In The Grave, old west outlaw Pinto Sykes is gunned down by a group of townspeople and buried in a lonely grave. However, before Sykes dies, he swears that if the bounty hunter Miller (Lee Marvin) ever comes near his grave, he’ll reach out of the ground and grab him. Needless to say, it’s not long before Miller is challenged to put Sykes’s dying words to the test.
This episode of The Twilight Zone was written and directed by Montgomery Pittman. It originally aired on October 27th, 1961. Classic western fans will immediately recognize the majority of the cast.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD has been the most eagerly anticipated new series of the 2013 television season.
Ever since the show was first announced, fans of both Joss Whedon and the Marvel cinematic universe have been waiting to see whether the show would live up to its impressive pedigree. Every casting announcement has been analyzed and every clip on Youtube has been viewed and debated.
Questions were asked: how would Phil Coulson (played by the wonderful Clark Gregg) manage to be the main character in this series when his death was a major plot point in The Avengers? Who was the man who was seen jumping out of a burning building and landing without a scratch on his body? Would Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD be a prequel or a sequel to The Avengers? Would the TV show even acknowledge the films from which it spawned? Would Samuel L. Jackson show up to utter a few badass quips on network television?
But the most important question of all was this: Would Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD live up to all the hype or would it be another case of a show being smothered by the weight of high expectations?
Having just watched the first episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, I can now answer some of those questions.
How is Phil Coulson still alive? Well, it turns out that he never died in the first place. As he explains to newly recruited S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), he nearly died when he was attacked by Loki but ultimately, he survived. Nick Fury told the Avengers that Coulson had died because he understood that Coulson’s “death” would cause the heroes to bond together.
After the end of The Avengers (or, as the show puts it, “the Battle of New York,”), Coulson spent a while recuperating on a beach and “reading Travis McGee novels.” Now Coulson’s back and he’s in charge of the highly secretive Level 7. (The Avengers, we’re told, are only Level 6.) Level 7 investigates “special and strange” cases involving super powered individuals.
Who was the man that we saw jumping out of the burning building? A lot of people online assumed that he was Luke Cage but instead, he turned out to be Mike Peterson (J. August Richards). Mike is the show’s first “case,” a decent man who has recently lost his job and is struggling to deal with suddenly being super powered. In a neat twist, the more powerful Mike becomes, the more easy it is for him to rationalize being destructive.
Coulson and Level 7 track Mike down with the help of Skye (Chloe Bennet), a forcefully recruited hacker and anti-government activist. At the end of the episode, once Mike has been subdued through a combination of Coulson’s humanity and a tranquilizer dart fired by Grant, Skye is recruited into Level 7.
How direct a sequel is this show to the Marvel films? It’s such a direct sequel that it would probably be unintelligible to anyone who hasn’t seen the films. Not only is Mike’s origins story indirectly related to Capt. America’s (both of them owe their powers to a form of the super soldier formula) but the entire series takes place in a world that has been massively changed by the events of The Avengers. Agents of SHIELD takes place in a world that now knows that there are super powered beings walking among us.
The show is also full of little comments and throw-away references to the characters and events of the films. Those references are a nice gift to those who have seen all of the films that have seen all of the films that led up to Agents of SHIELD. At the same time, I have to admit that pretty much all of my knowledge of the Marvel universe comes from watching the films in the Avengers and X-Men franchises. My boyfriend, however, grew up reading Marvel comics. He assures me that, for every film reference that I picked up on, there were dozens of other references that would only be significant to those who have read the comic books. If nothing else, this shows that Whedon and the show’s other writers respect their audience. As a result, Agents of SHIELD invites its viewers to join the exclusive club of people who understand the importance of tweeting, “COULSON LIVES!”
No, Samuel L. Jackson does not show up but Cobie Smulders reprises her role from The Avengers, interviewing Grant and introducing him to Agent Coulson. However, guest star power isn’t necessary because Clark Gregg is such a compelling and likable actor that he perfectly anchors the show. Gregg brings a much-needed everyman quality to the role of Agent Coulson and, as such, he serves as the perfect guide through the world of super powered flamboyance.
Finally, did the pilot of Agents of SHIELD live up to all the anticipation?
In a word — yes.
Now, I should admit that I am a long-time fan of Joss Whedon’s and a good deal of my positive response to Agents of SHIELD has to do with the fact that it’s clearly a Whedon show. Not only is the show populated by characters that’ll be familiar to any Whedonite but the self-aware and relentlessly quippy dialogue suggests that, on some level, they are all aware that they are characters on a television show along with being agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Along with Clark Gregg, the cast superstar so far is Chloe Bennet, who has a way with a one-liner and, on the basis of the pilot, an appealing chemistry with Brett Dalton. Personally, I’m hoping that we’ll learn more about the appealingly eccentric Agents Fitz and Simmons (played by Ian De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge). I’m also hoping that J. August Richards will return in a future episode. He generated a lot of empathy for the character of Mike and, as the result, prevented Agents of SHIELD from turning into an elaborate inside joke that would appeal only to us Whedonites.
Pilots are strange things. Not only does a pilot have to introduce all the characters and justify the show’s existence, it also has to find the time to tell a fairly compelling story that will hopefully inspire people to tune in the following week. Agents of SHIELD succeeded in doing all of that and I look forward to seeing in which direction the show ultimately heads.
Last night, my BFF Evelyn and I watched yet another old episode of California Dreams.
Why Were We Watching It?
As I’ve explained before, my sister Megan got me hooked on this silly old show called California Dreams last Christmas. For whatever reason, I continue to find myself oddly intrigued by this mediocre 90s sitcom. While I was on my vacation last week, it occurred to me that it had been a while since I last shared and reviewed an episode of California Dreams on this site so I resolved that, as soon as I got back, one of the first things I would do would be to remedy that situation.
As for how Ms. Evelyn ended up watching it with me — well, Evelyn’s a very good friend.
What Was It About?
It’s time for another wacky class assignment! Since the members of the California Dreams all have the exact same class schedule, that means that they all get the same assignment: to research their family trees.
All the Dreams discover that they come from distinguished backgrounds, except for Tony who opens up one book to one random page and, after spending less than a minute reading, announces: “My ancestors were slaves!”
So, Tony claims to be descended from royalty and, because everyone at Pacific Coast High School is an idiot, they’re soon carrying him around on their shoulders and talking about setting up a royal harem.
Things are looking pretty good for Tony but then, as often happens on this show, a ghost visits him during the night and sets him straight.
What Worked?
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m usually pretty lenient when it comes to judging old episodes of California Dreams. After all, it was made back in the 90s and, especially when compared to something like Saved By The Bell: The New Class, the members of the cast did the best that they could with the material they were given.
But seriously, of all the episodes that I’ve viewed on YouTube so far, Family Trees is without a doubt the worst. Good intentions aside, absolutely nothing worked in this episode.
Strangely enough, however, the fact that it is so truly bad makes this episode oddly fascinating. The fact that nothing works is what makes this episode watchable.
What Did Not Work?
Where to begin?
Okay, first off — I understand that this show was probably written with the best of intentions but are we to seriously believe that, before getting this particular class assignment, Tony apparently had no idea about the history of slavery in the United States?
Secondly, who could have guessed that all you had to do to research your family history was check out a book from the library and then open it up to a random page?
Third, Tony getting visited by the ghost of an ancestor reminded me of the fact that, just a few episodes later, Sam would be visited by the ghost of an ancestor! One gets the idea that the show’s writers were perhaps running out of ideas.
Fourth, what is the deal with the lack of classrooms at the high school? I swear, every class that they take seems to be located in that same tiny classroom.
Fifth, the Dreams did not perform during this episode. Couldn’t they have written a special “Be Yourself” song in order to make Tony feel better about himself? It seems selfish not to.
However, this episode’s biggest problem was pointed out by Evelyn when she said, “Why is everyone at that school so easily impressed?” And, seriously, she is so totally right.
Let’s say that one day, Arleigh informed me that he was descended from royalty. Would that cause me to treat him any differently? Well, of course, it would! I mean, who isn’t impressed by royalty? (Myself, I consider Pippa Middleton to be my royal role model.) However, eventually, I would stop calling him “your highness” and begging him to say stuff like, “I declare him to be an outlawwwwwwwwwww!” and things would get back to normal here at the Shattered Lens. However, the students at PCHS are so impressed by Tony’s claim to be descended from a king that they immediately form some sort of odd cult of personality.
And why, if they’re so impressed by Tony’s claim to royal lineage, are they not impressed by the fact that Lorena is legitimately descended from power?
Seriously, that school sucks.
“OMG! Just like me!” Moments
As usual, I related so much to Lorena that I’m tempted to think that my cousin might be Mario Lopez.
(As far as my family tree is concerned, I am of Irish-Italian-Spanish-German ancestry, with a bit of French mixed in there as well. If I was in that class, they’d have to set aside an entire week for me to give my full report.)
Lessons Learned
Surf dudes with attitude are kinda groovy. Especially when they’re feeling mellow…
Through the Shattered Lens 