Twilight Tales from the Outer Limits of the Darkside

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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: (first time ever)

[Trollheart]

ROUND FIVE, PART II: YE LESSER MORTALS

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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: 

[Trollheart]

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

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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