For tonight’s episode of Freakylinks, we have a little something called Still I Rise. It has a zombie theme to it. Towards the end of the episode, Ethan Embry goes a little crazy. (Far crazier then he went on Rex Manning Day….)
(C’mon, you know I was going to have to work in a reference to Rex Manning Day eventually.)
This episode originally aired on January 12th, 2001. And you can watch it below!
On tonight’s episode of FreakyLinks, Derek and the team head down to New Mexico to investigate reports of a tentacle-bearing desert creature! If not for the tentacles, I would say it was probably a chupacabra. Seriously, if you ever see a chupacabra coming at you, run!
(A friend of mine in college was nicknamed Chupacabra, mostly because he was kind of …. odd.)
This episode originally aired on November 3rd, 2000!
Enjoy!
Are there mole people living in the New York subway system?
Watch tonight’s episode of Freakylinks and find out!
This episode originally aired on October 20th, 2000.
In 1971, for the entire month of January, children across the UK were terrified of the Autons.
That was because Doctor Who began its eighth season with a four-part story called The Terror of the Autons. Previously seen in Spearhead From Space, the Autons were plastic aliens who could disguise themselves as anything. That mannequin in the store? It might be an Auton. That strange looking man handing out flowers? Might be an Auton. Your favorite plastic doll? It might be an Auton waiting to kill you in your sleep.
In this case, the Autons had returned to Earth because of the machinations of the Doctor’s greatest foe, The Master. This serial featured the first appearance of The Master, with the Roger Delgado playing the role and becoming the series’s most popular villain since the Daleks. (This serial also featured the first appearance of Katy Manning as Jo Grant, who went on to become popular for entirely different reasons.) But as evil as The Master was, it was the Autons who reportedly kept viewers awake at night. Even after The Doctor (played, at that time, by Jon Pertwee) defeated them for a second time, you could never be sure whether that mannequin was harmless or if it was an Auton stalking you whenever your back was turned.
For modern viewers, it can seem strange to hear that people were ever scared by Doctor Who. But the Autons are an exception. The Autons are actually creepy.
The Master doesn’t seem to be too scared of them, though.
The Terror of the Autons would go on to be the first episode of Doctor Who to be cited in the House of Lords, when it was listed as a recent programme that might have a dangerous effect on the minds of the people watching. But who knows? Was that Lord Beaverbrook or was it…?
Previous Great Moments In Television History:
Remember Freakylinks?
If you don’t, do not worry. To be honest, I had totally forgotten about it until, six years ago, my friend Janeen mentioned it to me. Freakylinks is a show that aired on Fox back in 2000. It only lasted one season and it was about this guy (played by Ethan Embry) who ran a website called freakylinks.com. To me, that sounds like a porn site but apparently, it was actually a site dedicated to investigating the paranormal.
Freakylinks was produced by the same company that produced The Blair Witch Project. A few months before the show premiered, in order to try to create some Blair Witch-style buzz for the production, the production company set up a website called Freakylinks.com and designed it to look like it was just some ghost hunter’s Geocities-style blog. While the web site got some publicity, it didn’t translate into ratings and Freakylinks was canceled. However, the entire series has been uploaded to YouTube and below you’ll find a pilot!
Prepare to take a trip into the past, to a time when the internet was still a mysterious and powerful thing and people apparently didn’t realize that anyone with time to kill could make a web site.
(I often wonder if the ruins of Geocities is haunted by the ghosts of dead blogs?)
(Let nothing get you down on Rex Manning Day!)
On tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond, a man suspects that his best friend is having an affair with his fiancee. What better way to take care of the problem than by leaving his friend to die on the side of a mountain?
It seems like the perfect crime and the man might get away with it …. but only if he can do something about the ghost who seems to be stalking him in the days leading up to his wedding!
As always, this is supposedly based on a true story.
This episode originally aired on March 1st, 1960.
Enjoy!
On November 8th, 1994, NBC aired an episode of Frasier called “The Candidate.”
Unlike the actor who played him, Frasier Crane was a committed liberal. Of course, he was the type of liberal who lived in an impossibly large apartment and who had little interest in spending any time with anyone who didn’t have an Ivy League degree. As a popular radio psychiatrist, Frasier Crane usually refused to endorse politicians or even give his opinion on the issues of the day. The one time he made an exception was when he endorsed Phil Patterson, the earnest progressive who was running to defeat right-wing Congressman Holden Thorpe. (Rewatching the episode earlier this week, it was impossible not to hear the voice of Donald Trump when Thorpe called into Frasier’s show to taunt him.)
Fraiser’s father, Martin (John Mahoney, how we miss you!) had already filmed a commercial for Thorpe, one in which he said that his career as as a cop was ended by the type of criminals that would be released on the streets if a bleeding heart like Phil Patterson was elected. Hoping to counter their father’s endorsement, Frasier and his brother, Niles, arranged to film a commercial for Phil Patterson right in Frasier’s apartment.
In the commercial, Frasier was scripted to endorse Phil Patterson because he “cares about the little people” and “I like the way his mind works.” After shaking Patterson’s hand, Frasier was to proclaim him to be “the sane choice.” The rehearsal went well. Before shooting the actual commercial, Phil and Frasier stepped out on the balcony. Phil admitted that he needed someone to talk to. Frasier assured Phil that anything Phil said would fall under patient-doctor confidentiality. Relieved, Phil explained that he had recently been abducted by aliens and that he hoped that, once in Congress, he hoped he could serve as a sort of intergalactic ambassador.
Frasier and Phil before they stepped out on the balcony:
Frasier and Phil, after the conversation on the balcony:
Fortunately, with the help of his brother, Frasier was able to eventually shoot the commercial. Of course, the next day, Frasier heard that it was all over the news about “Patterson and the aliens” so he went on his radio show and announced that it didn’t matter that Phil Patterson believed in aliens. Every leader had his eccentricities. “Even J. Edgar Hoover let his slip show occasionally!” Of course, the aliens that were all over the news were a group of Guatamelan exchange students whom Patterson was giving free room and board.
In the end, Holden Thorpe was reelected to Congress but Phil Patterson at least got 8% of the vote and was making plans to relaunch his political career in California.
Along with being one of the funniest episodes of one of television’s best sitcoms (Kesley Grammer’s response to the story about the aliens is absolutely brilliant), “The Candidate“ is an episode that still feels relevant today, nearly 16 years after it first aired. Of course, in 1994, it was a given that a candidate thinking he had met with aliens would be viewed as a political disqualifier. I’m not so sure if that would be the case in 2020. Would you vote for the candidate who believed he had been beamed aboard a space ship? Maybe you already have.
If you need a salve to help deal with the burn of 2020 politics, this episode is currently available to be viewed on Hulu.
Previous Great Moments In Television History:
In tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond, Emmy (Patty McCormack) makes the mistake of telling her parents (Eileen Ryan and Leo Penn) that she can read minds. Needless to say, the news does not go over as well as Emmy might have hoped. Her parents have a farm to run! The last thing they need is a witch in their midst!
Emmy runs to the church and prays, “Make me not a witch!”
But what if the world needs a witch?
As with every episode of One Step Beyond, this episode is supposedly based on fact. Patty McCormack is best-remembered for her Oscar-nominated performance in The Bad Seed while Eileen Ryan and Leo Penn are best remembered as being the parents of Sean and Chris Penn.
This episode originally aired on December 22nd, 1959.
Enjoy!
On tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond.…
A young woman (Suzanne Pleshette) desperately needs a blood transfusion. Fortunately, the police have managed to track down one of the only people to share her blood type, an accountant named Harold Stern (Norman Lloyd). Harold seems like a nice, rather mild-mannered guy and he has a long history of donating blood. However, when the police approach him, Harold refuses to donate.
“What type of crumb are you!?” the police demand.
Harold explains that, whenever he gives someone blood, he develops a psychic connection with that person. He can see their future. And that’s simply a burden that he can no longer shoulder….
This episode of One Step Beyond originally aired on September 15th, 1959. Norman Lloyd, who plays Harold, got his start as a member of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater and he also played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur. (Speaking of Hitchcock, Suzanne Pleshette played the doomed school teacher in The Birds.) When Lloyd appeared in this episode of One Step Beyond, he was 44 years old.
Today, Norman Lloyd is 105 years old and guess what? He’s still active! He had a role in Trainwreck and still occasionally appears on television.
Enjoy!
When I first started searching YouTube for episodes to use in this feature, I came across quite a few episodes of an old black-and-white TV show called One Step Beyond. Running for three seasons (from 1959 to 1961), One Step Beyond was hosted by John Newland. Every week, Newland would tell the audience about some sort of possible paranormal phenomena. Then, a dramatization of a “real” event would be shown and occasionally, the show would end with Newland interviewing the real people whose story we had just watched.
To me, that all sounds like a lot of fun.
The 16th episode of One Step Beyond was called The Burning Girl and it dealt with a teenage girl who, whenever she got upset, could apparently cause fires to spontaneously erupt. It was written by Catherine Turney and directed by John Newland himself.
It was originally broadcast on May 5th, 1959 — presumably long before Stephen King even had the idea to write about a girl named Carrie.
Through the Shattered Lens 