Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

 Since rediscovering it on Tubi, despite being Halloween season, when going to bed, I have become addicted to Silk Stalkings, a 90s show on USA Network I used to leave on at night during my high school days. I would go to work, come home, and do homework while it was on. Back then you got your sexy shows however you could get them, and Silk Stalkings had enough titillation and trashy storylines following homicides often with a salacious, sleazy backdrop, set in "Palm Beach, FL" (mostly Cali or AZ actually), mostly around the rich and privileged (consisting a lot of VERY attractive people with very ugly personalities and attitudes). The dialogue and characters are often quite a piece of work, the women would often wear coats with tight-fitting skirts, and guys had their muscled physiques. This felt like a not-too-distant relative to Miami Vice. The wardrobe had bright colors, Mitzi Kapture (as Rita Lee Lance) and Rob Estes (as Chris Lorenzo) had plenty of come-ons while workin...

McDowell and Comi prepare to leave for Mars.  Aliens visiting the UN, dropping off their cook book, providing goodies for humans on Earth, easing them into trusting them, spiriting them away to be food for them on their home planet. To Serve Man is nearly 60 years ago. I've been watching Twilight Zone since I was a teenager in the mid 90s thanks to Sci Fi Channel. Many of my family have passed since (for instance, my mother's siblings are all about gone except one last sister), and it wouldn't be right to avoid a marathon during the 4th if just for nostalgic reasons. Syfy didn't see the value of TZ on Independence Day, except last year, so even though I cannot watch episodes like I do during New Year's Eve and Day, it is nice to try and sneak in a block of episodes whenever possible. I started with Death Ship from the fourth season, continuing with Stopover in a Quiet Town and The Gift . To Serve Man would feel like a later afternoon watch but SYFY showed it at 3:...

Serling introducing Stopover in a Quiet Town  Kicked off with Death Ship in a previous post and will drop marathon notes on this blog post until I hit the bed: Imagine waking up in the bed of an alien girl’s doll town called Centerville, a fictional replica of Earth; Bob and Millie Frazier can run nowhere, get away, or return home. They are the playthings of a much larger alien girl until she’s tired of them (or they need food). Daddy brought them from Earth to exist as his baby girl’s human toys. I imagine they wish this was nothing but a hallucination or some alcoholic fever dream. Stopover in a Quiet Town just has that eerie quality I never tire of. A couple bewildered by a ghost town, not realizing they are far, far from home. An alien in The Gift does come in peace and has a miracle offering but the village sees him as a threat, destroying the very gift that could have provided them all with so much more than they had. This is the kind of episode that comes and goes during SyF...

 I was gone all day at my mom's house for the 4th, but I did look at the schedule when I got home later in the evening. Death Ship was at 1:30 PM in the afternoon, which is where I decided to start my own marathon. For some reason, SYFY decided to plop Resident Alien within the marathon inexplicably, and why the network did that is anybody's guest. The Twilight Zone audience wouldn't bother with this show, and if they did, most of us would have done other things waiting for the return after it was over. I know I would have if I had been home. At any rate, Death Ship continues to be a sad experience because it's clear Ted Mason and Mike Carter are ready to go to the afterlife (especially Mason, whose wife and child were killed before his lift off, while Carter encountered a friend and relative before reaching home who had previously died, where no wife was there because she was still alive) while their captain (Jack Klugman's most infuriating, unlikeable character on...

 Word of warning. This review contains adult subject matter. Carly and Nick seem to have a great sex life but want to jazz it up...or are at least considering it. Lara has an inviting "swinging club" allowing them to see a "sample" of what they can have if they are interested: Burton and Kimberly fucking in a room with a window for them to watch. Kimberly will be available to Carly and Nick if they so choose. And they decide to take Lara up on the offer, engaging in a threesome with Kimberly. It doesn't stop there, however. While fucking Kimberly is nice, very nice, Nick is very interested in Lara, actually, and she reciprocates more than gladly. Carly is upset at her man for quietly slipping outside to fuck Lara, talking to Burton about how mad she is...and Burton tells her to do something about it. That "doing something about it" is fucking him! By the end Carly and Nick realize they want to remain together and enjoy the final fuck of the film. There...

Rod Serling presents Piano in the House "...we will not end the nightmare, only explain it. In the Twilight Zone" -- Rod Serling, looking down into the "cylinder prison" in the episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" I'll do some analysis on and off today and tomorrow, Episode titles in bold I watched but did not comment. Tuesday, December 31, 2024 3:00am – The Chaser (hilariously the Syfy cut dispenses with Roger/Leila conversation to a point to just get on with it...but there is a distaste this leaves behind now that might not have been as distinct then) 3:30am – The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross (definitely a fifth season episode fit for 2:30 in the morning of the New Year's Eve portion of the marathon. Salvatore buys compassion and dies because it wasn't part of his personality. The sociopath is traded in a barter for money but the woman he wanted in this contest of his own making cost him his life thanks to a father he couldn...