TV sow | Through the Shattered Lens

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 and Hulu. 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 Jungle, which first aired on December 1st, 1961, is a personal favorite of mine. A businessman returns to New York from Africa. While in Africa, he upset a local witch doctor. Though the businessman, at first, laughs off the possibility that he may be cursed, it soon turns out that he’s wrong. There’s a lesson to this episode and here it is: Don’t piss off a witch doctor.

When I first saw this episode, the final scene caused me to have nightmares!

(By the way, I’m embedding this episode from Hulu. Sadly, you will have to deal with commercials. However, it’s really a great episode!)

(It has also come to my attention that some browsers do not work with embedded Hulu vidoes. Seriously, the internet is so frustrating! If the embedded video is not appearing on your browser, you should be able to watch this episode on Hulu. Here’s the link — http://www.hulu.com/watch/440777. I apologize for the inconvenience but still, it is a really good episode!)

Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction aired off-and-on for about five years on the Fox network. A sign of just how randomly this show was scheduled can be found in the fact that season 3 started in 2000 while season 4 didn’t start until 2002. Reruns of the show currently air on the Chiller Network which is where I recently discovered it.

Hosted by Jonathan Frakes, each episode would present the viewers with five different stories. Each story would appear to defy logic and then, at the end of the episode, Frakes would reveal which of the stories were fact and which were fiction. The show was often incredibly silly and yet, it occasionally had an odd charm to it. A lot of this was due to Jonathan Frakes, who always seemed to be rather amused with it all.

Even more importantly, as bad as this show often was, it’s the perfect type of show to watch in October. It’s the television equivalent of a scary story being told around a campfire.

Episode 13 aired during the show’s 2nd season. Can you guess what’s fact and what’s fiction?