Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

  Suspended in time and space for a moment, your introduction to Miss Janet Tyler, who lives in a very private world of darkness, a universe whose dimensions are the size, thickness, length of a swath of bandages that cover her face. In a moment, we'll go back into this room, and also in a moment, we'll look under those bandages, keeping in mind, of course, that we're not to be surprised by what we see, because this isn't just a hospital, and this patient 307 is not just a woman. This happens to be The Twilight Zone, and Miss Janet Tyler, with you, is about to enter it. Deeper than that pitiful, twisted lump of flesh, deeper even than that misshapen skeletal mask. -- Says the doctor with a certain face like those acceptable in his society about Donna Douglas during a conversation with his nurse. I can still to this very viewing remember the first time I ever watched the masterpiece, "Eye of the Beholder". The shock and awe. This is what a twist has always bee

  I was looking forward to this one. This is just a gem for an old Universal Monster movie fan like me. The angles are plenty, John Carradine as Father Jerome looking like Moses with the big poofy hair and long white beard, in the big robe, carrying his staff, wearing his sandals, and the Devil locked up in a cell. An American in Europe, caught in a storm, coming across this leaking relic of a monastery, quite ill and barely able to stand, collapsing when Jermone and the Brotherhood request he leaves. What does the Devil do? He presents himself as this well-spoken, quivery-voiced prisoner in rags who happened to kiss the wrong girl in the nearby village, angering the jealous Jerome who retaliates by putting him in a cell. Then Jerome gets his turn to try and explain to HM Wynant's Ellington that the supposedly innocent prisoner held by some madman is in fact Satan himself. Ellington, to no surprise, believes the prisoner because Carradine looks and sounds outrageous. Ellington is e

  Serling introduces A Thing About Machines Bartlett Finchley really needed to get out more. Smell the fresh air, check out the sights, and feel the wind against his face...whatever could help with his pressure-cooker building rage that seems to go without much needed release. The guy, as brought to us by Richard Haydn, has a lot of stress and seemingly no pressure valve to bring it down to acceptable levels. Just ask his (quitting) secretary, Ms Rogers (Barbara Stuart), who has had enough of his denigrating tone and wholly unpleasant temper. Who wants to talk to this guy much less be in the same room with him. And when he can't say anything good to people, instead unleashing tirades, insults, and ornery diatribes, even the machines in his house want to get rid of him! Showcase for effects that torment and try to literally get rid of Finchley, who can blame a TV set for wanting to drive him batty or the electric shaver for wanting to tear into him? Finchley does nothing but break c

Rod Serling introduces Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room Joe Mantell's performance(s) will be an acquired taste. The sheer amount of times George is said by Mantell's Jackie Rhodes is example enough that this episode might not be on too many TZ fans' favorites list. I know I don't typically watch it often, and if I do it is because of the reflection gimmick. The strong personality that takes issue with wimpy, sweaty, fingernail-chomping Jackie, named John, who wants out of the mirror and in charge of the life might be impressive for viewers since Mantell does differentiate one and the other. It is the dichotomy of our existence, these different thoughts and feelings inside us wanting to determine how we live and the decisions we make. Douglas Heyes really does get the most out of the gimmick involving the "two Mantells" talking it out over a period of time regarding a job assigned to Jackie from George (William D Gordon) to kill a bar owner who won't succu

  Serling introduces Man in the Bottle Episodes about genies and wishes just seem to get folks in either more trouble than their worth or worse. So often wishes just result in disappointment or effects for the one who gets them. The genie (as is the case with Joseph Ruskin's well dressed genie, the hat and cane, and devious, sneaky smile) grants and Arthur can't seem to calculate exactly what comes with each wish. The piece-of-shit IRS man who shows up to tax Arthur and Edna -- you bet if any Average Joe gets a little bit of money, the government will show up to punish him while the very rich just seem to always get away with paying very little -- after they had just given a majority of their cash away to the neighborhood. Now, the second wish regarding 1 million dollars, they have no one to blame but themselves. I'm certainly not against charity, but why didn't the Castles pay off their debts first? That always bothers me. These are such good people, but when you are a

 King Nine Will Not Return This is Africa, 1943. War spits out its violence overhead, and the sandy graveyard swallows it up. Her name is King Nine, B-25, medium bomber, Twelfth Air Force. On a hot, still morning, she took off from Tunisia to bomb the southern tip of Italy. An errant piece of flak tore a hole in the wing tank and, like a wounded bird, this is where she landed, not to return on this day, or any other day. Ahh, yes, now we are really tapping on the familiars that brought me to the dance and got me to get out there on the floor to sample the show's wares. I started with my DVD set for the second season because I wanted to watch the episode without commercial interruptions (on HULU, where I watched many of the first season episodes). This is one of my favorite "marathon episodes". I really love to kick off my New Year's marathons coming into this one first or second. Last year on December 31st, I watched this right after "The Mighty Casey" if my

  I finished up my Thanksgiving viewing for the year and with a ton of Christmas movies and content watched (reviews added to my Letterboxd Scarecrow88 account), along with a nice dinner with some family I hadn't seen in two years (nothing last year due to the Pandemic), there was an evening available. With some much appreciated time off (though I will be working overtime from home during the weekend, but I digress...), I had this little block of time and decided to watch some Twilight Zone, continuing my march through the entire series, episode by episode, season by season. I am just about done with Season 1, so I thought I'd knock out the remaining episodes of said season, maybe even starting on Season 2 if I felt like it. Mr. Beavis I was eating some of my mother's Pumpkin pie as Orson Bean's James BW Beavis slid down the stairwell rail of his apartment complex on a dare by a little boy who lives in one of the rooms in the building out of the front door, down the ste

I'm closing in on the end of the first season. As I was going through the first season again, I realized how extraordinary it really was that Serling could produce so much television. It's insanity, today, to think any show would offer this many episodes in a single season. But in the early days of television, this was just the norm.   The Chaser SYFY had some serious cuts in the episode, but considering this is one of my least favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, that didn't bother me. I'm sure this episode will annoy and irk people who might take offense to George Grizzard's Roger Shackleford using a love potion he bought to "influence" the mind and heart of a woman he had no chance in hell of winning over without it. Leila (Patricia Barry) so head over heels and obsessed with Roger's happiness and pleasure she drives him back to a professor (John McIntire) he bought the love potion from. I am very impressed with the huge library where the profess

A Stop at Willoughby I have watched this episode quite a few times and whether or not Gart Williams actively pursued suicide has always remained such a debate for TZ fans. It does come up from time to time on the Reddit sub for the show. Could it have been a pervasive desire in the back of the mind, some yearning to depart a miserable existence for some form of "peace fantasy", where Gart is fed up with a bitchy wife (yet another horrible wife written in the first season, more of a sociopath to Eileen Ryan's raging Nora wanting her alimony in "A World of Difference") played with efficient coldness and biting viciousness by Patricia Donahue and unbearable boss (Howard Smith; most folks at some point or another has been under the burden of such a brain-piercing, ulcer-producing barker with an unrelenting pressure pressed on his employees to achieve at a high level, applying the press with that voice). Gart certainly had my sympathies and I could understand why he

  A Nice Place to Visit Mr. Valentine is yet another hood who gets focus on the Twilight Zone and, if I'm honest, just doesn't deserve it. He isn't interesting or compelling. He has a big mouth, remains this bossy, unpleasant, wholly irredeemable thug pulling out a gun on Sebastian Cabot's "Fats" (Valentine's name for the guy in a white suit offering him a ton of pleasantries after he is rightfully shot dead when engaging with police in a shootout after robbing a safe in a store), just not satisfied with rewards for nothing, continuing to bully "Fats" around despite every reason to thank him for luxurious digs, the finest wardrobe closet, all the women he could ask for, and an unlimited supply of casino success. It just doesn't bring the same thrill as robbing a store and facing down the fuzz with the chance of being killed. The danger of being caught or dying in the act of robbery isn't available. There is a scene where "Fats"

  People Are Alike All Over This episode didn't age well. Martians looking as if they came from Ancient Greece on a planet that isn't habitable for human type beings. Roddy McDowell's Sam Conrad can just leave his ship and breathe comfortably on Mars and those who inhabit the planet seem perfectly fine. And Sam's "zoo cell", a home modeled after a suburban house back on earth, is perfectly modeled from his mind by the Martians capable to read his thoughts. The whole point was to provoke a response of "how do the zoo animals feel when you put them in a habitat to be eyed at by onlookers all day?" This is one of those episodes that has slid down my favorites list quite a bit because it is built on the twist and I just never felt what happens up until the twist really is all that memorable besides McDowell's lone TZ appearance. I'll always love the fact he was in "Planet of the Apes", though, cementing his connection to Serling in not

 Just a quickie. SYFY continues to show Twilight Zone early mornings and I've recorded a few. I go back and forth between SYFY (cut with commercials) and Hulu (the package with commercials, but uncut). So this episode is part of a small block of SYFY episodes. This was on Saturday morning at 4 AM, November 13th. "Long Live Walter Jameson" was the lone Twilight Zone episode featuring Kevin McCarthy, who had starred in the science fiction classic, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" just four years prior. I've always liked this Walter Jameson, even though the episode seems to just scratch the surface of a premise I find very fascinating. This professor of history at a university who has lived for 2000 years. He is good friends with a chemistry teacher, named Kittridge (Edgar Stehli). Kittridge realizes that Jameson's diary about the Civil War experiences of Hugh Skelton are just too vivid, too real. Eventually Kittridge gets the truth out of him: he isn'

 The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street This episode sure talks to me nowadays. With mobs out from their representative tribes just looking to attack each other. You are the enemy and we must stop you. They aren't from flying saucers from outer space looking to colonize so they mess with lights and the power of machines. It is in the algorithm. It is on Twitter. It's on Facebook. It doesn't matter if they are folks written by Serling back in 1960 to provoke a response from us *not* to become the very neighborhood folks on Maple Street on The Twilight Zone. I imagine if Serling could see his country now the alarm bells would ring. This is exactly what he probably hoped we evolved out of. But here we are. Mobs ready to kill each other at any given moment. By the end of the episode, Akins' Steve, the voice within the anger that tries to keep the mob calm and from using violence against each other, couldn't stop the eventual breakdown. I think as Charlie warns Steve not t

 The Purple Testament William Reynolds as the haunted Fitz has one of the understated performances I personally take for granted until I revisit this episode and realize how good he really is. His reactions, again incredibly understated, when he looks at the faces of those destined to die, not bursting into histrionics, shows this "taken aback" shock and then this "no, no, this can't be happening..." follow up response. I admit to forgetting about this episode which is a shame because when I happen to return to it, the power of "The Purple Testament" feels so personal, as if Serling's trauma, of war and how his own experience stuck with him, reaches out and into our hearts, into our guts, and squeezes. We feel what Fitzgerald does, understand the devastating impact of returning to camp from each offensive more bothered and worn down. I think "A Quality of Mercy" is a damn good follow up to this episode, a companion piece that is also quit

 ...and somewhere between heaven, sky, and the earth lies The Twilight Zone. There are times when characters take unexpected, life-altering trips in time, either forward or back. Sometimes because of the time travel, how events happen results from someone passing through some sort of "rift", and often there is no explanation given. Such as Richard Matheson's penned "The Last Flight" about a WWI British pilot of the 56th Squadron landing 42 years into the future while "lighting out" of a fight with German planes, leaving his teammate "Old Leadbottom" behind to be surrounded (and possibly killed). Because he moved through some rift within a mysterious white cloud, Terry Becker (Haigh) is informed by American officers on a base stationed in France that Old Leadbottom, Mackaye, is not dead. Becker wonders if this whole chance travel forward encounter in time to meet the likes of Major Wilson (Simon Scott), and Wilson's commanding officer, Maj

  I will not have this tainted money smelling up our pockets -- Franklin I do admit that I loved the hell out of this episode back when I was a teenager watching "The Fever" in marathons. It was one of the episodes I looked forward to the most. Nowadays, the episode is more or less a guilty pleasure. I don't know if Serling had some ax to grind towards Vegas, gambling, or casinos, perhaps a bad experience, since Franklin's attitude towards coin machines seem to speak almost in his voice. Except I don't think Franklin, a terrible husband to poor Flora (Vivi Janiss), is Serling in the flesh. But by the end of the episode Franklin is an absolute disaster. He's just a rude grinch at the beginning of the episode, with Flora basically walking on eggshells around him. I have always asked myself when watching this, "At what point and time did Franklin charm Flora at all? He sure doesn't seem to have ever had much of a personality." How Franklin is left t

 I couldn't help but remain impressed by the end of this episode because I still, after hundreds of times watching "The Hitch-Hiker", have goosebumps when Nan Adams looks into her review mirror and sees the "shabby, scarecrow man" who seems to pursue her from Pennsylvania to Arizona, never letting up, always ahead or just behind. It could the music (familiar to us obsessive Zoners) and her narration admitting that since she learns of her death in a booth in Tuscon all of the fear and worry that has followed her since seeing shabby scarecrow man has left. Once she realizes that her trip to LA was actually just meant to reach a totally different destination...a destination she would inevitably make her way to. Inger Stevens has some acting pieces in the episode I take for granted. I've just watched "The Hitch-Hiker" so many times, mainly during marathons over and over, that I sometimes move to the next episode, shaking my head to the episode's po

 The fifteenth episode of the first season has been a favorite for years, but I think I've reached my limit with Corey, the unstable, greedy, self-absorbed astronaut who is immediately an unlikable, toxic, argumentative asshole so obsessed with his own survival that he will not even think about the needs of the others still alive in his party who made it out of the crashed ship alive. As I have said (as have others) before, I don't know how Corey made it through psychological testing and behavioral study to make sure he was mentally fit for the job. He's a jerk the moment we meet him and remains that way until he kills the last two astronauts so he could have their water. The ending is now very much TZ lore: they didn't crash onto an uncharted asteroid as Colonel Donlin (Edward Binns) had thought: they were not too far from Reno. How they vanished off radar and never got picked up by any scans remains a bit confusing, but for the twist effect the show was going for, tha