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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 6, 2019 11:30:33 GMT
I recently watched a DVR-rip of this show which was on for just 1 season before being cancelled. It was some problems - cheap, varying quality, rushed plots - each segment is short, each episode is 2 segments for less than an hour ......... etc. but kind of of fascinating too - some major guests of interest to us here - Bridget Fonda, Jack Palance, Malcolm McDowell, some major directors - Tobe Hooper, Spike Lee's main man Ernest Dickerson, Joe Dante etc. This stuff is online if you're curious, not sure if it ever got a legit DVD release. As I mentioned in the Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone thread - the first episode - The Comedian which I though was kind of aces in way (not sure whether they can sustain it), kind of reminds me of this show too - except the Peele show has way higher production values and a more cinematic feel. I pretty much know some of the bigger shows whether they lean horror (Tales From The Crypt, Masters Of Horror -I still say Cigarette Burns from that show should be remade as a feature, classic plot idea dammit) - Night Gallery, Ghost Story (with a famous, unforgettable episode with Jodie Foster/Melvyn Douglas), James Coburn's Darkroom and all the previous iterations of Twilight Zone too - I like all of these - I just dig the format - but some could use a re-watch so any recommendations for episodes or any series not covered above feel free to give a shout out. stephen because Night Visions feature (an underutilized) Amanda Plummer in one episode at her most Plummer-ish and Mattsby since you may like some of these plots from a writer's POV especially ........I quite like the McDowell episode from that angle myself ("Patterns"), a couple of good ones here you could re-do, re-write, re-package, re-sell to audiences as a feature film. |
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Post by Mattsby on Sept 14, 2019 19:40:19 GMT
I'm gonna dive into a lot of these shows next month but I just watched the Joe Dante 'Quiet Please' segment from Night Visions with a very good Brian Dennehy and loved it and its off-kilter humor and the twist. They could make a great little Netflix movie of it now with any two actors really. As for other shows, besides Twilight Zone, I've only seen random eps like the Patricia Neal ep of Circle of Fear at the strange hotel, predictable but well made, director later did The Initiation of Sarah TV Movie. I always get a kick outta seeing how many of these sorta shows and stuff the directors have done, like Richard Donner who did the great maybe most popular Twilight Zone ep Nightmare at 20,000 Feet and then Circle of Fear (which is the same show as Ghost Story i think?) and some Tales from the Crypt and a 1972 ep of The Sixth Sense called 'The House that Cried Murder' very corny but there's some straight up De Palma esque sequences. One thing about Hitchcock Presents, the actors usually really deliver, like Matthau, Cassavetes, Falk, Bette Davis was amusing in hers, etc. Even unknown names to me like Carol Lynley (a coquettish Elle Fanning lookalike) in Altman's ep The Young One. Altman's two eps are actually pretty good! and since Thriller was brought up in the other thread, Boris Karloff is by far my favorite Host! Very witty, funny, disarming, with a winking kinda conspiratorial quality. I wanna see more Thriller though (they're all 50ish mins like little features) so any other standout eps pacinoyes ? I like the Ida Lupino 'Sommervilles' ep which has especially good dialogue. also have you heard of the Ray Bradbury Theater show? I haven't peeked at it yet but it's all on Prime, and some great names show up in eps like Peter O'Toole, Donald Pleasence, Ian Bannen, Carol Kane... last shout-out, just came to mind, Scorsese's 25min Amazing Stories ep 'Mirror Mirror' with Sam Waterston is really good and creepy - Viced if you haven't seen perfect quick watch for next month. |
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Post by stephen on Sept 14, 2019 19:42:55 GMT
One Step Beyond and Four Star Playhouse would also be worth checking out for some quality performances.
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 14, 2019 22:11:02 GMT
and since Thriller was brought up in the other thread, Boris Karloff is by far my favorite Host! Very witty, funny, disarming, with a winking kinda conspiratorial quality. I wanna see more Thriller though (they're all 50ish mins like little features) so any other standout eps pacinoyes ? I like the Ida Lupino 'Sommervilles' ep which has especially good dialogue.
also have you heard of the Ray Bradbury Theater show? I haven't peeked at it yet but it's all on Prime, and some great names show up in eps like Peter O'Toole, Donald Pleasence, Ian Bannen, Carol Kane... last shout-out, just came to mind, Scorsese's 25min Amazing Stories ep 'Mirror Mirror' with Sam Waterston is really good and creepy - Viced if you haven't seen perfect quick watch for next month. Most of the really good Thriller episodes are after S1 which is shaky to me - it gets good like maybe towards the end of S1 - but The Cheaters and a Wig For Miss Devore are classics if you haven't seen those ones (along with The Grim Reaper). Ray Bradbury theater is pretty good and I like the one with Jeff Goldblum - it freaked me out for some reason although I don't know why - possibly because it deals with trains (scary to me, how do they stay on the track - what is that black magic???), old people (scary to me, why won't they/I die?) and an abandoned town (scary to me, where do they go for f'n coffee????). There also an ace episode of Johnny Staccato (Cassavetes show) not in line with the others with Cloris Leachman which is scary to me in a way though I'm not sure of their availabilty - not ghost story scary but pretty gripping psychologically that one is. |
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Post by Mattsby on Feb 3, 2020 18:06:53 GMT
 Another somewhat under the radar anthology series that's on Prime.... Hosted by Anthony Perkins, adapted from Patricia Highsmith stories, only 12 episodes (1990-92), called Chillers in the US, and Mistress of Suspense in Europe. It doesn't even have a wikipedia page. Some notable guest stars, like Ian McShane, Ian Holm, Tuesday Weld, Nicol Williamson, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Bill Nighy. I watched Ian Holm's episode "The Stuff of Madness" which isn't very good but oddly humorously disturbing about a man who becomes obsessed with a mannequin. A much better episode: "A Curious Suicide" with Nicol Williamson as a rigid and secretly vengeful American businessman abroad, feels a bit like Chabrol. |
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Post by Mattsby on Apr 7, 2020 2:46:34 GMT
Thx pacinoyes for the rec - Watched a couple of Night Visions....... E13a: Patterns - with an excellent Malcolm McDowell as a man who claims - to a doubtful therapist - that his superstitious tics keeps the world from destruction. In a longer form, they could go further into playing with whether he's crazy or not, and bleed into it a coincidental tragedy for the therapist, to have him mentally devolve and give in... E11a: The Maze - with Thora Birch as a college student who emerges from a campus maze to find she's mysteriously all alone, or is she? w/ Amanda Plummer as a psycho professor with a bad haircut. This ep is weird but I love the campus location wherever they shot it and the "where'd everybody go?" of it is eerily timely... E7b: Neighborhood Watch - starring David Paymer as a family man who is pressured into taking action against the new resident, a sex offender, in his apartment block. You know what the twist will be but it's still interesting looking at an overactive panic among the characters... E6a The Occupant - something is up with Bridget Fonda in this ep who gets dolled up (really beautifully, just sayin) to sit alone in public places. She's also convinced her house is being haunted. A little awkward going but Fonda in one of her last perfs (come back!) is quite good and the ending twist is an interesting one..... Also wanna re-recommend to anyone the Quiet Please episode w/ Brian Dennehy and Cary Elwes, Joe Dante -directed, a perfect leave-me-alone quarantine watch.  |
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Post by Mattsby on Apr 9, 2020 0:33:31 GMT
 I watched Bruce Dern's two Alfred Hitchcock Hour eps. Both 1964. Night Caller - a housewife is convinced the man she caught peeping at her (Dern) is also who's been making obscene house calls. Dern with a practiced charm wins over the police and the housewife's husband and son but hides a disturbing motive. Dern is forward and smooth and scarily mysterious bc we can't put a finger on just how dangerous he might be.... Lonely Place - a wanderer (Dern) is hired as a farmhand and amuses himself by distressing the farmer's wife (Teresa Wright). Dern is especially sadistic here, ragged, hopped up by what he knows he can do - he makes Wright repeat sentences back to him and gets a kick outta that kinda control. “Why don’t you tell me what it is about you that scares me.” Similar eps although one is suburban and the other on a farm, both are about victimized women whose homes are invaded, and whose husbands are useless. Lonely Place has really remarkable camerawork - back and forth dolly shots, suddenly shaky handheld, and the way objects are foregrounded (dishes, doors, bushes, bed frames), with Wright behind them, to visualize how trapped she feels. |
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 10, 2020 18:23:11 GMT
One Step Beyond and Four Star Playhouse would also be worth checking out for some quality performances. Just looking into One Step Beyond (1959-61) - couple interesting things: It premiered nearly a year before Twilight Zone though it's nowhere near that level. It's a big early example of pretty much lying to audiences about being "based on true stories." It's the only show afaik where the Host (John Newland) also directed every single episode; 96 episodes is not nothin! He also directed some Karloff's Thriller, Hitchcock Presents, Night Gallery, and the very popular TVM Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973) that I still haven't seen! Notable guests: Christopher Lee, William Shatner, Charles Bronson, Robert Blake. I watched three eps: 'The Confession' with Donald Pleasence who gives an eerily wide eyed haunted perf, 'The Dark Room' with Cloris Leachman which is predictable but still kinda terrifying, and its most famous ep I think, 'The Visitor' with Joan Fontaine as an alcoholic convalescing at her country home and Warren Beatty (before he did any movies!) 23y/o playing twice that age as her husband whose younger doppelgänger unsettles the evening; some nice snowy visuals and I really liked the dialogue exchanges at the beginning. |
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Post by Mattsby on Oct 1, 2020 1:03:13 GMT
Things that go BUMP in the night. This thread is perfect for October.... I just watched a Night Gallery ep "Silent Snow, Secret Snow" (1971) that is pretty much a perfect 15 minute spooky short. Orson Welles narrates this brilliantly, about a boy's obsession with snow. It catches just how a kids imagination works, really. Of course the adults suspect something is wrong, and they are shot like a Polanskian cult. Smoothly made (though the director already adapted the short story a few years earlier (it's also great) and follows his own pattern). With some clever ideas - how the focus pulls off a chandelier, creating bokeh that looks just like, yup, snow.  |
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Post by Mattsby on Oct 1, 2020 16:53:06 GMT
Speaking of Welles..... he hosted a rarely seen anthology series called Orson Welles' Great Mysteries (1973-74), 30min adaptations, only 26 episodes. Some great guest stars include Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gambon, Dean Stockwell, Eli Wallach, Ian Bannen, Ian Holm, etc. Here's a short teaser trailer featuring John Barry's awesome theme music and a bunch of the cast.
I've seen most of the eps, a lot of them aren't so good bc they're cheaply done productions shot uglily on video and so eps only really stand out if the performers do. Donald Pleasence gives a greatly haunted, manic performance in his ep. As for eps, I think the present-day set ones fare better in the format, like the atmospheric ep "The Leather Funnel" with Christopher Lee, or "The Furnished Room" with Clarence Williams III (very sad ep), or "For Sale - Silence" with Jack Cassidy about surveillance experts and oneupmanship. Cassidy did it between his Columbo eps - did he always wear a pinky ring? Creepily, authorities used that same ring to identify his body when he burned to death in real life. *shudder*
Another note for this series is that Welles wrote and directed all of his own intro/outro segments while in France doing F For Fake.
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 9, 2021 1:10:59 GMT
tornightfire.com/small-screen-horror-the-ghoulish-delights-of-venturing-way-out/Fascinating recent article on the obscure Roald Dahl-hosted anthology 'Way Out (1961) which was cancelled after only 14 eps. It had aired right before Twilight Zone.... definitely a product of its time: "The only demand of the show’s sponsor, L&M Cigarettes, was that there be copious smoking in the stories and by the host." I really liked this meta ep Dissolve to Black about an amateur actress stuck on the studio set at night where ghouls replay the day's drama with seriouser stakes - it brings to mind Carnival of Souls which it predates. Great spooky watch for October, I think I'll hold off the other eps til then... Dahl later hosted, and was more involved in, Tales of the Unexpected (1979-88) that had a lot of great guest stars - I've never seen that series, any fans?
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 14, 2021 23:46:44 GMT
 Fallen Angels (1993-95) Only 15 eps. I didn't know where else to post this, I'm perplexed and disturbed that I never heard of this Showtime anthology series before this week. Only ever mentioned on the boards by cherry68 - tho I gotta tag my noir goons Viced pacinoyes stephen Conceived as a noir variation on Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, created by William Horberg (he coproduced adaptations of Miami Blues, A Rage in Harlem, Talented Mr Ripley, Burnt Orange Heresy, etc, so he has writer-taste!) and exec produced by Sydney Pollack and Steve Golin (Red Rock West, Dream Lover, True Detective, etc). We're already in good hands.... and they're picking from noir gods for 30m packaged adapts of Goodis, Chandler, Hammett, Woolrich, Jim Thompson, and you got Walter Mosley, James Ellroy, Westlake in there. And who do we have directing eps? John Dahl in his prime, Alfonso Cuarón, Peter Bogdanovich, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise (his only directing effort), the great Agnieszka Holland who did the final and only hourlong ep with Danny Glover as Marlowe (it's the only ep not on Youtube, grr). Soderbergh did two eps - I watched these... 'The Quiet Room' shot by Chivo, with Joe Mantegna as a crooked cop, very good but with a stretch of a twist. And better, really a Sod career gem, 'The Professional Man' with Brendan Fraser (and you thought No Sudden Move was their first collab?) as a gay mob tough ordered to kill his lover. Lotta talented actors involved - Gary Oldman, James Woods, Alan Rickman, Laura Dern, Michael Rooker, Benicio Del Toro, Bill Pullman, etc. Soderbergh mentioned a few years ago that he's wanted to remaster the show but can't find the negatives (!!) and has also said how the producers of the series gave each director final cut, which is cool. Anyone ever check this out..... Again, most eps on YouTube in iffy but okay quality.... |
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 15, 2021 0:54:56 GMT
Fallen Angels (1993-95) Only 15 eps. Conceived as a noir variation on Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, created by William Horberg (he coproduced adaptations of Miami Blues, A Rage in Harlem, Talented Mr Ripley, Burnt Orange Heresy, etc, so he has writer-taste!) and exec produced by Sydney Pollack and Steve Golin (Red Rock West, Dream Lover, True Detective, etc). We're already in good hands.... and they're picking from noir gods for 30m packaged adapts of Goodis, Chandler, Hammett, Woolrich, Jim Thompson, and you got Walter Mosley, James Ellroy, Westlake in there. I will definitely revisit these on Youtube, thanks for the tip........something else to watch besides Shudder this month - yeah I'm on that free month now too buddy  ) I remember thinking it was pretty cool but my main thing was being disappointed in the Woolrich and I was obsessed with him ..........which is from a weird almost Pinteresque book called Hotel Room that is a series of almost half written sketches - almost not noir at all and not that good maybe but interesting and weird .........as far as I know none of it has ever been filmed (?) except this .............as "Black Bargain" which doesn't really get to the The Dumbwaiter (one of my fave Pinter things) level of absurdity / scariness it should. Mamet regular JJ Johnston is the cop in this........ My brother had a few of these on VHS too iirc ........the Oldman one and a couple others |
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Post by Mattsby on Jun 16, 2021 1:03:54 GMT
Fallen Angels -
I finished S1... I think the best directed of 'em is actually Tom Hanks' ep2 I'll Be Waiting that he did between shooting Philadelphia and Gump. Based on a Chandler short story - with Bruno Kirby, Dan Hedaya, Jon Polito - hell, no wonder it feels like a Coens, even the location could be the Barton Fink hotel. Hanks has a very small part but he's instantly better than his Perdition gangster.
Tom Cruise's ep4 The Frightening Frammis might be the worst but it has the best one liners. “Women named Babe will eat you for breakfast with a cup of Ovaltine.”
Alfonso Cuarón's ep5 Murder Obliquely - his English language debut - is the highest IMDb rated of the series, and there's Laura Dern and Diane Lane as squaring-off mistresses to Alan Rickman but I think it's hampered by the runtime.
The underrated Jonathan Kaplan did Ep6 Since I Don't Have You from Ellory and uses the runtime the best I think bc it's devised as a "recap" in the narration by Gary Busey's Buzz Meeks. I really liked the visuals and the movie biz nods. And there's James Woods as Mickey Cohen.
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Post by Mattsby on Oct 29, 2021 18:47:44 GMT
 Cheating but I wanna ask about this show Millennium (1996-99) - only just heard about it - from the creator of X Files, it seems like a precursor for NBC's Hannibal - starring Lance Henriksen who was Golden Globe nom'd for each season, and Terry O'Quinn recurring. Guest roles for Brad Dourif, John Hawkes, Clarence Williams III, Glynn Turman, Philip Baker Hall, CCH Pounder, Art Hindle, etc. stephen have you seen this? Does it have longer arcs or contained, episodic narratives? The show isn't really available anywhere, but I'm gonna keep it on my radar. |
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Post by stephen on Oct 29, 2021 18:56:52 GMT
It's one of my favorite shows of all time, Mattsby. Season 2's finale is the greatest of all time. And it's a mix of episodic and mythology storylines.
And yes, it's very much Hannibal of the '90s.
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Post by Mattsby on Oct 3, 2022 0:36:24 GMT
Gonna goose bump this thread.  I saw another Night Visions ep - "Harmony" directed by Paul Shapiro (shout out Hockey Night), starring Timothy Olyphant as a stranger in a town where music is outlawed (a pacinoyes nightmare!) .....in its loose use of folklore reminded me of M Night a bit? Not bad, certainly hilarious at the end. Speaking of Night Visions...... the creators also did Goosebumps (1995-98) that's on Netflix right now. Is that for-the-kids or anyone a fan? William Fruet (Killer Party !!!) directed 27 eps....... Gosling stars in an ep, etc....  |
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) I remember thinking it was pretty cool but my main thing was being disappointed in the Woolrich and I was obsessed with him ..........which is from a weird almost Pinteresque book called Hotel Room that is a series of almost half written sketches - almost not noir at all and not that good maybe but interesting and weird .........as far as I know none of it has ever been filmed (?) except this .............as "Black Bargain" which doesn't really get to the The Dumbwaiter (one of my fave Pinter things) level of absurdity / scariness it should.
