Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

 I have old user comments I'll also include here from July 5th, 2015, when SYFY was still showing the 4th of July marathon. This review got hammered with the unhelpful tag on IMDb, so I might as well removing it and dump the comments here. I had thoughts of watching this last week but never got around to it.  I have my problems with the episode. And I think I list them for the most part below. Joining Custer with machine guns, in modern military fatigues, you'd think history would be warped with the Butterfly Effect or something. If they did join Custer in a losing battle at Little Big Horn, wouldn't those actions shape the outcome of the future. I guess the time warp (a wind and encountering wigwams, a canteen, a horse without a Sioux rider, and an arrow in the back) was always meant to include these three at Little Big Horn, but their weapons and uniforms, you'd think, would be cataloged as peculiar artifacts. Whatever the case, while I think the episode is riddled wi...

 How about a pair of killer jeans? You might want to be cautious when you go into the changing room because these jeans literally do kill. The use of ecosystem to describe areas of a store, the emphasis on particular corporate branding, the toxic work environment, how fake people are, and the capitalist mentality of a clothing store as MONDAY MADNESS prepares a potential customer deluge for a brand new line of pants made from cotton among other fabrics from India are all satirized with no subtlety but I think in this film's case that approach was probably wise considering pants, once worn, kill the wearers in a variety of ways. As outrageous as it sounds, but all the retail store parodying going on hits more than it misses. I didn't mind this at all. There is even some Woke culture aspects thrown in to add to the tension.

 Carter really went for it big. A three part arc involving CSM trying to recover the digital tape with evidence of alien information Mulder desperately wants made public. But Mulder and Scully's safety ultimately is more important than that truth coming out. CSM must back down because Skinner, of all people, negotiates a deal with help from Albert Hosteen as leverage (he broke that code and shared what he knows with Navajo associates of his). What proves to be a major hiccup is that CSM has two of his hitmen set up Krycek, since he had the digital tape in his possession after attacking Skinner in the stairwell of the hospital near the Intensive Care room as Melissa, Scully's sister, was shot by Krycek and now is near death. I really liked that Carter brought back Albert Hosteen one more time, but I figure his opening monologue with the mother buffalo producing a rare white offspring as it parallels Melissa's condition and Scully's predicament will frustrate or repel som...

 I can't imagine what that have been like for Mulder's mother to be attending her husband's funeral, not knowing where her son is. Poor Scully is back in DC, not knowing where Mulder is, fearing he's dead, finding a chip in her shoulder, finding John Neville (called The Well-Manicured Man) at Bill's funeral with a warning that she would be killed my hitmen setup through members of his consortium (who "predict the future by inventing it"), put on suspension from the FBI, seemingly without any allies until Skinner eventually (and surprisingly) saying he has the digital tape to give to her, and loses her sister when she comes by her home to visit. So not only does Krycek kill Mulder's father, but he also kills Scully's sister. Skinner's loyalties are often ambiguous as he must ride a fine line between helping Mulder and Scully while avoiding the wrath of The Cigarette-Smoking Man.  Mulder's health is in bad shape when Albert Hosteen (Floyd ...

 This episode has everything that hooked me forever to this show. "Anasazi" even includes Floyd 'Red crow' Westerman as a wise old WWII codebreaker who assists in helping Mulder and Scully cracking an encrypted code Mulder gets a hold of from an anarchist/hacker, unearthing the docs from the Department of Defense that pertain to over fifty years of UFO information. Scully later learns she is on the docs, too, wanting Mulder to find out why. Mulder's rivalry with the Cigarette-Smoking Man heats up big-time as he tells the "dark-lunged" cancer man he'll expose all of their secrets. Immediately, of course, Cancer Man hops on a chopper with the military and heads off to New Mexico to locate Mulder...and possibly kill him. CSM made sure to send his hitman, Krycek, to kill Mulder's father, Bill (Peter Donat), when Mulder was in the other room. Mulder holding his dying father, bleeding in his arms, as he weeps is just heart-wrenching. The term "mer...

 Being right before the second season finale, I was anxious to see if "Our Town" felt like one of those lesser-thans sort of filling in the gaps between the very best episodes. The plot is grisly enough for sure: cannibalistic rituals in Dudley, Arkansas, where a chicken processing plant produces famous Chaco Chicken, investigated by Mulder and Scully when a health inspector for the government goes missing. It seems the locals of Dudley are much older than their youthful appearances might make you think. This episode was even a bit much for me, quite honestly. Seeing a town of folks gathered together to feast on the remains of a health inspector's wife and watch without blinking when Mr. Chaco (John Milford) is beheaded and his body is carried away was quite a bit laughable and outrageous to me personally. As a ghoulish horror story, it has that diabolical DNA one might expect from a sinister secret a town is harboring familiar theme. The cannibalism aspect is handled wit...

 Poor Tony Shaloub. Stuck in a damned cell, strapped to a chair, showered in the face with consistent light, a lab animal with a small tear trickling down his face because he's now a "product of some shadow government". And X being there with a doc in a lab coat, seemingly excited (in a doctorly, clinical, cold way) about how Shaloub will be a source of experimentation for a "long, long time" just created this eerie sense of dread because the secret source of information Mulder was meeting after Deep Throat was assassinated might not actually be help but something far more dangerous. And we have seen X kill a man before, doing so again, in the case of Shaloub's fellow scientist (McNulty), who had planned to turn him over to whoever "they" was supposed to be. I guess most didn't figure X would be "them". If you are a friend of Mulder and Scully and serve in some form of law enforcement or agency, you're screwed. Much like "Gho...

 Mulder once again knows that three is a coverup and he can't tell the public. A contagion spread after a doctor for a pharmaceutical company encounters a bursting postule on a dead animal in a Costa Rican jungle and a mysterious package is sent with such a postule on a leg of that dead animal to a prison. Eventually prisoners are dead from the contagion not long after attracting it and Pinck Pharmaceuticals sends a quarantine unit posing as the CDC to take care of this "little problem". There is a scare for Scully who is in a room when a postule bursts on Charles Martin Smith's Dr. Osbourne. This episode is fucking disgusting. That special X files score that loves to get under the skin when used for icky scenes is utilized to maximum effect in this episode. Bursting sores of puss into faces, securing a death sentence for victims is quite up there at the top of this series in terms of grossout. Dean Norris before "Breaking Bad" is head of a team of marshals ...

 This was another one of those evil possessing kids episodes. The Căluşari are this Romanian sect of exorcists, using birds and different ingredients and herbs concocted to ward off a presence invading a human victim. The head of this sect tells Mulder to be careful since that evil now knows him...yikes. After this was over, I have no idea why Scully could be as skeptical, considering the evil possessing little boy, Charlie (Joel Palmer), caused a big dustup in a room in the house of Charlie's mother, Maggie (Helene Clarkson). Maggie levitated off the floor and up against a wall, windows breaking, wind all stirred up, Scully thrown across the floor, you'd think some of the skepticism might have dissipated. I think for a majority of us, if we experience what Scully does, belief in the supernatural might have a slight bit of an uptick. Maggie's husband gets hung by his tie in the mechanics of a garage door as it opens, with Charlie crying out, "NOOOOO!!!!" so that t...

 DC Fontana-penned episode during an era of The Next Generation that wasn't exactly remembered fondly. I personally just didn't like it, though there was some fun content that amused me, such as the warring species / delegates looking to join the Federation, the snake-like Selay and dog-like Anticans, who absolutely detest each other, plotting to use violence when the opportunity is available. But the A plot regarding an entity invading the Enterprise out of an energy cloud (though, when invading Picard, this being tells the crew it was snatched from the cloud as if the ship were a claw), moving not only through systems of the ship but crewmembers such as Worf and Crusher was basically a possession story akin to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". The show just hadn't yet found its own personality separate from The Original Series. Although I find the first two seasons fascinating, I agree with other fans and critics of the show that The Next Generation really found...

 I laughed when I read fans were dead set against any other love interest for Mulder other than Scully when his former love from Oxford University, Pheobe (Amanda Pays), pays him a visit while traveling from Scotland Yard to locate a possible arsonist killer targeting members of Parliament. I thought to myself  before reading that, "Why hasn't Phoebe been back on this show except that one time?!" "Fire", for me, is pretty much memorable for the introduced woman from Mulder's past, how she broke his heart, how she plays successful mind games with him and can toy with his emotions, how Scully is clearly bothered by any closeness between them, and Mulder's debilitating fear of fire. I LOVE Amanda Pays, having such a crush on her in the Rob Lowe vehicle, "Oxford Blues" (1984), so I completely understand why her Phoebe would run roughshod over Mulder's emotions. Duchovny has all that vulnerability opened up...you can see Mulder can't escape ...

  I totally get why there were some vampire and horror fans critical of the transfusion "cure" for Adrian Pasdar thanks to his father, Tim Thomerson, in the cult favorite from the same year as "The Lost Boys" and "The Monster Squad", Near Dark (1987). "Fright Night" (1985) also gets lumped in with the vampire films of this era. But Kathryn Bigelow's western vampire film isn't beholden to any rules or tropes except for they die by sunlight. Henriksen's brood, consisting of Paxton, Goldstein, and Joshua John Miller, are very much nocturnal predators just like vampires, driving town to town, bar to bar, hotel to hotel, swapping vehicles, feeding off the unfortunate human cattle wherever they go. Pasdar and Jenny Wright's romance is what stops them. Jenny tells Pasdar that she was a victim of John Miller's, a high school student believing he needed tutoring since he was a child when bit by a vampire. Wright couldn't stand by ...

 After Part II had an alien and Paul Reubens as a very disgruntled bus driver and Part 3 had Patrick Dempsey receiving sex help from a paranormal porn star played by Sally Kellerman, I'm not sure why any producer would wish to greenlight yet another sequel to "Meatballs" (1979). I've noticed plenty of conversation regarding how the horror genre was dying coming out of the 80s. Well, entering the early 90s, comedy wasn't exactly doing well, either. Meatballs 4 (1992) seemed to be a holdover of the 80s, as if a last gasp of a decade many considered a high watermark. That sentiment is changing quite a bit, and as culturally more and more generations hold the past contemptible and shame it as detestable, I think comedies like "Revenge of the Nerds" and something like Meatballs 4 will be banished to the dungeon of pop culture quarantine. I'll be amazed if these films do get any streaming or cable/satellite service in the future. I scan Letterboxd and IMD...

  God, I wish I could say I thoroughly enjoyed Volunteers (1985), considering it has Hanks, Candy, Wilson, Thomerson, and Watanabe make up a seemingly game cast. It is directed by Nicholas Meyer, whose films such as "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", "Time After Time", and "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" were right up my alley. I recall that Volunteers was a VHS rental on television at my cousin's birthday party in the late 80s. None of us kids watched it. We did later get into "One Crazy Summer", though. Hanks, for one thing, is just not particularly likable. He's a bit of a heel. He only joins the Peace Corps because he owes a bookie $28K and the bookie's muscle wants to destroy him for bluffing at cards for big winnings. He manipulates a Thai village to build an impressive bridge so a druglord/warlord could have access for opium movement. He trains villagers to bet at cards. Watanabe is Hanks' lackey and loyal patsy who seems t...

 Watching Bachelor Party (1984), while going back into Tom Hanks' past, the very word used for anything offensive and PC abusive that is problematic would be used against it. I'm sure the Tom Hanks of today doesn't even want a memory of this at all infiltrating his mind or psyche at any given point or time. A donkey snorts coke and dies with Hanks, Zmed, and his pals leaving it legs up in the elevator for the hotel owner to find, causing him to shriek. Two female hookers are sent to a bachelorette party by Hanks' adversary for the affections of a stunning Tawny Kitaen, Real Genius' own Robert Prescott (yes, he was also the dorky foil for the heroes in that goofy 80s comedy as well), surprising the ladies in attendance as they go down on each other (it is offscreen but certainly implied as the women react in shock). There is one particular trans scene that most certainly wouldn't fly involving Gary Grossman. Prescott is stripped naked by Hanks and his buddies (g...

Lila is infatuated with a dead body she sees  Dexter sees Deb fucking some gym trainer...yeah, awkward. Dexter makes sure the next morning to keep the subject of that changed. He desperately needs to know what Matsuka found that might be a turning point in catching the Bay Harbor Butcher because he is the Bay Harbor Butcher. Algae tied to a specific boat might just be what snakebites Dex. So what will he do to keep his boat from implicating him?  This episode had plenty of "Dex-isms" that amused me to no end. His immediate feeling about Rita's mom, Gail (JoBeth Williams!) and altering that when she remarks about how the Bay Harbor Butcher perhaps isn't so bad considering his targets were all bad people. How he considers parents aliens from a distant world. His comfortable attraction to Lila (Jaime Murray), even as he attempts to "break up" their "sponsorship" relationship when Rita lays out a hint he should find an older man as his mentor in addict...

What seems to be a creature attacking the Alligator Man and Michael J Anderson's trailer park proprietor is actually drunk Vincent Schiavelli's "appendage brother", able to "disengage" from him in the hopes of finding a new brother. It seems Schiavelli was dying of liver cirrhosis and why would his "little brother" want to stay attached to him? Unfortunately, "Leonard" doesn't quite know how to go about it. Mulder's appearance in the episode cracks me up because those that live there look at him with disdain, not out of jealousy but because he's just a dull, average human going through life. Particularly Blockhead finds Mulder to be unfortunately the future, without as much genetic mutation or an alternative to him. Blockhead embraces his outsider lifestyle, rejecting what society considers normality. He'd rather hammer nails into his nose or a spike into his chest. And the fish-eating Enigma happens to be in the right pla...

 I think a majority of Next Gen fans consider this clipshow second season finale, "Shades of Gray", the worst episode of the series. It is hard not to think it is almost a complete waste of the regulars. I credit Sirtis and Muldaur for providing panic, worry, tension, and ultimately relief while Frakes remains under a head device while being monitored for an infection caused by a little slug after visiting an alien world. I believe Muldaur's Dr. Pulaski deserved a better send-off than this. Sirtis' Counselor Troi is obviously constantly concerned while by her side. I don't hold the cast accountable for this, and a writer's strike and lack of budget resources just simply handcuffed the crew/production. Throwing a bunch of clips together (mostly from the first season when Riker didn't have his beard), sort of cobbled according to the emotional state of Riker's mind at any point in time (commercial break to commercial break) with a "uh oh, Riker'...

 Ole reliable trope--superior humans created through Eugenics invitro with greater intellect, strength, and especially the side effect of psychosis--is introduced here in The X Files. Twin psycho girls who murder their fathers through exsanguination, their existence through invitro masterminded by a genius named Sally Kendrick (she looks as if she's highly unstable and ready to suffer a psychotic break at any moment), or Eve 8 (Eve 7 was taking medication to keep her own latent psychosis at bay) using digitalis (a type of paralyzing drug) eventually are a threat to Scully and Mulder, not realizing that they are already very dangerous, their own psychopathy developing earlier that usual (typically psychosis emerges during teenage years). These kids are creepy. When they smile to each other, having done what they have to their fathers--and eventually Eve 7--it is chilling. They plot and scheme without a hint of guilty conscience or moral issue. It is easy for them to kill. They are c...

 I think the major problem with Matheson's "Spur of the Moment" remains how I felt the previous time I wrote a review on the blog back in 2017...the twist on who teenage Anne is being pursed by on horseback--as Serling puts it, "The face of terror". Anyone can tell it is Anne Henderson aged with makeup. The old Anne pursuing her younger self. Why she would ride town with a shriek and give chase to her like a witch on a broom is puzzling because that kind of rushing someone, especially yourself from the past in order to warn her not to run off and marry the wrong man, won't accomplish anything. At any rate, as seen above, it makes for quite a startling image even if it remains a bewildering decision by older Anne to cry out like a banshee and scare away her younger self. This also uses that "vicious circle" where time continues to loop over and over with no alteration. Anne will always run away with David Mitchell and cause a life of misery and even...

Morbidly, I must admit, I often research how many of the cast is still alive. I was quite surprised to see that three of the five cast members for the Richard Matheson-penned TZ episode, "Spur of the Moment", are still with us. Hyland unfortunately left us at the young age of 41 due to breast cancer, but her mother, played by Marsha Hunt (I know her from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Too Short a Season"), is still alive, as are familiar faces, Roger Stone ("Dark Shadows", the 60s classic horror soap) and Robert Hogan (who has been a television staple up until 2018!).  I still like the twist. You'd think Hogan's preferred investment banker and Hyland's fiance would be the one responsible for her family's ruin; that it was Stone, for whom Daddy Warbucks didn't like at all and was decidedly against, and seemed sincere and just right for Hyland, was actually the one who ultimately leads the family into destitution popped me. ...

 I will include user comments from an IMDb review from January 3, 2016. This is one of my favorite episodes of the first season dealing with Deep Throat and Mulder's difficulties with the FBI and how they want to close the X files. This is a template for how the series operates: Mulder gets close to the truth, faces a setback, seems on the verge of being dumped by the FBI, with forces at work in the government that override Mulder's potential dismissal. This had that big ending where Deep Throat seemed to reveal himself as perhaps not a Mulder ally. Perhaps Deep Throat was working Mulder or perhaps he is working those who consider him an ally. Throughout the first season Deep Throat leads Mulder to places, such as he does in "Fallen Angel", to Wisconsin where an actual cloaked alien moves about burning folks severely it comes in contact with while Marshall Bell's Colonel Henderson trying to catch up to it and kill it. Henderson wasn't about to let Mulder subve...

 I will include user reviews from January 1, 2011 I withdrew from my old IMDb account. This is the perfect Monday evening episode, I think. I go back and forth on it. I just don't think it is great Serling. But even okay Serling is better than a lot of writers of 60s science fiction much less after him. I think as I have felt in time's past, that "Probe 7, Over and Out" is too familiar. The themes--such as hate, nuclear fallout, countries attacking each other instead of working things out, two completely different people (in this episode's case, Basehart, seemingly from a type of Earth, and Bower, seemingly from a completely different planet, although she looks human, too) despite their differences, a man and woman, as a type of Adam and Eve, a serious crashlanding causing an astronaut to remain forever stuck on a distant planet without others of his species, etc.--are Twilight Zone regs seemingly culled from the series for the final season, probably because Serli...

 To be honest, not much to add to what I've said in the past on this episode on the blog. I didn't like the "alien ghost" that possesses Lauter, though I appreciated the treatment of NASA, considering I'm in awe of the space program, ever since I was a kid watching "For All Mankind" over and over. Mulder and Scully at Houston, getting to be involved in helping to bring a shuttle back to earth safely, was fun. Seeing Mulder geek out, schooling Scully on the technobabble shared among Mission Control and Lauter's Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Belt, as Susanna Thompson's Michelle Generoo hopes to guide the astronauts (one of whom is her fiance) through a payload delivery and re-entry despite signs of sabotage that might cause a terrible disaster, is fun. Scully remarking she's surprised Mulder didn't ask for Belt's autograph after so much hero worship and signs of respect cracked me up. But, honestly, I understand why "Space" isn...

 They can do anything they won't. - Deep Throat, talking about the Department of Defense to Mulder. Artificial Intelligence that kills to protect itself. Department of Defense interested in this AI. Mulder's former partner killed when he goes to apprehend the brains behind that AI, its Central Operating System (C.O.S.) in control of this big building also responsible for the death of a CEO who orchestrates the release of the man behind the very invention/creation of the IA. Brad Wilczek (Rob LaBelle) understands that much like Oppenheimer, whose conscience never recovered from the drop of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his invention of this dangerous AI could be a dangerous weapon in the possession of the government, looks to discontinue the COS. Mulder, reeling from the loss of his friend, wants to help Wilczek set off a virus that kills the machine. In this episode, Deep Throat is briefly involved in the plot, more or less informing Mulder of the DOD's interest in th...

 Although "Shadows" is one of my least favorite episodes from the first season, I don't think it is necessarily a bad one. It has paranormal activity where a businessman was slashed in a tub, set up to look like a suicide thanks to his partner's betrayal due to their defense company's illegal sale of parts to an Iranian terrorist group called Isfahan. I think Lisa Waltz is very good as the victim, Howard Graves' secretary, Lauren Kyte. This is more or less a special effects showcase where electromagnetic charge is left behind whenever the presence of Graves either kills people associated with his former partner, to protect Lauren (who knew about the illegal sale of parts), or by lighting up the front lights of Mulder's rented car whenever he tried to cause him to wreck. Scully makes it seem as if she believes the spirit of Howard is protecting Lauren in order to convince her to help them find information that will take down Dorlund (Barry Primus), responsi...

  8 million years out of Africa... - Mulder ...and look who's holding the door. - Scully "The Jersey Devil" was brought to my attention again by a user on the X Files subreddit mentioning how nice it was to see Scully out of the FBI "pants suit" and comfortably civilian, attending a godson's birthday party with lots of 8 year old kids running around. Having an actual life outside the job , that was something the user was glad to see emphasized. As the episode continues, a single father and simple businessman named Rob is recognized as a potential romantic partner for Scully. She even dresses up and goes on a date while Mulder spends the entire episode hanging out in the industrial district with the homeless looking for a cannibal wilderness Neanderthal as the Atlantic City Detective Thompson (Wayne Tippitt) makes it very clear he wants the FBI agent nowhere near his case of a half-eaten homelessman and jurisdiction. Thompson is dead serious and not to be tri...