Twilight Tales from the Outer Limits of the Darkside

[Trollheart]

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

ratings and quite a few


Bottom of the list is shared by Creepshow, Night Gallery and Tales of Tomorrow, with

each, while there are

for Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Amazing Stories.
Nearly topping the list with

is Monsters but just edging it this time is Dimension 404 with the highest rating


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

[Trollheart]

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.


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:

[Trollheart]

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: (only due to the rather decent ending, really)

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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

We have one

two with ratings of

One with

and one with


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
putting it in fifth place.
Next up is Goosebumps, which gets a rating of
and takes fourth place.
Both The Veil and Room 104 get
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
takes the top spot.

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

[Trollheart]

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


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:

[Trollheart]

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: ?

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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

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

Hardly a ringing endorsement, I know. Much better are the top two, with Monsterland reaching a high of

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
taking first place.

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

[Trollheart]

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.



Black Mirror, Bloodride, Two Sentence Horror Stories



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



Monsters, Goosebumps, Monsterland



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



Love, Death and Robots



Tales from the Crypt


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