Photo Five Picture Prompt

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So, after a mobile phone video of a lighthouse in the rain prompted this awesome fic from lipstickcat, I thought we could use some picture prompts here at the Eerie, Indiana fandom. On the 5th, 15th and 25th of the month, I'll put up a post where we can share photos or pictures that evoke a sense of Eerie, and these can be used as prompts for fic or art or a poem or icons or whatever shakes loose.

Happy Krampusnatch!

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It's Krampusnatch! According to folklore, Krampus shows up in towns the night of December 5, known as Krampusnacht, or Krampus Night. The next day, December 6, is Nikolaustag, or St. Nicholas Day, when children look outside their door to see if the shoe or boot they'd left out the night before contains either presents (a reward for good behavior) or a rod (bad behavior).

So, in the little town of Eerie, who's got sweets in their slippers, who's got birch switches, and who got thrown into a sack and dragged off to the underworld to get eaten and beaten?

Mike K reviews the Hole in the Head Gang

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This is the first episode to feature Dash-X, who’s going to become an important recurring character for the remaining five episodes. We don’t learn a lot about him just yet, just that he’s a young homeless amnesiac with a mysterious past. The plus and minus symbols on his hands that he named himself for aren’t even brought up, therefor the audience doesn’t actually know what to call him yet.

The plot actually starts out tricking the audience into thinking it’s going to be an episode about Dash-X, and therefor that he’s probably just going to be another antagonist of the week: Marshall and Simon go out to investigate a supposedly haunted abandoned mill, only to find that he’s been living there and faking the paranormal occurrences Scooby Doo style. But of course, because this is Eerie, the place does turn out to be haunted anyway - The rest of the episode gets decidedly more comical as Marshall finds himself forced to assist the ghost of an incompetent bank robber (played by Claude Akins, best known as Sheriff Lobo from B.J. and the Bear). Eventually Dash returns, helps resolve the plot, and quickly vanishes to return another day.

The silliness of the rest of the plot could be considered a little anti-climactic after the initial and still unexplained Dash-X hook, but this is actually quite a funny episode. Claude Akins is naturally perfect for this sort of role, and it does lead to some memorable gags.

Side Notes:

The other notable change this episode brings is John Astin replacing Archie Hahn as Mr. Radford, owner of the World O’ Stuff. Mr. Radford is a minor enough character that they could have gotten away with switching actors with no explanation, but they make an amusing gag out of this: It turns out that the “Mr. Radford” we’ve known up to this point is a compulsive impersonator, who tied the real Radford up in the basement and took over the store. The impersonator is dragged out of the store, but the real Radford won’t press charges because the impersonator was a great salesman and drove up business. Even better, Hahn then shows up as a teller at the Eerie bank, which only Marshall notices.

I didn’t remember Dash-X having such Jack Nicholson-esque mannerisms. Maybe it’s something they toned down for the rest of his appearances, maybe it was something I just plain didn’t get as a 12 year old (though I’m pretty certain I had seen Nicholson play The Joker by that point).

As a big fan of this show’s continuity nods, I love that one of the creepy moms from Foreverware shows up as a bank customer.

Mike K reviews Mr Chaney

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It makes sense that there would eventually be a werewolf episode, what with this show’s love of classic horror movie nods - here the title character’s name is of course a nod to Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man, and there’s also mention of The Howling (Joe Dante has directed a few episodes, but not this one). I also detect just the tiniest bit of The Wicker Man in the plot as well: Every 13 years, Eerie sends a Harvest King out to the woods to find the “Eerie wolf”, which will bring the town plentiful crops and “lower taxes”, and this Harvest King has a tendency to disappear. Marshall is chosen as the new Harvest King (Dash-X overhears a plot to fix it so he’d win the raffle, so he fixes it so Marshall will win instead). Marshall is sent with Mr. Chaney to find the wolf, and of course, Mr. Chaney is the wolf. Apparently they’ve just been sacrificing people to Chaney so he doesn’t run rampant on the town instead.

While the episode still keeps with the show’s largely tongue-in-cheek tone, it also doesn’t ignore the unsavory fact that the town is letting a kid get eaten every 13 years just because it’s the easiest, most discreet way to deal with the problem. So surprisingly, this is the first episode with a “message” of sorts in a while.

Side Notes:

Dash-X isn’t constantly Nicholsoning it up, but it’s still there… Enough so that I fully support this theory. Oh, and this is the first episode where we get a good look at his hand markings, though you can also see them in The Hole In The Head Gang if you know what you’re looking for.

Mr. Chaney himself is none other than Stephen Root, which I didn’t realize until I looked it up. I enjoy his mannerism of always stuttering when saying the word “wolf”.

Twin Peaks comparisons must have been made while the show was still on the air too, hence Dash getting the line “Well, it sure ain’t the log lady”.

Eerie, Indiana cast/crew denim jacket

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Check out what just arrived from eBay! Sorry for the shitty picture quality, black denim doesn't photograph well on a dark green sofa and I'm way too excited to wait til tomorrow to take a photo in daylight.

Eerie, Indiana screenshots by Deifire

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Per deifire, "they're also free for anybody to take, reuse, remix, make icons out of, and so forth if they want."

Part one

Part two

Part three