My favorite episodes of '80s Horror/Sci-Fi anthology shows

The horrifying Cutty Black Sow

1980s television was replete with series from a genre that in my opinion is sadly underrepresented today: the horror anthology series. Not only was there the superb Twilight Zone reboot, we got Tales From the Darkside featuring writing from horror luminaries like Stephen King and George Romero plus lesser known series like Monsters and HBO's The Hitchhiker that featured some pretty good episodes in their own right. Here I'll showcase some of my favorites from that bygone era. I'm going to try and stick to series from the '80s, so don't expect any newer stuff like Tales from the Crypt or the '90s run of The Outer Limits, or older stuff like the original Twilight Zone run from the '60s. I may get into them at some point in the future..anyway:

Tales From the Darkside-"The Devil's Advocate: Jerry Stiller plays an unsympathetic, smug talk radio host who seems to delight in deriding his show's callers for their misdeeds and misfortune. During one broadcast, he begins to receive calls that seem to come from another era, followed by his studio getting hotter, its door disappearing, and two strange horn-like growths appearing on his head. It begins to look like some higher power has taken offense to his callous attitude. Could it be that he's been sentenced to a living Hell where he'll have to take calls from across time, for all eternity? The high falootin' guy, or girl, who gets cut down to size as punishment for their arrogance and hubris is a common theme explored on these shows, and this episode pulls it off in fine fashion.

Justine Bateman with some windswept and hairsprayed up '80s hair. I thought she was pretty fly on those Family Ties reruns when I was but a moppet.

Tales From the Darkside-"Mooky and Pooky":Sometimes these shows decide to showcase a more heartwarming take on the supernatural, and this episode is one of those cases. A twin brother and sister ( The sister is played by Justine Bateman, aka Mallory Keaton on Family Ties) with an unusually strong bond find that their link to one another can even transcend death when the brother somehow manages to store his soul on a computer before he passes away from a prolonged illness. Most of the episode deals with the sister and her mother trying to convince the skeptical Dad of the family that his Son isn't really dead, and they can't sell the computer like he wants to. It wasn't uncommon for this series and The Twilight Zone to stray from strictly creepy territory, in fact some of their best episodes are of the more uplifting variety.


Tales From the Darkside-"The Cutty Black Sow": One of the joys of going back and watching these shows on youtube and such is sitting through stuff I know would have scared the living crap out of me as a child. This episode right here is something I'd never show to a small child, except maybe Damien from The Omen. An old and dying Scottish woman tasks her great grandson with protecting her from a soul snatching demon that preys on those who pass away on All Hallow's Eve. The story seems deeply rooted in old Celtic myths about about demonic figures who frequently appeared in animalistic forms like the dreaded "Black Shuck", a demonic black dog, and the monster is weird and anomalous as hell when it does show up. I know famed horror movie effects and makeup wizard Tom Savini worked on some episodes of this series, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if he was responsible for creating the creature. This episode certainly succeeds in creating a frightening atmosphere, especially because the protagonist, a young boy, and his sister are alone in their house with this thing lurking around. Kids on these shows always have the most horrible parents. "Well, Jimmy, Grandma just died but we really have to go meet the Pattersons for martinis. You're nine, right? Well then, you should have no problem looking after your six year-old sister by yourself, you know how expensive those damn babysitters have gotten." There's a good build up of suspense, before an explosion of pure "holy shit what is that!" shock horror. It's based on a story from the Borderlands collection by prolific horror author Thomas F. Monteleone. I'm not very familiar with his work but this episode has definitely piqued my interest.

The Yattering, played by the talented Phil Fondacaro

 Tales From the Darkside-"The Yattering and Jack":  Based on a short story by Clive Barker, this episode has a somewhat humorous bent to it. A curmudgeonly old man named Jack is plagued by what at first seems to be a very active poltergeist, but turns out to actually be a demon sent by Satan to drive him insane and claim his soul. Jack has been refusing to acknowledge the demon's existence for years, but eventually he finds that he must confront it, both to save his soul and to simply have some damn peace and quiet.

The Twilight Zone-"Her Pilgrim Soul": This is another one of those non-scary anthology series episodes, even though Wes Craven was responsible for the plot. Two scientists, one played by Gary Cole of Pineapple Express and Office Space, working on a supercomputer with a holographic display are surprised one morning when they come in and see their project displaying the holographic image of a 3 dimensional fetus, eerily floating in the middle of their lab. As days go by, it grows into a little girl and at first they're under the the impression that they've somehow created life. The more they investigate, however, it becomes apparent that this now full grown and fully sentient woman represented in hologram form has already lived a very full life. This episode is capable of touching even the coldest heart, and is just an example of great television that even people who aren't fans of the series can enjoy.

The Twilight Zone-"The Hunters": Strange happenings are afoot at a remarkably well preserved prehistoric cave dwelling, discovered under a housing development in the process of being built. An archaeologist from the local university shows up and finds 12,000 year old paintings at the site, and has it cordoned off and construction halted much to the chagrin of the textbook greedy developer in charge. When the carcasses of local livestock start showing up in the cave, the archaeologist at first suspects the unscrupulous developer is trying to scare her away. The truth is much more unbelievable, and far more dangerous.

The Twilight Zone-"The Star": Based on a tale published years ago in the now defunct magazine Infinity Science Fiction penned by sci-fi luminary Arthur C. Clarke, this is an excellent all-around episode. A survey ship in the far future discovers a cache of artifacts left by an advanced civilization thousands of years ago, as a sort of time capsule in the face of annihilation by a supernova. A priest and a scientist aboard the ship examine what has been left behind while engaging in a lively debate about God, existence and the randomness of the universe before discovering that this long dead society is more connected to Earth than they'd previously thought.

The Twilight Zone- "Acts of Terror" : Written by longtime comic book and television scribe J. Michael Stracyzinski, this is a cautionary tale about why you shouldn't act like an asshole toward your wife. A woman (given the name of former Marvel Comics writer and editor Louise Simonson in what I'm pretty sure was some sort of inside joke between her and Stracyzinski) with an abusive, philandering husband gets revenge thanks to an angry Doberman only she seems to be able to summon and command. The Doberman is able to understand her thoughts and subconscious desires, and is connected to a small dog statue she keeps in her home. Her husband thinks he's rid of the thing after destroying the statue, but it seems his wife's hate for him is much stronger than he'd ever imagined.

The Twilight Zone- "Something In the Walls": This episode is frequently cited as the creepiest in the series by fans. A doctor newly assigned to a sanitarium has a very interesting patient, a beautiful young woman who's shut herself away from the outside world due to an extreme fear of the "faces" she sees in wallpaper, patterned cloth and virtually any patterned material under the Sun. She suspects that these faces belong to beings she was never supposed to discover, and now they're out to harm her so she'll keep quiet about them. The doctor is of course skeptical at first, but as is often the case in this series it turns out the "crazy" person in question is far more sane than others believe her to be.

The Hitchhiker- "Why Are You Here?": The host of a late night tabloid TV show focusing on the debauchery and danger that accompanies the night life in the big city hits up a New Wave dance club looking for a story. He comes across a young debutante, played by Helen Hunt, who engages in fun hobbies like "collecting last words" from bums about to die in dark alleys, and her crew of hangers-on and fellow party animals. He ignores the advice of his producer and camerawoman, and follows them back to her mansion where she whines about how hard her life is and how her daddy doesn't really love her, before coming on to the host and then retiring to the bathroom after her dealer shows up with her daily allotment of heroin. This is an episode where society, shown as becoming more nihilistic and chaotic through the actions of the crazy New Wavers and their debutante Queen, is cast as the "monster", rather than a vampire or creepy critter, and I thought it was very well done.

The Hitchhiker- "That O.D. Feelin'": A cursed bag of cocaine changes hands among different denizens of a big city Red Light District in this episode. Gene Simmons makes a cameo as the crime boss at the heart of the matter as we're shown the various misfortunes that befall the gaggle of pimps and hustlers foolish enough to try and profit from the drugs. The Hitchhiker wasn't saddled by the same restrictions network shows like The Twilight Zone and Amazing Stories were, which makes it the perfect show for this type of story. It's a good old fashioned cautionary tale about not trying to profit off something that isn't yours, and the ending would make a hilarious anti-drug PSA.

Amazing Stories- "Gather Ye Acorns": Mark Hamill stars in this tale of a man who forsakes worldly ambitions in favor of living his life like an overgrown child after receiving some advice from a friendly wood spirit/troll thing claiming to be "Mother Nature's only Son". After getting kicked out by his parents, he ends up squatting in a shack in the Nevada desert and it looks like he may have made a mistake in following said advice. However, he learns when the "junk" you've kept from your childhood includes items like a copy of Action Comics #1, a quick reversal of fortune is never out of the question.

Amazing Stories-"Fine Tuning": A teenager working on an improvised TV antenna for a school project finds that not only can he watch Chinese broadcasts with the gadget, he can pick up signals from outer space. It seems a civilization about ten light years away has been receiving classic TV broadcasts from Earth for years, and they're obsessed with our stars of yesteryear such as Lucille Ball and Milton Berle. When they catch a broadcast indicating three alien astronauts are headed to Hollywood to meet all their heroes, they decide to try and meet up with them. Hilarity and hijinks ensue, with a cameo from Milton Berle himself. Those are the kind of guest stars you can get when your show is written and produced by Spielberg.

Monsters- "The Waiting Game": After two soldiers tasked with manning a missile silo live through a nuclear war, their fears of possible being the last people on the planet are allayed when they're able to contact personnel at another missile silo. One of them quickly becomes smitten with a young woman manning the microphone in the other silo, and decides to brave the outside in an attempt to rendezvous with her against the advice of his superior. Too bad zombie mutants now seem to have the run of the land outside the silo door...

Monsters- "The Demon"- Richard Moll of Night Court fame shows up in this comedic episode about a sorcerer who accidentally summons an unlucky accountant to his dimension. After being caged and threatened with eternal imprisonment by the sorcerer, the accountant tries to summon his own demon to get rid of the sorcerer, but just succeeds in trapping another accountant in the same predicament he's dealing with. They must work together to free themselves from the terrifying bailiff from Night Court.


That's all I have for now. I could probably write about ten or twelve episodes from these shows in the future, and maybe I will. Unfortunately, most of these series are currently unavailable on netflix and hulu, so youtube is really your only choice for checking many of these episodes out.

The Atari Lynx: What could have been

        
The Atari Lynx was released in 1989, and at first it looked like it would have a legitimate chance at challenging Nintendo's Game Boy for handheld console supremacy in the US. It was capable of displaying full color much richer than the Game Boy's black and green palette, it was twice as powerful as Nintendo's console, and since it was an Atari product, home translations of popular arcade titles like Hard Drivin' and Paperboy were a given. At the same time, the odds were stacked against the Lynx in many ways from the time of its release. In this post I'll look a bit at how and why the Lynx failed, but most of my time will be spent focusing on a few key mistakes Atari made which, if rectified, could have led to the Lynx being very successful in the North American market. I'm not even going to speculate about Japan, Nintendo was going to be king there regardless.

The Lynx actually began life as a prototype called the "Handy" developed by a company called Epyx. Like Atari, they had a propensity for coming up with really cool ideas, but displaying some ineptitude when it came to their finances. They started developing computer games back in the late '70s, when some of them still came on cassettes. Epyx then hit it big in the early '80s with an RPG called Temple of Apshai, released right around the same time as a title called Akalabeth which would go on to spawn the famed Ultima series.

I've never played the game myself, but according to reviews from the era it compared favorably to Akalabeth, and it succeeded in making Epyx one of the more prominent names in the software business back in its infancy. After making a decent amount of money thanks to Temple of Apshai, Epyx continued to have success in the nascent PC game market. Their next big hit was the primitive platformer Jumpman, and they followed that up with Summer Games in 1984, which capitalized on the popularity of the Los Angeles Olympics and was their most successful release to date. It was available for pretty much every personal computer and console under the Sun in those days, but soon after the release of Summer Games, Epyx made the classic mistake so many software companies make, and got into hardware. Their first forays were in the long forgotten realm of interactive VHS games. Like "virtual reality", this was one of many video game crazes of the '80s and '90s which never really lived up to the hype and has since faded away.

The Handy was their next project and it could have been a doozy if it had dropped back in '86 or '87. It's technical specs blew away non-portable consoles of the '80s like the NES and Sega Master System, but because of stunts like their ill-fated series of interactive VHS games, they lacked the funding to finance the Handy alone. Enter Atari. The former giant of the video game industry had recently been surpassed in the market by Nintendo and Nolan Bushnell, who'd started the company, had left to run hundreds of Chuck E. Cheese franchises. Their own Atari 7800 home console was performing dismally compared to Nintendo's NES, and under the former head of Commodore, Jack Tramiel, Atari had been focusing more on the PC market than the video game market. Tramiel and co. were obviously impressed enough by the Lynx's potential to throw their weight behind it in spite of their lack of faith in Atari's other video game ventures, and it was released in Christmas of 1989, about three years after Epyx had presented their initial prototype. So what went wrong?

There are several major reasons the Lynx was unable to compete with the Game Boy in the long run.

Lack of exclusive marquee software: While the Lynx did receive home translations of many Atari arcade hits, so did the NES, Sega Genesis, DOS, early Windows editions and just about every device the Lynx was competing with. As an added handicap, Atari itself had never really succeeded in developing iconic franchise characters like the Mario Bros. They also failed to capitalize on some of the most iconic franchises they had at their disposal. The only game in the Gauntlet series for the Lynx is Gauntlet: The Third Encounter, an Epyx-developed dungeon crawler featuring classes such as Android, Pirate and Nerd:

                                                           
The title really had nothing to do with the Gauntlet series until Atari decided to slap the license on it, and it's all but forgotten today.

The huge delay between its prototype and release stages: Atari acquired the rights to distribute the Lynx back in 1984, and then dithered around for about two years before releasing it. Had it been released in '87 or even 1988, it would've been the first 16-bit console to hit the US market, handheld or otherwise. Instead, by the time of its release, the Lynx was competing not only with the NES, but also the Sega Genesis and NEC's Turbografx-16. Atari lacked both the marketing muscle and, as mentioned above, must-have software, to compete in this environment.

Atari never really cared about the Lynx in the first place: When the Lynx finally hit the stores in 1989, Atari was already busy talking to former members of the Sinclair computer company's development team about releasing a home console based around a chipset dubbed "The Panther". By around Christmas of '91, they'd decided to throw in the towel and concede defeat to the Game Boy juggernaut, and Lynx releases slowed to a trickle from then on. Atari always seemed to look at the Lynx as this fun little project they were throwing money at, rather than a product that could have helped revive the flagging fortunes of their home console business. First with the Panther (later abandoned to the netherealm of unreleased "vaporware") and again with their Jaguar console, they always seemed to have other projects on their plate which were viewed as more important.

It was just too damn big to be truly portable: The kid in the Lynx commercial I posted at the beginning of the blog is able to fit his Lynx into his jeans pocket and hide it from his teacher. This was not something successfully accomplished by even one person in real life. If the Lynx had been released in the late '90s when me and all my school chums thought those hideous Jnco jeans with pockets large enough to fit a lunch box inside were cool, then maybe fitting it inside of your back pocket would have been feasible. In reality, the Lynx was hardly "portable" compared to the Game Boy.

Despite its failings, I do have a bit of a soft spot for the Lynx. I own one, and even though it's one of my lesser played consoles, it does have some titles which I feel stand out:
STUN Runner-The crown jewel of Lynx arcade ports, it blows away anything on the NES graphically:

Ninja Gaiden -The game is a direct arcade port which differs significantly from the NES game of the same name. I wouldn't say it's better than the NES game by any means, but it is definitely easier. A port of Ninja Gaiden 3 which mimics the NES version more adeptly is also out there, but it was a rush job released near the end of the Lynx's lifespan and not nearly as good as this one in my opinion.

And lastly, Robo Squash, the Pong game of the future:

Until next time, keep your heads up