Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

Rod Serling introduces Rip Van Winkle Caper  Busy working and later get together removes my chance to watch much TZ today, but the weekend,..Woop, Woop, will be total dedication to the show. I hate not getting to watch much. Just some notes for this particular day: Some notes to go with the below: *Watching "The Parallel", I'd love to do "further analysis" at a later date. There's some great Serling writing and a question of how the astronaut is able to land without injury or crash and not remember it leaves quite a question never answered. The "something's off" nature of the astronaut's experience in a different dimension, in a different "timeline" explored through Serling's script has little touches I appreciated. However, and not to keep harping on it, the demand for length really seems to strain these fourth season episodes. There are extended dialogue scenes discussing Bob Gaines' "condition". I can't he

  The Cancer Man and the Syndicate turning their smallpox bees on a playground full of children and their schoolteacher at PE speaks volumes about how their agenda shows no mercy. A postal employee sneaking a smoke in her bathroom stall and a specialist in bees are further sacrificed to those damned bees, and Cancer Man makes sure a triggerman put a bullet in a detective working in concert with Mulder on the smallpox investigation since a similar case was already an X File under purview.  Skinner's mission was to get a cure for Scully, making a "deal with the devil" by removing evidence (and body) associated with the smallpox bees, cleaning up and "deleting" anything of possible trouble for Cancer Man and the Syndicate. "Zero Sum" -- besides following Skinner as he cleans up the bathroom of the postal building where the female employee smoker was killed by the bees and securing the victim's body from the morgue, taking that corpse to a foundry to b

 The episode, "S.R. 819", really has one hell of a hook! Watching a vascular-diseased Assistant Director Skinner with pulsing blood vessels all throughout his body while in the ER on a table dying right before his heart stops and the credits roll...that is quite a way to kick off your episode. And if you are a fan who wonders how the hell the show provides the route for Skinner to survive what looks like a body-ravaging disease, this episode gives us quite a doozy! The return of damned Krycek, disguised in long, scraggly hair, looking like someone out of an alley after a meth binge, emerges with this device attached with a screen pen he uses remotely controlling nanotechnology purposely poisoning Skinner in order to control him. Later, once Krycek resurrects a dead Skinner, whose heart was stopped by the device and then "rebooted", he tells the Assistant Director he'll keep in touch. So the episode leaves another hook: Krycek holds Skinner's life in a device

  You know, "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" was just so much more rewarding this year. I think I was distracted last year even as I watched it because of the Pandemic ruining my joy. My stepfather was dying of Covid and my mother was very sick because of Covid. My stepfather had hip surgery in the hospital, and that is how both of my parents caught Covid. My mother barely made it while my stepfather died in January of 2021. So December 2020 as a whole was really depressing and soul-sucking. It was an emotional wallop that drained from me so much. While I'm pretty much done with anything Christmas-related in terms of content -- I started with "Scrooged" on November 2nd, and my Letterboxd is inundated with Christmas film reviews and comments, done so more as a diary catalogue and historical document for future use -- I thought I would treat myself to one more holiday related reward and that is "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas". Ed Asner and Lily Thompson

  Mulder and Scully, certainly to get quite involved in the Flight 549 These are just some disparate comments about "Tempest Fugit" and "Max". Mulder smiling about surprising Scully in a DC bar on her birthday Chilton Crane as Sharon Graffia, not Max's sister as first thought. Sharon Graffia is the one who told Mulder and Scully about Max's situation which involves them in the investigation in Flight 549. She isn't Max's sister but someone he met and corresponded with, even bonding with her. Sharon is considered unreliable due to stints in a mental institution. And Max just needed someone to believe in him since his abduction stories were considered crackpot and nonsense. Max's videotape recording, to me, is so heartbreaking because, despite all the other theories about UFO technology used to enhance and advance the latest current technology existing that shouldn't have been available for another 30 or so years, knowing that he's dismisse

  One of many hired guns, Garrett (Greg Michaels) Sadly Cancer Man's cronies often get away. It is one of those sad states of affairs that happens in the X Files. And in America today, methinks. The good guys -- whoever they are, since a lot of people think are on the side of right and could be seen as wrong -- don't always win. And often the bad guys get away. Greg Michaels represents Cancer Man's long line of hired guns, and he's there at the alien ship crashsite near the Great Sacandanga Lake to recover alien bodies present and to obviously get rid of any evidence that might help Mulder prove of the existence of EBEs, with help from the military. Cover up any evidence and just cop to a mistake of bad coordinates that caused the plane to go down...an error that seems pat and convenient but not one that provokes Mulder to just accept it as fact. Max Fenig, a final recording on a VHS tape In "Max" there is this harrowing setpiece narrated by Mulder regarding &

The fourth season episode, Tempest Fugit   Despite being a lot going on in the two-part Max Fenig-centric episodes, "Tempest Fugit" and "Max", it has to be acknowledged that Scully couldn't even enjoy her birthday without some X File interference. This was smack dab in the middle of the fourth season, and when "Tempest Fugit" kicks off, Mulder and Scully are in a bar together, and some of the guys in there provide her a little cupcake with a smarkler on top. Mulder had one of those little straws in his mouth, a big smile, and Scully looked obviously embarrassed and taken aback, but in a good way. Because I think she was enjoying it with someone she really cares about.  This episode was recently brought up on the X Files subReddit board for discussion because the topic presenter was a bit bummed about Max's departure. The person felt Max was a character so easily discarded, unceremoniously so. A few others chimed in that they felt he served his purp

  I wanted to believe but the tools have been taken away. The X-Files have been shut down. They closed our eyes. Our voices have been silenced... our ears now deaf to the realms of extreme possibilities. You know, on the blog it is quite noticeable that when I "jump start" my X Files phases, so often it ends with the first season last episode, "The Erlenmeyer Flask", where I will go on hiatus, taking a bit of a breather. Then I'll typically seem to restart with the first episode of the second season, "Little Green Men". While "Little Green Men" has never been my favorite episode, I think I'd have to say that it is up there at least in my top five. If just because it has all the ingredients that make me the fan of the show I am today. It is Mulder's journey through the Cancer Man's interference, the blockade of government subterfuge, the barrier of resistance available to inherently intervene on those who never want the truth out t

 I will return to my blog for the New Year's Eve and Day for lots of Twilight Zone, but for the remainder of 2021, I want to beef up Letterboxd with Christmas content, since this blog has had more posts than any other year. My hope, goal, plans, whatever is to try and cut the output down considerably next year. Whatever you do or don't believe, I hope you are in some happy and/or healthy place. Across the world lives have been changed because of COVID and its various aberrations. I just want anyone who passes by here still to be safe and in a better place than where we have been. I just want to gift you good vibes, if anything.

Special thanks to Shadow & Substance for his generous share, provided to him courtesy of SYFY early Link here  December 31, 2021 2:00am – The Parallel 3:00am – Where is Everybody? 3:30am – One For the Angels 4:00am – Mr. Denton on Doomsday 4:30am – The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine 5:00am – The Incredible World of Horace Ford 6:00am – Judgment Night 6:30am – The Purple Testament 7:00am – Elegy 7:30am – Nightmare As a Child 8:00am – Valley of the Shadow 8:50am – The Chaser 9:15am – A World of His Own 9:40am – King Nine Will Not Return 10:05am – Of Late I Think of Cliffordville 10:55am – A Thing About Machines 11:20am – The Trouble With Templeton 11:45am – Back There 12:10pm – Mr. Dingle, the Strong 12:35am – The Rip Van Winkle Caper 1:00pm – The Mind and the Matter 1:25pm – The Arrival 1:50pm – The Passersby 2:15pm – A Quality of Mercy 2:40pm – Nothing in the Dark 3:05pm – The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank 3:30pm – The Trade-Ins 3:55pm – Hocus-Pocus and Frisby 4:20pm – Young Man’s Fancy

Serling introduces The Night of the Meek  The eleventh episode of the second season provided the opportunity to see the great Art Carney as a depressed wino with a heart of gold yearning to give out gifts to the poor and needy in his area of the city, granted his own very special present: the chance to actually be Santa and pull from his bag exactly what kids and skid row occupants at a homeless shelter desire for Christmas. To be honest, the story isn't complicated. It is real simple, and the magic of the season given a special treatment as only The Twilight Zone could. Carney's performance stands the test of time: his ache for those hurting is felt, and when he's provided the chance to give to them, seeing him light up, watching him delighting in what the Santa bag (found in an alley, kicked on the street by an alley cat) has for so many with so little, it is a privilege I can't help but enjoy reliving each and every year. I just wish it was shot on film instead of on

  I really didn't want to use this for what seems to be such a throwaway viewing of "Queen of the Nile". I love to use Rod Serling inserts for marathon posts. And the above might be one of my favorites with Serling. For a lackluster episode as the above, that says something, I reckon. This episode has always been a late nighter, for whatever reason. Nothing special and rather forgettable despite a fetching Blyth as a preying mantis luring young men to her mansion estate under false pretenses, using an ancient Egyptian scarab to dry them of their youth so she can remain eternally beautiful, rejecting aging. Why her daughter, who is elderly in the episode, has let Blyth get away with murdering so many handsome men remains that particularly nagging question that persists every time I watch "Queen of the Nile". Lovsky doesn't ever just come out and say it to Philips, and when Blyth orders her actual daughter (not mother, as Philips is led to believe) to do somet

 I watched "Love Finds Andy Hardy" (1938) on December 5th as part of my annual Christmas movie schedule (the film only become part of the schedule after last year when I watched Christmas day), and Mickey was such a happy, light-on-his-feet, innocent kid in the portrayal of Andy. Andy loves his judge father, wants this car so badly, and has girl trouble. I am talking Lana Turner, Ann Rutherford, and Judy Garland. That's quite a nice pickle to be in, I guess. This is all whimsy and honestly sweet-natured pablum from MGM. It is comfort food that I admittedly embrace without much concern of it remaining on the mind very long after its conclusion. "Love Finds..." takes place during a few days of the holiday season as Christmas approaches. Garland is a teenager visiting from New York, portraying a singer and performer extraordinaire smitten with Andy, who doesn't see her as anything but a friend. Rutherford leaves for grandmother's for a Christmas vacation wi

  Just for fun since I haven't added much Christmas content this year. These are my two Letterboxd reviews from this year and last: Written moments ago: When Durbin pretends to be a chair under a sheet while eventually securing a pair of bloody shoes (throwing them out a window while avoiding Mr. Saunders (George Coulouris) with his white cat and Saunders' henchman, Danny (Allen Jenkins)) just put a smile on my face. I forgot about this scene from last year. I fell head over heels for Durbin and this noirish murder mystery set during Christmas last December. I was in much better spirits this year than last because my mother had Covid, eventually recovering. Durbin's Nicki Collins just getting further embroiled in a murder mystery involving a family looking to benefit from the death of a magnate doesn't feel as dark and brooding as some of the Warner Bros pictures of the time. It is just hard to believe that in three years time, Durbin would leave film altogether. You

Rod Serling introduces The Jeopardy Room Episodes 147 - 149 of the Fifth Season of The Twilight Zone. I will admit that I have no intentions of ever writing about the first two ever again, and they will only serve as background during marathons that plan to air them. I'll need to go back to my Twilight Zone favorite to least favorite list and see if I can lower the first two anymore than they already. I can honestly say that the first two left me rather disheartened, but Richard Donner and Martin Landau rescued me from the doldrums with the third episode. Sounds and Silences It would have been better, I think, for Twilight Zone fans if this episode remained out of syndication/circulation. And that this is the episode Serling might be sued for due to plagiarism is rather tragic considering how fucking obnoxious it is. I asked myself while watching this, "How, at any point and time, did Lydia fall for this guy?" I can't picture Roswell G Flemington was ever charming or

  From my Scarecrow 88 Letterboxd review: I totally see how this film has received some "Oh, hell naw, don't get in that car with him, giiiirrrrrlllll" reactions. Especially *after* she learns of why Ashton knows of the kind of food she likes (and left behind at the university), where she lives (eyeing her phone in class, a big stalker-yuck thing to do), and that they share a class together. But going the "short cut scenic route", even as Blunt tells him to get back on the highway, is a certain THIS IS GOING TO END BADLY sign. And when he balks about how difficult it is to date women, as Blunt scoffs and takes him to task for such belly-aching, I can just feel a section of audience really excoriating the scene. And I can certainly rationalize complete rejection of any warm feelings towards Ashton. The film tries. I guess because Ashton's face isn't threatening, those behind the character thought that might work. I never felt it did. And because of that,

 So I was revisiting "The Little People" and it follows a theme that seems to be recognizable in more than one episode during the series about unreliable astronauts who seem to eventually snap. Joe Maross (a pilot of a spaceship in "Third from the Sun", a solid first season episode) is sick to his stomach of being ordered around by Claude Akins, told to tend to a map with his slide rule. Maross wants to be the one giving orders, benefiting from commanding others, getting to do this when he comes across a tiny civilization on a planet Akins had to land their ship on in order to make badly needed repairs. I couldn't help but think of "I Shot an Arrow in the Air" when Dewey Martin's Corey puts himself above all else, even killing his commanding officer (Edward Binns) and fellow astronaut, Pierson (Ted Otis) so he could outlast them a few more days. In the case of Maross' Peter Craig, he gets a bellyful of Akins' Fletcher, to the point that he