Cloned from a Mutual Zygote: V vs. ID4 Mothership Edition

Ask JKM a Question #6: Black Swan (2010)?

A regular reader named Todd asks me:

"Have you seen the movie Black Swan?  If so, I would love to hear your thoughts on it.  I thought it was a great psychological thriller with deep meaning and symbolism.  I love reading your insight into various films.  You pick up on stuff that  I would never think of.  It amazes me every time.  Thanks for writing this great blog."

Thank you for your affirmative remarks about the blog, Todd, and about my writing.  I have indeed seen Black Swan (2010), and I too find it a deeply disturbing yet weirdly beautiful work of art.  That established, I also consider it a (brilliant) horror film.

Accordingly, I'll be reviewing Black Swan one week from today, on Tuesday, July 10th.  So tune in that morning for my analysis and interpretation of this Darren Aronofsky film.  Thanks for writing!

Don't forget readers, ask me a question at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com.  

The Horror Lexicon #18: The Tour of the Dead

While dissecting what he called “Dead Teenager Movies,” critic Roger Ebert once came up with a pretty funny joke.  I’m paraphrasing a little, because I don’t remember the words exactly.  But the joke went something like this: “How do you know when a Dead Teenage Movie is over?”

“The same dead teenager turns up twice.”

Turns out, this was a pretty apt observation.  Though I don’t share Ebert’s disdain for the Slasher movie format, it’s undeniable that “The Tour of the Dead,” as I term it, has become a de rigueur component of the sub-genre.

In the so-called Tour of the Dead – universally set during the final act -- the resilient Final Girl flees from a terrifying mad-dog killer (usually masked), but the bloodied and savaged corpses of her friends and associates begin popping up in her path...sometimes quite violently.  The sudden re-appearance of these murdered characters provides both authentic jolt scares for the audience, as well as horrifying obstacles to the character’s successful escape trajectory.

One of the earliest (and still best…) Tours of the Dead appeared in John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and thus fits in with that film’s organizing principle: Halloween festivities, including trick-or-treat pranks. 

Here, poor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) visits the house across the street in suburban Haddonfield, and sees the body of her friend Annie (Nancy Loomis) posed on a bed…underneath a tombstone.  As Laurie recoils in horror from this macabre sight, other corpses pop out to terrify her, thus providing more than Laurie’s Halloween quotient of “one good scare.”  Laurie grows so terrified that she absently seeks retreat (walking backwards, a  big horror movie no-no…) at the doorway of a dark room…where the white-masked Shape emerges from impenetrable blackness.

The Friday the 13^th movies adopted the “Tour of the Dead” convention, starting in the first, 1980-era film. There Alice (Adrienne King) runs from nutty Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), and navigates a veritable battlefield of dead bodies.  Steve’s corpse comes down swinging from a Camp Crystal Lake sign, for instance.  Another corpse gets tossed through a window at Alice.  Yet another ends up hanged on a cabin door. 

For the sequels, it was a case of rinse-and-repeat as imperiled Final Girls ran similar corpse gauntlets.  The Tour of the Dead convention is entertaining in these franchise films, but entirely devoid of the "trick or treat" context of Halloween it doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense. Mrs. Voorhees (and later Jason)  not only move from place to place killing camp counselors, but apparently pose the bodies, and calculate -- with precision accuracy -- what path the prey (like Alice) will ultimately take. What makes the conceit interesting (and a little funny...) in the original Friday the 13th is the way that director Sean Cunningham uses signage like "Danger," or "Keep Out" to subtly punctuate the gruesome exhibits on the Tour of the Dead.

In some fashion, the Tour of the Dead is is not just a final challenge to navigate and a visual signifier that the Final Girl is really and truly alone and therefore without help, but a bloody reminder (to the character and to the audience) that she was right about sensing danger. Where the other characters blissfully ignored warning signs of impending massacre, the Final Girl heeded them.  I’m aware that some critics may term the Final Girl’s equation as being something akin to “Survival of the Chaste-st,” but I propose something more along the lines of “Survival of the Smartest.”   Final Girls – at least the good ones – boast insights, feelings and behaviors that their more impulsive friends lack.  And by undergoing the Tour of the Dead, the Final Girl gets confirmation of her greatest character traits.  She was right..and is still alive.  Her friends were wrong and are now...ornaments.

In some Slasher movies, the Tour of the Dead is more ritualized than in others.  In films such as Happy Birthday to Me (1981)  for instance, victims' bodies are propped up at a table (with a birthday cake…) and posed as if at an actual birthday party.  In Tobe Hooper's brilliant The Funhouse (1981), the bloody corpses become part of the amusement park environs, therefor blending entertaining, funhouse-style horror with the real thing.  

As is the case with other elements of the horror lexicon, "The Tour of the Dead" reveals how the best horror directors deploy familiar conventions to good and inventive effect, while others just ape and imitate for the heck of it, for the sake of doing something that's expected, rather than what best tells the story. 

Cult-TV Flashback: The Sixth Sense (1972)

“You enter a strange room for the first time, yet you know you’ve been there before.  You dream about an event that happens some days later…A coincidence?  Maybe. But more than likely, it is extrasensory perception, a sixth sense that many scientists believe we all possess, but rarely use.”

-          From The Sixth Sense Press Kit, published in Senior Scholastic: “The Sixth Sense,” September 18, 1972, page 22).

-           

About a week ago, I made the unexpected discovery that Amazon.com is streaming episodes of the 1972 sci-fi/horror/paranormal series The Sixth Sense, starring Gary Collins for $1.99 apiece.  This is a major discovery because of the sad and bizarre fate the Anthony Lawrence-created TV series has endured across the long decades.

After originally airing for two seasons on ABC in the early 1970s, this hour-long series was brutally cut-down to a half-hour length so as to be syndicated along with the episode catalogue of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.  Mr. Serling even filmed new introductions in the famous black gallery for the re-crafted The Sixth Sense episodes. 

But The Sixth Sense’s “Night Gallery” stories, if you ever saw them, were always nonsensical, in part because they were trimmed down literally fifty-percent from their original running time.  It was this abbreviated, hacked-up The Sixth Sense that aired on The Sci Fi Channel in the 1990s, for instance.  In 2007, Chiller ran episodes of The Sixth Sense, but I'm not certain if it was the chopped-up version, or the original.

Butchered in syndicated format, The Sixth Sense episodes are almost unwatchable.  Characters appear without introduction or preamble, and allude to events that are no longer depicted.  Characters are alive in one scene and dead the next, with no explanation for how, why or when, their demise occurred. The series in this corrupted format is baffling and incoherent, to put it mildly.

Today, The Sixth Sense is still joined at the hip with Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. But for the first time since 1973, a curious watcher can actually see a handful of full-length, hour long episodes under the title Night Gallery Season One on Amazon.  I’ve watched a couple already, and though they are slow-paced, some episodes are pretty intriguing and even visually dynamic.

I don’t mean to suggest The Sixth Sense is some kind of unexcavated genre masterpiece, only that it hasn’t been granted a hearing by genre fans in an uncorrupted form for literally forty years.  No series deserves such a fate, frankly.

Imagine how well Star Trek would play cut down to a half-hour, or Kolchak, or Mission: Impossible.

Writer Anthony Lawrence originally created The Sixth Sense after the success of a 1971 TV movie titled Sweet, Sweet Rachel, which involved a parapsychology expert, Lucas Darrow (Alex Dreier) protecting two women from psychic assassins.  When the television movie proved successful in terms of ratings, ABC wanted a quick follow-up.  Lawrence and developer Stan Shpetner thus crafted The Sixth Sense, a series which would follow the adventures of another parapsychology expert, Dr. Michael Rhodes (Gary Collins). 

During every episode of The Sixth Sense the preternaturally patient and calm Dr. Rhodes would investigate a complex mystery featuring psychic overtones.  That case might involve astral projection (“Face of Ice”), premonitions (“If I Should Die Before I Wake,”) automatic writing (“I Do Not Belong to the Human World,”) aura photography (“The Man Who Died at Three and Nine”), witchcraft (“Witch, Witch, Burning Bright”), apparitions (“Echo of a Distant Scream”), spiritual possession (“With Affection, Jack the Ripper) cryogenics (“Once Upon a Chilling”) or even organ transplant (“The Eyes That Would Not Die.” Usually Rhodes solved the mystery at hand by working closely with a beautiful woman in jeopardy. 

This damsel-in-distress role was played, in various installments, by beloved genre actresses such as Mariette Hartley (“Eye of the Haunted”), Pamela Franklin (“I Did Not Mean to Slay Thee”), Stefanie Powers (“Echo of a Distant Scream”), Tiffany Bolling (“Witch, Witch, Burning Bright), Lucie Arnaz (“With This Ring I thee Kill), Mary Ann Mobley (“Shadow in the Well), Carol Lynley (“The House that Cried Murder) and Anne Archer (“Can a Dead Man Strike from Beyond the Grave?”)

And among those talents working behind-the-scenes on The Sixth Sense -- at least for a time -- were Gene Coon, Harlan Ellison and D.C. Fontana.  I had the opportunity to interview Ms. Fontana in 2001, and our conversation veered briefly to The Sixth Sense.  She recalled to me that in her opinion, developer Shpetner was difficult to work with because he had so many story dislikes:

“He didn’t like children.  He didn’t like women.  He didn’t like men…He didn’t like stories about sick people, or emotionally ill people.  He didn’t like stories about poor people.  He didn’t like stories about ethnic people.  Essentially it came down to us doing stories about rich white people who didn’t have any problems.  And that was a problem for me.”

Fontana’s tenure on the show was, perhaps not surprisingly, short-lived:  “I left one day, and Harlan Ellison left either the day before me or the day after me.  It all happened in fast succession, I can tell you that much…It’s too bad, because the potential for stories about extra sensory perception and abilities was great.”

The abundant flaws of The Sixth Sense are apparent today, even with restored episodes to view. For one thing, Dr. Rhodes always helped beautiful, young (25 – 35) white women, but never actively romanced any of them.  He just seemed to inhabit a white, upper-class world of beautiful, psychically gifted females. 

And secondly, as a character Rhodes was not permitted to grow or show much by way of passionate emotion.  Collins’ performance on the series is actually kind of brilliant in a weird way, simultaneously minimalist and intense. 

But the writing never ascribes much by way of humor or personal life to the man.  As a lead character, Rhodes is certainly dedicated and helpful -- and physically capable – but we know precisely nothing about him save for his unwavering support for ESP and parapsychology studies. It would have been great if the series had more fully explored his background, including his childhood and the development of his abilities as a “sensitive.”

On the other hand, The Sixth Sense triumphed in two notable areas.  In the first, it features some great guest appearances by the likes of Joan Crawford (“Dear Joan: We Are Going to Scare You To Death”), William Shatner (“Can a Dead Man Strike from Beyond the Grave”), and Lee Majors (“With This Ring, I Thee Kill.”).  Today, it’s a thrill to see Cloris Leachman, Patty Duke, Sandra Dee, Henry Silva, June Allyson and Sharon Gless, among others, get menaced by strange paranormal “phenomena.”

Of more legitimate interest is the series’ second strength: jarring and disturbing visuals and special effects.  Some of the imagery in the series remains downright haunting.  In “The Heart that Wouldn’t Stay Buried” a man is attacked by the statue of a bird, and it’s a trippy moment.   In “Witness Within,” jump-cuts, slow-motion photography and a nice eerie blend of light and shadow make a nocturnal attack almost pulse-pounding.  Likewise, in “Lady, Lady, Take My Life,” an insufferable bureaucrat is murdered by a psychic “cathexis,  and the he screen goes blood red (with terror) as the poor man suffers twin aneurysms. 

In one of my favorite episodes, the bizarre “Once Upon a Chilling” a man’s spirit is projected outside of his cryogenic chamber and his spectral face is coated in dripping, cracked ice…an image which terrifies rather than informs.  In moments such as these you can sense a real imagination in the visual presentation of the stories.  If the stories were all up to snuff, and not so predictable in terms of character, The Sixth Sense would have been a contender.

Some of the more intriguing episodes in the series include the one starring Shatner and Anne Archer (“Can a Dead Man Strike from Beyond the Grave”), written by Gene Coon.  And “With this Ring I Thee Kill,” starring Lee Majors and Lucie Arnaz proves a weird call back to Faustian legends and stories. The episode featuring Joan Crawford (and directed by John Newland) is also a humdinger, since it pits the Hollywood legend against Mansonite cult member crazies.  

In spite of flaws, The Sixth Sense must be viewed as something of a pioneer in terms of horror television programming.  It is the first horror-oriented series, for instance, to feature continuing characters rather than an anthology format.  It pre-dates Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) by two years, in this regard.  Considering that place of importance in the horror genre, the series certainly merits a better fate than to be cut to ribbons and offered only in a corrupt format. 

Although only a handful of season one episodes of The Sixth Sense are currently available on Amazon streaming, my hope is that this will soon change.  Failures and all, The Sixth Sense deserves a full DVD release with all twenty-five episodes restored to original formatting.

Theme Song of the Week: The Sixth Sense (1972)

Ask JKM a Question #5: Where Do You Get Obscure Titles?

A reader, Hugh Davis, instructor of English, writes:

I am a fan of your writing and enjoy your blog. I will likely send you a variety of questions along the way, but I thought I would ask something more pragmatic first. What is your main source for seeing/collecting/(and especially) finding old shows and movies, particularly those which have never been released commercially? E-Bay used to be an occasional option, but they’ve really blocked selling non-commercial recordings, and iOffer can be hit or miss. What suggestions do you have?"

Hugh, that's a terrific question.  I'll answer it as best I can.

Back in the 1990s, when I wrote Terror Television and Horror Films of the 1970s, I interacted with some great tape traders who encouraged historical scholarship by offering up obscure, never-commercially released TV programs, mostly.

At the same time (the 1990s) I created a vast library of video recordings -- taped off the air -- of cult-tv programming.  I wish I had done even more of this, given the obscurity of some series today.  Some of these programs were complete when I taped them, and some were Sci-Fi Channel re-airings, therefore all cut to hell.  But my reasoning was that getting to see some of these shows -- even butchered -- was better than never seeing them at all.

You ask about my main source.  For right now, my main source is likely the flea markets, yard sales and conventions that I frequent.  You never know what people taped off the air, and what they are selling.  The first two venues are obviously pretty hit or miss, though I've been gratified to find some crazy titles there.  The third venue -- genre conventions -- is probably the most reliable.

For out-of-print titles, no venue is better, perhaps, than Movies Unlimited, which features a huge catalog of such titles.  The prices are sometimes high, but this is a dependable company with excellent customer service, and a great selection.  Honestly, it's fun to spend hours going through their catalog.  And no, they aren't paying me for an endorsement.  When I needed to see Let's Scare Jessica To Death again, back in the 1990s, for instance, when I wrote Horror Films of the 1970s, Movies Unlimited is where I turned.  But again, this venue is for out-of-print titles rather than never-released ones.

I hope that helps!  Happy hunting, and feel free to ask any further questions you like. If readers would like to add anything to my answer, please help out in the comments sections.  I know a lot of you are collectors...for historical scholarship, too.

Don't forget, you can ask me a question by e-mailing me at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com, and putting "Ask JKM a Question" in the subject line. And let me know if I can use your name and your full e-mail.

Cult-TV Theme Watch: Ambassadors

An ambassador is defined as “the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization.” 

Because of the ambassador’s function as a go-between between two divergent or even opposite interests, this functionary has often appeared in cult-television programming as a person of duplicitous or suspicious motives.   Much like the defector character trope, which I featured a few weeks back, the ambassador is someone who can appear to be one thing, but may actually be something else.

With ambassadors, hidden agendas abound.

In TV series of political intrigue and competition -- such as the original Bruce Geller Cold War era program, Mission: Impossible (1966 – 1973) -- the ambassador may be an important figure who requires rescuing.  This is the premise of the first season installment, “Shock,” which features James Daly as a captured ambassador secretly replaced by an enemy imposter of an Eastern Bloc nation.

Revealing the political nature, perhaps, of space adventuring, ambassadors have often been featured in prominent roles in episodes of virtually every Star Trek incarnation. 

Ambassador Sarek (Mark Lenard) was not only Spock’s father, but a target for elimination in “The Journey for Babel,” where his opinion on the admission of a planet to the Federation was highly influential, and therefore dangerous.  Another ambassador, Robert Fox (Gene Lyons) nearly caused the Enterprise’s destruction when he ordered Captain Kirk to take the Enterprise into orbit of Eminiar VII in the episode “A Taste of Armageddon.”

Throughout Star Trek’s many incarnations, we’ve met many other ambassadors, including Nancy Hedford (Elinor Donohue), Spock himself (“Unification), Soval (Gary Graham), and even Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) in one “fantasy” scenario, “Future Imperfect.” 

In virtually all these scenarios, the ambassador is seen as a difficult sort; one whose need for successful diplomacy tends to endanger missions, crew members or otherwise lead to danger.

Often in science fiction television, it is the job, explicitly, of the Ambassador to act as peacekeeper, to prevent a war during a cosmic or interstellar incident.  Sometimes these ambassadors are malevolent themselves, as was the case in Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century’s “Planet of the Amazon Women.” Mark Lenard, meanwhile played a different kind of alien ambassador, Duvoe, in the Buck Rogers second season episode, “Journey to Oasis.”   His species could, oddly, separate into two parts: head and trunk.  It’s a skill that his people have successfully kept hidden.  But as war looms with Earth, Duvoe and his people must finally reveal more of their true nature.

JMS’s Babylon 5 (1994 – 1999) featured a number of colorful ambassadors among its regular cast of characters.  These included the Minbari Ambassador, Delenn (Mira Furlan), Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik) of the Centauri Republic, G’Kar of the Narn (Andreas Katsulas) and the fearsome-looking Vorlon Ambassador.  As you might suspect, the sheer number of ambassadors stationed on the space station Babylon 5 resulted in frequent intrigue, espionage, and bickering.

Come See Me at Fantasci this Saturday

I'll be speaking at the Fantasci Tenth Anniversary Convention in Chesapeake, Virginia, this Saturday morning, and I hope to see some readers there.  

I go on at 10:30 am to give a talk I call "The Horror Genome Project," about the horror films of the 1990s.  The premise is basically that genetic science is to horror films of the nineties (like Mimic, Deep Blue Sea, Jurassic Park, X-Files: Fight the Future, etc.) what the atomic bomb was to horror films of the fifties: a galvanizing theme and a reflection of fears about science (and scientists) run amok.

Check out the link to the party, here, and if you happen to be close-by, come and see me and watch the presentation!  I plan to attend the con from 9:00 to noon, or thereabouts and would love to say hello.

I’m really looking forward to being back at Fantasci.  It was at this show, five years ago, where I premiered my web series, The House Between (2007 – 2009), which I hope to have fully available – all 21 episodes, newly re-edited – on DVD and streaming soon.

And remember, if you work at a University or for a convention that would like to have me speak (or deliver one of my seminars, like "Savage Cinema,") contact me at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com and we'll see what we can work out.

The Cult-TV Faces of: Ambassadors

Identified by Brian: Mission: Impossible: James Daly as Ambassador Wilson in "Shock."

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Fox (Gene Lyons) on Star Trek: "A Taste of Armageddon."

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Nancy Hedford (Elinor Donohue) on Star Trek: "Metamorphosis."

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Sarek (Mark Lenard) on Star Trek: "Journey to Babel."

Identified by Brian: Jonathan Harris in Get Smart: "How Green was My Valet."

Identified by PDS: Ambassador Andros (Tim O'Connor) in Wonder Woman: "Judgment from Outer Space."

Identified by Brian: Ruathan Ambassador, Buck Rogers: "Planet of the Amazon Women."

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Duvoe (Mark Lenard) in Buck Rogers: "Journey to Oasis."

Identified by Brian: Alien Ambassador (John Glover) in The Twilight Zone: "A Small Talent for War."

Identified by Brian: Ambassador T'Pel (Sierra Pecheur) on ST: TNG: "Data's Day."

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy): ST: TNG: "Unification."

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Picard (Patrick Stewart): ST:TNG: "Future Imperfect."

Identified by Brian: Selay Amassador, ST:TNG: "Lonely Among Us."

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik) on Babylon 5.

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Delenn (Mira Furlan) on Babylon 5.

Identified by Brian: Ambassador G'Kar (Andreas Katsulas) on Babylon 5.

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Kosh (Ardwright Chamberlain) on Babylon 5.

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Soval (Gary Graham) on Star Trek: Enterprise.

Identified by Brian: Ambassador Ovirda (Victor Garber) on SGU: "Seizure."

Television and Cinema Verities # 26

“It was shot late at night, and we had an eighty man crew shooting on this hill.  On the other side of the same hill, Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford were filming some war movie.  Anyway, we were going along fine when Frank Sinatra sent a messenger over to our side of the hill to tell us to keep it down.  Well, I gave the guy a message of my own: I said he should tell Sinatra to ‘go fuck himself.’  The messenger returned to his side of the hill, we resumed shooting on our side, and everybody thought everything was fine.  Then, suddenly, it got really quiet on our side of the hill.  I was behind the camera so I didn’t know what was going on, but when I turned around, Frank Sinatra was right there, standing just a few feet from me.  ‘Johnny,’ Sinatra said deadpan, ‘I got your message.’ There was silence for a second, then everybody laughed…and it was over.”

-       -  One Step Beyond director, John Newland, describes his encounter with Frank Sinatra while filming the episode “If You See Sally.”  From my book, An Analytical Guide to TV’s One Step Beyond (2001), pages 165-166.

Cult TV Blogging: Ghost Story/Circle of Fear: "Bad Connection" (October 6, 1972)

This week on the horror anthology Ghost Story/Circle of Fear, our host Winston Essex (Sebastian Cabot) muses about the wonders of…the telephone.

Not the cell phone mind you, the land-line. 

The jocular Essex does so in words that read suspiciously like a transcription of his introduction from “The Dead We Leave Behind,” the show’s second (and so far, best episode)

Only there, the subject was the hidden dangers of the television, not the phone. What if it had a mind of its own and could make you watch what it wanted you to watch? 

Here, Winston worries about what would happen if the telephone could, literally, reach out and touch someone.

The story on that very subject, “Bad Connection” fits into a weird horror TV subgenre in which the telephone is a diabolical vehicle for terror.  In the original Twilight Zone, the telephone brought terror in both “Long Distance Call” and “Night Call.”  In the 1980s, well after this episode of Ghost Story, an evil telephone terrorized Jean Marsh in “Answer Me,” a first season installment of Tales from the Darkside.

Here, Karen Black plays Barbara Sanders, a pleasant secretary who is about to be re-married.  Her first husband died at sea, and she is finally putting the terrible event behind her.  But on the eve of her wedding, the widowed Barbara begins to receive frightening phone calls from a voice she assumes to be that of her dead husband.  He warns her that “death” is coming for her soon.  And that she must “remember the promise” they shared: to always love one another.

Barbara grows increasingly – and dynamically -- hysterical as the phone calls continue and escalate in terror.  Soon, she begins to see a shadowy form stalking her every move.  Is it her dead husband?  Or did she misinterpret his telephone message?  Is someone else trying to drive her mad? If so, why?

In exploring the answer to such questions, “Bad Connection” directed by Walter Doninger proves immensely entertaining. The episode stumbles over the boundary of camp at times, thanks in large part to Karen Black’s dedicated if dramatically overwrought performance.  Much of the hour involves Black screaming madly at the phone, or tripping suddenly and inexplicably into a catatonic trance state.  The star of such 1970s classics as Trilogy of Terror (1975), Black never fails to invest her genre roles with gusto.  This hour is no exception, and “Bad Connection” is fun because Black anchors it, and isn’t afraid to go full-bore bonkers when the scene requires a mental breakdown.  She really commits -- physically and mentally -- to this role.

Also, I submit that this episode works because, at some level, it is utterly irrational, or surreal.  A telephone continues to ring even when it isn’t plugged in.  A specter commits to murdering another man’s wife for no real logical reason.  That specter can not only appear in the flesh as a kind of pasty zombie, but always knows when Barbara is near a phone, or even which particular phone (in an office sitting) she happens to be nearby.  There’s no logical explanation for any of this material, and yet, that’s okay with me. 

Some horror movies and TV programs slip into this wonderful surreal, nightmare territory, and it’s a valid choice.  They make no real conventional sense, and yet we recognize the nature of the terror in an emotional sense because we’ve all experienced dreams wherein we’re being chased, or where strange, inexplicable things occur.  “Bad Connection” features the weird dream-sense of a nightmare, and I can laud it on that level.  Others might disagree with me, and note that the writing here is silly or bad.  I suppose your mileage may vary, depending on how long a leash you’re willing to give Ghost Story.

Some of the visuals in “Bad Connection,” -- of the villain appearing in the flesh, for instance, at a dock -- are downright chilling.  Also the episode pulls out a nice, optimistic surprise at the conclusion, a re-parsing of the “promise” Barbara made, and how it is actually applied in the narrative.  Fear gives way to catharsis, as it should.

I certainly wouldn’t rank “Bad Connection” was among the best Ghost Story episodes produced.  That honor goes to “The Dead We Leave Behind,” the absolutely bizarre “House of Evil” (featuring Jodie Foster, a doll house, and raisin-eyed cookie voodoo dolls…) and the brilliantly malevolent “Alter-Ego.”  But “Bad Connection” is far better than the real stinkers.

And, unfortunately, next week brings us to just such another stinker: the interminable “The Summer House” starring Carolyn Jones.