#tv anthology series

[countesspetofi]

Today in the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, Leonard Nimoy guest stars in "A Quality of Mercy," episode 15 of the third season of The Twilight Zone (original air date December 29, 1961). Nimoy plays the radio operator of a U.S. Infantry unit in the Philippines, in the final days of WWII.

The unit is put under the command of an inexperienced, glory-hungry young Lieutenant (Dean Stockwell) who wants to take them on a pointless, dangerous raid while there's still time to make a name for himself. Instead, he finds himself transported, Quantum Leap-style, into the body of a Japanese officer. When he comes back to his own body, his newfound sense of perspective leads him to call off the raid just before they get the news from Hiroshima.

Bonus Dean Stockwell:

[mylifeincinema]

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities...

All of the Posters for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which will be dropping two episodes a day from October 25-28. I cannot wait for to spend the week leading into Halloween with this anthology series featuring so many promising names in horror and fantasy filmmaking, even if I’m disappointed Guillermo didn’t direct one himself. I’m especially excited for Lot 36 & The Murmuring.

[movie--posters]

I got a friend watching Beyond Belief, I'm watching Highlander with her husband while rewatching Buffy by myself, another friend is watching Murder she Wrote and another is watching X-Files and yet another is watching Star Trek: Voyager. Everyone I know is watching shit from or that started or aired in the 90's. No matter who's house I go to it's 90's time. Are we nostalgic or did TV peak?

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

ℜ𝔬𝔟𝔢𝔯𝔱 𝔈𝔫𝔤𝔩𝔲𝔫𝔡 𝔦𝔫 𝔠𝔥𝔞𝔯𝔞𝔠𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔰 𝔉𝔯𝔢𝔡𝔡𝔶 𝔎𝔯𝔲𝔢𝔤𝔢𝔯 𝔤𝔬𝔬𝔣𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞𝔯𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔡 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔢𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔉𝔯𝔢𝔡𝔡𝔶'𝔰 𝔑𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔢𝔰 (յգՑՑ, 𝔗𝔙 𝔖𝔢𝔯𝔦𝔢𝔰).

[rickchung]

True Detective: Night Country (prod. Issa López).

An inverse of the first season's sweaty Louisiana masculinity, this season is set in frozen darkness during the annual month-long period of continous nighttime in a remote Northern Alaskan town as López both enhances and subverts what intially drew audiences to pulpy detective drama.

[gt-icons]

Dani Clayton  “The Haunting Of Bly Manor” icons

‒ like or reblog if you save

[movies-tv-more]

TRUE DETECTIVE season 4 premieres tonight at 9pm on HBO

[mariocki]

An uncredited Jacqueline Hill appears as an unnamed Irish barmaid in The Vise: Death Pays No Dividends (1.5, ABC, 1954); in the UK, this episode wasn't seen until 1960 as part of ITV anthology The Crooked Path

[vendriin]

Papa Legba -

American Horror Story

[gameofthunder66]

Fargo (2014- ) tv series

-(started) watchin' Season 2- 4/9/2024- on Hulu (FX)

[countesspetofi]

Today in the Department of Before They Were Star Trek Stars, William Shatner guest stars in "The Glass Eye," episode 1 of the third season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (original air date October 6. 1957). The main story, which is pretty thin, takes place in flashback: A lonely Edwardian spinster falls in love with a music hall ventriloquist, only to discover that the object of her affection is actually the dummy, while the real ventriloquist is a little person in a mask who plays the dummy in the act. Shatner appears in the framing segments as her nephew, who discovers the story after her death (sometime in the late 1920s or early 1930s, by the look of the costumes). He's pretty stiff in these segments, but he also narrates the flashback and does a good job of that.

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

A U.S. Marine finds themselves inside a temple (actually a tomb) in the Middle East that’s swarming with monsters. The monsters are sensitive to sound. A love triangle between a stiff, hardass husband, his tough and commanding wife, and the wife’s sensitive, distressed new lover. A lunar eclipse occurs in the story. There’s a shootout in the desert. At least one of the main heroes is Arabic. Story can be classified as horror-action. 

Now, am I describing “Moon Knight” or “The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes”? 

[movie--posters]

[burningexeter]

[PITCH]

The Night Chronicles

What is it —

A 2D animated horror anthology series that is not only connected by an Observer character who appears at the beginning and end of every episode but is also in the same veins as HBO's Tales From The Crypt and the Hub's R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: The Series where whether or not you actually think or find it scary, you still appreciate and give credit to it being actual horror cause it does indeed try to be full-on horror.

PREMISE:

Bringing high quality 2D animation to the genre of horror, The Night Chronicles tells a rather wide variety of dark, intense, twisted, macabre morality tales or just tales in general of absolute horror with a wide focus on kids, teenagers or adults depending on the episode or storyline. Unlike most horror anthologies though, every episode of each season will be a solid 2 hour long because they're treated more as mini-movies with their theatrics and scales.

EPISODE IDEAS:

Sophie, The Girl Who Cheats Death — The life of a shy, quiet, socially awkward and timid gorgeous blonde teen girl, Sophie Wilcox, is turned upside down when after getting caught trying to steal a prized fantasy uniform from her favorite series in an attempt to impress her peers, the shop owner who's revealed to be a mad witch places a curse on her as a sick punishment.... she's given Sophie the nine lives of a cat through a gland in its brain that causes it but to the expense of a kitten's life. However, things take even more of an unexpected turn of events when they both realize they could use this to their advantage and now Sophie is the star attraction of a carnival sideshow and has become a sensation. In doing so, it unfortunately leads Sophie down a neverending dark path as the fame changes her into leaving her friends behind, leaving her family behind and willing to do anything to stay on top. All of this culminates on the night of her final performance, having heartlessly disowned her former friend and her mother, when Sophie realizes all too late as she's buried alive deep underground.... that she may have miscounted how many lives she has.

Texas Body Count — Set in El Paso, Texas, a mysterious vigilante of imposing height arrives in the middle of the night and begins cleaning up the crime ridden streets in his own vicious and brutal ways as a gang war is threatening to break out. But throughout all of this, we see him get mortally wounded and even fucked up horribly and fatally yet there's not one single scratch or wound on him and if there is any, they instantaneously heal right up. He falls from high buildings in pursuit and just gets right back with no bloody mess and broken bones. It's then that this man's past is revealed to us, he was once a dangerous criminal wanted by the FBI that was killed in a robbery gone wrong but instead of letting him stay dead, the U.S. Government confiscated his body and used it for an undead and indestructible super soldier program, resurrecting him as one of them. However, what they didn't count on was that he would be the only one who as it turned slowly regained his memories and eventually escaped all on his own from the facility. Now in order to redeem himself in his own eyes from all of the bad he's done in his life, he's taken to cleaning up the streets riddled with crime and take revenge on the people who turned him into a monster.

Flesh & Bone — A twelve year old bullied boy, Jacob Avery, is regularly picked on by his classmates and older siblings and due to being blamed for the constant trouble the latters cause, he's one slip-up away from being sent to military school by his strict, military-wannabe father. The only person who seems to genuinely care about his well-being and is the only one he considers to be a true friend or the closest to any is his teacher, Ms. Parkerton, whose become aware of the severe bullying he's facing. It's then that Jacob starts hearing strange but otherworldly voices and howls coming from the woods that are calling to him and it turns out he's not the only one — Parkerton's begun hearing them too. Investigating all on her own, she ultimately discovers the terrifying source of it as it's of an old rotting flesh-craving wendigo that needs to rejuvenate and uses its call to lure its victims. However, Jacob soon realizes all of this is to his advantage when he discovers the horrible truth that his bullies had driven another student (a girl) to attempt suicide, his bullying older brother had raped and beat his cheerleader girlfriend and his father has been emotionally, verbally and physically abusing his mother and other siblings.... and the creature in the deep, dark woods will eat anything you put in front of it.

Notes/Trivias/Details:

• The most important one of all is aforementioned previously, an Observer character who serves as the "host" of the series will appear in every episode's beginnings and ends. He's called "The Hidden", an assumed young man who wears a blank, white burlap sack as a mask that's almost wrapped around his face instead of an ordinary mask with no eyeholes and he collects objects from strange and disturbing tales that he puts in his homeless guy-type of backpack so that no one ever forgets them. No one knows who he is or where he came from or why he does what he does or where he'll go next but all that's known is if you see him or worse, hear his whistle than you know something dark and scary is gonna happen. However with that said, he obviously doesn't mean no harm and is just a curious observer.

• Most episodes or rather almost every episode of the series have bad endings but there will definitely be a few genuinely good or bittersweet endings sprinkled throughout to balance it out to where the bad endings are more effective and the good endings feel more special and earned. With the bad endings, there's always a genuine moment of victory where the character or characters let's say break the age-old curse or defeats the demonic harlequin or escape the clutches of the Sandman whose held them captive in their sleep etc.... but then in classic horror anthology style, there's an extra thing or a twist that immediately happens that goes "Nope!". So there's an "Ah, relief!" for the viewer and character/characters then suddenly bam, nope, nuh-uh. But the good endings are the ones that do feel the most well earned where they go through hell and back but they actually grow and develop into better people who realize the errors of their ways.

• As you can see if you at least know, the three episodes in one way or another are influenced by some other media. "Sophie, The Girl Who Cheats Death" is influenced by the classic Tales From The Crypt episode "Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone" but does its own magical and tragic take on it to where it makes it its own to where you can view them both separately. "Texas Body Count" is directly based off a cancelled Tales From The Crypt movie called Redneck Frank aka Body Count written by Adam Rifkin and one of my favorite filmmakers Walter Hill and I felt like it was a strong enough story to tell in the medium of animation.... HORROR animation. As for "Flesh & Bone", it's a subversive take on a lot of the aspects of R.L. Stine stories, Stephen King stories and children's horror anthologies where the bad people are legit awful people such as useless idiot adults, psychopathic bullies and abusive parents and most of the time, they don't get called out on it or get what they deserve. Here, it's the exact opposite where they're all called out on what heinous people they are and get their horrifiyingly sick and gruesome comeuppances for being shitstains.

• Now for the animation style, that's easy. It'll be heavily inspired and modeled after the artwork of comic book artist Tony Moore especially with his Walking Dead issues and since it's animation, it will be more fluid and more expressive without going overboard.

• Last but not least, the show will have three seasons with about 8 or 10 episodes each and without ever pointing it out, it's shown that every episode of The Night Chronicles are set in the same universe as each other obviously with not just the Hidden appearing and connecting at the beginnings and ends but also there's call-backs, casual references and easter eggs such as let's say a fictional Big Kahuna Burger fast food restaurant is mentioned in one episode than the bag with the logo on it appears in another.

But there's a surprise reveal in the series finale:

After the Hidden walks away into a crowd as usual, the scene transitions into a warm home on Christmas Eve and we're introduced to a gorgeous blonde but quiet young woman whose name is revealed later on to be Andrea and is comforted by her mother and two younger sisters, Amy (23) and Sophia (8). Earlier this year, Andrea's fiancee Charlie was killed in combat serving overseas and a recovering from depression Andrea has recently been doing nothing but stare at a snowglobe that Charlie gave to her as a going-away present day in and day out. After a loving conversation with her youngest sister Sophia, a still silent Andrea decides to go over and celebrate Christmas with her family.

All the while two things are shown to us....

1). It's revealed that Andrea, Amy and Sophia are the Andrea, Amy and Sophia of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead comic series done in Tony Moore's style with Andrea having her hair all the way down as seen in the final second image below in the background.

& 2). Once Andrea and Sophia walk away from the toasty kitchen table, the camera slowly moves in on the snowglobe and as a direct throwback to the final moment of a little show.... called St. Elsewhere, the setting of the series finale to The Night Chronicles is in the goddamn snowglobe.... thus revealing that not only are every episode in the same universe but that the whole entire series is all in the mind of Andrea. It's been a figment this whole time.

Go figure.

There she is all the way on the right.

[rickchung]

The Afterparty x "Hannah" (prod. Christopher Miller).

Season two of Apple's anthology murder mystery comedy series continues its exploration of film genres. A standout episode sees Anna Konkle's Hannah tell her life story up to the wedding crime scene as a flashback in the style of a Wes Anderson film. It's an inventive gimmick to mine comedic material while lovingly parodying famous cinematic tropes through the half-hour sitcom format.

[purbiworl]

I wish we could see these two interacting outside of the Advent Calendar (and one or two neogreetings) 😔 I want to see them being petty old men but still ending their day knowing that despite how often they quarrel, they still care for each other 🥺