Twilight Tales from the Outer Limits of the Darkside

[Trollheart]

Title: "Good Boy"
Series: Into the Dark
Season: 2
Year: 2020
Writer(s): Aaron Eisenberg, Will Eisenberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

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

Comments: Good story, again great animation.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating:

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Killer Inside"
Series: Two Sentence Horror Stories
Season: 3
Year: 2022
Writer(s): Sehaq Sethi

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

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

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

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

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

Second sentence: "She wanted parts of me."

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

Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

And here it is.

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

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

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

[Trollheart]

ROUND FOUR, PART I: THE CLASSICS

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

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

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

[Trollheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

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


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

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

Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

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

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

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

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


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

Rating:

[Trollheart]

The only good thing I can say about Tales from the Darkside is that once whatever rubbish they try to masquerade as a story is done, we have this to look forward to.

Title: "Crocodile"
Series: Black Mirror
Season: 4
Year: 2017
Writer(s): Charlie Brooker
Storyline: On the way home from a nightclub, well the worse for wear, a man and a woman knock down a cyclist on the road. Fearing being sent to prison, the man makes the woman  help him seal the guy up in a sleeping bag, weight it down with rocks and throw it in the sea. Look, they don't even, so far as I can see, check to make sure he was dead. Three years later (I assume) the woman, Mia, is giving an important speech. Oh, she's an architect, apparently. Meanwhile a claims adjuster meets a road traffic accident victim to discuss her claim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating:

[Trollheart]

ROUND FOUR, PART II: YE LESSER MORTALS

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

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

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

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


Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

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

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

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

Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

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

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

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

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


Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

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

Comments: Sigh.

Rating:

[Trollheart]

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

Oh, that's it. Right.

Comments: Short and sweet, but kind of meh.

Rating: