Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

 "Eye of the Beholder" is just a keystone of The Twilight Zone. I still remember when I first saw this episode. That initial reaction as a teenager, the impact of what beauty and ugliness is, reversed and how the episode protects that twist all the way through, the ingenuity of the camera work, the makeup of the doctor, nurses, and staff, and the religious and cultural leader of this group while Maxine Stuart's agonizing young woman in bandages kvetches about her physical "deformity", the eleven procedures (all failures) attempted to fix the face in order to conform with the society of this place. I don't think it has lost its ability to land. Beauty and the desire to attain it in order to "fit in", to procure whatever procedure is needed to be accepted. It's a staple in the evening, to me. I'm guessing even if the lineup wasn't SYFY, this episode is too much an institution of the TZ not to be featured in prime time.

  Oh, anyone that knows my love of Universal Monster Movies wouldn't be the least bit surprised that "The Howling Man" is absolutely my jam. John Carradine dressed as Moses complete with white hair, robe, and staff, and all that gusto he could muster as the leader of the Brotherhood, dedicated to keeping the Devil locked up while Mr. Ellington (Wynant), who arrived in a rainstorm rather ill, questions whether or not this type of religious order is keeping an innocent man locked up because they are all mad. Hughes as the prisoner howling is often probably best remembered under the Devil makeup, horns, pointy ears, and cape but I think the way he handles the character can't be understated. Pitiable and begging for help, Hughes howling man does appear weak, disheveled, and held against his will...nothing about how he looks or sounds raises red flags that he's Evil Incarnate. So Ellington is duped while Carradine looks right the opposite. The way Carradine delivers hi...

  Right before "A Stop at Willoughby (when I was still on Twitter, this episode was really recognized by many TZ fans as a fan favorite) was "A Nice Place to Visit" with Cabot as an angel wearing white (which is a clever little twist), Blyden his "assignment" in the "afterlife". Blyden's fate isn't exactly satisfying...because it's hard to consider him ever "suffering". Yes, he wants to return to that criminal lifestyle. That life of danger, robbery, violence, gambling, and looking to take what he wants. In this "heaven" every wish is granted, every desire is provided, and every game is won. He has plenty of beautiful women, a fine place to live (with lots of perks), and kills it at casinos. When he breaks balls on a pooltable, they all go into their pockets without a scratch. And his wardrobe closet is filled with lots of fine linen. This just doesn't sit well with Blyden. Having it all just isn't exciting. And...

 This performance from Duff in the Twilight Zone episode, "A World of Difference", is just so fucking realistic. He's so convincing as "Arthur Curtis" terrified of this "facade" called a drunken actor "married to a harpy" named Gerald Raigan, trying to find his way back to "his family, career, and life" (that is a shooting script in production). His face, full of perplexity, anxiety, confusion, and sheer terror, and a mind that can't accept (or perhaps refuses to) this "real life"; Duff's work is truly exceptional. This wasn't just some campy B-show to the actors like Duff and Conte ("Perchance to Dream")...the talent in the 60s took to the science fiction of this era very seriously. And because of that, Duff enriches an episode like "A World of Difference", his Arthur Curtis (he simply won't listen to his agent, ex-wife (looking for the next check), movie director (called "The Priv...

  A particular shot of the gathering of folks in the neighborhood of Maple Street before Akins tries to diffuse the tension I too often fail to appreciate enough. Right after kid Tommy (Jan Handzlik) mentions that in the books he reads the aliens send down a family that looks like humans. And these faces absorb that and you can see each and ever person in that group lets what Tommy says stay quite active. And not very long after Atwater has a mob approaching him because his car started. Friends who have known each other for years easily turn on each other, offer accusations about being up at a particular time in the morning ("an oddball, always an oddball"), question why a ham radio is being build in the basement, lights going on and off, and before long Weston is propping up nearby with a coke and plenty of pointed fingers. Weston, especially, and some of the women (2020 would probably call them Karens) even will accuse anyone and everyone by the episode's end. It can ne...

 I do think a lot of the appeal of "The Hitch-Hiker" besides Inger Stevens knockout performance, one of the very best The Twilight Zone ever produced--and probably one I'll continue to drumbeat until I breathe my last breath--and Strong's intrusive "little scarecrow man" always there to remind her of what she cannot avoid, always right there "needing a ride" is the "road movie" aspect of it. Supposedly from Pennsylvania when Stevens' Nan "blows out a tire" and the mechanic that helps her keeps reiterating how she's lucky she isn't dead until Arizona, with plenty of places in between, the entire episode is moving from one place to another. I think I've always been attracted to the road movie. Taking the trip, the long trip, an adventure. This, for Nan, isn't quite what she had in mind...certainly not the destination. I usually love to watch "The Hitch-Hiker" on New Year's Day in the early afterno...

It is no surprise "The Hitch-Hiker" is the prime real estate of prime time on Night One of the Twilight Zone marathon, but I like that "Perchance to Dream" got the chance to precede it in the SYFY schedule. I always want Robert Florey's ("Murders of the Rue Morgue") work in this episode to get some serious consideration because of the first season, "Perchance to Dream" and "A World of Difference" are the two episodes who have definitely risen in my personal ranks of the first season. "Perchance to Dream" was a big surprise last year and once again watching the episode just reiterates the previous two viewings of the episode, particular Conte's haunted performance where it definitely looks as if the poor guy badly needed a good night's rest. Fear of heights, fear of death, fear of what lurks within the mind; Conte is at the breaking point. When he "takes a flight" out his psychiatrist, Larch's window (...

 About 5:50 in the evening here Central time in the States is when SYFY started to bring out some of the most popular episodes of Twilight Zone. "Time Enough at Last", came and went. I still wonder why the Bank President and Henry's wife hated books so much. Helen (deWit) crossing out poems in a book and tearing the pages out while calling Henry (Meredith) a fool, almost sadistically out of spite and Henry's boss, Carsville (Vaughn Taylor) smiling all Machiavellian when told by his bank clerk about Helen's keeping all reading materials from him...poor Henry seems whipped in every part of his life. Why he ever married Helen or wished to work for Carsville, Henry just seemed like someone willing to be deprived and victimized. Maybe he lived too much in his books and even after he had "all the time he needed, all the time he wanted" thanks to nuclear holocaust, perhaps such overwhelming dedication to the printed word, with the very sense needed (sight) to m...

 While I don't think "King Nine Will Not Return" is recognized as necessarily upper echelon Twilight Zone, I find Robert Cummings as a fighter pilot from WWII stuck in Africa "circa 1943" going mad at the illusions of the ghosts of former soldiers he once knew quite compelling every time I've seen the episode. And I have seen this one a bunch of times, going back to the mid 90s when I was watching these marathons on Sci-fi Channel during Forth of Julies. I bet you I have VHS tapes of these marathons in my shed. I should investigate...I bet there are some fun advertisements and Sci-fi channel specific related material of particular interest. I do remember "King Nine" was quite  a favorite of mine back then, but then into the 2000s, it sort of slipped to the back. But in the last five or so years, "King Nine" made a resurgence and became an episode I always look forward to. The bleak setting, the B-25 laid bare under the hot desert sun, the...

 Not sure "A World of His Own" gets over as well as it might have back in the first season upon its making and release. I gave it 8/10 I noticed on the IMDb, but after this evening's viewing, I think I was more won over by its clever twist at the end with Rod Serling being "deleted" (for lack of a different term) by writer Keenan Wynn, whose concocted characters dictated to tape became so real to him they actually manifest from imagination to human form. If Wynn chooses to, he can get rid of those human characters he creates by tossing the tape he speaks into existence by way of dictation recorder (Rod did this as a writer) into a fire in his office fireplace. You rarely see Wynn so at ease, without much care in the world. He's just chill. He is often associated with characters who raise their voice, get stressed out or particularly angered into an outburst, or are roughly hewn. I could just feel the seething that might be conjured by scenes like when Mary L...

 As far as "The Mighty Casey" goes, I got off work and had a shoulder and back ache I think I received as part of strenuous activity not to mention stress due to my internet being trash thanks to a router malfunctioning. Anyway, I was glad to finally rest for a bit and watch Twilight Zone. I have recorded all the episodes when the marathon officially started at 5AM here in the States where I live. No fanfare or excitement this year as the pandemic has really set its target on my family with my mother and stepfather getting Covid related pneumonia, as well as, my cousin and stepfather's sister. My first episode being "The Mighty Casey" is kind of okay, while it isn't any great shakes, I always enjoy starting the marathon with something that isn't as firmly entrenched in the prime of Twilight Zone's schedule as the usual suspects often are. Granted, I will be be getting to the opening slate of episodes here shortly with "Where is Everybody?" ...

 Gladly saying kiss my ass to 2020 with the New Years Eve and New Years Day Twilight Zone Marathon I'll be writing about throughout Thursday Evening and all day New Years Day. I noticed SYFY is really tightening these episodes to 25 minutes each. That is quite short, with the channel already notorious for excising material that are often considered important to TZ fans. Since I am more or less not critiquing any of them as I would uncut on other platforms (mainly from my complete DVD set or Netflix in certain instances (laziness)) or focusing on individual episodes for any serious reviews for the blog--truth be told, these two days are very relaxed as the year has proven not to allow us to feel that way, for any number of reasons including the threat of a pandemic on our welfare, both physical and mental health.

  Liv with "dominatrix brain"? Sign me up! I need my punishment, Liv. I've been a bad boy. Okay, enough of that. Yes, a dominatrix who was very popular, considering a politician, news anchor, and attorney all were clients, was killed. Liv will eat her brain after Ravi soaks it in blue liquid Ravi has perfected that allows for visions to last much longer. It seems the dominatrix recorded all her sessions and whoever murdered her has the footage and is using that to blackmail. Eventually Clive and Liv get the guy once he goes for some money being held in a sack by Johnny Frost (Daran Norris). The investigation is just a whole lot of nothing. This is all about McIver in a very seductive, sexy, ultra-aggressive, commanding dom persona ordering men (like a sketch artist for the police, the suspects, even swinging a whip to get Clive's attention) around in a demanding manner that certainly aroused me, if I'm honestly forthcoming. It is just the kind of personality that ...

 This episode (#247) has Maggie's brain completely scrambled as Barnabas and Willie continue to tell her she's Josette, although she's just not convinced. Maggie is still in that brain trying to get out it seems. When Burke Devlin talks Sam Evans into finding his art to preoccupy his tormented psyche, as the sheriff informs him that Maggie's absence has even baffled the FBI and little evidence has been recovered of her whereabouts or disappearance, potentially considering her dead, Sam sees Burke's point, heading for the Old House to recover the portrait of Barnabas, with an apprehensive Willie leading him in reluctantly. While Willie hurries him out of the house by convincing him to take the portrait while he grabs the easel, Sam leaves behind his distinctive pipe (it has this weird misanthropic face on it, a feature that is quite detailed). That pipe is found by Maggie, sort of stirring up some confusion...and memory. This was very clever. It is just a little carr...

  So a busybody gossiper at a dental company is found dead in a urinal in the ladies restroom by co-workers after someone (an employee) tainted her yogurt with Utopium...her skin was pale with a bloated tongue sticking out of her mouth. Liv eats her brain in some chili, and that gossiping, stick-your-nose-in-everyone's-business personality takes over, with her interests in Seattle Police Department, the dental company where the murder occurred, and the relationship between Blaine and Peyton (yuck) juicy soap operas completely taking up her attention as Clive tries to reel that in to his advantage during the investigation. Clive and Liv have to really investigate a lot of logs and texts, but eventually three candidates surface to the top of the list...a former porn star (80 films in five months, with a specialty in "noir porn"), an adulterer outed with resulting divorce, and an employee with a "torpedoed" promotion. Meanwhile Major is very sick, with an inhaler i...

 "Hub" was a nice return for me to the final season of Battlestar Galactica after a little hiatus as the Resurrection Ship--which functioned as a cloning and transfer of personality/soul when one clone is killed, allowing them to return inside the clone of another created exact form--is once and for all nuclear bombed and destroyed, leaving only those Cylons still alive existing with one remaining life. No longer will a Cylon skinjob resurrect into another body, awakening in "clone goo". If a Cylon is killed, that is it. Just like humans, Cylons get one chance and that's it. D'Anna (Lucy Lawless) knows who the "final five" are and President Roslin needs that information so she can pluck the hidden Cylons out from among her crew. The Basestar with the hybrid who keeps shouting "Jump!", causing the ship to time jump repeatedly, allows for Roslin to experience a type of spiritual "connection" with Elosha (Lorena Gale) on the Battle...

  I realized I wouldn't be getting to "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) during the Christmas season (although, I don't know that this season doesn't go to New Year's Eve or not for some people), I considered maybe trying it out Saturday afternoon late on the 26th. But when the clock struck Midnight, I wasn't sure what my first film would be "post Christmas Day". I haven't shaken Christmas off (nor do I want to, really; it wasn't a bad month until my mother and stepfather got Covid and are both sick), so I was sort of considering what to watch after a cardio workout. I recorded Bell, Book and Candle (1958) off Turner Classics December 23rd because I hadn't watched it again since December 14th of last year. I wrote a review about the film, though views on my blog were fairly abysmal during that month, so I can only hope that years of the blog in the void will help summon eyes interested even when I long gone from this mortal coil. I re...

 I was disappointed in my failure to continue a tradition I had started a few years ago on Christmas Eve. I liked concluding Christmas Eve with the Twilight Zone episode, "Changing of the Guard". It has a certain melancholy to it, as I am sure I've written before on the blog. But a man at the end of his life, Professor Ellis Fowler (Donald Pleasence), "retired" by the college's committee without a new rehiring contract, told by the Administrator (Liam Sullivan; the Twilight Zone episode, "The Silence") of school's replacing him with someone younger; It doesn't go well and Fowler, tears in his eyes, says Merry Christmas goodbyes to a couple of young student boys, and plans to kill himself with a gun...until ghosts of students from his past return to tell him that he wasn't an abject, miserable failure.  That the poetry he taught to the boys didn't just leave their minds as soon as they left his class, with the ghosts telling him of p...

 Typically the 25th is a pleasant time of year, but this year in horrible 2020, my mother and stepfather were stricken by Covid while the latter was in the hospital having surgery. Right now my mother is sick and recovering while my stepfather is in the hospital holding it together in the hopes he won't be put in the ICU. On Christmas Day, no less. Whoever is responsible for Covid, fuck you royally. You have destroyed countless lives and ruined so many people. I rarely wish anything upon anyone, but a special place in whatever hell anyone believes in for those responsible for Covid and the destruction of so many lives. I have already watched "Scrooge" (1951) last night before bed, but with some depression and not getting to spend time with my mother this year, I have slept on and off while leaving this (and the FX version with Guy Pearce) on throughout last night, early morning, and today. I watched the color version of "Scrooge" from my VCI DVD last night but t...

  Yaphet Kotto, Messiah? In the middle of the year I went through a serious depression. I'm not good at being stuck at home wondering if the country will fracture into pieces. At this point the Covid Death Clock ticks at 300 thousand people. I'm at the point where everything funneled to us is slanted with some sort of agenda and trust for anything told to us is frustratingly eroded. Since March a lot of my friends have lost their jobs, but most of them have found new ones. My hope for the next year is recovery, but I'm not optimistic. I have very little faith in humankind right now. This year watching the Twilight Zone episode, Night of the Meek , has a bit more punch to it. All boozing and tormented Art Carney wants is for those in poverty with very little to have a nice Christmas. Especially the older men at a shelter and the poor kids who beg him (while in his shabby Santa costume and beard) for jobs for their daddy and just one particular gift. He is drunk and in tears ...

 I had no intentions of watching this 6th season episode of The X-Files--set on Christmas Eve at a haunted house with suicide pact lovers, Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin (both an absolute hoot), toying with Mulder and Scully, looking to trick them into shooting each other (Mulder does mention that a series of double murders have happened in the house in the past), because I had actually never seen it!--but a fan on the series' subReddit brought it to my attention. During this season, in 1998, I was newly married and had stopped watching the show for a brief period. That is rather exciting to me, though, because I always love knowing that I have plenty of X-Files episodes like this left to watch for the first time. This episode is a lot of fun...just a blast. Scully actually very anxious and terrified--the skeptical scientist always questioning everything--inside a haunted house with Mulder encouraging her (in actuality, she loses her keys and follows Mulder into the house to see if he ha...

  I think I might see myself in the coming years adding Gershuny's Silent Night Bloody Night (1974) to my ever-expanding Christmas watch schedule, featuring Woronov (and other Warhol Factory members) as a mayor's daughter, involved in this odd tragic story regarding a returning grandson of a derelict manor's supposedly dead owner, burned alive in the opening sequence. Woronov obviously survives as it is her walking about narrating the ongoing film. Patterson (who died not longer this film's release of cancer in his 40s) is the grandson eventually learning a dark secret about the manor's former owner. With ax murders and a heavy throttling with a shovel, a creepy killer with a lantern and whisper in a phone communicating outside the manor his sinister presence, this film is a precursor to classics like "Black Christmas" and "When a Stranger Calls", with some eerie moments, unease, good use of POV and just the right music to punch up the history of...

  The Barb of the remake of Bob Clark's "Black Christmas" (1974) is played by Crystal Lowe in Glen Morgan's own 2006 Black Christmas . I watched it early in the morning today before finally finding an end of insomnia, and to make sure this film very much stood out with its own personality different than Clark's from the early 70's, there's a monologue about what makes Christmas and all it entails so undeserved of anything festive and, instead, deserving of repulsion: Christmas is more about warding off evil spirits than Halloween. What Christmas shit in this room resembles anything Christian, huh? It's all neo-pagan magic. Christmas tree, a magical rite ensuring the return of the crops. The mistletoe is nothing but a conception charm. Fifth century Christians jacked a Roman Winter Festival - twelve days in December when the nights were long and the Earth was ruled by the demons of chaos. And fucking Santa Claus? This fat voyeur that watches you all yea...

  One among a hell of a lot of Santas is a serial killer. And his choice of prey consists of "naughty" people. While there are some slight nods, some certain callbacks to "Silent Night Deadly Night" (1984), action director Miller's 2012 Silent Night , to me, is its own animal. If I were to compare, I think when this isn't trying to cater to the previous franchise's faithful slasher fans, "Silent Night", in my opinion, is a better film than any of the five before it. But because of the cultdom the first and second SNDN have built for themselves, "Silent Night" perhaps will need to have some time (and further exposure) to gain its own audience. It's got a mean streak and really dark side to it, especially with its creepy priest (Curtis Moore) and number of repulsive Santas (one played by Logue is a foul-mouthed, cynical, downright asshole, while Mike O'Brien has a face that no one wants to see at their window at night or hiding ...

 The plot developments between Jess and Peter regarding her pregnancy, plans for an abortion, and the timing of this news always intrigued me. I always wonder why Jess decided to tell him right before he was to play piano for a stuffy group of critics. He told her on the phone--a rather cold conversation where Jess rather tells Peter, with a "going through the motions" attitude, she needed to meet up with him about a conversation they must have, responding with "I know" after he tells her he loves her--he had been up for like three days with little rest and then she unloads on him her pregnancy revelation. She does say she hadn't planned to tell him about the abortion at all. My response was, "Why tell him?" Or the timing of it of when she tells him. Why not wait until Peter plays his piece for the critics before telling him? I was always a bit baffled by Jess' decision here. If she didn't want the child, knew that Peter was "always high s...

  Boy, when I scanned the Letterboxd crowd, Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009) sure takes a shellacking. The number of one star reviews or two star reviews stack up in quite a hurry. Even if it isn't exactly the most iconic or classic adaptation of the Dickens novel, I personally don't consider it such a wash. And as a horror fan, Zemeckis including some really eye-popping art designs of London and how The Ghost of Christmas Present deteriorates into a skeleton, his bones turning to ash as his condition worsens as the big clock's chime bangs loudly, it was my jam. I love the design of Scrooge, too. I love how Scrooge's fingers are so bony and how he's basically a skeleton with flesh clinging for dear life, a skinny ogre with a crook-back, tilted in walk. When he moves your direction, you wonder if a toll must be paid. Carolers grow silent in his presence. Carrey, I admit, probably should have only voiced Scrooge, though. I would have liked other voices and face p...

 I hope everyone has had a nice December and holiday season. As you can tell, I've taken a considerable break from the blog, with my Letterboxd account getting more attention. I do hope to add some content soon. Tonight I thought I would watch Black Christmas (1974) again, this time on Shudder. I'm not sure if I will revisit this again and again, but I also noticed that you can find this film on YouTube as well. It is cool that Black Christmas can be found in a variety of places now. I even think Tubi might have this available. Anything for this film to get more eyes on it. I think the film has really gained some good will, even more so than in the past twenty years. I watched Black Christmas for John Saxon's memorial after the horror genre and fans lost him this horrible 2020. I was watching a scene where Margot Kidder's Barb gets off the phone with her mom and moves down a hall into the living room and stairs, sort of a bit of melancholy since she's not been gone...

  I think in November of 2019 ( A Christmas Horror Story ) I covered A Christmas Horror Story (2015) rather in depth enough where I don't have to elaborate with any more specifics and can now shoot more loosely. I still think William Shatner, despite his limited appearances in the film, is such a fun presence, that the anthology horror film ("Trick 'r Treat" (2008) clearly an inspiration for its framing of the stories, not told in traditional format of the tales separated) benefits so much from him being in "A Christmas Horror Story". He really received a cushy role in the film located comfortably in a radio station, sort of the DJ not only in job but for the stories (and characters in them). I think it was important to keep that Christmas aesthetic (something you will read a lot any time I write during this part of the year) really ever present, and Shatner's studio is very much treated as such. I mean, with Shatner's storied career, a film he made...

 While I always watch the film on the DVD my wife bought me for Christmas years ago, Scrooged (1988) was on AMC this afternoon while I was doing cardio. I noticed a serious cut in the film that really bothered me. It concerned Ghost of Christmas Past (David Johansen)  carrying Murray's Frank Cross in a visitation to his parental home as a child. After Frank's reminded of his unpleasant meat market butcher father's disregard on Christmas Eve, bringing a cut of veal home for a "present", and his pregnant mom's departure includes a goodbye to her little boy, adult Frank starts to well up and cry while Christmas Past seems assured of "Niagara Falls" due to this memory. In the AMC cut, once Frank cries, the "time counter" in Christmas Past's taxi clocks them forward to a Christmas Party held by television CEO, Lew Hayward (John Forsythe). There is an entire moment cut right after Murray's tears as Frank and Christmas Past leave the hous...