Trollheart

Okay, this one breaks the pattern. Not only is it from the 1950s, but it was in fact never screened! You can buy this on DVD but otherwise YouTube is your only man. Let's see what it's like; maybe there's a reason why it never made it to the televisions of America. Ooh look! It's Boris Karloff hosting. That's got to be a good start.

Title: “Summer Heat”
Series: The Veil
Season: 2
Year: 1958
Writer(s): Rick Vollaerts
Storyline: In the searing heat of a New York summer, Edward Page sees a woman attacked in an apartment from his window, but when he calls the police and they open up the door the apartment is entirely empty. (Trollheart’s Theory (™) *: it happened in the past and somehow he’s seeing it now, or it’s going to happen in the future). The cops dismiss it as “just the heat” but when Page gets anxious they decide to take him in.They get him committed, but the doctor in charge believes Page is sane, and that he saw something. He sends Page home.

Meanwhile, a woman rents the apartment and it’s clear that what Page saw happening is about to occur now. Of course, when the cops get the call they assume Page is the culprit. He did, after all, give a detailed description of the woman, the apartment, the scene. And he’s just returned home. But there’s one thing in his favour: when he described the apartment, it was unfurnished, empty. So how could he know what the furniture would look like, where it would be placed, what she would look like? Still, this is an old-style cop in charge, and he’s not going to let anything inconvenient like facts get in the way of putting Page away, even when his sergeant expresses serious doubts that Page could have done it.

What about fingerprints? Have they even taken any? Page’s would not be here, and that would surely help exonerate him (though he could have worn gloves I guess, but they haven’t mentioned anything about prints) and how is he supposed to have got into the apartment? They take him to the station - I thought they were arresting him but they have him going through mug shots - and then he remembers the killer had a cauliflower ear. Suddenly, the two cops believe him and they go off to check this description against known offenders. They find the guy, and Page is able to show them that the woman he murdered bit the guy before he could kill her. Rolling up his sleeve, they see the bite mark on his arm and they know they have their guy.

The cop, the doctor and Page are all left with the unsettling knowledge that somehow Page saw the crime before it was committed.

* Trollheart’s Theory is my attempt to, at any point in the episode (but ideally as early as possible) suss out how it’s going to end.

Comments: Now this is how to write a story! And only six years after Tales of bloody Tomorrow! Yes, I sussed it out quickly enough but the story was well-written and presented, and within the context of the show, again, quite believable, something you could see on The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits maybe. A very impressive start. Why wasn't this greenlit, eh?

Rating: A+

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Title: “The Girl Who Cried Monster”
Series: Goosebumps
Season: 1
Year: 1995
Writer(s): Charles Lazer
Storyline: Goosebumps is based on a series of books written for children by R.L Stine (any relation to Franken? I’m here all week, sorry) so you might think this won’t be too scary or adult, but then, Are You Afraid of the Dark? is for kids too and that… was not too scary. Well then, a girl who delights in torturing her little brother with stories of monsters encounters a real one in the library, but because of her reputation nobody will believe her. So Lucy decides to hide in the library after hours and get a picture of the librarian, who she has seen transform into a monster who eats insects. Unfortunately she rather stupidly uses a flash and so is easily detected when she takes the picture, and now she’s on the run with the monster after her.

As he’s the librarian though, he knows where she lives, and comes to call, but she won’t let him in. He has come ostensibly to return her backpack, which she left behind, and after trying to get in he leaves it on the doorstep. Showing its age now, as Lucy has to get her parents to take her into town to get the film developed (ah tis well I remember it!) but when she comes out with her photographs who’s there but the librarian, who takes the photo when she drops them on the street. Seeing him, her parents invite him over to dinner, to Lucy’s horror. However, in a very clever twist it turns out that her parents are both monsters, and they eat the librarian. Can’t have him spreading rumours about them. Having finished him off, they tell Lucy and her brother that soon they too will grow to be monsters, just like their parents.

Comments: Surprisingly good. I didn’t suss this one at all, didn’t even know where it was going. Not entirely original, but clever.

Rating: A

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Title: “Offervilje” (“The Ultimate Sacrifice”)
Series: Bloodride
Season: 1
Year: 2021
Writer(s): Kjetil Indregard
Storyline: Okay, from what I read this series follows a set of passengers on a bus, and each episode focuses on the story of one of the passengers. That story is also linked to a holiday for some reason. This one concerns a woman who, while riding the bus, suddenly sees her hands begin to bleed. The action changes to a guy going for an important interview with the CEO of finance company (I think that means he’s a journalist interviewing the CEO, rather than trying to get a job there, but the translation does not make that clear) then flashes back to five years previous, as a family arrive at their new downsized home, a cottage in the country. The mother (the woman in the story) does not look happy but her adult children try to tell her it’s not so bad. They meet the neighbours, who seem friendly, but Molly, the mother, thinks they’re weird and a little pushy when they offer to help them sort out the cottage.

They don’t expect many to turn up but a crowd does (all holding small animals and seeming a little too attached to them?) and the work is done in no time, as they settle down to a barbeque. (Trollheart’s Theory: these are cannibals). While out jogging she sees two of the women, pets in their arms, head through the forest and while she watches in horror one sacrifices her cat, stabbing it with a knife. In shock, she steps back and is discovered. The two women seem to debate between themselves, then decide to take her into their confidence. They tell her the town is built on an old Viking burial ground, and we all know how Vikings loved to sacrifice animals to their gods. She’s told that one of the townsfolk took his dog, which had cancer, to the spot where Molly saw them do in the cat - it’s an old sacrificial stone, apparently - and shot him. The next day he won the lottery. So now everyone thinks the stone works, and they sacrifice their pets when they need good fortune.

Not cannibals, then. Damn.

The women warn her that the stone could change her; if she thinks she can get anything she wants with it, she may lose control. She tests it by catching a rat and splattering it on the stone, then legs it to the shop, buys a scratch card but only wins a small amount. The women tell her that in order to get a proper reward the animal has to have a bond with her. They own a dog, so yeah, you can see where this is going now. After callously killing the dog she goes to buy a lottery ticket. Meanwhile her daughter is frantically searching for her dog while Molly sits at home greedily and anxiously watching the draw for the lottery. She almost has is, getting increasingly excited as number after number comes up, but then the last one is wrong, and she’s furious. No jackpot for her!

The women laugh at her when she rages. They know, they can tell that though it was her daughter’s dog she didn’t love it. I mean, who could kill a pet they loved so easily for mere money? And now you can see where we’re headed. They did mention when they told her about the stone that the Vikings sometimes sacrificed humans so… She decides to tell her husband, and leads him to the stone. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say she’s prepared to sacrifice him for her precious jackpot. She doesn’t seem the sort to really entertain remorse, or to let anything stand in the way of her goals, and the women did say the more she loved something, the more money she would get.

So she does it. She goes to the sacrificial stone with her husband and attacks him. The scene changes. We’re back with the guy and his interview with that CEO. He asks if there is any subject he should avoid (he’s clearly a journalist) and he’s told to avoid asking her about how she made her first million. Back to the past we go. Molly is about to kill her husband when Katja, her daughter, comes upon them. They struggle. Molly tries to kill Katja but her daughter in desperation, fighting for her life, picks up a stone and smashes into into her mother’s head. Cut back to the present and it’s Katja who is the CEO, a big white fluffy cat on her lap which she pets constantly like a female Bond villain.


Comments: This was really good. On the surface, a version of the old sacrifice-in-the-woods-Indian burial ground idea, but cleverly used. The script kept me guessing to the end, and even then I wasn’t sure who was going to be in the chair until she turned around. A good morality tale with a chilling ending.
Rating: A+

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