Here there be shows that will amaze and frighten. Classic TV from the time when TV meant experimenting with a relatively new media. Up to the cusp of TV and film. We will be covering a reasonably eclectic group.
The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Night Gallery, One Step Beyond, Thriller.
Essentially all the shows that us old guys watched to be frightened and amazed. As kids. :)
I will be starting this off with one of my favorite Outer Limits episodes. The Zanti Misfits.
Please understand. Some of the special effects you will see may look silly to you kids. But try to picture yourself as a 10 year old watching this for the first time on your grandparent’s black and white TV. Get into the mindset of a child that had never seen anything like it. Ever. Really. Never. It scared the everloving crap out of me.
So. I will watch The Zanti Misfits along with you. Haven’t seen it in a while.
You might notice a certain rakish boy driving a car. For extra points name the movie he was in as a more mellow character.
As far as how future suggestions may be suggested? Please don’t PM me. Wait until discussion of the present one is done. Assuming there is any discussion.
I don’t remember who was in it (Fritz Weaver maybe) but the Night Gallery episode with the guy who wished to be in a picture, only to finally get his wish and discover he was in a concentration camp nightmare instead of a lazy fishing picture. That one freaked me out as a kid.
Anyone else remember Roald Dahl’s Way Out? It was a Summer replacement show (remember those?) for Twilight Zone.
The episode that scared the ever-loving crap out of me was about a photographer who developed a kind of emulsifier. When he used it to remove people or objects from photos, they would disappear in reality as well. At the end of the episode he accidentally spills some on a self portrait, and this is the result.
Yes I did. Sorry for the delay. I was kinda running in and out today. Power washing the back porch. Making beef stew for dinner…
Anyway.
One thing we might notice about the shows of the 60s and early 70s was, The Message. Serling was a master of The Message. As was Stefano. And let’s face it, The Message could often be very heavy handed.
In this case The Message is that sometimes a people need an outside solution to an internal problem. And Earth people were that solution.
So. The Zanti contact us and say that they need a special place, on Earth, to keep their “misfits”. Why would we do that? Because if we didn’t they would destroy us. Is a certain cheeto their leader? We don’t know for sure that they could. But we don’t know that they can’t.
They want a space in the desert that no humans will enter. They will land a strangely shaped, and rather small, UFO.
Meanwhile something important happens. A guy with a portable typewriter arrives. A very important typewriter!
More later.
Edit: Next time. The guy with the 1000 yard stare.
And that’s why I walked away thinking this was, “OK.”
And it made me contemplate why I’ve never been able to dig into The Outer Limits. By all rights, I should just groove on it. I love The Twilight Zone, Hitchcock Presents, Night Gallery, etc.
But every time I’ve seen The Outer Limits two things have always limited (ha ha) my enjoyment of it.
The first is that you can see the message a mile away. Let’s say that when a certain thing gets flicked and I heard about how a certain people couldn’t do a certain thing, I thought “Ah, that’s it”.
The second is that it really seems to rely on the Monster of the Week rather than nuanced concept, deft writing and characters who seem to have an inner life. Maybe its because I am comparing it to Serling, who can surprise you with the O. Henry twist bearing The Message, even when you know its coming. So maybe I am judging it by an unfair standard. But Hitch Presents seems to excel at the nuance, fully developed character thing as well, forgoing The Message for interesting plots, twists, concepts and development.
One that’s always stuck with me: Channel 11 in St. Louis used to show episodes of Get Smart on weekday afternoons at 4pm, and I fell in love with the clever show. It was hilarious.
But one episode, I think called “The Spirit Is Willing” is about ghosts and seances and a cemetery and whatnot, and it’s all a plot and stuff…but then comes the surprise ending twist and it freaked me the hell out.
I know. I’ve been remiss in my duties here. The thing is that I have an issue. I was going to do a scene by scene review. That being so, it would take as long as the episode to do. I need to take it back a bit. Try to hit the high points. Not make it a moment to moment thing.
While I’m great at multiple paragraph shitposts about my life, I’m not so good at the review thing. Yet I will try.
My notes shall follow. When the typewriter guy arrives he speaks to an officer that essentially stares off and wonders if what they are doing is a good idea. They are on the porch. And eventually they go inside.
Seems that typewriter guy is a buddy of the boss at the base.
