Category Archives: TV

Horror On TV: Twilight Zone 5.25 “The Masks”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In “The Masks,” a group of greedy relatives gather at the New Orleans home of Jason Foster (Robert Keith).  Foster is on the verge of death and the relatives are eagerly waiting their chance to claim their inheritance.  However, as Foster informs them, they will only get paid if they wear masks that are meant to reflect their inner natures…

This episode of the Twilight Zone first aired on March 20th, 1964.  As written by Rod Serling and directed by Ida Lupino (making her the only woman to direct an episode of the original Twilight Zone), this episode is full of gothic Southern atmosphere and it’s a perfect addition for any Halloween viewing marathon.

Add to that, the masks are really creepy!

Horror On TV: Twilight Zone 5.19 “Night Call”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this poignantly haunting episode of the Twilight Zone, Gladys Cooper plays a lonely widow who starts to receive mysterious phone calls from a stranger.

This episode was written by Richard Matheson (and based on his short story Long Distance  Call) and it was directed by Jacques Tourneur.  Tourneur is probably best known for directing moody horror films like Cat People and Curse of the Demon and he brings a similar atmosphere to Night Call.

Night Call originally aired on February 7, 1964.

Horror On TV: The Unaired Pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I first decided that I wanted to devote some of October to horror-themed television, I knew i wanted to feature a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  After all, Buffy is one of the most acclaimed and influential shows of all time.  On a personal note, the show started when I was 12 and it ended right before my senior year of high school.  As a result, Buffy was a show that I watched during some of the most emotionally turbulent years of my life and, as a character, Buffy Summers was the type of role model that I needed.

However, what i quickly discovered was that there really aren’t any full length episodes of Buffy on YouTube.  There’s plenty of fanvids.  There’s a lot of music videos featuring clips of Angel and Buffy staring soulfully at each other.  But, because of copyright issues, there aren’t any full-length episodes available on YouTube.

However, there is the unaired pilot.

This was a 30-minute “sample” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that was written and directed by Joss Whedon in 1996.  The episode was never meant to be televised.  Instead, it was a tool that Whedon used to pitch the concept of Buffy to the networks.

So, since I couldn’t find Hush on YouTube, here’s the 1996 unaired pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Horror On TV: Hammer House of Horror Ep. 3 “Rude Awakening”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Originally broadcast in the UK on September 27th, 1980, this episode of Hammer House Of Horror deals with a sleazy real estate agent (played by Denholm Elliot) who finds himself besieged by dreams about seducing his assistant Lolly (Lucy Gutteridge) and murdering his wife Emily (Pat Heywood).

Featuring an outstanding lead performance from Elliot and strong direction from Peter Sasdy, this is a good one.

Horror On TV: Hammer House of Horror Episode 7 “The Silent Scream”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s episode of televised horror is The Silent Scream, the seventh episode of Hammer House of Horror.  It was originally broadcast in the UK on October 25th, 1980.

This episode features an odd pet shop, a youngish Brian Cox playing an ex-con, and — best of all — the iconic Hammer horror star Peter Cushing!

Seriously, how can you do a horror month without featuring at least one appearance from Peter Cushing?

Horror on TV: Hammer House of Horror Ep. 5 “The House That Bled To Death:

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s episode of televised horror comes from the UK.

First broadcast on October 11th, 1980, the fifth episode of Hammer’s House of Horror was entitled The House That Bled To Death.  It’s about a family who buys and moves into a house that has a sordid past.  The family plans to fix the house up and then sell it for a profit.  The house has other plans.

(Incidentally, The House That Bled To Death would have been a great title for one of Lucio Fuci’s later films.)

Horror on TV: Twilight Zone — “The Howling Man”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s offering of Horror on TV is another episode of The Twilight Zone.

In The Howling Man, H.M. Wynant plays a rational man who, during a walk across Europe, finds himself in an isolated monastery.  Wynant discovers a bearded prisoner (played by Robin Hughes) who explains that he’s being held prisoner because he was caught kissing his girlfriend in public.  However, Brother Jerome (played by the legendary John Carradine) claims that Hughes is the devil himself!  It’s left up to Wynant whether to set the man free or to leave him imprisoned…

Written by Charles Beaumont and directed by Douglas Heyes, The Howling Man is a favorite of mine.  Not only does the show establish and maintain an atmosphere of palpable menace but it also features a brilliant ending.

Enjoy The Howling Man.

 

Horror On TV: Twlight Zone Ep. 54 “Twenty-Two”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s televised horror story is Twenty-Two, the fifty-fourth episode of The Twilight Zone.

First broadcast on February 10th, 1961 and written by Rod Serling, Twenty-Two tells the story of a dancer (Barbara Nichols) who is in the hospital, suffering from fatigue.  As she tries to recover and get out of the hospital in time to catch a flight to Miami, Nichols finds herself having a reoccurring nightmare.  In her dreams, Nichols goes down to the morgue and is told, by a smiling nurse, “Room for one more, honey.”

This episode seriously freaks me out!  Perhaps it’s because I’m a dancer who, in the past, has suffered from fatigue or maybe it’s because I’m scared of flying but this episode scares me to death.  Though the episode’s final twist may have been spoiled by far too many inferior imitations, Twenty-Two, as directed by Jack Smight, manages to perfectly capture the feel of a nightmare.

It’s the perfect episode for an October night.

Horror Review: The Walking Dead: “The Oath” 3-Part Webisode

Posted on by Arleigh

TheOath

What has become a yearly ritual, whenever a new season of The Walking Dead inches closer to it’s premiere AMC and the folks running the show shoot a series of webisodes telling the story of a group of survivors outside of the show’s main cast. These individuals never come into contact with Rick and his band of survivors, but they do come across similar places that we’ve seen in past episodes.

The first webisode series was the 6-parter “Torn Apart” arrived just prior to Season 2 and told of the origins of the so-callled “Bicycle Girl” zombie Rick comes across soon after waking up from his coma. Then we had the 4-parter “Cold Storage” preceding Season 3’s premiere. Now we have the 3-parter “The Oath” which extends each webisode and deals with a surviving couple whose camp have been overrun by a swarm the night before.

“The Oath” stars Ashley Bell (The Last Exorcism) as Karina with Wyatt Russell (Cowboys & Aliens) playing Paul. The duo races to find medical help in the early months of the zombie apocalypse and they soon come across an abandoned hospital that should be familiar to fans of the show from the very beginning. We even see the origin of the barricaded door in the hospital with the ominous warning to keep any passer-by away.

While the webisodes themselves have been hit-or-miss when it comes to the casts performances they do fill in some backstory on the fringes of the main show. With “The Oath” we see that the Governor and Michonne may not be the only ones to have found a way to use the zombies as a sort of mascot/camouflage.

Overall, “The Oath” was a nice webisode with some average acting from the cast. The teleplay by Luke Passmore was actually quite good and series executive producer Greg Nicotero does a good job directing the whole affair. Some sequences turn out to be very tense and scary. Maybe it’s the nature of the webisode itself that the acting could be uneven, but it was still a good little story that should help whet the appetite of the fans who have been waiting a year for Season 4 to start.

“Alone”

“Choice”

“Bond”

Horror On TV: The Twilight Zone 3.12 “The Jungle”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Along with starting each day of October with a horror film here at the Shattered Lens, we’re going to end each day with a horror-themed television show.

While  I had previously caught a few episodes of the Twilight Zone during one of the annual holiday marathons on SyFy, I didn’t truly appreciate the show until I first exchanged e-mails with my friend in Australia, Mark.  Among other things, Mark expressed a very eloquent appreciation for The Twilight Zone and that inspired me to watch quite a few episodes that have been uploaded to YouTube.  Along with being an essential piece of television history, the best episodes of the Twilight Zone remain watchable and entertaining 50 years after they were first broadcast.

Considering the esteemed place that the Twilight Zone continues to occupy in American culture, it seems appropriate to feature it during Horror Month here at the Shattered Lens.

The episode below is called The Jungle and it first aired on December 1st, 1961.  It was written by Charles Beaumont and directed by William Claxton.  John Dehner plays an engineer who, having recently returned from overseeing a project in Africa, foolishly believes that he’ll be safe from a tribal curse just because he’s in New York.  This is an effectively creepy 23 minutes of television and the ending is a classic.