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Here’s some more episodes of Eerie Indiana.

In The Retainer, Marshall is trepidatious about visiting the dentist. Not suprising when his dentist is Vincent Schiavelli.

His friend Steve has a massive retainer that lets him talk to dogs.

They learn of a conspiracy among the town’s dogs.

The next episode is The ATM with the Heart of Gold. Marshall’s dad has created a friendly computerised teller, slightly reminiscent of Max Headroom.

Gregory Itzin plays the town mayor. He really is the go-to actor for untrustworthy elected officials, isn’t he?

Marshall’s friend Simon starts getting money from the ATM, because he’s nice to Mr Wilson.

In the next episode, The Losers, Marshall’s dad loses an important presentation. The search leads to some strange places, and an appearance by Joe Dante regular Dick Miller. Not surprising, since this episode is directed by Joe Dante.

Another Dante regular is Henry Gibson, who works in the Bureau of Lost.

Next, it’s America’s Scariest Home Video. It’s Halloween, which can’t be good in Eerie. Marshall’s younger brother is stuck in the TV, and the Mummy has got out, only it’s the actor who played the Mummy years ago.

Next it’s Just Say No Fun.

I’ve just noticed their school is BF Skinner High School – named after the behaviourist who invented the theory of operant conditioning, and the Skinner Box, an experiment where doves were trained to collect food from a dispenser. The dispenser would randomly deliver seed in response to buttons the doves would peck, but it was always random. However, the doves would develop momre and more complex, repeated behaviours in the apparent belief that what they were doing was key to the seeds being given.

Simon is given new glasses, and suddenly he’s boring and just wants to do schoolwork.

There’s a tiny bit of the end credits of Mork and Mindy before the next episode.

Then, an episode Heart on a Chain. A new girl, Melanie, joins Marshall’s class. She has a life-threatening heart problem, and is waiting for a transplant. And all the boys in class fall in love with her. She’s played bu Danielle Harris, possibly familiar to you as Bruce Willis’ daughter in The Last Boy Scout.

Marshall gets love advice from Elvis, who lives on his paper route.

It has a sad ending.

This is the last episode here. After this, recording continues with the start of Channel 4 News.
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“Questions were playing tiddly winks with my grey matter...”

Most times you go back to watch a programme from your youth, it's pretty disappointing. Every now and then, however, they're genuinely as good as you remember. Eerie, Indiana is one of those special few. There are a handful of series that tried to be The Twilight Zone for kids. Round the Twist (which I'll be coming back to in another article) is well-remembered by British and Australian audiences. Are You Afraid of the Dark and Goosebumps scared the kids of the early and late nineties, respectively. None had the wit of Eerie, Indiana. So why this series only lasted for a single season baffles me.

The series was set in the eponymous town of Eerie, Indiana, population 16,661. Marshall 'Mars' Teller moves to Eerie with his family. Only he, and his best friend, Simon, seem to notice just how bizarre life in Eerie really is. Bigfoot eats out of Marshall's trash, Elvis is on his paper round, and each episode, some uncanny occurrence makes becomes the subject of Marshall and Simon's investigations. The situations the duo faced were man and varied. Some were drawn from classic horror and sci-fi, but with a twist, such as “America's Scariest Home Video,” which drew the Mummy straight out of a black-and-white movie and into Marshall's living room, while Simon's younger brother took his place (and proved far scarier). Some drew on science fiction for their inspiration, such as the HAL 9000 riff “The ATM With a Heart of Gold.” Others were barmy in their originality. “No Brain, No Pain,” involved a shambling vagrant, who was in fact a genius, but had accidentally taped over his mind with a copy of The Knack's My Sharona.

While the writing was generally very good for a children's drama, it was the direction and the cast that really set Eerie apart from its rivals. While Jose Rivera and Karl Schaefer were credited as the series' creators, Joe Dante was a major creative force on the show, directing several episodes. This is the man who directed such sci-fi classics as Innerspace, Gremlins and, um, Piranha. Not the sort of person you'd expect to be working on a children's TV series for the Disney Channel. The cast were what really made it, though. The series boasted not only a solid regular and semi-regular cast, but some of the best guest actors in television. Weird old Vincent Schiavelli played the town's terrifying orthodontist, while Rene Auberjonois tried to brainwash the town. Dante's favoured actor, Archie Hann, played Mr Radford, the proprietor of the World O' Stuff, until the series' midpoint turnaround, when he was revealed to be an imposter. The real Radford was revealed, played with twinkling charm by John “Gomez” Astin. In one fan-favourite episode, “The Lost Hour,” putting the clocks forward one hour incorrectly stranded Marshall in an empty parallel version of Eerie, with only a mysterious milkman to turn to for help. That milkman – who, it was hinted, may have been Marshall's own future self – was played by the late, great Eric Christmas, an actor who was born to play the Doctor. These impressive guest spots and many clever references make the series a joy to watch for genre fans.

It would be wrong to overlook the core cast, however. Omri Katz was the star of the show. Fifteen at the time of filming, but playing it a little younger, Omri was perfect as Marshall, representing the many young boys who were just entering puberty and being torn between silly kids' shows and adult life. Omri gave Marshall a wide-eyed wonder at the weirdness of the world, with just enough snark to make the character snappy, but never obnoxious. Stealing the show, though, was Justin Shenkarow, four years younger, as Simon Holmes. Justin dominated every scene he was in, despite being the youngest member of the cast. Simon was an outsider in Eerie, and became close friends with Marshall, only to find himself take a backseat to the teenager's problems. Popularity, school, and above all, his burgeoning interest in girls, threatened to take Marshall away from Simon, but at the end of the day, the two were inseparable. There was a lot for young boys to relate to.

Marshall's family were equally as important to the setup, forever oblivious to the strange goings on around them. Frances Guinan was just the right side of eccentric as his father Edgar. Possibly named in association with Edward Teller, inventor of the hydrogen bomb, Edgar tried to keep afloat with his career as an inventor for Things Incorporated. His inventions were often a main plot point in the series. Marshall's mother, Marilyn, was played Mary-Margaret Humes, who I only now realise was quite impossibly sexy and wasted as Edgar's housewife. As Marshall's older sister, Syndi, Julie Condra provided the boys watching with the twin interests of an irritating sibling to run rings round, and a beautiful young woman to gaze at.

It was something of a boys' show. Marshall had a new crush every other week, and while the girls were often strong, impressive characters, there was less for the female members of the audience. That changed in the thirteenth episode, which began a process of revamping the series by introducing Jason Marsden – that guy who's in everything, these days – as Dash X. A mysterious, amnesiac with grey hair, Dash X didn't know his real name or where he came from. He became the amoral antagonist to Marshall's hero, sometimes helping him, sometimes out for himself. He might possibly have been an alien, and was even seemingly aware that he was part of a television programme. He was also, importantly, the one all the girls watching had a crush on.

Dash X threatened to steal the series away from Marshall, something that the producers were fully aware of. In what was surely intended as the final episode of the series, but actually aired as the penultimate instalment, Marshall woke up to find that his name was really Omri, and his entire life was, in fact, part of a TV show. “Reality Takes a Holiday” was an ingeniously postmodern episode, and saw Dash X – the only character referred to by his fictional name, and not his actor's name – attempt to oust Marshall as the star. Genuinely clever, it was a high point for the series.

My favourite episode, however, was “Heart on a Chain.” Marshall and a previously unmentioned classmate, Devon (played by another Dante favourite, Cory Danziger), both fall for the new girl, Melissa. When Devon is killed in a road accident, his heart is transplanted into the desperately ill Melissa, who begins to display some of Devon's personality traits. Marshall and Melissa's burgeoning romance is sabotaged by Devon's restless spirit. Apart from the fact that I had a huge crush on Danielle Harris, who played Melissa, this episode really touched me as a kid. Watching it again now, it's still affecting. It's a genuinely sweet, sad, creepy little ghost story, just really fine television.

For all the silliness, references and naff monsters, Eerie, Indiana was quite a dark, subversive series. The strangeness of the town and its supposed ordinariness was a metaphor for the harsh realities that are so often kept behind closed doors. While Marshall had a strong, loving family, Simon was from a broken home. He was able to spend so much time with the Tellers because his mother was rarely home, and his father was often “entertaining.” Other characters' lives were rarely anything to celebrate. “Who's Who” revolved around a young girl whose mother had abandoned her, and who was neglected and exploited by her father and brothers. Even the pilot episode, “Foreverware,” hinted at the dark secrets behind so many supposedly perfect families.

For some reason, Eerie, Indiana never took off on its initial 1991-2 run. It sank without a trace, with certain episodes not even airing. It wasn't until 1997 that Fox bought the series and it was given a new lease of life. It was then that the series made it overseas, onto the Saturday mornings of my thirteen-year-old self. It became successful enough to spawn a spin-off series, Eerie, Indiana: The Other Dimension. The concept was rather clever: in a parellel version of Eerie, life is perfectly normal, until a crazy cable guy opens an interdimensional rift. This lets the weirdness of the “prime” Eerie through to the Other Dimension, and threatens to destroy the Eeries of all realities. Marshall and Simon even appeared in the first episode to help out their younger equivalents, Mitchell and Stanley. However, although the effects had improved over the years, the scripts hadn't, and the weaker sequel series lasted only one season itself.

Eerie, Indiana amassed something of a cult following in its brief renaissance, but has little legacy. Even much of its cast are no longer acting. Omri Katz made the occasional film up until about eight years ago, while Justin Shenkarow now does mainly voice work. Julie Condra no longer seems to be acting. Of course, many of the more legendary guest stars are no longer with us. On the other hand, Jason Marsden is a familiar face on American television, Danielle Harris has become something of a modern day scream queen, and some kid called Tobey Maguire, who played a ghost boy, did quite well for himself. Still, I doubt any of these roles will make me smile quite as much as Eerie, Indiana.
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After running for seven seasons on HBO, it was perhaps inevitable that Tales from the Crypt would make the leap from the small screen to the big screen. Based on the influential EC comics of the 1950s, each week Tales from the Crypt would provide a short, sharp shock of horror free from the censors of network TV, one often directed by a name such as Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future,1985), Walter Hill (48 Hours,1982) or Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon, 1987), who also all produced along with Joel Silver. Even the likes of Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Kyle MacLachlan all had a go at directing an episode.

Before the show came to an end in 1996, the first feature-length movie made its debut in the traditional “dump” theatrical release month of January in 1995. The script for Demon Knight had been floating around Hollywood for a while and was snapped up by the producers with the intention of turning it into a big-screen version of a Tales from the Crypt episode. Spike Lee’s director of photography, Ernest Dickerson, who had recently made his own directorial debut with Juice (1992), was hired to direct.

Bookended by pun-heavy, cheesy Cryptkeeper segments, Demon Knight starts off with Brayker (William Sadler) on the run from The Collector (Billy Zane). The pursuit ends in a car wreck, and Brayker makes his way to a run-down old church which has become a mission for the downtrodden. Inside, he finds no-nonsense manager Irene (CCH Pounder), drunk hobo Willy (Dick Miller), troubled postman Wally (Charles Fleischer), hooker Cordelia (Brenda Bakke), her a**hole boyfriend Roach (Thomas Haden Church), and former thief Jeryline (Jada Pinkett-Smith). The Collector soon arrives with a couple of cops he has conned into helping him, and it becomes apparent that the Collector needs the key artifact that contains the blood of several saints that Brayker has with him. Turns out The Collector is a demon of some sort who dispatches his minions into the mission to retrieve his prize, all whilst preying upon the weaknesses of the people inside to tempt them over to his side.

There is something so gloriously ’90s about Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. For their first feature, the creators decided to play it relatively safe with a riff on Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) crossed with The Evil Dead (1981), and then mix this with a tale as old as time itself about how the devil will always tempt the weak. Like most franchise outings of the decade, this had a soundtrack album of metal tracks that barely appear in the movie, as well as a novel adaptation, and all that was missing was a video game and comic book version. Regardless of originality, the actual film turned out to be quite a good time at the flicks.

This was the first proper horror film I saw at the cinema—I managed to get in when I wasn’t quite old enough—and it delivered everything I wanted at the time. I was at that point pretty much a gorehound at home thanks to The Evil Dead movies and Peter Jackson’s Braindead (1992), as well as browsing the pages of Fangoria at my local comic shop. Demon Knight delivered what I wanted to see finally on the big screen. Limbs are ripped off, people are disembowelled, people become demons with jaws hanging off, and tongues penetrate chest cavities. In one scene, where Cordelia is possessed, an arm is ripped off, a head explodes, and eyeballs are splattered on the floor, and I was in absolute heaven. Demon Knight was made on a relatively low budget and was at the weird period between the old school and the proliferation of CGI, so all of the effects work is practical or in-camera. The puppetry doesn’t quite hold up, but the organic nature of the effects work always pleases me, even now.

I really like the characters in this movie as well. They all have really brief and broad strokes in terms of introductions, but they do the job well so that you know what each has to contend with before they are tempted by evil. William Sadler was perhaps best known at this point for stealing the show as Death in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) and playing a villain in a couple of action movies. Based on his work here, it is surprising that he didn’t get more standard hero work, as he acquits himself well as the weary but determined Brayker. At the time, Billy Zane was perhaps best known as being really ridiculously good looking rather than for his acting chops. Yet in Demon Knight, as the villain, he gets all the best lines and is clearly having the time of his life. It’s a reminder that he is more than a pretty face when given the chance.

Kudos too to the producers of the time for allowing the story to go in a direction that was not typical at all in the mid-’90s. We talk online all the time now about representation and inclusion, and somehow Demon Knight was way ahead of this in terms of who actually survives and thrives at story’s end. It’s another aspect to the film that, despite the lack of originality, made it feel outside the norm at the time.

Regardless of the actual quality of the finished film, Demon Knight made a small profit of $21 million from a $13 million budget. It’s not really the case now, but for a long time, January and September were seen as “dump months” in which studios would banish the films that usually lacked quality or inspired little faith. This is where a majority of horror films would be released, but there were some great ones sneaking out every now and then, and Demon Knight is firmly of that crowd. It was successful enough to lead to another movie from the Tales from the Crypt franchise.

Now, depending on who you speak to, there was a point where Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) script was meant to be the next Tales from the Crypt outing. A post-credit scene on the digital version of Demon Knight that I have reveals the Cryptkeeper telling the audience it would be called Dead Easy, which was apparently a zombie story set in New Orleans. Neither of these films next; instead we got Bordello of Blood (1996) a mere year-and-a-half after Demon Knight. Bordello of Blood is an awful film, badly directed, badly acted, and just plain cheap. It was apparently plagued by behind-the-scenes production troubles, and it shows. It flopped massively at the box office in the summer of 1996, and the cinematic Tales from the Crypt franchise was dead. They released something under the moniker called Ritual straight to DVD sometime later in 2002, but this didn’t have the Cryptkeeper bookends and was even worse than Bordello of Blood.

Tales from the Crypt was mooted to return to TV (well, streaming) a few years back with the involvement of M. Night Shyamalan and John Kassir back to voice The Cryptkeeper. This version has since been cancelled and now seems stuck in limbo. With anthology TV all the rage thanks to Black Mirror, it surely won’t be long before this franchise rises from the dead again with its built-in brand recognition. Demon Knight remains great horror entertainment and a solid start to something that should have run in cinemas every year for the rest of the ’90s. Sadly, it was not to be.
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Here’s some more episodes of Eerie Indiana.

In The Retainer, Marshall is trepidatious about visiting the dentist. Not suprising when his dentist is Vincent Schiavelli.


His friend Steve has a massive retainer that lets him talk to dogs.

They learn of a conspiracy among the town’s dogs.

The next episode is The ATM with the Heart of Gold. Marshall’s dad has created a friendly computerised teller, slightly reminiscent of Max Headroom.

Gregory Itzin plays the town mayor. He really is the go-to actor for untrustworthy elected officials, isn’t he?

Marshall’s friend Simon starts getting money from the ATM, because he’s nice to Mr Wilson.

In the next episode, The Losers, Marshall’s dad loses an important presentation. The search leads to some strange places, and an appearance by Joe Dante regular Dick Miller. Not surprising, since this episode is directed by Joe Dante.

Another Dante regular is Henry Gibson, who works in the Bureau of Lost.

Next, it’s America’s Scariest Home Video. It’s Halloween, which can’t be good in Eerie. Marshall’s younger brother is stuck in the TV, and the Mummy has got out, only it’s the actor who played the Mummy years ago.

Next it’s Just Say No Fun.

I’ve just noticed their school is BF Skinner High School – named after the behaviourist who invented the theory of operant conditioning, and the Skinner Box, an experiment where doves were trained to collect food from a dispenser. The dispenser would randomly deliver seed in response to buttons the doves would peck, but it was always random. However, the doves would develop momre and more complex, repeated behaviours in the apparent belief that what they were doing was key to the seeds being given.

Simon is given new glasses, and suddenly he’s boring and just wants to do schoolwork.

There’s a tiny bit of the end credits of Mork and Mindy before the next episode.

Then, an episode Heart on a Chain. A new girl, Melanie, joins Marshall’s class. She has a life-threatening heart problem, and is waiting for a transplant. And all the boys in class fall in love with her. She’s played bu Danielle Harris, possibly familiar to you as Bruce Willis’ daughter in The Last Boy Scout.

Marshall gets love advice from Elvis, who lives on his paper route.

It has a sad ending.

This is the last episode here. After this, recording continues with the start of Channel 4 News. The conflict between Bosnia and Serbia is the top story. I think their spell checking fell down slightly here.
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Collection of New “Vintage” Comedy Shorts Starring “The World’s Favorite Fake 1930s Comedy Team” Available on DVD May 22, 2018

Feature-Length Compilation To Be Released on Major Digital Platforms including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and Vudu on May 22, 2018

Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to BIFFLE AND SHOOSTER, a collection of new “vintage” comedy shorts written, produced and directed by former studio exec turned award-winning independent filmmaker Michael Schlesinger.

Harking back to the glory days of Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Hope & Crosby and The Three Stooges, Biffle and Shooster are vaudeville comics who get themselves into (but seldom out of) various scrapes with a minimum of smarts and a maximum of laughs, plowing through life armed with slapstick, puns, impressions and an occasional song. Though first created by the actors who portray them, Nick Santa Maria and Will Ryan, it was Schlesinger who developed the characters into full-fledged movie stars in these amazingly authentic-looking shorts, presented in 1.37:1 and (mostly) black-and-white.

Advance screenings have already garnered lavish praise from such filmmakers and writers as Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovich, Leonard Maltin, Scott Eyman, Tim Lucas, Sid Ganis and many more.

The collection includes six shorts: “The Biffle Murder Case,” “Imitation of Wife,” “Schmo Boat,” “Bride of Finklestein” and “It’s A Frame-Up!” — plus a faux-Vitaphone novelty, “First Things Last.” Among the familiar faces in the cast of nearly 50 are Jim Beaver, Daniel Roebuck, Robert Picardo, H.M. Wynant, Dick Miller, Fay Masterson, Academy Award®-nominee Robert Forster and — though you don’t actually see his face — Academy Award®-winning VFX artist Chris Walas as a gorilla. (“Any film is improved by a gorilla,” Schlesinger noted.) The discs will contain over three hours of hilarious bonus material spanning their alleged film career from 1928 to 1962.

To avoid confusion — which is a normal state of mind for the team — the DVD will be titled THE MISADVENTURES OF BIFFLE AND SHOOSTER, to be released on May 22, 2018, while a feature-length compilation of four shorts plus additional songs and bits, simply titled THE ADVENTURES OF BIFFLE AND SHOOSTER will be available on all major digital platforms including iTunes, Amazon Instant, Google Play and Vudu, beginning May 22nd. Special features on the DVD will include audio commentaries, additional short subjects, extended and deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and bloopers and outtakes.

The deal was negotiated between Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber and Schlesigner. Schlesinger observed: “Kino Lorber was always my first choice. They’ve been around for over 40 years, I know and admire everyone there, and as one of the premier distributors of both old and new movies, who better to release a new movie that looks like an old movie?”

About Writer / Producer / Director Michael Schlesinger:
Michael Schlesinger is widely acknowledged as the dean of classic film distributors, having worked for more than 25 years at MGM, Paramount and Sony, keeping hundreds of vintage movies in theatrical release (and later on DVD), and instigating the restoration of many more, including the completion of Orson Welles’ 1942 documentary It’s All True some 50 years later. He has also recorded several DVD commentaries, including some for Kino Lorber, is a “Trailers From Hell” guru and has appeared in numerous documentaries as a film historian, as well as the recent HBO smash If You’re Not In The Obit, Eat Breakfast. Behind the camera, he wrote and produced the American version of Godzilla 2000 and co-produced such Larry Blamire parodies as The Lost Skeleton Returns Again and Dark and Stormy Night. BIFFLE AND SHOOSTER represents his first effort as a director. He hopes it won’t be his last.
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When Eerie, Indiana debuted on American television in September 1991, it was well-received by critics who favorably compared it to Twin Peaks, albeit for kids. However, I always felt that a better analogy for this clever, short-lived show was that it was actually Friday the 13th: The Series for kids. Like the protagonists in that supernatural-themed program, the main characters in Eerie – two young boys – investigated bizarre happenings and collected artifacts from their adventures. The latter was much more light-hearted in tone than Friday the 13th, but still had a creepy undertone reminiscent of episodes of the classic era of The Twilight Zone.

Eerie, Indiana was the brainchild of Jose Rivera and Karl Schaefer, both relatively inexperienced in the realm of T.V. at the time (Rivera had done a handful of episodes for various sitcoms, while Schaefer had even less experience) but they capitalized on the flood gates of weirdness that Twin Peaks broke open during its brief tenure to push through a quirky show reminiscent of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries but if written by Stephen King. However, the look and feel of the show is indebted to filmmaker Joe Dante who not only directed the first episode (and four others) but also acted as creative consultant for the series. It is easy to see what drew him to the project as the suburban setting, with child protagonists encountering fantastical events, are all hallmarks of his career.

Dante really sets the overall look and tone for the series with the first episode, entitled “Forever Ware” (a sly nod to the classic science fiction novel The Forever War by Joe Haldeman perhaps?). Marshall Teller (Omri Katz) is a 13-year-old boy whose parents have moved from New Jersey, “just across the river from New York City,” where he loved that it was “crowded, polluted and full of crime,” to the wholesome, squeaky clean suburbs of Eerie, Indiana. Sure, it looks like a cross between the all-American Lumberton in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and the cookie cutter neighborhood in Edward Scissorhands (1990), but Marshall isn’t fooled. He can see past the façade and realizes that the town is in fact the “center of weirdness for the entire planet,” where the local mailman is packing a firearm, a lady hangs her laundry to dry which includes a strait-jacket, and a graying Elvis Presley emerges from his home to pick up the daily newspaper. And in a nice Lynchian touch, a crow can be seen perched on the town sign with an eyeball in its mouth. And this is all conveyed in the prologue!

Marshall’s family is introduced to the neighborhood by Betty Wilson, an AVON lady/Stepford Wife hybrid with two sons (Bert and Ernie – har, har) that peddle ultra-efficient Tupperware called Forever Ware. Betty’s eager to not just sell Marshall’s mother (Mary-Margaret Humes) some of her containers but invite her to become part of a small circle of friends. However, when one Betty’s sons slips Marshall a cryptic note, he decides to investigate with the help of his next-door neighbor Simon (Justin Shenkarow). They soon uncover a rather sinister plot that won’t make you look at vacuum-sealed plastic containers the same way again. Of note is Dante’s trademark mix of horror and humor through the eyes of young kids.

Part of what makes Eerie, Indiana work so well is how it takes things that kids deal with while growing up and give them a slightly sinister, supernatural spin, like going through the ordeal of getting braces in “The Retainer,” which sees a hapless kid beset by a prototypical retainer created by an orthodontist cum mad scientist (played with relish by Vincent Schiavelli) that allows the wearer to hear what dogs are thinking and it ain’t pretty. Marshall and Simon uncover a canine revolution where dogs demand, “Down with Kibble!” and “No more Stupid Pet Tricks!” and “No more neutering!” The only thing that appears to be stopping them is “the mystery of the doorknob,” as one dog puts it. While these scenes are played for laughs because of the sheer absurdity of the concept, it does remind one of how poorly dogs (and animals in general) are treated in pounds/shelters and are regarded in our society.

“ATM With a Heart of Gold” places more of an emphasis on Simon as he befriends an intelligent ATM machine that Marshall’s father (Francis Guinan) invented. The machine’s interface features a computer avatar that’s a cross between Max Headroom and a Ken doll known as Mr. Wilson. Simon is just a kid who wants to belong and have friends because his home life is so crappy. In one scene, we see him walk towards a drab, earth-toned colored house where we can hear his parents arguing and fighting within. No wonder he wants to hang out with Marshall and investigate flights of fancy. Shenkarow does a nice job of conveying the longing Simon has for friends and how this leads him to befriending Mr. Wilson. This also blinds him to the machine’s creepy malfunctions. Pretty soon Simon learns that you can’t buy friendship and that money won’t solve all your problems.

Robert Altman regular Henry Gibson and Dante regular Dick Miller make an appearance in the Dante-directed episode, “The Losers,” and seem to be having a blast playing men responsible for all the recently disappearing items in Eerie. There are some nice visual gags in this one as we get a look at a few rather famous missing items found in their lair, chief among them a pod from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and the sled from Citizen Kane (1941). This is definitely a more playful, whimsical episode and it is great to see veteran character actors like Gibson and Miller playing such pivotal roles.

I always enjoy Halloween-themed episodes of T.V. shows and Eerie, Indiana does not disappoint with “America’s Scariest Home Video,” which pays homage to the Boris Karloff 1932 horror film The Mummy as Marshall and Simon are stuck babysitting Simon’s little brother only to have the mischievous tyke transport himself into a horror film on T.V. and the Mummy in the film appearing in the house. The fog-enshrouded night and decrepit monster always make me think of John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) minus the scary pirates from beyond.

In 1990, co-creator Jose Rivera was working on an idea for a horror anthology show set in a high school that would have been a teenage version of The Twilight Zone. Meanwhile, co-creator Karl Schaefer had an idea for a modern-day Tom Sawyer story. An agent got the two men together and they merged their ideas to create Eerie, Indiana. Schaefer described the show as “a twisted, modern fairy tale.” Rivera grew up loving fairy tales and wanted to impart notions of magic realism into suburbia, “that beneath the veneer of malls and crossing guards there lurks a deeper reality of something just slightly off-centre.”

He and Rivera picked Indiana because it had the image of “being a benign, harmless place to live.” They also asked Joe Dante to direct the pilot episode and with him convinced the executives at NBC to air the show. Schaefer said that the network liked the central character Marshall but they had to be convinced that the concept of the show would work because it was so different from NBC’s usual fare. In retrospect, Dante considered Eerie, Indiana a dream project because he was there at its inception and was then asked to stay on as a creative consultant. As a result, he even had a hand in casting Omri Katz. The producers originally wanted “this geeky kid,” according to Dante, but he felt Katz was more authentic and the young actor was cast. Dante was obviously taken with Katz as he subsequently cast him in his next film, Matinee (1993).

Eerie, Indiana was well-received by critics when it first debuted on television. Entertainment Weekly gave it a "B" rating and Ken Tucker wrote, "You watch Eerie for the small-screen spectacle of it all — to see the way, in the show's first few weeks, feature-film directors like Joe Dante (Gremlins) and Tim Hunter (River’s Edge) oversaw episodes that summoned up an atmosphere of absurdist suburban dread. The Hollywood Reporter’s Miles Beller wrote, "Scripted by Karl Schaefer and Jose Rivera with smart, sharp insights; slyly directed by feature film helmsman Joe Dante; and given edgy life by the show's winning cast, Eerie, Indiana shapes up as one of the fall season's standouts, a newcomer that has the fresh, bracing look of Edward Scissorhands and scores as a clever, wry presentation well worth watching." USA Today described the show as "Stephen King by way of The Simpsons," and Matt Roush wrote, "Eerie recalls Edward Scissorhands and even – heaven help it – David Lynch in its garish nightmare-comedy depiction of the lurid and silly horrors that lurk beneath suburban conformity." Finally, the Washington Times’ David Klinghoffer wrote, "Everything about the pilot exceeds the normal minimal expectations of TV. Mr. Dante directs as if he were making a movie, and a good one. In a departure from usual TV operating procedures, he sometimes actually has more than one thing going on on screen at the same time!"

After Eerie, Indiana’s demise, co-creator Karl Schaefer stayed in the genre, writing and producing T.V. shows routed in fantasy and horror, like Stephen King’s Dead Zone, Eureka and The Ghost Whisperer. Jose Rivera also continued to dabble in the supernatural, writing episodes for Goosebumps, Night Visions and Shadow Realm before moving on much acclaim with his screenplay for The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) and adapting Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road for the big screen. Omri Katz worked again with Dante in Matinee and starred in the fun family film about witches, Hocus Pocus (1993) before going back to T.V. with the short-lived but critically-acclaimed, The John Larroquette Show. Aside from a couple of one-off guest spots here and there, he’s largely dropped out of the business, which is a shame. Since Eerie, Justin Shenkarow has worked steadily in T.V. and movies, most notable a regular on the show Picket Fences while also doing a lot of voice work. Joe Dante has found it increasingly harder to get his kind of films made and has also gone back to T.V., directing two episodes apiece for the horror anthology shows Night Visions and Masters of Horror. He has made a new film called The Hole (2009), which is still without a North American distributor (?!).

Eerie, Indiana takes the trials and tribulations of a teenage boy, like his first crush on a girl, and gives them a supernatural spin – said girl gets a heart transplant from another boy that liked her and begins acting like him. The otherworldly aspects allow the show to deal with heavy topics like life and death while still aiming it at kids. However, there are plenty references for adults to recognize and enjoy, like the numerous visual cues to classic horror films and guest stars, like John Astin, from classic film and T.V., that elevates it above typical kiddie fare. Eerie’s influence can still be felt in more recent kid shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Goosebumps, and the more recent House of Anubis. However, none of its offspring could quite duplicate the diversity of Eerie, which wasn’t afraid to end some episodes on a whimsical note, or on an ominous one, or even in a poignant way. And I think this is down to the presence of Joe Dante, who instilled that X-factor missing from other shows of its ilk. Much like what David Lynch brought to Twin Peaks, Dante gave Eerie, Indiana the look and feel of cinema with each episode having his personal touch regardless of whether he directed it or not. This is why the show still holds up today and works whether you’re a young kid or simply young at heart.
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[personal profile] froodle
The success of Batman: The Animated Series allowed its original creators, Eric Radomski and Bruce W. Timm, some room to experiment with the show in other formats, principally movies. The first out of the gate was Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (sometimes referred to as Batman: The Animated Movie). Released to theaters in 1993, it told the story of the caped crusader taking on the mysterious Phantasm, who is killing mob bosses all over Gotham City with Batman taking the blame. On the hunt from the cops, as well as trying to discover the Joker’s role in all of it, Batman must find a way to solve the riddle of Phantasm while at the same time reconciling a relationship tied to his dark past.

Most cite Mask of the Phantasm as one of the all-time best Batman movies, animated or otherwise, and for good reason. It’s a brisk, well-told story with little fat to it, but also adds some necessary character development. Being a continuation of the original series, it stays true to the characters, the story, and the animation style, but expands upon the mythos of Batman and Gotham City’s underworld. We learn through flashbacks of Bruce Wayne’s lost love who is intrinsically connected to his burdened desire of becoming the Batman, while at the same time following the developing plot of the Phantasm. All of the series’ main cast returns, including Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Bob Hastings, and Efrem Zembalist, Jr. There’s also a variety of new voices added to the mix, including Dick Miller, Dana Delaney, Stacey Keach, and Abe Vigoda.


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There is a long and respected history of filmmaking teams, whether they’re writers and directors (like Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader), directors and producers (like Danny Boyle and Andrew MacDonald), or directors and actors (like Tim Burton and Johnny Depp). It’s clear that some filmmakers bring out the best in each other, and in working together, audiences get the best from both of them.

This is definitely true in the horror arena, where directors and actors reteam with regular consistency. So who are the iconic horror director/actor teams? Who is the Scorsese/De Niro duo of gore? The Kurosawa/Mifune team of the supernatural? This is a list of some of the most frequent and enjoyable collaborations in horror film history (in no particular order):

2. Joe Dante and Robert Picardo, Dick Miller, and Kevin McCarthy

Sometimes, a filmmaker finds a muse in an actor because that actor captures something distinct and unique about their filmmaking style and message. And sometimes, directors are just loyal to the people who started with them, and they enjoy having fun, talented people around them.

In this case, Joe Dante constantly works with actors he likes on multiple occasions, from Rick Ducommun to Henry Gibson. But by far, his most frequent collaborators have been Robert Picardo, Dick Miller, and Kevin McCarthy.

Dick Miller has been with Dante since the beginning, appearing in Hollywood Boulevard when Dante worked for Roger Corman. McCarthy joined one movie later, in Piranha, and Picardo joined the troupe in 1981 as the villain in The Howling. Since 1981, Dante has made 14 feature films and there hasn’t been a single movie that hasn’t had at least one of those three actors in it. The real question is, when Dante makes the Roger Corman biopic The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes next year, will Dick Miller play himself from fifty years ago?

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