Tag Archives: review

October Hacks: Splatter University (dir by Richard W. Haines)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As we started to watch 1984’s Splatter University, Jeff warned me that, “This is not a great movie.”

I laughed.  “Hey,” I said, “I just watched Satan’s Children.  How bad can it be?”

I looked at the screen and was immediately confronted by a poorly animated picture of the New York Skyline.

“Oh crap,” I said.

Four words appeared on screen: “A Troma Team Release”

“Oh, no!” I shouted….

Still, I’m not one to stop watching a film once it starts so I watched the entirety of Splatter University.  Fortunately, it was only 78 minutes long and, regardless of what else one might say about it, it did not waste much time getting to the murders.  Within the opening few minutes, an orderly in a mental hospital got stabbed in the crotch, with the camera zooming in on the blood spurting out from his groin,  The patient who stabbed him took the orderly’s clothes (which, quite frankly, should have been covered in blood so I’m not sure that they would actually be the ideal disguise) and makes his escape.

Three years later, a sociology professor is brutally stabbed to death in her classroom at St. Trinian’s College and again, the camera zooms in on the spurting blood, as if to make sure that no one accuses the film of lying about the “splatter” part.  Her quickly-hired replacement is Julie Parker (Forbes Riley), who soon notices that someone seems to be murdering her students.  Being a good teacher, Julie decides to protect her students by figuring out who the murderer is at St. Trinian’s College.  Fortunately, there aren’t that many suspects, for two reasons.  Number one, the students and faculty die with such frequency that it’s easy to guess who is responsible by process of elimination.  Number two, it appears that the makers of this film could only afford a handful of actors.  St. Trinian’s appears to have about twenty students and most of them appear to be in their early forties.

On the one hand, as I mentioned previously, Splatter University does live up to its name.  It’s obvious that the production didn’t have a huge budget but it appears that the majority of what the filmmakers did have was spent on fake blood and entrails because a lot of blood is spilled and one particularly gruesome scene even involves intestines spilling out of a body.  Agck!  (Seriously, the sight of the large intestine always freaks me out.)  I really can’t fault the film as a slasher flick, even if the killer’s identity is obvious.  That said, this was still a Troma release and, as such, there’s a lot about it that sucks.  Apparently, the original film was too short so Troma added some badly acted, “comedic” scenes of the students acting stupid.  Those scenes pad out the film’s length but they also screw with the pacing and they distract the viewer from what is otherwise a crudely affective, low-budget American giallo film.  But that’s Troma for you!

(And, let’s be honest — how can you not love Lloyd Kaufman?)

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Satan’s Children (dir by Joe Wiezycki)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1974 film, Satan’s Children, tells the story of unfortunate Bobby Douglas (Stephen White).

Bobby is a teenager who lives in a hideous suburban house with his stepfather (Eldon Mecham) and his stepsister (Joyce Molloy), who looks old enough to be Bobby’s mother.  Bobby’s a rebellious kid who doesn’t understand why he should always have to cut the grass while his stepsister hangs out by the pool.  Bobby is sick of the whole scene, man.  When his stepfather yells at Bobby for having a small stash of marijuana in his room, Bobby decides to run away from home.  Seriously, that scene was totally melvin so I don’t blame Bobby.

Bobby goes to a bar, where an old man tries to talk to him until Jake (Bob Barcour) tells the old man to get lost.  Jake tells Bobby that he has to be careful because there are perverts all over the place.  Bobby nods and laughs because Bobby’s not a square.  He knows what’s up.  Jake invites Bobby to come hang out at his place and Bobby is like, “Cool, way too friendly stranger, I’ll get you in your rape van.”  Bobby goes home with Jake and is promptly raped.  With Bobby naked and bound, Jake calls all of his friends over and Bobby is then gang raped.  The scene where Jake and his friends drive the bound Bobby around is pure nightmare fuel and I can only imagine how audiences in 1974 reacted to it.

The next morning, a group of hippies found Bobby lying in a field and they take him back to their commune.  Of course, these folks aren’t just hippies.  They’re also Satanists!  Sherry (Kathleen Marie Archer) wants to let Bobby stay with them while she nurses him back to health.  Joshua (John Edwards), an older member of the group, says that Bobby isn’t welcome because Bobby is probably “queer.”  Simon (Robert C. Ray II), the turtleneck-wearing leader of the group, is also hesitant to allow Bobby to stay and again, it’s because Simon assumes Bobby must be gay.  Simon also makes it clear that he doesn’t want any lesbians in his Satanic cult either.  He just wants people who are prepared to carry out a blood sacrifice….

(I swear, that Satan.  Not only is he the ruler of Hell and the tormenter of souls and the fallen angel responsible for getting Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden and bringing sin into the world, he’s also apparently a massive homophobe!)

While the Satanists torture Sherry for displeasing Simon, Bobby tries to figure out a way to escape.  Fair warning: the majority of the film’s finale involves Bobby running around in tighty-whities, which get progressively more and more mud-stained as the movie goes on.  Seriously, ew!  On the other hand, not one but two people manage to die as a result of accidentally wandering into quicksand.  If nothing else, it’s a reminder that Bobby isn’t the only incredibly stupid person in the movie.

This is a weird movie.  I imagine it was made to capitalize on the notoriety of the Manson Family but, with its extended opening scenes in the suburbs, it instead becomes an ennui-drenched look at how far people will go to escape conventional society.  Despite all the of the truly terrible things that happen to him, Bobby is not a sympathetic or likable character.  In fact, he comes across as being just the type of idiot who probably would get sucked into a cult.  That said, the film is truly a unique (if rather slow) experience and the brutal ending took me totally by surprise.  Like many grindhouse film, Satan’s Children is an oddity that you truly can’t look away from.

Retro Television Review: T and T 3.17 “Nightmare”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing T. and T., a Canadian show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990.  The show can be found on Tubi!

This week, Terri is approached by a man who claims to be a political refugee.  But is he really?  It’s a good thing T.S. Turner doesn’t have anything better to do than help her out.

Episode 3.17 “Nightmare”

(Dir by Don McCutcheon, originally aired on April 28th, 1990)

While walking down the street in Canada, Terri is approached by a desperate man (William Colgate), who introduces himself as Sebastian Fuentes.  He explains that he was a newspaper editor in his native country of San Miguel.  After a left-wing death squad killed his family, Sebastian fled to North America.  Now, he needs Terri’s help to be designated a refugee.  He claims that there are people from San Miguel who want him dead and, for that reason, he cannot risk going to the authorities or even being seen in Terri’s office.  He says he has to hide, no matter what.

Terri doesn’t know anything about immigration law.  Both T.S Turner and a sleazy lawyer named Kerr (Don Allison) warn her that she shouldn’t be so quick to believe Sebastian’s story.  But something about Sebastian’s fear touches Terri’s heart and she agrees to help him.

Unfortunately, it turns out that both Turner and Kerr were correct.  Sebastian is actually a colonel who murdered the real Sebastian.  The nightmares that haunt him are not about watching his family being killed but instead about being the killer himself.  The people who are searching for him are not government agents but instead the relatives of the people who he victimized in his home country.  Eventually, Sebastian’s real identity is discovered by some fellow refugees (one of whom is played by a young Jill Hennessy) and he ends up in prison, haunted by his crimes.

This was an unusually serious episode of T and T.  Indeed, it was shot more like an episode of Monsters than a typical episode of this show.  Unfortunately, with the exception of Don Allison’s performance as the sleazy Mr. Kerr, the acting in this episode was pretty dodgy and it was easy to guess that Sebastian was going to turn out to not be who he said he was.

Probably the most interesting thing about this episode is that it aired 34 years ago but the issues that it deals with are the same issues that are going on today.  Dictators are still coming to power and abusing their citizens and, as a result, refugees are still flooding over the border.  The immigration system is still broken and it doesn’t appear that anyone is truly interested in finding a way to fix it.  This episode aired in 1990, long before men like Venezuela’s Maduro came to power.  The issues that are dealt with in this episode existed before the current crop of dictators and they will undoubtedly continue even after people like Maduro fade into history.

Book Review: Runaway Train Or, The Story Of My Life So Far by Eric Roberts with Sam Kasher

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hell yeah, Eric Roberts has written a book!

A friend of mine recently sent me Eric Roberts’s just published autobiography as a gift.  I was excited because, as any of our regular readers know, I am a huge fan of the insanely busy Eric Roberts.  That said, I wasn’t really expecting much from the book because most Hollywood autobiographies that I’ve read have had a tendency to be a bit dry.  Often times, the author (or their ghost writer, as the case may be) is either too concerned about not offending anyone or too bitter about the state of their career to really provide much honest insight into their life or their chosen profession.

Eric Roberts, however, is the exception to the rule.  Runaway Train is a fascinating read.  Roberts comes across as being very honest about his career, his demons, his family, and his compulsive need to always be working.  Roberts admits to being a workaholic but, as he explains it, it’s better to be addicted to acting than to be addicted to cocaine.  And I have to say that I think he has a point there.

Roberts writes about his dysfunctional childhood, his time as a star, and his more recent career as an actor who is willing to appear in just about everything.  He writes about his addictions and how they almost ruined his life.  He writes about his marriage to Eliza and fully takes responsibility for all the times that he’s screwed up.  (Roberts screwing up is a recurring theme throughout the book, almost to the extent that you just want to give the guy a hug and tell him to stop being so hard on himself.)  He writes about the time that he spent as a patient of Dr. Drew on Celebrity Rehab.  (In perhaps the book’s funniest moment, he realizes that he needs to be addicted to something if he’s going to go on Celebrity Rehab.  Eventually, he agrees to go on the show for help with his marijuana addiction, despite Roberts belief, which I agree with, that you can’t actually get addicted to marijuana.)  Roberts writes about some of his films, though he obviously can’t write about all 700 of them.  So, while there is no Top Gunner trivia, there are three pretty interesting chapters devoted to Star 80, The Pope of Greenwich Village, and Runaway Train.

Roberts does write about other celebrities, though he does so in a way that is neither petty nor obsequious.  He writes about his friendship with Robin Williams with an honesty that few other celebs would be willing to risk.  Danny Trejo, Eddie Bunker, Mickey Rourke, Christopher Walken, Sterling Hayden, Doug Kenney, Sharon Stone, Rod Steiger, and Sylvester Stallone all show up at one point or another.  And yes, Eric Roberts does write about his relationship with both his sister Julia and his daughter, Emma.  Eric is open about he and Julia having been occasionally estranged but he manages to do so in a way that protects everyone’s privacy.  One might never expect this from some of the roles that he’s played but Eric Roberts comes across as being a pretty classy, if somewhat eccentric, guy.

I loved this memoir.  I recommend it to all of you.

October True Crime: Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door (dir by Michael Feifer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released this year, Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door tells the story of two neighbors in the 70s.

Bobby (Mason McNulty) is a typical 7os teenager, with long hair and a laid back attitude.  He’s what my grandparents used to call a “good kid.”  He helps out his neighbors and he only charges 50 cents an hour.  When he sees someone new moving in, he immediately offers to help the man unload all of his furniture.  He gets along with his parents.  He’s popular with his friends.  Bobby seems destined to grow up to become the type of guy who you would want living next door to you.

His new neighbor is named John (Mike Korich).  John is a small businessman with local political ambitions.  He entertains at parties under the name Pogo the Clown.  He has a loud and, if we’re going to be honest, somewhat grating laugh.  He’s a dorky guy but he seems to be super-friendly.  In fact, he’s a bit too friendly.  He’s very quick to invite young men like Bobby to come home with him.  Bobby can’t help but notice that John’s new friends enter the house but they don’t ever seem to leave.

“I’ve never met anyone named John Wayne before,” Bobby says, when he first meets John.

“My mother named me after a cowboy,” John Wayne Gacy replies.

Soon, Bobby’s curiosity gets the better of him and he starts investigating Gacy on his own.  He comes to believe that Gacy is murdering the men that he brings home and then keeping their bodies in the house.  Unfortunately, no one wants to believe Bobby.  John, a murderer?  Friendly, clownish, buffoonish John?  “He works for the Democrats!” Bobby’s mother says at one point, a line that genuinely made me laugh.

There’s a lot of laughter to be found in Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door.  John Wayne Gacy loves to put on his clown makeup, kill people, and laugh.  The laughing gets old pretty quickly, to be honest.  The real-life John Wayne Gacy was executed after less than 20 years on Death Row.  If his real-life laugh was anything like his laugh in the movie, I’m surprised that they weren’t any quicker about doing away with him.

The real-life John Wayne Gacy was one of the worst serial killers in American history.  He killed dozens, so much so that he’s still considered to be a suspect in several unsolved murders.  He tortured his victims in the worst ways imaginable.  And he never even bothered to fake any sort of remorse for his crimes.  Instead, after he was jailed, he sold Gacy merchandise to morbid collectors.  His last words, before being put to death, were reportedly, “Kiss my ass.”  John Wayne Gacy is the type of murderer who makes people like me, who are against the death penalty in general, seriously reconsider their feelings.

Considering how terrible Gacy and his crimes were, it’s a bit odd that Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door almost plays out like a comedy at time.  The film portrays Gacy as being so openly evil that it’s hard  not to smile whenever an adult refuses to believe Bobby’s claim that there might be something wrong with the man who enjoys wearing clown makeup and carrying around a set of handcuffs.  A scene where Gacy comes over to Bobby’s house and asks if he can use the phone is pure cringe comedy.  The problem is that I don’t think that the scene was meant to be comedic.

Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door is a bit of a misfire as a true crime film, as it gets the majority of the facts wrong.  (That said, it was correct about John Wayne Gacy being a Democrat.)  It works as a comedy but one could argue that a film about John Wayne Gacy should not be a comedy, even if it is largely unintentional on the part of the filmmakers.  Mason McNulty gave a good and sympathetic performance as Bobby and Mike Korich was properly creepy as Gacy.

In the end, we should probably just be happy that John Wayne Gacy is dead.

Horror Film Review: The Pit and the Pendulum (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The second of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, 1961’s The Pit and The Pendulum opens in much the same way as The Fall of the House of Usher.  A young Englishman (played by John Kerr) rides a horse across a colorful but desolate landscape.  A castle sits in the distance.

Of course, as opposed to  the 19th Century British setting of The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum takes place in 16th Century Spain, at a time when the country was still scarred by the horrors of the Inquisition.  And Francis Barnard is not traveling to the castle to see his fiancée but instead, he’s searching for information about the disappearance of his sister, Elizabeth (played by the one and only, Barbara Steele).  At the castle, Francis meets Elizabeth’s husband, Nicholas (Vincent Price) and Nicholas’s sister, Catherine (Luana Anders).  Nicholas explains that Elizabeth died under mysterious circumstances, while suffering from a rare blood disorder that seemed to quickly sap away her will to live.  Nicholas’s best friend, Dr. Leon (Anthony Carbone), explains that Elizabeth died of fright after she locked herself in one of the iron maidens in the castle’s torture chamber….

Oh yes, the castle has a torture chamber.  Nicholas’s father was a leader of the Inquisition and he used the castle as a place to conduct his business.  Nicholas’s father was a madman who suspected that his wife was cheating on him.  One day, while young Nicholas was exploring the torture chamber, he witnessed his father murder both his wife and his brother.  Nicholas watched as his mother was entombed alive and ever since, he’s been terrified of the idea of premature burial.  In fact, his fear that he may have buried alive Elizabeth while she was still alive is driving him mad.  The sudden arrival of the suspicious Francis doesn’t help matters….

The Pit and the Pendulum opens with splashes of color spreading across the screen, a sign that Corman was once again in a pop art state of mind when he directed this film.  The Pit and The Pendulum takes everything that worked (and didn’t work) about The Fall of the House of Usher and it turns it all up by a notch or two.  The castle is even more gothic.  Vincent Price’s Nicholas is even more mentally fragile than his Roderick Usher, though Nicholas is also a quite a bit more sympathetic.  If Roderick was a control freak who used his family’s curse as an excuse to embrace his own authoritarian tendencies, Nicholas is just a frail man suffering from PTSD.  He’s definitely more of a victim than a victimizer … or, at least, he is at first.  Much like Mark Damon is The Fall of the House of the Usher, John Kerr is a bit of a stiff in the role of Francis but it doesn’t matter.  Vincent Price is the main attraction here and Corman’s direction shows that he understood that.

And then there’s the Pendulum.  It takes a while for the Pendulum and its swinging blade to make an appearance but when it does, it lives up to the hype.  The Pendulum swings and Corman goes all out, zooming into Price’s crazed eyes while the Pendulum comes closer and closer to its latest victim.  The images are tinted red and green and the Pendulum itself seems to swing in a slow motion, the cinematic equivalent of a nightmare come to life.

The Pit and the Pendulum is a wonderful work of gothic pop art.  Featuring Vincent Price at his most wonderfully unhinged, this is a film we should all watch this Halloween.

Pit and the Pendulum (1961, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Floyd Crosby)

 

Horror On the Lens: Creation of the Humanoids (dir by Wesley E. Barry)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Creation of the Humanoids (1962, dir by Wesley Barry)

What makes us human?  What does it mean to have free will?  What is love?  What is freedom?  The questions and more are asked in the low-budget (and rather odd) science fiction epic The Creation of the Humanoids, which you can view below!

Now, I should warn that Creation of the Humanoids is an extremely talky film.  And the plot is occasionally difficult to follow. There’s a lot of ennui to be found in this particular film, both from the humans and those who have been built to serve them  However, I find it impossible not to love this one because it’s just such a strange movie.  I love it for the colorful set design, the contrast between the resentful robots and the paranoid humans, and the fact that the film — despite being made for next to nothing — actually has more ambition than anything ever made by several of the more successful directors working today. And, while it may not really be a horror film in the way that some of our other October films are, it still feels appropriate for the Halloween season. It just has the perfect holiday atmosphere.

First released in 1962, Creation of the Humanoids was reportedly one of Andy Warhol’s favorite films.  Keep an eye out for Plan 9 From Outer Space‘s Dudley Manlove.

October Positivity: The Apocalypse (dir by Justin Jones)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 2007 and produced by The Asylum, The Apocalypse opens in much the same way as many Asylum films.  An asteroid is hurtling towards the Earth.  It crashes into our planet without warning, destroying the town of Monterey.  (“And nothing of value was lost!” says the old timey Borscht Belt comedian.)  Then more asteroids strike the planet, causing mass panic.  The power goes out.  People desperately try to reach their loved ones.

And then a tornado hits out of nowhere.

And then the state of California is suddenly hit by torrential rainfall.

And then….

Well, you get it.  Things are not going well in California or in the rest of the world.  As I said at the start of this review, the Earth being bombarded with asteroids is a pretty common theme when it comes to the Asylum.  Indeed, anyone who has watched more than a handful of Asylum films is probably already picturing the stock footage of the asteroid hurtling through space with Earth in the distance.  I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen that rock start to burst into flames as it enters the atmosphere.

What sets The Apocalypse apart from other Asylum asteroid films is that, after the first asteroid hits, people start to vanish.  They’re not crushed underneath an asteroid, or at least they aren’t as far as we can tell.  Instead, they just seem to vanish into thin air, as if they’ve been taken to another place.  Those who do not vanish can only stand around and wonder why they didn’t go to church more often….

“I’ve been left behind,” one character says and yes, this is indeed a mockbuster version of the Left Behind films.  I guess it makes sense.  The Asylum has produced mockbuster versions of every other genre out there.  Why shouldn’t they also try to cash in on the end times.  Really, one has to respect the fact that the Asylum managed to make its own Left Behind film without abandoning the idea of the world being bombarded by asteroids.

(And, if we’re going to be honest, the idea of God using asteroids to destroy humanity actually makes a lot more sense than the usual story that these films tend to tell.  I mean, asteroids have to be good for something, right?)

The Apocalypse follows Jason (Rhett Giles) and Ashley (Jill Stapley), a divorced couple who are trying to make their way through the state of California so that they can see their daughter Lindsay (Kristen Quintrall) before the world ends.  Along the way, Jason and Ashley discuss their own failed marriage and their guilt over the death of their son.  Though Jason and Ashley do have to deal with some unexpected weather and asteroid events, the film itself is surprisingly somber for an Asylum film.  There’s far less self-referential humor than in the usual Asylum film.  The pace is deliberate, thoughtful, and, to be honest, a bit too reverential for its own good.  The world ends but it ends very slowly.  This is probably the talkiest film that the Asylum has ever produced.

That said, the film does create a believable portrait of the type of desperation that would accompany the end of the world, with the various characters all attempting to find some sort of peace before everything ends.  The special effects may be a bit cheap but the images of deserted streets and desolate countryside are far more effective than what one might expect from an Asylum film.  This is a case where the mockbuster, flaws and all, is still superior to the original.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.19 “Heaven on Earth”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989.  The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, things get a little bit sad on the highway to Heaven.

Episode 2.19 “Heaven on Earth”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 26th, 1986)

Now, this episode made me cry!

While visiting an amusement park on their day off, Jonathan and Mark come across a lost six year-old girl named Sarah (Morgan Nagler).  Jonathan offers to take Sarah to the park’s security office but Sarah says that she’s not allowed to go anywhere with a stranger.  After explaining that he’s a former cop and knows how to deal with lost children, Mark asks Sarah for the name of her mother.  After learning that Sarah’s mother is named Nancy, Mark goes to the security office and has them page her.  Soon, Sarah and Nancy are reunited.  Yay!

Later, as they drive through the desert, Mark and Jonathan are nearly run off the road by a drunk driver.  A few moments later, they come across an auto accident.  The owner of a jeep swerved to avoid the drunk and instead crashed into a station wagon.  Jonathan suddenly tells Mark that they should leave but Mark walks up to the overturned car and discovers that it was being driven by Nancy.  Nancy survived the accident but Sarah did not.

Broken-hearted, Mark blames himself.  He tells Jonathan that, if he hadn’t been so eager to show off, Sarah and Nancy wouldn’t have left the park when they did and they wouldn’t have been in the car accident.  Mark pulls the car over to the side of the road and tells Jonathan to get out.  Jonathan reluctantly does so and Mark drives off.

Mark drives until the car runs out of a gas on the outskirts of a small town.  The proprietor of a local store tells Mark that the town’s pretty much been dead since the new turnpike was built.  There are two gas stations but they’re both closed on Wednesday because the owners like to go fishing together.  Reluctantly, Mark goes to the local boarding house and asks for a room for the night.

Mark is shown his room by a helpful girl named Wendy (Alyson Croft).  Inside his room, Mark spots a picture of Wendy with Sarah and realizes that Jonathan led him to the boarding house.  Later, at dinner, Mark meets Wendy’s father, a divinity student named Tom Ward (Michael Anderson, Jr.)  When Wendy goes to call her friend Sarah to find out how the amusement park was, Mark can only sit in silence as Wendy tells her father that Sarah’s family wants to speak to him.  Without telling Wendy why, Tom says that he has to go to Sarah’s house.  He tells Wendy to get to bed early and then he leaves with his wife and their infant son.

Mark goes back to his room.  Wendy pops in and to give him a heater because the furnace is broken.  Unfortunately, the heater is also broken and makes an annoying clicking sound.  Mark angrily kicks it over before going for a walk.

While standing outside of a church, Mark hears the sirens of fire engines.  The Ward house is on fire!  The firemen manage to get out Wendy’s grandmother but they say there’s no way to rescue anyone else.  Mark rushes into the house, determined to save Wendy.  And …. he promptly faints.

When he awakens, he’s with Jonathan.  Jonathan says that “the boss” has decided to give Mark the chance to play God.  Mark says that he wants everything he wishes to be true and that he wants all of his mistakes to be corrected as if they never happened.

As a result, the town is suddenly thriving but the proprietor of the now 24-hour gas station is dead as a result of having worked himself to death.  Wendy is alive but, because Mark wished for her to have everything she ever wanted, she’s now a spoiled brat.  And Sarah….

When Mark demands to see Sarah, Jonathan takes him to the cemetery and shows him that Sarah is still dead.  Jonathan explains that Sarah’s death was not his fault.  It was the fault of the drunk driver and there was nothing Mark could have done to save her.

Mark awakens in the burning house.  Not only does he manage to save Wendy’s life but, once he’s released from the hospital’s burn unit, he and Jonathan once again hit the highway….

This was a good episode, though I have to say that the Wards were a lot more forgiving about Mark burning down their house than I would have been.  This episode worked largely due to Victor French’s heartfelt performance as Mark.  Watching him, it was impossible not to feel his pain.  In the end, the message was a good one, though I do think it would have been nice to see the drunk driver punished for his actions.

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 1.3 “Emergency Only” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond features Jocelyn Brando (sister of Marlon) as a purported psychic who warns a skeptical man that he will soon be traveling by train, that he will meet a woman with an usual, snake-design ring, and that she will end up chasing him with a knife.

The man laughs her off.  Why, he never travels by train!  Sure, he has a trip coming up but he’s already paid for his plane tickets.  This just proves what the man has always suspected, that psychic’s are all phony!  But then he gets a message that his flight has been cancelled and he’s going to have to travel to his destination by …. TRAIN!

CAN YOU PROVE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN!?

This episode originally aired on February 3rd, 1959.