and it gives her new confidence. Herbert throws the ring out the window, and in a clever bit of karma, her old boss picks it up and gives it to his girlfriend, the other waitress.

Things I liked: The turnaround/payback at the end


Comments: Again, the Spielberg name pulls in the stars. In this one we have Rhea Pearlman (Carla from Cheers) and Danny DeVito, who also directs. The question is, does the presence of these comedy titans cover for a bad story, or do they enhance it? Is this just window dressing to hide a poor episode? No, this time he's done it. A lovely little story of two people in love trying to show each other how much they love the other, a cursed ring and a cool piece of payback at the end. Excellent.

Rating: :5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/AYAotD_logo.png)
Title: "The Tale of the Unexpected Visitor"
Series: Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Season: 5
Year: 1996
Writer(s): Alan Kingsberg
Storyline: A kid whose father is an astronomical scientist or some damn thing tries to use his dad's setup to hack into a satellite to get a free show, but instead ends up contacting alien life. While Sherman is out of the room, Burt, his stoner mate, accesses the father's top secret project notes (which are, of course, just lying around where anybody could stumble over them) and somehow sets up a communication with a distant planet, using the music he and Sherman wrote as the message. Then he gets a message back! But terrified now, as he wasn't supposed to touch the equipment, Burt shuts off the computers.

That night an alien boogies on down to see what this Earth place is like, dude (sorry; got somewhat caught up in the whole stoner aspect of the writing. Man.) and starts like collecting specimens. Radical! Sorry. It takes the dog, and the Sherman's kid brother Bobby, using some sort of golden sticky spiderweb sort of deal. Awesome! Sorry again; that will be the last one. Sherman and Burt come across the web, and also a sort of metal door in the forest. When they throw the dog's toy through, it disappears (even though the whole door is about three or four inches thick at best) and then it's thrown back out at them. Showing for once a bit of sense, the two run.

Back at the house, they can't find Bobby, and checking the computers it seems the aliens are plotting a course towards Earth. Then Burt gets caught and taken by the web. Sherman legs it back to the forest, and goes through the metal door, armed with the greatest weapon known to man: a stick. Here he finds Burt and Bobby and the dog, all trapped in a perspex tube. Amazingly, it's quite impervious to the power of the stick! Somehow, Burt has worked out that everything is controlled by musical tones, and tells Sherman that if he can play a D Sharp note the cage will open. He records the note, runs back to the door and it does work.

They then find out that the alien was a kid, who had misinterpreted the musical notes as an invitation to come and play. The other alien is its mother, who has come to take him home. She apologises for any inconvenience.

Things I liked: Stoner dude. Excellent!

Things I didn't like: The epilogue was ridiculous (see below) and like "The Tale of the Renegade Virus" the whole process was distilled down to idiot level. As if such a contact could be made by one man with his system, and aliens could then arrive so quickly? As if Sherman's father would be allowed to keep everything pertaining to the project in his own damn house, and work alone? And as if nothing would be password protected or double redundant so that any stupid kid could get into it? As if the instructions for contacting alien species would be written out in plain English in a fucking manual beside the computer station, and that it would require a mere few keystrokes to activate it? Fuck me. Do me a lemon. You think I have no brain?

Comments: Not a bad little story. The stoner is very endearing in his blundering way, and the ending is decent. Kind of ruined it though by saying the father wasn't annoyed because it proved his tech worked. I mean, surely this would have been a global phenomenon? Actual contact with alien life? And then they play their music at the end to the alien kid? Silly, silly ending to what could have been a good story had they left it alone.

Rating: :3.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/df/Night_Gallery_DVD.jpg)
Title: "Little Girl Lost"
Series: Night Gallery
Season: 2
Year: 1972
Writer(s): Stanford Whitmore, from the story by E.C. Tubb
Storyline: Yeah yeah I know it's the same title as an earlier episode from The Twilight Zone we picked. I doubt it's the same story though. No it's not. A professor who is - or was  - working on an important project for the military has lost the will to work after his daughter was killed. He may have snapped, as he is now going around thinking Jenny is alive, holding her hand, feeding her, brushing her hair etc.  A psychologist brought in by the top brass to try to work with him plays along, pretending he too can see the girl. Oh, okay. I was convinced that when he offered to "brush her hair" he would actually feel something, feel as if there was a solid object, a person there in front of him, but he hasn't given any indication of such. So much for my idea.

After weeks of pandering to the guy, he's finally completed his works, but now he gets all maudlin, then angry. He knows he's been working on ways to make better weapons of mass destruction, and while driving he starts to push the car too fast, his anger boiling over at the military using him, at man's blindness to what he's doing. Turns out he does know his daughter is dead, and in giving the - wrong - equations to the scientists at the military he has ensured that all of Earth will be wiped out, and he'll be with his little girl again.

Things I didn't like: Very selfish tone to this. Because he's grieving, and because a majority of power-brokers want to create weapons, he's ready to condemn all of humanity to death?

Comments: Nah I didn't like that one at all. Apart from anything else, again it's entirely oversimplifying things to say a) that one man could crack the secret of fission with non-radioactive materials, as they say he has and b) that his equations would be accepted without any sort of check, and used, so quickly and so devastatingly. Kind of an insult to the intelligence. Bah.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Creepshow_TV_Series.jpeg)
Title: "Model Kid"
Series:  Creepshow
Season: 2
Year: 2021
Writer(s): John Esposito
Storyline: A monster-movie-obsessed kid is less than pleased when his loser uncle and his wife come to stay, but it's to help his mother, who is going through chemotherapy. Unfortunately it doesn't work and she dies, so the brother and wife move into the house. Uncle Kev is less than tolerant about Joe's monsters, in fact he throws all his models out. Turns out - big surprise! - he's a wife-beater too, and Barb is scared of him, doing her best to protect Joe, and one night he dreams his mother rises from the grave (though not as a zombie) and tells him that she and his friends are watching over him. She offers him a copy of his magazine (Creepshow, duh) and the next morning he sends off for a thing called "The Victim".

Apparently made by voodoo craftsmen in Haiti (it says) I guess it's a sort of twenty-first century version of sticking pins in a doll? Anyway he gets it and makes it up to look like his uncle, who suddenly starts experiencing unexplained pain. But then it gets a little silly as Joe's monster figures come to life and attack and kill Uncle Kev. I suppose he used the figure in some way. Anyway they tear him apart, and when Auntie Barb comes home it looks like Joe has become a real vampire.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Thought the kid might suddenly realsie he was becoming a monster, make up with Kev, warn him of what he could do, and live happily ever after under that threat.

Things I liked: The movie posters: IT Came Back followed by IT Came Back Again! and finally IT Won't Stop Coming Back!

Things I didn't like: The gratuitously violent ending, which seems to tell the message, if someone hurts you, hurt them back twice as bad. Also the seeming animosity towards Barb who had only been kind to him.

Comments: Pretty stupid really. A kind of violent revenge death-fantasy featuring a kid who doesn't learn anything except how to hit back. A little pointless and quite disturbing.

Rating: :1stars:

And so we come to the last ever episode of
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Dimension404Title.jpg)
Title: "Polybius"
Series: Dimension 404
Season: 1
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Will Campos, Dez Dolly
Storyline: A videogame-obsessed kid who's also from a strict Christian family has to keep the fact that he's gay from his parents, who have no time for computer games either. Andrew's trying to be a games writer, but not having a lot of luck. He and his best friend (who also has a crush on him,  (unbeknownst to the other boy) Jess meet a girl who is new in town, Amy, and then come across a new computer arcade game they have not yet even heard of, called Polybius. It appears to consist of running headlong through a 3D wireframe maze until a red demon figure appears and says "Your souls are mine!"

Kids start to turn up dead, and Andrew's computer suddenly displays the game, then he thinks he sees something in his wardrobe, and is grabbed by the demon from Polybius. He sees it feasting on the body of one of his ex-friends who turned against him, and then he wakes up. Was it a dream? Well maybe not. His computer was unplugged, and the next morning he finds a kind of tattoo of the symbol for the game (a pentagram, duh) on the back of his neck. Shortly afterwards he finds a body in one of the lockers, the same friend whom he had fallen out with and whom he had seen, or dreamt as he thought, the demon eating last night.

After trying to explain his fears and theories about the game to the investigating detective, Andrew meets a strange man who seems very interested in the fact that he has played Polybius, and tries to get him to go with him, but Andrew senses something is up and refuses.  We then see he's working with the police. Meanwhile he finds that Amy has also the same tattoo. Andrew has looked up Polybius and found out it refers to a demon, but he has to face his own demons when, encouraged by Amy, he tries it on with Jess, who is repelled by his advances. Is he overcompensating, or is he just not that way inclined? Either way, Andrew feels like an idiot. Before he can concentrate on that, though, the strange guy enters the arcade.

They manage to get the jump on him and tie him up, and eventually he admits he is following the installations of the game, getting rid of any evidence it existed, because it's too terrifying for the human race to believe that any such thing could be real. But he doesn't know what is is and he's not involved in whatever its plans are. In fact, they find out that the inventor of Polybius is the arcade owner, Wilma, who appears with a shotgun and kills Mysterious Guy, grunting "our souls are his."

The demon Polybius comes out of the machine. Well, it would be rude not to, wouldn't it? It takes Amy's soul, but Jess manages to wrestle the shotgun from Wilma and shoots it, destroying it and freeing her.

Yeah. Right. This is a demon, remember? Shotguns don't have any effect on them!

It does give the other two time to run though, time they don't waste. Andrew though decides to go back in and take the thing on, put an end to it once and for all if he can. Jess has a brain, so he tells him he's on his own and runs off. The game has spilled out of the machine and is filling the arcade, so when Andrew re-enters he's in the game. Then Jess comes back. Awww! The two of them figure the only way to beat the monster is to break the game, and that will only happen if they can break the record for the high score. So Andrew begins playing while Jess baits the demon, creating a distraction. Andrew forces the score to reset to all zeros and the game implodes, taking the demon with it. Amy's soul is released back into her body, and the three friends leave after Amy lays out Wilma, who tries to spoil everything with her shotgun.

Things I didn't like: The fact that the coach is grinning like an idiot as the body of one of his students is taken away. He doesn't seem at all bothered that there's been a grisly and horrible murder in his school.

Comments: A good episode, but there kind of was a little too much emphasis placed on Andrew's being from a strictly religious family, that didn't really play out, other than his knowledge of the demon. The gay relationship was nice, but again was unfulifilled. Was Jess secretly gay too? Never said. And sadly, once again, a woman was the bad guy (other than the demon I mean). I also am slightly upset that, in a series with only six episodes, two of them - almost three, if you count "Chronos" - were based around video and computer games. There's also a lot of Tron in this, so that kind of takes away from the originality aspect of it. It might have been nice to have had Amy be the heroine, but she exists kind of just as a supporting character, sort of sandwiched in between the two boys.

I'd also have to take issue with Mysterious Guy. Never revealed who he was working for, why he wanted to destroy the game or how he even knew of it. Basically thrown in as a way of wrong-footing the viewer: you think this has to be the bad guy, then it turns out he's not, he's kind of a good guy. But before he can do anything he gets blown away. And why and how did Wilma create the game? Lots of unanswered questions, which sadly will never be resolved.

Rating: :4.5stars:

ROUND SIX, PART III: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART I
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Room_104_teaser.png)
Title: "The Last Man"
Series: Room 104
Season: 4
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Mark Duplass
Storyline: Our last episode (also from season 4) was an animation, this time it seems we have a musical number, as two warriors fight it out in what looks to be either an apocalyptic wasteland or a time just after dinosaurs. Or on a desert planet, who knows? Looks like one of the settings for an episode of original Star Trek! One of the warriors - Darkon (shut it) - says he's been waiting a few thousand years, and also mentions "the fall of the humans", so I guess we're on a future Earth? As he and Chiron fight, they sing, which is I have to admit very annoying, like watching a movie you didn't realise was going to be a fucking musical before you began. Chiron falls but as Darkon prepares to deliver the death blow both are enveloped in a sandstorm and when it clears Darkon is gone. A woman then appears - Chiron calls her Granada - and she seems to be some sort of sorceress, also that Chiron is her pupil.

So they start training, Jedi-like, for the return of Darkon and Chiron's eventual victory. Then she vanishes and the storm whips up again, and now, um, we're in Room 104, with a family, 132,478 years later, it says. The family are playing Monopoly, until Chiron blasts in from, I guess, the past, and they all leg it. Availing himself of the hotel's facilities, he watches TV as if he has seen it before, but a long long time ago, so is he from the past or the future? Fuck knows. He recites a brief history of humanity (in song, of course) and then decides to literally fall on his sword. But then Darkon appears and doesn't seem inclined to fight. Both realise "this is the place", whatever that means - okay, Darkon says that they have been fighting all their battles through history in the same spot, and now there's a hotel built on it. But it's the same place. And again they fight. In the end, they both impale each other on their swords.

Then the sorceress shows up, and it seems she's both their mother, and she's been training both of them ; they've been fighting like this since they were kids and she's been trying to show them how stupid that is. Like this fucking story.

Comments: I had really hoped there would be a better pay-off. Should have known better.

Rating: :2stars:

(https://i.postimg.cc/vZTY2PnW/image-2022-07-24-210843550.png)
Title: "Itchy"
Series: Creeped Out
Season: 2
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Robert Butler (No, not robot butler!)
Storyline: Again, yes, the title of the first episode of Room 104 we looked at, but nothing I can do about that. This is not about a guy carrying alien babies inside him, but about an outbreak of headlice on an island, where suddenly all the bottles of medicated shampoo seem to have been sabotaged; tiny pinprick holes are in them allowing the contents all to drain away, and Gabe hears a voice nobody else can hear, saying "A war!" repeatedly. He's apparently afraid of the dark (or of tunnels anyway) and his brother has got a heat vision tablet, which seems like it might be important to the plot, if there is one.

Turns out not to be "a war" that he heard, but "award" - they're at a graduating ceremony for their cadet school when the lice attack - everyone scratching and running. Using the laptop with the heat vision they're able to see where the lice are as they attack, and they get the last two bottles of shampoo from the head's office (sorry), though one gets spilled. Having sealed themselves in one of the rooms they're safe, but they can't stay there. Gabe goes through the ventilation shaft, even though he's afraid of tight spaces (claustrophobia?) but as he's about to leave, his brother, and then he himself, are attacked. With a final desperate effort, he tips the remaining bottle of shampoo into the school's sprinkler system, hits the fire alarm and instead of water the system sprays out shampoo, killing all the lice.

In a coda, Gabe then later hears the words "Revenge" being whispered, and using the tablet he can see that his cat is covered in the things. The battle may have been won, but the war, it seems, goes on.

Things I didn't like: Again, the fucking croaky, whispery voice of the so-called narrator. It's not just that her voice is low, it's mumbled and muttered as if she doesn't really have her attention on what she's saying, or doesn't care. It's really annoying and the least scary thing I've heard.

Comments: A pretty good story, a cautionary tale to check and keep clear of head lice, and also a story of facing your fears. A sort of ecological message in it too, when Gabe mourns the death of all the lice, saying they were just trying to survive, but then that's countered by the intended revenge attack. Nice.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51FZ4WEN60L._AC_SY445_.jpg)
Title: "The Crystal Ball"
Series: The Veil
Season: n/a
Year: 1958
Writer(s): Robert Joseph
Storyline: A writer is aghast to find that the woman he loves is going to marry for money, and worse, she's marrying his publisher! She makes no secret about why she's marrying the man, and gives Edmonde a crystal ball for some reason. His love very quickly turns to hate, and who could blame him? She's a gold-digger, and has admitted as much. Completely shameless. His uncle visits, and hearing that he no longer loves Marie, offers to set him up with a new love. He's something of a romeo about Paris, despite his, um, rather advancing age. He declines, but later sees in the crystal ball that Marie is cheating on her husband.

When the publisher comes back - early - Edmonde gives him reason to suspect his wife, without saying it out straight. Charles, the publisher, thinks that Edmonde has been having an affair with his wife, and promises to kill him (typical bloody Frenchman!) if it proves to be true. Marie meanwhile has the feeling someone is watching her while she's cheating, while Edmonde reveals that he knows where she is, and that she is getting it on with a Parisian artist. Charles won't believe him, but he shows him the scene in the crystal ball. Charles of course can't see what Edmonde sees. It appears only he can see the image. Edmonde decides to take him to the address he's seen, and they find Marie there with her fancy man. Charles is not a happy bunny, and demands a divorce.

Comments: Meh, all right I suppose. Typical overwrought French mannerisms, even if they're portrayed by American actors.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://cdn.wallpapersafari.com/28/4/y9ljwK.jpg)
Title: "Monster Blood"
Series: Goosebumps
Season: 2
Year: 1996
Writer(s): Rick Drew
Storyline: Evan has to stay with his weird aunt while his parents go off on business, but he doesn't like his aunt. She's weird, he says; creepy, and she doesn't like animals (says she's allergic to them) so his dog is not allowed in the house. He's told to stay out of one of the rooms, so of course he goes in, and finds it dark, dusty and full of cobwebs. His aunt throws him out, angry and aghast (afraid?) and when he's gone locks a wardrobe inside of which something seems to be trying to get out. That night his aunt prowls through the house, looking or listening for something.

Morning however brings a new friend, a girl called Andie, who agrees that Catherine is creepy, and well known for it. She inveigles her way into the house to see the forbidden room, using that weapon against which no kid has any defence: saying Evan is scared. They discover some odd things, including a jar of some green material, labelled as monster blood. It's like gel or something, or hardened rubber, or that gunge kids used to play with. When Evan takes a handful of it and fires it against the wall it ricochets around like a bullet. Unseen by either, it looks as if a black cat has appeared out of the jar, too, and it goes behind the sofa. Then the dog eats the stuff. That can't be good.

The next day Andie shows Evan that the monster blood is multiplying, growing; there's about ten times as much of it as there was. That cat is around now too, lurking around corners. Then, as they're trying to transfer the monster blood into the bath Evan falls in. That, also, cannot be good. The cat turns into a woman, and Evan's aunt tells them this is Zarabeth, a demon whom she summoned, but  the monster blood (no idea where it came from or what it is) imprisoned. Now she's out, and ready for revenge as the monster blood bubbles through the house.

Suddenly the dog barks, appearing at the window - and filling it. And more. He's grown to enormous size, and as the woman was initially a cat, that's what he sees and that's how she reacts. She steps backwards, into the monster blood, and is again caught in it, vanishing. The dog returns to normal size, and there's a part two coming as it seem the monster blood has been loaded onboard the plane Evan is now on, but that's another story, and frankly, I'm not that bothered.

Comments: A pretty silly story with a lot of holes in the plot. Where did the monster blood come from? What is it? Where did Zarabeth go? How did the blood get loaded onboard a plane (of course, that might be explained in the second part, I guess)? A story that sort of says of logic, don't bother me with such details, and just ploughs on. Pretty poor really. Even kids must see through this.

Rating: :1stars:

This round also sees our final trip on - or rather, off the bus, as we take our last episode from
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYTljYTYwYTktNjhjMC00MmQxLWJjODktYjIzYTViYWZhZTE4XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNDg4MjkzNDk@._V1_.jpg)
Title: "The Elephant in the Room"
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Kjetil Indregard
Storyline: At a company's summer party, two people new to the firm try to find out what happened to Martha, an employee who is said to have fallen from a balcony. Nobody can or will talk about it, and the more they investigate the more it seems a guy called William, who was said to be on the balcony with Martha, and a girl called Helene are involved. William is dressed as an elephant and making a real nuisance of himself, coming close to sexually harassing the girls, Kristin and Paul and find out that Martha is rumoured to have been bullied, likely by these two.

Details come out of a nasty picture comparing Martha to Gollum, which was distributed throughout the company network, a few days before Martha fell. The girl who shows it to them intimates that management may have been trying to hush the whole thing  up, protecting someone at a high level perhaps. They search William's desk and find on Helene's computer - the two share a desk and work as a team - the images, along with others comparing Martha to other people unfavourably. Helene then walks in and they accuse her, but she says the images are William's, and that Martha was in love with him. She says that William rebuffed her, and that Martha took it into her head that there was something between he and Helene, and charged at them that day on the balcony. They stepped aside and she went over the edge.

Helene takes her computer back, saying they will have no evidence once she has deleted the pictures, but she doesn't know that Paul has taken copies on a USB drive. When they see William and Helene in one of the upstairs offices, Kristin says that as the receptionist she has keys to all the rooms. They plan to lock the two of them in and then show everyone the pictures, proving the pair's guilt. William, though, seems about to try it on with Helene, who is not interested. William is also married, as we saw at the beginning. Paul and Kristin put their plan into action, but it turns out they've got it all wrong.

Martha, they are told by the HR head, who has been forced to sign an NDA, was bullying them. They were terrified of her. She is, says this woman, a psychopath. Meanwhile, the body of William has turned up in the gents, quite dead, and now it seems obvious that the person in the office with Helene, the one wearing the elephant suit, is Martha. And she attacks Helene, who can't get out because the room is locked.

Comments: Meh, it was all right I suppose.  A bit, what's the word? Meh. Yeah, a bit meh. I mean, Kristin, having locked the room, and realised what she's done, doesn't even make an attempt to run up and unlock it, knowing that Helene is in danger. She just stands there, horror-stricken but doing nothing. And if Martha was a psycho bitch and both were afraid of her, what were they doing baiting her by making uncomplimentary pictures? If you're afraid of someone you don't goad them into action.

Overall, you'd have to say not the best ending for the series (though this was not the last episode, just the order in which I chose them was random and this ended up coming out last) though in general it hasn't really disappointed. I'll be doing a retrospective of it and Dimension 404 as we say goodbye to both.

Rating: :4stars:

ROUND SIX, PART IV: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK, PART II
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Rlstine-hp-hero.png)
Title: "The Girl in the Painting"
Series: The Haunting Hour
Season: 3
Year: 2012
Writer(s): Jack Monaco
Storyline: A girl who dreams of a better life than she has with her single mother finds a painting in the garbage. It depicts a beautiful room, with a little girl sitting with her back to the artist, so you can't see her face. Becky wishes she could be her, live her life, and starts to rearrange her room to correspond with the layout in the painting. The next day the girl in the painting has moved; she's now standing up, facing the artist, and the clock has changed the time it was showing. Becky tells her mother but she won't or can't or refuses to believe her; in fact, she thinks she's getting so obsessed with it that she threatens to get rid of the painting, but relents when her daughter agrees to stop being so wrapped up in it.

That night Becky hears a voice - the girl in the painting is calling to her, and walking through the wardrobe (thank you, C.S. Lewis!) she gets into the painting and meets the girl. The girl keeps looking at the clock and seems to be waiting for something, so here's Trollheart's Theory: she has been trapped in the painting, but if she can get someone else to take her place (presumably something to do with the six o'clock that the clock is about to reach) she can be released and the other person will be imprisoned in the painting, taking their place. She certainly seems reluctant to allow Becky to leave anyway. Hey, maybe she's a demon or the devil, come to take the little girl's soul?

She's closed the door to the wardrobe, now that Becky has agreed to "have a sleepover" but I bet that's so she can't find her way back.Then six o'clock strikes, and she pulls the bellcord at the side of the bed. The roof slides over - the girl says it opens at feeding time - and a monster reaches down and picks up Becky and eats her. Okay. Very weird. The mother of the girl in the painting comes in and sighs that this is just how their world is, and that people see what they want to see. Someone else will be along to feed the monster, attracted to the beauty of the painting, and using her as bait. There's nothing they can do about it. They have to sacrifice others in order to survive themselves. The girl resumes her seat and waits.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Like my theory said, I assumed she was about to switch places with the other little girl, and she would then be trapped in the painting. Meh, my way was better.

Things I didn't like: The stupidity of the mother. Anyone with half a brain could see that the girl in the painting had originally been sitting, and now she's standing, but the mother shrugs it off. Ridiculous.

Comments: At its heart not a bad story, but the idea of the monster outside doesn't sit well with me. A little hard to reconcile. Is this then a painting, or a house, or a block? Where is the monster patrolling? Another planet? Dimension? Another cautionary tale about appreciating what you have and not always wanting better, the grass being greener on the other side etc.

Rating: :3stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Mastersofhorror.jpg)
Title: "Right to Die"
Series: Masters of Horror
Season: 2
Year: 2009
Writer(s): John Esposito
Storyline: As he tries to get his wife to forgive him for having cheated on her, Cliff crashes the car and Abby is horrifically burned. Cliff considers what he should do: should he keep Abby living in agony, hanging on, a mere skeleton with a few folds of scorched flesh clinging to her bones, or end it for her? As he ponders the decision, above the kitchen counter a message she wrote changes from "Wake me at 7" to just "Wake me". Back at the hospital, as she flatlines, Abby appears in the bath beside him, whole, complete, just as she was, and they begin making love. But in the throes of passion her skin begins to crack and blister, and she turns into a half-alive, burnt monster, while the scene changes to the burns ward, where the staff are trying to defibrillate her. They get a faint pulse and she vanishes from the bath, or from his mind.

When he examines himself in the mirror, there are burn marks on his chest and back, where his wife touched him as they made love. Her mother calls to say she'll fight his attempts to have her daughter's life support turned off, and swears he won't profit from it. He's confused; how could he possibly profit? But she doesn't explain and stalks off, saying he can talk to her lawyers. Then she appears on television, accusing him of wanting to end her daughter's life for his own selfish gain (still not sure what the angle is here; did she make a will? Does he have life insurance on her?) and he starts getting hate mail, people calling him a murderer.

The girl he cheated on Abby with - in point of fact, his secretary - seems not to care too much about his wife being on life support and wants to continue their affair (which he had told Abby was over) - and he agrees! His lawyer now explains what the mother meant about getting rich off her daughter's death. As her airbag did not deploy during the accident, they are able to sue them for negligence, and the company will pay big - up to ten million - for their keeping this out of the courts. If Abby dies, her mother gets the money so you would think she would want to let her die? Not quite understanding that. The lawyer says Abby's mother is going to have Cliff removed as the legal guardian, to prevent him cashing in, but can you be guardian of someone over the age of majority? Maybe they mean a kind of power of attorney? Either way, the legal bills are going to be massive.

Trish becomes even more interested when she hears Cliff may be due a massive windfall. She really is a fucking heartless bitch. I know she probably dislikes Abby, as she's screwing her husband, but she doesn't even offer her sympathies or talk about her at all, other than as an obstacle to getting it on with Cliff, and maybe replacing her. I really hope she gets what's coming to her. Cow. At any rate, it seems he's getting a little tired of/disturbed by her come-ons as he tries to make a difficult decision, but the DNR order is ratified by the court and he goes to see his wife one last time before her life support is switched off. Of course it's a media event, and he has to navigate cameras, reporters, protesters and rubberneckers before he can get in. Meanwhile his lawyer has callously bade farewell to Abby, saying he never liked her but she is going to make him a pile of money, so cheers. Another cunt.

When Cliff goes to kiss Abby goodbye she bites his lip, then flatlines. Outside, he sees her again, as she used to be, then she vanishes. The lawyer, meanwhile, looking for somewhere to make a phone call after he has been warned by a doctor not to use his mobile, wanders into the MRI room. Fucking idiot. This'll be the end of him. And it is. The ghost of Abby is standing behind him (though I don't think he can see her) and first his phone fries and then she turns on the MRI magnet. This drags him, via his wristwatch and ring, against the door of the unit, and pinning him there like a fly on a windshield.

Then Abby appears.

Not the original Abby, but as she is now, all burned and skeletal-like, and very very angry. He's managed to get the ring off, and with a superhuman effort dumps the watch, but he needn't have bothered. Abby points at him and he goes up in flames. Cliff changes his mind; Abby must live now, it's imperative. The doctor tells him that Abby's wounds do appear to be healing rather quickly, which is unexpected to say the least, and he rescinds the DNR, also offering any money made from the case to anyone who can donate - um, what? Their skin? I mean, she's basically a skeleton now. What does he want a donor to give? Doesn't make that clear.

Trish looks like next in line for the chopping block. She's continuing her all-out assault on Cliff, and he, to be fair, is putting up very little fight. Now she's on the way to the shower and we see the thermostat climb up above boiling point. Cliff's phone rings and it's her, sending sexy photos of herself in the bathroom. Then behind her her see the skeletal burned figure of Abby! Trish starts screaming. Cliff runs to the bathroom door, where one word is scrawled, I think in blood or maybe it's burned in. Anyway, the word is SKIN. Cliff knows what he has to do.

Hitting Trish over the head with a bottle he prepares her for.. Surgery? He's a dentist, not a goddamn skin surgeon! But there she is, all marked out and ready to be carved up. Oddly enough, she's conscious - he says the skin has to be fresh, don't know if that's correct or not - but either way he's killing her isn't he? Well, I said I hoped she got what was coming, so I guess she is. He does have her under local anaesthetic so I suppose there's that.

Now there's a flashback, and we see that Abby was so angry with Cliff for betraying her that she told him he would never get near the baby she's just announced she's carrying. What's more, her parents have been supporting his dental practice and she says all that ends now. Then they crashed, as we've seen. But what we haven't seen is that he did not call 911, and in fact lit a lighter in order to incinerate her. So if that's the case, a) what about the baby? Was he not thinking about killing an innocent life and b) why does he now want to keep her alive when she hates him and can talk about how he was responsible for her horrific injuries? Doesn't make sense. I mean, I know he's terrified of the kind of hauntings - who wouldn't be? - but isn't he just digging himself deeper in here? He's killed her/their unborn baby: how does he think she will react to that if she lives?

In any case, it doesn't work out. By the time he gets to the hospital with Trish's body parts, Abby has died. As he dumps the parts in the bin and goes back inside his house, the ghost of Abby is there to greet him. Guess he'll be haunted forever now.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Near the end, there's a point where he has to jam on the brakes and the bag of body parts spills out on the road. A cop car flies by. I of course assumed he would then be stopped, done for murder, and jailed for life. But no, the cops just shout "Get out of the road!" and zoom past, despite the fact that Cliff is standing there holding a human arm! Ah, America's finest, huh?

Things I liked: The death of the scumbag lawyer was particularly satisfying.

Things I didn't like: The brazenness of his assistant. With his wife clinging on to life, she still wants to have her affair with him. At least wait until the wife is switched off, yeah?

Comments: Macabre and quite bizarre, but another great story from the man who gave us the previous one in this series, "Pick Me Up". No real humour in this one, per se, but Esposito manages to deflect the horror of the apparitions and the sadness of a woman's life so cruelly cut short by focusing on her attempts to extract revenge from beyond the grave. Sort of. Quite visceral, but then you have to expect that, and it is good to see the woman triumphing in this, whereas in the other story she very much did not.

Rating: :4.5stars:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/IntoTheDark.png)
Title: "They Come Knocking"
Series: Into the Dark
Season: 1
Year; 2019
Writer(s): Shane van Dyke, Carey van Dyke
Storyline: On a road trip following the death of his wife, a man and his two daughters try to bond, but it seems that Clair, one of the daughters, a teenager, is not his, so she won't call him dad. She calls him Nathan (for, 'tis his name). This episode is written with Father's Day in mind. Clair is riding in the trailer being towed behind the SUV, and sees what she thinks is a strange figure when they stop for food at a diner. She also sees a bunch of missing kids notices behind the counter. As a teenager, and especially a teenage girl, she's programmed to be moody, sulky, self-obsessed and wishes she were anywhere other than here, but they've come both to retrace the path Nathan and his wife took 17 years ago on their road trip, and at the spot where he proposed to her, they intend to scatter her ashes. The other daughter, Maggie, has made some sort of doll's house deal with figures of her family - including her late mother - made out of wood or cardboard or something. I hope that factors into the story, as otherwise it's quite a weird thing to do, I think.

Now it emerges that his wife was very sick and on life support, and Nathan had to be the one to tell them to turn it off, to spare her the pain, something Clair has not forgiven him for. It's driven a wedge between them. That night, there's a thumping on the door of the trailer and going to the window Clair sees that mysterious figure again, and when her dad (or stepdad) goes to investigate he hears children's voices asking to be let in. Suddenly they appear outside the caravan, hooded figures about the size of children. When the father refuses to let them in, the voices get more threatening and then they seem to vanish, singing "Three Blind Mice". Right. There's little as creepy as spooky children. Nathan stays up on guard with, um, a spade. You dig? Sorry.

Of course, a simple prediction to make here is that by the end of the episode Clair will be calling him dad, but that's taken as read. In the meantime, the next morning they find the kids have wrecked the car's engine, so they're going nowhere. Nathan sets off to find a garage, leaving Clair to watch over Maggie. He gives her a walkie-talkie so they can keep in touch while he's away. Hmm. Given that these seldom have happy endings, I wonder if when he gets back the two girls have been convinced to join the ghost kids, and then, Stephen King-like, he has to make the decision whether to leave them or join them in their eternal damnation? Wouldn't be that surprised. Right Maggie now said that she always keeps the figure of her mother with her, and Clair says that's good, as that way their mother can always look out for her, so I'm assuming her spirit is in there somewhere and will help protect them. It's pretty touching when, as the two girls sit by her bed (in the past), having talked already with her father about how, as a little girl, she would sit with her mother and watch her put on her makeup and try to copy her, Clair applies her mother's lipstick, as she's too weak and in too much pain to do it herself, but it's always important that a woman looks her best, even at - especially at - the end.

Meanwhile Nathan, who is not answering the walkie-talkie, comes across an abandoned trailer, which I'm assuming links in to some of the missing kids Clair saw notices for, then he sees a bunch of water bottles laid out in front of it in a line. Back at their own trailer, Clair finds Maggie gone, and goes frantically searching for her. Nathan explores the abandoned trailer (is that rust or blood on the door?) and finds a dead guy (blood then) and a scratched message: HELP ME. Dead guy is armed with a rifle, so Nathan takes that.  Clair arrives at some sort of junkyard, and sees a line of what appear to be shoes - possibly those of children - stretching away in a line. She also sees a lot of doll parts - mostly heads - hanging up. This cannot be good. Even worse when she finds Maggie's doll of her mother, dropped on the ground. Back at the trailer of death, Nathan comes across a strange drawing, obviously made by a child, which depicts two sisters watching their mother fly up to Heaven. Surely now that's not a coincidence that his daughters have just lost their mother? Definitely not, as another drawing shows two girls watching the creepy kids from inside the trailer (from the point of view of the daughters) and on the outside of the trailer are scrawled in dust on the windscreen the words CAN WE COME IN?

Back at the scrapyard, Clair thinks she hears singing ("Hush Little Baby") and runs into what looks like some sort of container, where there's just a doll in a rocking chair (doll size) and then the door slams on her to the laughter of children. Then she seems to encounter the spirit of her mother, but it's evil. Nathan on the way back at full speed hears only children's laughter when he tries to contact his girls on the walkie, but I guess he must be near where Clair is as he hears her screams and gets to the door in time to let her out, whereupon the - well, let's call it a demon, shall we? - the demon vanishes. Luckily, when they get back to their own trailer Maggie has returned, having gone looking for Clair, she says.

That night, they find a petrol can left outside, and the campsite set on fire. So Nathan has to go out to move the can before the whole trailer goes up, but as he does he realises there's a second one on the roof, and it's been allowed to leak, so now the trailer is covered in petrol. He has no choice but to douse the fire before it can reach the trailer. By the time he's managed that, one of the creepy hooded kids has appeared and asks him to play with him or her (hard to say; kids of that age all sound the same and this one is wearing some sort of a mask) and then goes for him. He strikes out and knocks the kid down with his spade, whereupon he or she starts crying, probably to draw him in and trick him into lowering his guard. Yup: now it's joined by others and begins to laugh. It straightens its neck in a way no living person could survive, so obviously it's dead, or undead, or using the body. Nathan legs it to the SUV as he can't make it to the trailer in time.

He uses the walkie to talk to Clair, but the range isn't great (not much fucking use is it? They're about less than a hundred feet apart!) and she has to try to get closer, and now again it seems these creepy kids or whatever they are are using the image of his wife to try to trick him out of the car. Unless it's actually her, and she's trying to save him. No, they're using her in a three-pronged attack, to try to get one of them to let them in. The wife is berating Nathan for being a coward and leaving his daughters - their daughters unprotected, while as Maggie's mother she's trying to get the younger girl to open the window so they can get in, and also appealing to Clair at the door. Hopefully none of them fall for it. It will only take one to weaken and it will be all over.

And it is. For Maggie anyway, who succumbed and is now spread over a wide area with rather a lot of blood. Clair was too late to help her: if she had just moved her arse faster once she heard her sister talking to someone, but she waited and delayed, then the door was locked (which she had told Maggie to do) and by the time she broke it down it was too late. So much for the figure of her mother protecting Maggie! Nathan, meanwhile, has made his way out of the car and is heading for the trailer, having trapped the creeps in the car, but when he gets there and Clair tells him Maggie is dead lying in the bath, all he sees when he pulls the shower curtain aside is the doll, no Maggie. Ah, so maybe she did protect her child after all. Now Nathan realises though that the creeps were after Maggie all along, so now he has to go try to save her. Got to find her first, of course.

Okay now they have found her, in the junkyard, running around like she hasn't a care in the world (probably one of the creeps disguised) and for some reason Clair has picked up the bottle of wine her father brought, which seems to have some connection to his wife. I mention this because I assume it will turn out to be significant. Maggie ends up running into the container where her sister was trapped before, and while Nathan is in there searching the creeps come out and menace Clair.

Meanwhile the wife, or a spirit, or a creep, manifests in the container and Nathan is now torn between staying with the woman he loved, but who he knows is dead, and saving his stepdaughter and daughter. A test of priorities? Finally he snaps out of it though and rushes to save Clair. Seems the wife's ashes are in the bottle, which was what made it so important, and now he pours them out, letting her go, as she asked him to as she was dying, and for some reason this scares off the creeps, who have no more power over them. They find Maggie cowering in the container and are reunited, the creepy kids have fucked off and good riddance to them.

Comments: That was incredibly brilliant. Everything came together in the end to create a really well-written and quite moving story about coming to terms with loss, the bond between family that can cross even death and the importance of keeping the memory of loved ones alive. Really enjoyed that, and I have nothing bad to say about it at all. Perfect.

Rating: :5stars:

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Title: "Ice Age"
Series: Love, Death and Robots
Season: 1
Year: 2019
Writer(s): Philip Gelat, based on the short story by Michael Stanwick
Storyline: In an old-style refrigerator, a couple find an ice cube within which is sealed what looks like a tiny mammoth, with spears in its side. Investigating further, they find an entire civilisation living inside the fridge, a tiny microcosm of prehistoric life. But even as they watch, the civilisation is advancing, maturing, developing. By the time they've buried the tiny mammoth in the soil of a plant and check back, the tiny people have advanced to an industrial age. Buildings are rising, roads are being built, crude transport moves across the cities. Eventually of course they reach nuclear capability, start a war and destroy themselves. The couple close the fridge, and an hour later wonder if the civilisation in there has been rebuilt yet?

They have, and they've come back better than before. They're now far more advanced than we are, and in fact send some sort of probe out of the fridge and into the couple's room, into the real world. But then the fridge is empty, and it looks like the tiny people have moved on to some other dimension maybe? There's nothing left inside the fridge anyhow, so they unplug it and go to bed. In the morning they check again, and everything has reset, with dinosaurs now pursuing ape-like creatures. I guess the cycle of life goes on and on, endlessly repeating.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: First I thought the creatures might end up in our universe and maybe take over, then I thought it might zoom out and the couple would be in a refrigerator being looked at in wonder by some other giants. Finally, when they unplugged the fridge I thought they might cause some sort of ecological disaster, depriving the civiisation of their power source. None of these things happened.

Things I didn't like: Wasn't too happy about the ending. Bit of a damp squib.

Comments: Very strange. It's a bit odd how easily the couple get used to the idea of there being an entire world/universe in their fridge. I don't think it would be so easy to accept that concept. It also links, doesn't it, to the Treehouse of Horror Simpsons episode where Lisa creates life in a bowl of dirt or something. A story with which a lot more could and should have been done.

Rating: :4stars:

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Title: "Eugene, Oregon"
Series: Monsterland
Season: 1
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Scott Kosar
Storyline: Jesus. Apparently in the USA medical insurance can just stop covering certain items of medication! Doesn't happen here, thank the Great Pixie! A guy who is trying to collect his mother's prescription, which should be covered, is told that three weeks ago the insurance company stopped covering it, so now he has to pay over 200 dollars to get the medicine. This is money he doesn't have, so he pays for what he can - about six tablets when he should have been getting thirty - and leaves. Oh wait it's sixty: a thirty-day supply and she's supposed to take two a day. Wow. Those six are not going to last long.

Obviously then, Nick cares for his mother and appears to be her only child (or the only one who cares - been there, done that, still doing it) and he really looks after her, but seems to be making up stories about having friends and possibly a job. While he's playing video games after settling her for the night he looks up and sees some sort of shadow on the wall, which is not his. Immediately he runs out, but when he comes back in he starts talking to the shadow (which does not respond) and then takes pictures of it and uploads them to a forum he's on, asking if anyone knows what this is?

His mother rings the bell system he's set up, and he runs in, to find her hysterical, thinking he has left her. He tells her it was only a dream, but she insists he stay the night with her, so he does. When she's asleep he goes back to the computer and sees replies that direct him to a chat group, who seem to know all about the shadows. They maintain these beings are responsible for all the bad things that happen in life, and are waging a war on humanity. They appear, these guys say, when times are bad, and make them worse. They sow fear and sadness and violence and disharmony. These guys are dedicated to wiping them out.

Nick goes and sits in his father's car, but his phone runs out of power and he ends up oversleeping, resulting in his boss firing him. Now with no job and no money, he walks the street and seems to be looking for someone called Mark Smith, who once worked in the local garage, but neither of the mechanics on duty know who he is, or care. That night he sees the shadow under his mother's bed. He looks again and it's gone, but he goes back to the chat room. Note: these guys are idiots. They're so obsessed with finding some way to avoid having to take responsibility for their shitty lives and their bad luck that they've come up with this theory about Shadows, blaming them for everything bad that happens. Well I have a theory of my own, and here it is: the Shadows are trying to help. Maybe they're ghosts - maybe the one Nick saw is the ghost of his father, trying to support him in some way. The one he saw hasn't, after all, done anything bad to him.

This group seems also to be lobbying for a presidential candidate, Fletcher, who, they say, secretly knows about the shadows. More bullshit I would imagine: conspiracy theories and coincidences, the currency of the weak-minded and the gullible, and those who want to exploit their fears. The girl talks to him and he tells her his father left when he was five; he's the Mark Smith he's been trying to track down, but what hope has he with a name like that? How many Mark Smiths are in Oregon? How many Mark Smiths are in Eugene?

The shadow appears and he chases it with a torch beam, as it flees from the light it heads into his mother's room and he goes after it. He finds his mother having fallen out of her bed. The paramedics say it was night terrors. Things go from bad to worse, as his internet service is cut off for non-payment. Now he can't even contact the Shadow Group. He manages to do so by going to the school - which he hasn't been attending for some months, and how does that work? Isn't his mother going to get into trouble if he doesn't go? Maybe he has some sort of compassionate leave deal? Anyway, the teacher says he left something in her office when he left and she goes to get it for him.

In fact she gets the school guards to hassle him and throw him out. I don't quite know why she has such a problem with him, but maybe that will become apparent later. Right now, he's reached nadir and the guys from the Shadow Group fuel his despair, convincing him that it's all the Shadow's fault and that he should kill it. They show him how, and they decide to livestream the event, to, they say, send a message. Now, you just know these are all going to end up being young kids feeding each others' fears, though the way the episode is filmed, it makes it look as if they're physically in the room with him. Two tough alpha males in their twenties or thirties and a Tank Girl-style maybe teenager, a real tomboy.

Nick builds a sort of flashlight rifle and prepares to take out the Shadow. But then he has second thoughts. What if it isn't some evil creature hell-bent on ruining his life? What if it's just a regular shadow? What if these guys are trying to make him do something he doesn't want to do? Then one of them tells him that he thinks he's managed to track down his father. And he has another family. Now Nick is ready to kill. But in all the excitement he's forgotten his mother, forgotten she needs him, depends on him. He's become cold, distant, selfish. While he's stalking the shadow, his mother is ringing for him. The shadow sinks to its knees, raising its hands in surrender as his mother cries "Where are you Nick? Where did you go?"

Nick fires at the shadow.

Things I thought would happen, but didn't: Thought the shadow might be friendly, maybe his father (this was when I thought he was dead, as the episode makes that originally a little ambiguous). Thought the Shadow Group would turn out to be about ten years old or something. Also thought the Shadow might start bringing him luck. Or that, on the flipside, he might have pursued it into his mother's room and scared her to death.

Comments: This will be a long one, as there is a huge amount wrong with this episode. Apart from anything else, the constant jumping from the computer to real life, showing Nick in physical contact with the others from the Shadow Group makes it seem like they are actually there with him, whereas later it's clear he's just talking to them on the computer, but whether in his head or not, it's made to look like he shares whisky with them, sleeps with the girl, and so forth. Very confusing. Other than that, well, let's see.

Why is the teacher so scared of him that she has security remove him from the school? Was he a danger? Was he thrown out? And how can his manager at Fry Town fire him when there is a backlog of customers? Shouldn't he let him work his shift, clear the backlog and fire him that evening? Also, how does the absence of one staff member lead to such a huge backlog anyway? Is the entire population of Eugene coming to Fry Town for its burger and fries?

Are the shadows real? Are there, in fact, any others, or is the Shadow Group just winding him up? What about this presidential candidate they speak of? He's mentioned once and never again. What happens at the end? Nick seems to force the Shadow to surrender, but shoots it anyway. Is this a metaphor for his becoming cruel, cold and selfish when he has been up to now kind and caring, and sort of accepting his circumstances, shit as they are? Is it now that he has a scapegoat, someone to blame for his troubles that he can release the darker side of him? Has he in fact been talking to anyone or is it all in his head?

When he first sees the shadow he does not seem afraid of it, and it seems quite friendly and harmless, mimicking his attempt at a shadow duck, which seems like a non-threatening gesture. It never shows itself to be hostile, just there. Is it a representation of the anger and frustration he feels with his life? Is it even there or all, or does it just exist in his mind? Has he gone mad? What happens to his mother now?

Too many loose ends, too many unanswered questions to get this any sort of a decent rating, which is a pity, as had things been cleared up (he wakes up in a hospital, never had to take care of his mother, dreamed it all maybe, father by his side) it could have been a good story. As it is though it's just left as if the writer shrugged and said "work it out." No thanks. Do your job, fucker: that's what you're paid for, after all.

Rating: :2stars:

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Title: "Toxic"
Series: Two Sentence Horror Stories
Season: 3
Year: 2022
Writer(s): Liz Hsaio, Lan Alper
First sentence: "My friends' jokes are harmless."
Storyline: A bunch of frat boys who enjoy playing pranks on each other spend a night in woods which have a reputation for disappearances. One of their number, Pete, is going off to Yale so this is his last trip with them, and they take advantage by playing all the pranks they can on him. Then things get serious when another one of them, Wes, takes exception and starts getting violent and angry. In the ensuing struggle, another of the boys is killed.  They put him in the camper and drive off, but crash, so they end up having to bury A.J.

While they dig the grave, they see to their horror that the corpse has moved, or been moved. They start to argue, with home truths as usual coming out in the process. They start hearing ghostly voices in the wood, and when they get back to the camper two more of their friends are dead. Then a park ranger shows up. They manage to see her off and when she's gone one of the corpses attacks Wes. The remaining two run into the woods, where the other one tells Pete that, far from being his friend, A.J. was the brains behind the pranks played on him, and not only that, he uploaded them to the web, despite the fact that they had all agreed not to do that.

When it becomes clear then that A.J. resented that Pete had got the scholarship to get into Yale that he had also worked for, and wants to call the cops, Pete snaps and bashes his head in with a rock. Morning comes and he's all alone. Or is he? Making his way back to the camper he is attacked by all four of his dead friends, who kill him, and now there are five corpse spirit zombie things stalking the forest.

Second sentence: "When you're dead, nothing hurts anymore."

Comments: Meh, bit weak. So a bunch of frat kids kill each other and end up as zombies. So what? Very little in this, again very bad payoff. Kind of pointless really.

Rating: :2stars:

23 Tales from the Crypt (down 3)
22 Creepshow (down 5)
21 Tales from the Darkside (down 2)
20 Tales of Tomorrow (up 3)
19 Monsterland (down 1)
18 The Haunting Hour (up 3)
17 Night Gallery (down 2)
16 Are You Afraid of the Dark? (down 3)
15 Creeped Out (up 7)
14 The Veil (down 3)
13 The Outer Limits (down 8  )
12 The Twilight Zone (down 8  )
11 Two Sentence Horror Stories (down 3)
10 Room 104 (no change)
9 Love Death and Robots (down 3)
8 Amazing Stories (up 6)
7 Monsters (up 5)
6 Goosebumps (up 10)
5 Bloodride (up 4)
4 Into the Dark (up 3)
3 Masters of Horror (down 1)
2 Dimension 404 (down 1)
1 Black Mirror (up 2)

Black Mirror retakes its place at the top, while pushing Dimension 404 out to second. Now that the latter show is over, it will steadily start to slide down the chart, assuming the shows behind it have decent stories. The same goes of course for Bloodride, which at least finishes, for now, in a decent fifth position, while Into the Dark comes storming back to take 4th after two excellent episodes over the last two rounds. Masters of Horror remains in the top 3, while Monsters, Goosebumps and Amazing Stories all advance into the top ten. Both The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, after bad showings, slide out of the top of the chart.

A farewell to kings: now that we've reached the end of the road - A retrospective look at Bloodride and Dimension 404

While some series, particularly those made in the latter half of the last century, will be going for probably years here, having six or sevens seasons or more, there are a few that only got the one, and are now finished. Sadly, for us, two of these proved to be the shining lights of this project, giving definitely The Twilight Zone and sometimes even its spiritual successor, Black Mirror, a run for its money. Each had a paltry six episodes, but what they packed into those six hours of TV each was, in some cases, worthy of several seasons of some of the weaker shows.

So let's look back over them now, and pay both the respect they deserve. It may not be true to say we shall never see their like again, but I can tell you this: as I search vainly for a replacement for both, it has not been easy, and I doubt even those I have selected are going to come close to the consistency of quality both these excellent anthology series provided, episode after episode.

We'll begin with
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We kicked off with "Cinethrax", which already showed how classy this show was going to be, with the tale of alien invasion through the cinema screen, and a very dark and honestly quite unexpected ending, which left us on notice that there would not always be a happy ending with this series. That was followed by "Impulse", a sort of time-travel story, though not really, and which provided an important moral, again leaving us with a dark ending. "Chronos", though played pretty much for laughs, a proper time-travel story this time, still gave us an important moral, where responsibility must be taken for one's actions, while "Bob" introduced us to a manic depressive computer who was, well, essentially being euthanised, and managed to somehow make it into a Christmas story too, which overall worked well. "The Matchmaker" was perhaps the best of the bunch, envisioning a future where the effort is taken out of romance and relationships, where you can literally have your soulmate built to order, and if it doesn't work out, send him or her back for (presumably) a full refund. The series ended (for us) then on the rather dark tale of three - really two - kids trying to outwit a computer game which had been taken over by a demon or something. I had issues with "Polybius", multiple ones in fact, but it wasn't terrible.

So the worst you could say about Dimension 404 is that not every episode was perfect, but then, not even Black Mirror gets that pass. No matter how excellent a series is, you can almost guarantee there will be one episode at least in there which will be below par, and I guess you could also say that the more seasons there are, the more episodes will fail to live up to whatever quality bar the series sets for itself. In that way, Dimension 404 rarely fell below the bar, and often rose above it. I'll miss it.

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This series starts out with what, for some people I expect, is a pretty major handicap: it's not in English. That is often enough to turn people off, and I know in my youth it was certainly my view that anything I had to read subtitles on got ignored. Having managed to rise above this outdated view, I've been enjoying some of the best and darkest drama Scandi-Noir has to offer, but that's another story, for another journal. Here, the show is made in Norway so everything is in Norwegian (duh) and you have to read the subtitles, but it's well worth it. The premise, as I already explained, but will again in case you're somehow coming late to this, is that every episode a passenger on a bus - the same bus - is focused on and their story told. The first one we looked at, "The Ultimate Sacrifice", blended pagan beliefs with human greed and a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of animal cruelty, while "Lab Rats" provided us with paranoia aplenty as employees struggled to find a way to escape from the cubicle their crazy boss had trapped them in, while "The Old School" was honestly one of the scariest of these episodes of any show I've seen, with a (literally) killer twist I did not see coming. "Three Sick Brothers" may be where this series achieved its peak, with a real blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality (and more violence of course), and then unfortunately it dipped somewhat with the confusing "Bad Writer", which did something similar but in a far more ambiguous way, leaving me unsure how it ended. That left "The Elephant in the Room", which was okay, focusing on office sniping and turning, yet again, murderous, but with a pretty decent twist.

Neither of these series were ever renewed, and given how long both are now concluded it's very unlikely indeed that they will be, and that's really a pity because both had so much potential. Bloodride of course had the massive language gap to overcome, and I suppose Mark Hamill had better and more important things to do in a galaxy far, far away, but even so, Dimension 404 could have survived with a different narrator. Or none. But both are over now, and there's nothing we can do about that.

I therefore have to find suitable replacements for them both, but as Saavik once said to Spock, I could never replace you, only succeed you. So let's hope their successors live up to their legacy.