Twilight Tales from the Outer Limits of the Darkside

[Trollheart]

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...

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:

[Trollheart]

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
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


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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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!

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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


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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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:

[Trollheart]

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

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:

[Trollheart]

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: