Memories

As a DIRECTV subscriber, I am used to new channels popping up out of nowhere. For this reason I have not added any channels to my favorites; I would rather search channel by channel to check and see if any new ones have cropped up. The first one I stumbled across was called Chiller. I immediately liked it because it showed the little known serials of “Freddy’s Nightmares” and “Friday the 13th: The Series”. Also, the channel shows Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery”. “Night Gallery” begins with the tagline, “Good evening and welcome to a private showing of three paintings, displayed here for the first time. Each is a collector's item in its own way -- not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare.” Serling himself then describes the painting as it is shown on the screen and the episode begins. The show can be compared to Serling’s previous serial, the well-known, “Twilight Zone”. “Night Gallery” reminds me a lot of the “Tales from the Crypt” serial that ran unedited on HBO in the 1990s in that it had a who’s who of actors in bit roles on the show. For instance, appearing in “Night Gallery” are: William Shatner, Vincent Price, Burgess Meredith, Bill Bixby, and other notable actors. I don’t have a favorite “Night Gallery” episode, but a few “Tales” are flawless. One is called “Fitting Punishment”. In this episode, A cruel, crooked funeral home director from Alabama gets an unexpected new addition to his home when his 16-year-old nephew , who was recently orphaned, shows up. The boy is always playing basketball and sometimes even bounces it in the house. The caretaker grows tired of his new ward, and pushes him down the long stairwell that leads down to the morgue, where the embalming takes place. The old man only has one casket, but it is about two to three feet short. The unscrupulous caretaker takes his saw and chops off the boy’s feet so he will fit in. The boy is buried and no one is any the wiser. One night while working on the embalming table, the caretaker hears and then sees a basketball bouncing down the stairs. His eyes grow wide as he sees one bloody stump followed by another. When the boy gets to the bottom of the staircase his eyes are all black and he mutters something to the caretaker. The old man is scared shitless as he should be. Unfortunately, the boy gets his revenge off camera. Another classic episode is called “Abra Cadaver”. IT stars Beau Bridges as Dr. Martin Fairbanks and Tony Goldwyn as Dr. Carl Fairbanks, brothers who are doctors. One birthday Martin suffers a heart attack due to the Carl’s practical joke. As a result, the Martin’s hands are not as steady as before. His work as a doctor begins to wane. He decides to get his revenge after he isolates a chemical that causes a person to become dead, but the brain is still alive. He injects his brother with this serum, and at the climax of the episode, Carl has a tear drop from his eye as an doctor presses the button and starts the saw to open his skull for the autopsy. He says inner monologue, “Martin was wrong about one thing, the sense of touch isn't the first thing to go... it's the last!”

On DIRECTV there is a new channel called Huboom. It is channel 264, I think. Hub shows programs that I remember from when I was a kid. The original TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE cartoons from the 80s come on, as well as Fraggle Rock. It also features programs from the 60s: Batman featuring Adam West, Laverne & Shirley, and Happy Days. Hub is featured on Comcast as well, somewhere around Cartoon Network. If you are a fan of these shows, I hope you watch them; They bring back pleasant memories for me.