Thriller - "Pigeons From Hell"

Season 1, Episode 36

Original Airdate: June 6, 1961

Writer: John Kneubuhl (adaptation), Robert E. Howard (original story)

Director: John Newland

Producers: William Frye, Maxwell Shane

Cast: Brandon De Wilde, Crahan Denton, David Whorf, Boris Karloff

“Pigeons From Hell” is a masterpiece of slow-burn horror. At first glance, its creators seem content to embrace all the usual trappings that are trotted out to achieve cheap, impact-less scares. But instead of the cheap scares, we are instead treated to slow tension building over the course of the hour, deliberately paced to get under the viewer’s skin and linger there.

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Two brothers (Brandon De Wilde and David Whorf) find their car broken down on an abandoned highway in the middle of nowhere. They come upon a nearby abandoned mansion… and then the horrors begin to happen. But instead of a bunch of scares straight out of the Universal B-horrors of the 1940s, writer John Kneubuhl and director John Newland aim to create the best movie Val Lewton never produced. It is an adaptation of a great short story by Robert E. Howard (a writer who inadvertently was the cause of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career by creating “Conan the Barbarian,” but don’t hold that against him), and in his adaptation Kneubuhl makes two distinct but very smart changes.

In the original story the young men are just friends, but here they are brothers. When Whorf’s character gets an ax to the skull, there is much more emotional resonance for both the audience and De Wilde’s Timothy. The original story worked fine without it, but here it gives the death extra significance, especially considering we only have five minutes with the characters before one is murdered.

Second, the short story takes place over the course of two or three days and nights, but Kneubuhl condenses the story to a single, endless night of horrors. That way the atmosphere is relentless – the characters cannot escape the dark and neither can we.

The most overt horror in the episode comes early: The aforementioned ax murder. While his brother sleeps, Whorf’s Johnny is drawn up the stairs of the deserted mansion by ghostly singing. When Timothy goes searching, he finds Johnny’s skull cracked in two. But that doesn’t make Johnny any less mobile – his brains still bleeding all over, Johnny chases Timothy out of the mansion, waving about the ax that was used to kill him. Despite the grisliness of what I have just described, the scene is played almost entirely by suggestion. While Johnny stalks Timothy in the hallway, we never actually see the split skull or the brains… all we see are drops of blood streaming down the front of his face. Everything else is hidden by the shadows.

Timothy manages to make it a few hundred yards away from the mansion before passing out. He is brought to the nearest Sheriff (Crahan Denton) by a town hick, and when the Sheriff decides to take the boy back to the mansion to investigate, we get the single inadvertently funny moment of the episode: The hick busts out of the house they are in and rushes off into the nearby woods like the Roadrunner escaping the Coyote. De Wilde, who many will remember for saying “Shane!” a thousand times in the film classic, also has the task of attempting to explain what happened to him in the mansion while being overcome with grief for his brother, and though his line readings might come off as hackneyed in another film, his innocent looks and inability to properly articulate himself actually works in favor of the character.

The Sheriff takes Timothy back to the mansion to investigate, and instead of a bunch of boo-scares and chains rattling, Newland provides viewers with a single, indelible image. Every time the duo enter the room where Johnny died, their kerosene lantern will not stay lit. The moment they exit the room, it comes back on. Any fan of a good horror movie knows the darkness is much scarier than seeing what is in the darkness, and that is never more obvious than here. Also, because there are no silly noises or faux-climaxes in the sequence, the viewer is consistently on the edge of his seat. There is no end to the tension until they leave the house – the threat of something bad happening ensuring the viewer cannot relax.

The atmosphere is only aided by the black-and-white cinematography, shot by Lionel Lindon (who also shot the incredible “The Manchurian Candidate” and the minor noir classics “Whirlpool” and “The Blue Dahlia”). I doubt there’s a shot in the film where everything in a given set is fully lit. Lindon uses the shadows to play with our expectations of terror, especially considering a character says early that the swampland is crawling with snakes. The lighting also makes some old-man makeup that would doubtless look hackneyed in color into something downright creepy.

Kneubuhl and Newland approach the episode’s climax with the same slow-burn mentality, refusing to ratchet up the pace for no good reason. As a result, Timothy’s slow, zombie-like walk up that decrepit staircase toward his destiny becomes excruciatingly suspenseful.

It's all about those eyebrows.

I got the “Thriller” boxed set for Christmas this year and have been consistently surprised at the quality of the episodes. It’s the only hourlong anthology series I’ve seen thus far that makes good use of its entire running time (unfortunately, “The Outer Limits” often feels like a half-hour show stretched to its breaking point to fill its hour) on a regular basis. I’ve watched about half the series (the first season is 37 episodes, so it’s not like I’m being lazy) and find that even the lesser episodes are still of legitimate quality, and Jerry Goldsmith’s musical scores are feature-film worthy, even eclipsing Bernard Herrmann’s scores for “The Twilight Zone.” The show pays homage to the Universal classic horrors of the 30s, especially with its use of host Boris Karloff (whose eyebrows here are epic, matched only perhaps by Larry Hagman’s in the “Dallas” reboot), but takes most of its inspiration from Lewton’s horror films of the 40s. Still, every now and then you can see the viciousness of the 50s Hammer films sneaking in. Since I love all those eras of fright, I feel like a kid in a candy shop every time I insert a new disc. “Pigeons From Hell” is my favorite, but I could have easily chosen “The Grim Reaper,” “Parasite Mansion,” “Late Date” “The Hungry Glass” or “The Purple Room”…and that’s just from the first season. It’s such a shame this show doesn’t exist in the public consciousness in the same way “The Twilight Zone” or “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” does, because it certainly deserves to be.

“Pigeons From Hell” is available on DVD and YouTube.

Route 66 – “Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing”

Season 3, Episode 6

Original Airdate: October 26, 1962

Writer: Stirling Silliphant

Director: Robert Gist

Producer: Mort Abrahams, Leo Davis

Cast: Martin Milner, George Maharis, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr.

“Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing” is a fantastic, wrapped present to fans of 1930s and 1940s horror classics. I hesitated for a while to write up an article about this episode because I don’t really think that it fits the definition of “great television” in the way the other shows I have written about here do. The writing here isn’t the best and it’s tonally different than the other “Route 66” installments I’ve seen. But that’s before you insert what I like to call the “awesomeness” factor at play here. I’m just a tad obsessed with those old classic horror movies I mentioned earlier, so to get to see Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney Jr. not only interact with one another, but don some of the most iconic film make-up of all time makes me happy in ways I can’t begin to articulate.

The episode opens with a young boy asleep in his bed when what appears to be a hunchback walks in. Turns out it’s just Lon Chaney Jr. (“The Wolf Man” himself, “The Son of Dracula”) wanting to tuck his grandson in, and he’s wearing his father’s get-up from the silent version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” At this point I checked my DVR to make sure this was really “Route 66” and it told me it was. Then we cut to a three-way phone conversation between Chaney, Peter Lorre (perhaps history’s greatest character actor, but know for golden age of horror roles like “Mad Love”) and (cue the Angel chorus) Boris Karloff (“Frankenstein,” “Bride of Frankenstein,” “The Mummy,” “The Old Dark House,” “The Black Cat,” “Isle of the Dead” and so many others, but most horrifyingly the “Mr. Wong, Detective” series for Monogram). At this point I figured I must have accidentally DVR’ed the wrong show.  This must have been writer Stirling Silliphant’s idea for a tricky, surprising teaser, and fifty years later it still works like a charm. In fact, this type of fake-out teaser has been copied many times since in horror series – just think of the “Humbug” episode of “The X-Files.”

The plotlines for the episode are light as a feather and done with an ample amount of good dialogue. Tod (Martin Milner) and Buzz (George Maharis) get a gig at a fancy hotel outside Chicago. Karloff, Chaney and Lorre (playing themselves) have come to discuss a possible television series they would star in and argue about whether they should stick to the old ways (Universal horror) or go the new route (Hammer horror), and Tod must act as their liaison to the hotel…or something. Buzz is in charge of a women’s lib convention and immediately falls head over heels with one of the secretaries there, who is depressed after her boss left her for his fiancé. Seriously. Though the A and B stories couldn’t seem more dissimilar, Silliphant finds ingenious crossovers between them. To prove the old scares are still viable, Chaney dresses up in Wolf Man garb and causes every woman in sight to faint in horror, and Karloff has a surprisingly sweet scene with the depressed secretary where he gives her love advice.

The real attraction here is getting to see the three legends interact with one another, with “the normal people” and dress up as the old favorites. Also, a quick shout-out to Lorre’s suitcase, which is alligator skin, has an actual alligator head as its handle (I’m not kidding) and almost steals the show. It’s always a thrill to see Karloff play a nice guy since his image is so synonymous with grotesquery, and here, playing a version of himself, he has a surprising amount of comedic timing, landing every punchline thrown at him. Lorre had long perfected his depressed-annoyed persona and seems to be having a horrible (meaning wonderful) time onscreen. Chaney is rarely out of make-up here, but I’m sad to report that when he is, he looks absolutely miserable. He can barely land any line other than grunting and seems to have trouble doing, well, anything. I have no idea whether it was his rumored alcoholism or what, but someone definitely needed to give him a Red Bull or something.

Chaney does do a decent job seeming very tortured while dressed up as the aforementioned Hunchback, the Mummy (though Karloff originated the role, Chaney played it in one of the sequels) and, of course, the Wolf Man. I got goosebumps when I saw Karloff in full-on make-up as Frankenstein’s monster, and how can you not? Since “Mad Love” was an MGM vehicle, Lorre must do his best with an evening jacket and evil glare. What makes it even more exciting is that it is the classic Jack Pierce make-up and not some second-rate knockoff.

It’s odd that I’ve come this far in the article with barely a mention of the two main characters, but they are ancillary to the episode at best. Maharis does a good job at being handsome (harder than it seems, I’m told) and has a neat little bit of physical comedy involving a pool. Milner interacts with the horror stars the most, but does the smartest thing possible here: He gets out of their way. The dialogue between the guys is smooth and well-written, and though they both are excellent actors who showcase their talents in other episodes, this isn’t one of them.

Silliphant was a co-creator of “Route 66” and also a show called “Naked City,” which I’m looking forward to sampling soon. Looking at his IMDB page, the diversity of his work and his output is almost staggering. This man wrote for “The Mickey Mouse Club,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and also penned the features “Village of the Damned” and “The Towering Inferno.” In what universe are those works related? Oh, and he was BFF’s with Bruce Lee! This is a writer I need to know more about, and pronto.

I love road trips. When I moved out to Los Angeles to attend the AFI Conservatory, I decided to try and travel down Route 66. I quickly found out that most of the highway is either very out of shape or just gone now, abandoned or paved over by the freeway. It’s a sad state of affairs when gas station attendants don’t actually know that their station is located on Route 66. And yet that time traveling out west remains one I will always remember fondly. I’ll always wonder what that highway, what that world, was like in its heyday, and feel lucky to get a little picture of what it might have been through this series.

“Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing” is available on DVD and YouTube.

The X-Files - "The Post-Modern Prometheus"

Season 5, Episode 5

Original Airdate: November 30, 1997

Writer/Director: Chris Carter

Executive Producers: Chris Carter, R.W. Goodwin

Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, John O’Hurley, Chris Owens

It’s impossible to choose a “best” episode of “The X-Files” because there are legitimately too many great ones to choose from. More than that, many of the great episodes are scary, some are funny, and others are fantastic mind games. Others are all of the above. Even masterworks like “The Sopranos” and “Seinfeld” have that one episode that can stand as a representation of everything the show can accomplish, but that’s not so with “The X-Files.” The stories, and voices of its writers, are just too varied to allow one hour to represent it. The only other show I can think of off the top of my head like that is “The Twilight Zone,” which puts this program in good company. I chose “The Post-Modern Prometheus” not because it is the show’s “best,” but it’s because it is my favorite.

Each episode would involve FBI Agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating the unexplainable. Mulder is a true believer in alien abduction, vampires, demons and the forces of evil. Scully, despite being proven wrong in almost every episode, continues to be cynical. The unexplainable occurrence here involves a version of the Frankenstein monster who breaks into women’s houses and inseminates them over the course of several days (he uses termite tents as a way to ensure he’s not caught). Oh, and he has a Cher fetish. Yes, that Cher. If you didn’t grin from ear to ear reading that summation, then there’s just no talking to you. Yes, this is one of the lighter “X-Files,” feeling much more like a fairy tale than a horror movie.

Writer/Director Chris Carter (also the show’s creator) chose to shoot in black-and-white as an homage to James Whale’s two Universal “Frankenstein” films. And indeed the skies are painted grey like in those films, and villagers with pitchforks serve a big purpose in the climax. But there are also numerous nods to Mary Shelley’s original novel, beginning with the name of the episode and in several lines of dialogue (yes, I know Mulder gives us the wrong ending to the novel…shut up!). Despite most of the episode’s characters being, uh, a few watts short of a working lightbulb and mainly obsessed with getting on “The Jerry Springer Show” (Springer has a cameo), the episode is one of the smartest of the series. Every time I revisit the show after a few months or years, I’m always pleasantly surprised by the intricacies of the dialogue, and how the writers never shy away from allowing their two protagonists to sound smart (really, really smart), even if some of the language goes over the heads of viewers. Big words are more and more of a “no-no” in today’s television landscape, and that’s such a shame because, looking back on the literacy of shows like “The X-Files” is almost like visiting a foreign planet (ugh, I’m so sorry for that pun, but not sorry enough to erase it).

The subject matter and the tone of “The Post-Modern Prometheus” prove just how versatile the series can be and what kinds of chances it was willing to take on a regular basis (I did mention the Cher fetish, right?). The black-and-white was a brilliant decision, and Joel Ransom’s work as cinematographer is absolutely sterling. The world is gorgeous to look at, and Gillian Anderson has never looked lovelier than here.

One thing that I don’t think “The X-Files” gets enough credit for is its inherent humanity. For a show that is, at its base, about scares and little green men, a lot of screentime and effort is taken to develop its one-off characters who may or may not survive ‘til the end of the hour. Similar horror shows treat them simply as monster bait, but here the writers genuinely attempt to make us care about these victims…and in the case of this episode, its monsters as well.  In the final act, the monster (Chris Owens, later to play Jeffrey Spender) gets a chance to explain his actions and the horrors he has apparently acted out to his “victims.” The scene is beautifully written and staged, but the kicker is what comes next. Carter ends the episode set to Cher’s cover of “Walking in Memphis,” with the monster actually getting to attend a Cher concert, where Cher (be still my heart) embraces him and takes him onstage with her. Totally unrealistic? Sure, but who cares? This is a fairy tale, and no one wants realism in one of those. Bonus points for letting Scully smile, which is something which doesn’t happen often enough in the show’s 202 episodes.

Yes, 202 episodes (plus two movies). It’s shocking how consistently great the show was during its entire run. The final few seasons got a lot of criticism while still airing for not being up to the standards of earlier episodes, but re-examining them today with fresh eyes reveals that the show remained great up until the very end. Episodes like “Roadrunners,” “Via Negativa,” “Daemonicus” and “Improbable” easily stand with the best “X-Files.”

“The Post-Modern Prometheus” just eeked its way past “Home,” “Triangle,” “Bad Blood” and the Darin Morgan installments to be the first “X-Files” episode I wrote about, though I’m sure several of the above will have their own columns soon. The fantastic thing that allowed “The X-Files” to last so long and work so well in different tones and genres was that it could be about anything just so long as it was something we, as human beings, cannot understand yet. Yes, that involved a lot of darkness, but it had a lot of hope as well. It is also one of the shows that made me want to be a writer.

“The Post-Modern Prometheus” is available on DVD, iTunes, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime.

The Outer Limits - "Demon With a Glass Hand"

Season 2, Episode 5

Original Airdate: October 17, 1964

Writer: Harlan Ellison

Director: Byron Haskin

Producer: Ben Brady, Leslie Stevens

Cast: Robert Culp, Arline Martel

“Demon With a Glass Hand” is a wonderful, complex science fiction story hidden underneath a beautifully shot film noir. It was “Blade Runner” long before that huge Geisha appeared on the skyscraper…and has better voice-over to boot. Writer Harlan Ellison sued the studio behind “TheTerminator” for plagiarizing his other (lesser) “Outer Limits” episode “Soldier” in a move that, to this writer, seems like quite a stretch. But though the mythology here is much different than “Blade Runner,” it’s impossible to not see all the inspirations, from the emotionless hero to the final twist.

Despite my obsession with all things “Twilight Zone” and love for anthology series in general, I’ve never before watched “The Outer Limits,” despite having the original series on DVD for a few years now. After finally digging in and watching several of the most popular episodes (“The Zanti Misfits,” “The Chameleon” and “Soldier,” among others), I was very much let down. Despite gorgeous cinematography and some good acting, the one-hour format stretched most of these science-fiction stories to their breaking point, despite very good ideas at their core. When half of your episodes feel like filler, you have a problem – the same one that “The Twilight Zone” dealt with when it expanded to an hour in its fourth season.

That’s one of the reasons why “Demon With a Glass Hand” (whose name doesn’t really make sense in retrospect) feels like such a breath of fresh air. Instead of filler scenes placed upon other filler scenes, writer Ellison provides us with an ever-changing Rubik’s cube of mythology, often so dense that the viewer is playing catch-up. It begins with a man named Trent (Robert Culp, purposely wooden) lost in modern times with a partially-constructed glass hand and several alien killers on his tail who are recognizable because they wear panty hose (not kidding) on their faces. Trent has no idea who he is, only that he supposed to be humanity’s savior, and he must retrieve the three missing fingers for the glass hand to understand entirely what has happened to him and what he must do to save the humanity of the future. And trust me, I’m just scratching the surface here. There’s more, lots more.

The first ten minutes of the episode feel like an exposition bomb has gone off. First Trent gets a boatload of information from the mysterious panty hose aliens, then more exposition from his hand, then he meets up with a woman and explains even more to her. It’s difficult to keep everything straight and would usually signal very clunky writing, but because Trent is almost as confused as we are, the exposition dump actually works to the episode’s advantage. We go along for the ride, waiting for pay-offs to mysteries we only half understood to begin with, and when those pay-offs come they are both surprising and fascinating.

Everything speeds up once Trent gets to an office building where the aliens are headquartered. Though director Byron Haskin and his fantastic cinematographer Kenneth Peach employed the shadows of noir from the first frame of the episode, the noir look goes into overdrive in this beautifully rendered building, filled with fantastic architecture and maze-like hallways. It reminds me a lot of the office in Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity,” and I wasn’t surprised to read that Ridley Scott used the sameplace to film the third act of “Blade Runner” (there’s that movie again).

Trent runs into a woman named Consuelo (Arline Martel) who was working late and turns her into his companion, not by choice, but because the aliens have put an invisible barrier around the building. Together they move up the several floors of the building, ultimately to the roof, before Trent descends back into the danger below as Dante did into the inferno.

"Cowabunga, dude!"

Many of the more sci-fi elements of the episode are almost laughable, and this is true of the show in general. The killer ants in “Zanti Misfits” had cute teddy bear faces and were obviously horrible models swung on strings during the final siege. The aquatic monster in “Tourist Attraction” would have fit better as one of Ariel’s pets in “The Little Mermaid” than on “The Outer Limits.” Here Trent’s glass hand isn’t the most impressive prop (and, for a long period of time, is stuck in a “Cowabunga, dude!” position). The aliens all wear a big necklace that, when torn off of them kills them and sends their bodies back to the future – and yet none of them think they might be safer if they just tuck it into their shirt. And I did mention the panty-hose faces, right?

I’m willing to forgive many of these in part because of the show’s budget, time period and that, yes, “The Twilight Zone” had many shoddy effects too. But what really saves the more eye-rolling parts of the production are the film noir elements. Even the most laughable costumes look awesome when shot in shadow, and the kookiest villains look menacing when you can barely get a good look at them. It’s inspired that Trent and the aliens use guns, actual guns, to do their battle. Ellison apparently was horribly unhappy with that decision, but seriously, what adaptation of his work has he not all-but-disowned after the fact, and here the guns bring a unique level of urgency to the storytelling missing from other science fiction (the guns used here are infinitely scarier than, say, the ray gun from Ellison’s other episode “Soldier”).

The twist at the end of the episode is a genuinely surprising one that hits the viewer on both an emotional and intellectual level, and fits perfectly in the world of noir. It is also darker and self-defeating than one would expect from an anthology, a trait that seems to be repeated throughout almost every “The Outer Limits” episode I’ve seen. Humanity always sucks, things never get better, and our heroes must consistently suffer for little reward. It’s a very dire notion for stories whose imagination is supposed to reach from the inner mind to the outer limits, and perhaps that’s another reason why I haven’t become fully invested in the series. The ending worked beautifully here, that’s for sure, but in the other episodes I’ve seen it just felt tacked-on, as if it was trying to prove a point. Ah well, the show still has many great qualities and I’m looking forward to diving into the remainder of the episodes. I will say one thing about it: the opening credits are much cooler than any of those in “The Twilight Zone’s” history. So that’s, uh, something.

“Demon With a Glass Hand” is available on DVD, AmazonInstant Video, Hulu, iTunes and YouTube.

'Way Out - "Death Wish"

Season 1, Episode 9

Original Airdate: June 9, 1961

Writer: Irving Gaynor Neiman

Director: Boris Sagal

Producer: Jacqueline Babbin, Roald Dahl

Cast: Don Keefer, Charlotte Rae, Heywood Hale Broun

Okay, let’s get to the elephant in the room. I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend why there is an apostrophe before the word “Way” in “’Way Out.” Though when I first heard the title I assumed it was an anthology focused on folk trying to find a “way out” of their problems, horrifying situations or lives, I discovered that the real meaning is that the stories themselves are “way out.” As in, “that’s way out, dude!” Were the creators and producers trying to be hip? The psychedelic intro where host Roald Dahl (yes, THAT Roald Dahl) has three heads seems to underline this theory. But still, what the hell is up with that floating apostrophe? Ah well, like the last third of “Mulholland Drive” and where Jimmy Hoffa is hidden, there are some things we are never meant to know.

“’Way Out” is a little seen, barely-available anthology series that was paired with “The Twilight Zone” for half a season before being cancelled. I had never heard of it until recently and sought it out because I simply had to see what the author of “The Witches” and “Matilda” (two books that really screwed me up when I was younger) did as a “presenter,” writer and producer on a television series. And I’m so happy I did. I’ve genuinely seen anything quite like this before – its tone is utterly different than “Twilight Zone,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” or any other anthology I’ve ever seen. The storytelling is like a Rubik’s Cube, transitioning tonally from dark comedy to horror to mystery, all the while keeping its viewers on their toes because we genuinely don’t understand where its authors are taking us. I was never bored, always entertained and, by the end, picking my jaw up off the floor.

“Death Wish” opens with an introduction by Dahl, who rambles on for minutes in a rant that both fascinates the viewer and serves as a pretty damn good pitch for “Six Feet Under.”

“I’ve often wondered, haven’t you, what sort of man an undertaker really is. Is he a gentle, sensitive, generous person who undercharges madly because he cannot bear to profit from misfortune? Or is he a more sinister individual, who reads the obituary columns in bed at night and broods all day about the price of caskets? One doesn’t know. And none of us are in any hurry to find out either, because we all figure, quite rightly, that we are all bound to meet up with him in the end, just once.”

The episode opens in a funeral home, with George (Don Keefer) and his wife Hazel (Charlotte Rae) attending calling hours for someone or other. Hazel is blunt, brutal and addicted to the television, but not in an adorable way like I am. She seems genuinely unable to comprehend a life outside of sitting in front of the box, memorizing actors and storylines and considering the stories proof that Native Americans got what was coming to them, among other things. This woman is so dense that she can’t even fully comprehend a commercial. And so, of course, George decides to murder her.

Up until this point, “Death Wish” could fit into any anthology series easily, but that is when the really interesting stuff happens. An unseen narrator tells us that George is deciding what way to murder Hazel, but then stops at the problem of how to dispose of the body. At that moment, a wonderful twist of fate, he is passing the funeral home he was at earlier, and the Mortician (Heywood Hale Broun) is putting out a sign that reads: “Let Us Dispose of the Body.”

George can’t help himself. He goes inside to see the Mortician has a special sale on pine boxes and a “Do-It-Yourself Burial Kit.” It’s here that the audience is thrown for a loop. How serious exactly are we supposed to be taking the situation? Is this just a really dark comedy with no connection to logic? Or is writer Irving Gaynor Neiman just teasing us to throw us off balance?

The rest of the episode continues to toe that line beautifully, with the viewer unable to take any of it very seriously, but still remaining oddly invested in the goings on. The final twist is a doozy: George finally signs some forms to allow the Mortician and his assistant to “take care” of his wife, only to discover that he was literally signing his life away. His wife came in earlier and ordered the same package for him.

The dialogue has such ingenuity it almost feels like the characters are dancing around one another more than communicating. And the actors (none of which I’m familiar with) are well cast and fill their characters beautifully without turning into caricature (with the exception of Rae, who is purposely over-the-top). This is what makes the episode work, because it certainly isn’t anything else.

To call the sets cardboard would be an insult to cardboard. As far as I can see, the funeral home doesn’t even have walls. There are some creepy horror series candelabras in the funeral home that were obviously borrowed from the next set over, and the science lab is laughable. This entire production probably cost $50 in total. The camerawork makes soap operas seem creative in their storytelling.

But because the story is there, “Death Wish” works beautifully. There are only four episodes available on YouTube for view, and I can’t wait to try the others. I can fully understand why the series was cancelled after so few episodes – the humor is too adult for kids but the series was too much of a farce for adults. I’m pretty shocked that it has not gained the same cult reputation that shows like “Thriller” have managed to, because if this episode is any indication of the writing quality, it deserves to be.

The “Death Wish” episode of “’Way Out” is only available on YouTube.

Masters of Horror - "John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns"

Season 1, Episode 8

Original Airdate: December 16, 2005

Writers: Drew McWeeny, Scott Swan

Director: John Carpenter

Executive Producers: Mick Garris, Keith Addis, Morris Berger, Steve Brown, Andrew Deane, John W. Hyde

Cast: Norman Reedus, Udo Kier, Zara Taylor

“Film in the right hands is a weapon.”

A character intones this in “Cigarette Burns,” and after watching the violence caused by “The Innocence of Muslims” and the domino effect that continues, my mind kept drifting back to this episode of “Masters of Horror,” in which an evil film becomes a cause for pain, torture and riots. Here is an episode of television with gigantic, far-reaching ambitions that just exceed the grasp of the filmmakers creating it – but watching them try to pull it off is some kind of wonderful.

When I say the movie in “Cigarette Burns” is evil, I don’t mean it in the same manner I do the inept and disgusting “The Innocence of Muslims.” The film in question, “La Fin Absolue du Monde” (translated to “The Absolute End of the World”) is actually evil. It depicts, among other atrocities, an angel having its wings savagely torn from its body. We learn that there was only one screening, at a festival in the ‘60s, where the audience rioted and attacked one another until the aisles were slicked with blood. After that, it seemingly disappeared into the ether.

Kirby (Norman Reedus), a film historian who has a reputation for being able to find any lost film, is hired by a rich man named Bellinger (Udo Kier doing a great Peter Lorre impersonation) to track it down. Bellinger is obsessed with “La Fin Absolue du Monde” and has several props from the film: The pair of wings torn from the Angel framed on his wall…and the Angel trapped in chains in his basement. Kirby is a recovering junkie who recently lost his love Annie (Zara Taylor) and takes the job because he owes a lot of money to Annie’s father (Gary Hetherington). He’s already emotionally fragile from his loss – and from the moment he begins his pursuit we can tell he is going to fall into the same cycle of obsession Bellinger cannot escape from.

Kirby seeks out to find information about “La Fin Absolue du Monde” from several people, and we make the quick realization that any person even slightly associated with the missing film has been mentally (or, in some cases, physically) destroyed. Hell, the director, Hans Bakovic, has also seemed to disappear completely. Most memorable among those Kirby can track down is an audience member (Chris Britton) from the first screening who has spent decades attempting to pen a worthy review of the film, writing tens of thousands of pages in the process. Surrounded by the pages, he speaks in a horrifyingly calm tone to Kirby:

“We trust filmmakers. We sit in the dark, daring them to affect us, secure in the knowledge that they won’t go too far…Hans Bakovic is a terrorist. He abused that trust we place in filmmakers. He didn’t want to hurt his audience – he wanted to destroy them completely.”

More than that, the film is physically manifesting itself for Kirby the closer he gets to it. He begins seeing “cigarette burns,” those circles you see at the top of a film frame when you’re at the movies that signals it’s time to switch reels, and though he keeps telling others that he doesn’t want to see the movie, we know he won’t be able to escape it.

The co-writers, Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, have set up an incredible concept (the horror version of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in many ways) and beautifully build suspense throughout the episode. There are many scenes where characters say some version of “This movie is fucking evil,” but McWeeny and Swan manage to find interesting variations and ways to continue the escalation. John Carpenter, who also directed the film masterpieces “Halloween” and “The Fog,” is expert in maintaining tension and his touch is apparent throughout, despite an over-reliance on gore that became both a hallmark and problem for most of the “Masters of Horror” episodes. Particularly out of place is a scene where Kirby is tied to a chair and must witness a psychopath (driven mad by the film, of course) behead a woman by repeatedly chopping into her neck with a machete. The scene feels exploitative and done because the audience expects it more than because it serves the story. It also doesn’t work on a technical level – the psychopath makes a point of talking about how powerful a murder would be if shot in a single take, but what power the moment might have is undercut by the editor’s constant snipping.

Kirby finally gets his hands on “La Fin Absolue du Monde” and here is where “Cigarette Burns” stumbles, but that’s not to say there aren’t thrilling moments in the climax. It’s just that, unfortunately, the writers did such a fantastic job of building to the moment that nothing could possibly live up to the viewer’s expectations. Carpenter unwisely made the decision to actually show sections of the “La Fin Absolue du Monde” instead of just letting our imaginations do the work, and that stops the episode dead in its tracks. One scene looks like something from “The Blob,” and the others are nothing we couldn’t see in any “Saw” or torture-porn flick. In many ways it is reminiscent of the third-act problems with Carpenter’s near-masterpiece “In the Mouth of Madness,” where he literally found himself written into a corner (those who have seen the film will get the pun).

But there is great stuff in those final moments. Bellinger’s butler has such a visceral reaction to seeing the film that he stabs both his eyes out. Bellinger falls deeper into madness and actually tears out his small intestine and begins running it through the projector, which is one of the most disturbing/amazing death scenes ever placed on film. And the final beat, with the Angel taking back the film and escaping from the destruction, is rightly moving.

By naming his show “Masters of Horror,” Mick Garris set an impossible standard for his anthology series. He did recruit some of the best names in horror: Carpenter, Joe Dante, John Landis and Dario Argento, among others, to direct the episodes but, as with most anthologies, the episodes vary widely in quality, with many way too gory for their own good (even the Masters often forget that more blood doesn’t automatically equal more horror). One episode in particular, “Imprint,” (directed by Takashi Miike) involved so much blood, gore and aborted fetuses that even Showtime found it too disgusting to air. But several, like “Cigarette Burns,” Dante’s “Homecoming” (a brilliant dark comedy where all the soldiers who died in Iraq raise from their graves…to vote against George W. Bush) and Landis’ “Family” (in which a deranged family man wants to murder his neighbors and adopt them into his home) are genuinely awesome. After two seasons on Showtime the show moved to NBC with a new title, “Fear, Itself” and leveled out in quality right before its cancellation.

I love “Cigarette Burns” for what it aspires to be, and it is one of the few modern horror works that actually got under my nerves and affected me on a visceral level. At its very best (or very worst), film and television can affect a viewer deeply in a manner no other artistic outlet can, which can be both lovely and horrifying, depending on your perspective.

“Cigarette Burns” is available as an individual episode onDVD or as part of the “Masters of Horror” season one boxed set. It’s also available on iTunes and on Hulu.

Twin Peaks - "Pilot"

Season One, Episode One

Original Airdate: April 8, 1990

Writer: David Lynch, Mark Frost

Director: David Lynch

Executive Producers: David Lynch, Mark Frost

Star: Kyle MacLachlan, Piper Laurie, Michael Ontkean, Lara Flynn Boyle

The pilot of “Twin Peaks” is one of those rare episodes that refuses to define itself. Do we latch onto the mystery elements? Should we invest ourselves in the out-there characters? Is this all a parody of a police procedural? The answer to all the above is “yes, of course,” and as a result co-writers David Lynch (who also directed) and Mark Frost created a surprisingly multi-layered show that engaged viewers on several levels, not just the most shallow and viewer-friendly.

The series opens with the iconic discovery of the body of teenager Laura Palmer, her body wrapped in plastic lying on the banks of river. From there, we watch the ripple effects of the murder as they echo through the town of Twin Peaks. Like most of his work, Lynch seems eager to exploit the beauty of nature and the town while undermining it in the same beat by exposing the just-out-of-view rot. In a way, the pilot becomes a series of fascinating, entertaining vignettes connected by those investigating the case more than a real narrative. I write this not as a criticism, but with a lot of respect that Lynch and Frost were able to so easily keep the viewers’ interest through it.

The investigators are Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean), both straight men in a town of kooks but both eccentric enough to fit right in. Cooper in particular is memorable, with his very straightforward style of speech and his insistence on taping everything he finds on a recorder. The rest of the town seems legitimately insane to one level or another. And by “insane” I mean “Lynch-ian.”

The teenagers in “Twin Peaks” seem created to be caricatures of awful teen movies, and I mean that in the best way possible. In particular, the character of Bobby (Dana Ashbrook) appears to be a human incarnation of Satan, plain and simple. If you think I’m overstating, his final scene in the pilot shows him in prison reduced to gutteral screaming like an animal. The scenes in the high school seem like they are from the 1940s and the music (by Angelo Badalamenti) suddenly segues into something that you can’t help but identify as the successor to the finger-snapping opening of “West Side Story.” While Lynch really embraces his quirky side in these passages (cutting to a random student dancing who is never seen again), it also yields the most emotionally resonant moment in the series. While roll is being taken in a classroom, Laura’s best friend Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) notes that her friend isn’t there. A deputy enters and asks for Bobby (wrong class), and Donna notes that something is wrong. The deputy takes the teacher aside, and then Donna notices a girl outside screaming and crying. Donna realizes what has happened and begins to break down. The scene is done with such beautiful subtlety, all without using any of the clichés we see so often in these types of scenes.

This beat, 25 minutes into the pilot, could not have come at a better time. Up until this point the murder really hasn’t hit home for us. The moment where Laura’s parents find out is handled oddly by Lynch (surprise, surprise), with Laura’s mother going so over-the-top with her screaming that it becomes comic.

Frost and Lynch present us with several fascinating clues as to what happened to Laura, ones that I daresay would make Agatha Christie envious. From “Fire walk with me” to the girl found walking on the train tracks to the $10,000 in the safety deposit box, the case seems to exponentially deepen with each revelation (good girl Laura was on cocaine!). Best of all is the fantastic sequence where Cooper finds a tiny letter imbedded under Laura’s middle fingernail, lit ominously with a flickering overhead lamp (something that has been imitated hundreds of times since).

The entire affair is filled with somewhat restrained variations on Lynch’s signature weirdness. When a fight breaks out at a biker bar, the completely-out-of-place singer keeps on going. There are 50 doughnuts stacked in twos. There’s a random deer head sitting on a table. The kitschy Native-American paintings all over the lodge. The show isn’t afraid to paint around the edges of every scene, encouraging the viewer to look closer and to watch again to see what he missed the first time.

The pilot finds a great balance between the crazy and relatable and the results are, in their own way, perfect. The world that Frost and Lynch created here is unlike anything else we’ve ever seen on television before or since, despite numerous others having tried to recreate its eccentricities (the most recent was “Happy Town,” which was cancelled before even airing all of its eight-episode first season). For a little while, that balance continued. And then it didn’t. Early on in the show’s run the scales were tipped toward the weird. Viewers stopped watching in droves and, as a result, Frost and Lynch decided to make the show even more weird and incomprehensible. Whether this was because the duo were being pressured to cater to what made the show stand out in the beginning or because they just didn’t care about coherent narrative is unclear. The disappearing viewers also made the network put intense pressure on the duo to solve Laura’s murder when the second season was barely underway, and the resulting revelation (“er…uh…it was evil Bob!”) wasn’t exactly fulfilling (and most of those tantalizing clues I mentioned earlier didn’t end up making sense). Many Lynch fans adore these later episodes and consider them superior to even the pilot, but there’s no question that the show lost its narrative drive after the uncovering of Laura’s murderer.

Lynch has said that Laura’s murder should never have been solved and, as if to prove his point, got a Best Director Oscar nomination for the great “Mulholland Drive,” a pilot that wasn’t picked up that he turned into a feature by adding a series of perplexing, beautiful sequences that added up to absolutely nothing and answered none of the mysteries posed by the first two acts. But I respectfully disagree with him about “Twin Peaks.” To me, the show didn’t die because he answered the question, it died because they stuck the landing and then didn’t immediately begin another great mystery arc to drive the show forward. Time and again, we’ve seen audiences get hostile about creators toying with their time and emotional investment—the most recent example being the huge hullabaloo over the lack of closure in the first season finale of “The Killing,” a PR disaster that scared viewers away en masse and resulted in an eventual cancellation at the end of the show’s second season. Shows like “Lost” and “The X-Files” have their detractors, but they held viewers’ interest for six and nine seasons, respectively, by handing out answers along with new questions.

But what happened next doesn’t really matter. The pilot of “Twin Peaks” marked a creative high for network television that it rarely achieves, engaging the viewers on an emotional and cerebral level. The sight of Laura’s lifeless face in the plastic, small stones stuck on her cheeks and in her hair, is one of the most memorable images ever broadcast. You find yourself humming the music at work and can’t imagine why. The show challenges you, gets in your head and then haunts it, seeming more dream than reality…and that’s pretty much the definition of a masterpiece, wouldn’t you say?

The “Twin Peaks” pilot is available on DVD, on iTunes and on Amazon Instant Video.