Staying After Hours in The Twilight Zone

It's March once again, time to do some Spring cleaning on the cobwebs of your mind and celebrate, along with blogathon host Terence Towles Canote at A Shroud of Thoughts, all those classic TV episodes that entranced us, entertained us, and even inspired us.

"Inspiring" isn't too strong a word in describing Rod Sterling's The Twilight Zone, as it came along at just the right time for Boomer Monster Kids like myself, stimulating their sense of wonder, giving a slew of future star actors some unique, meaty roles, and showing the way for a new generation of fantasy authors and filmmakers.

Also inspiring was the way in which Sterling and his stable of writers could take elements and objects of ordinary middle class life, add a twist or two, and come up with intelligent, albeit sobering and often macabre, commentaries on the human condition.

The beauty of the series was that the lessons were often seamlessly woven into a dark tapestry of imagination that seemed far removed from any kind of forced social messaging. It's the kind of schooling through entertainment we could use more of today.

The Twilight Zone did its thing so well that it still.has a hold on the popular imagination over six decades later. Indicative of its stature is the series' continued use for New Year's Day broadcast marathons, such as the the recent fest on the Heroes and Icons (H&I) channel. Even though episodes are available on demand at other locations, I went old school, pretending it was still the VCR era, and recorded a bunch of them for bingeing. Somehow, just setting up the recordings gave me a warm, nostalgic feeling.

I've written before on this blog about "lost" Twilight Zone episodes -- lost in the sense that I don't remember seeing them as a kid, and only (re)discovered them in the streaming era (see my posts here and here). Now that the New Year's recordings have run out, I've been sampling episodes from TUBI's on demand stash.

Now Playing: "The After Hours," season 1, episode 34 of The Twilight Zone, first aired June 10, 1960. Written by Rod Serling, directed by Douglas Heyes, and starring Anne Francis, Elizabeth Allen and James Millhollin.

One of the episodes that I binged recently, "The After Hours," is something I definitely remember from those halcyon days sitting in front of the black and white console TV. While it doesn't have the surprise gut punch of more celebrated TZ episodes, "After Hours" effectively establishes a dark and creepy atmosphere, only to end on an unexpectedly upbeat note (in a twisted fairy tale sort of way).

Anne Francis plays Marsha White, an attractive but nervous young woman who is hoping to get a gift for her mother at a busy downtown department store. After distractedly perusing items in various display cases, she heads for the elevator, which seems to be running slow, as there is a crowd of shoppers huddling in front of it.

Fortuitously, an adjacent elevator door opens, and an operator in a dapper uniform beckons to Marsha. Marsha informs him she's after something very specific -- a gold thimble -- to which he dryly responds that she wants the "specialties" department on the 9th floor. Except, after the door closes and it cuts to a close-up of the floor indicators above the elevator, we see there is no 9th floor!

The elevator doors open on a dimly lit, seemingly abandoned floor with empty, dusty display cases. Even as Marsha protests that "there's nothing here," the operator silently closes the doors, stranding her on the mysterious 9th floor.

As Marsha nervously looks around, a figure emerges from the shadows in the form of an elegantly dressed woman (Elizabeth Allen), who asks Marsha, "Can I show you something?" Oddly, the only piece of merchandise is the very gold thimble that Marsha was looking for. More suspicious still, the sales woman knows Marsha's name.

Marsha, increasingly nervous, only wants to pay for the gift and get out of there. As she heads for the elevator, the woman calls after her, "Marsha, are you happy?," as if they've known each other for years. When Marsha retorts that it's none of her business, she reacts strangely, throwing up her hands in exasperation, "Alright Miss White, suit yourself, it's none of my business!"

In the elevator, Marsha notices that the thimble she just bought is scratched and dented. The equally exasperated elevator operator drops her off at the Complaints dept. on the 3rd floor, where she proceeds to harass the management with her story of being sold damaged goods by a very odd sales woman on the non-existent 9th floor. Assistant manager Mr. Armbruster (James Millhollin), already a nervous type himself, has his hands full with the dissatisfied customer.

As Armbruster and his boss the store manager try to make sense of Marsha's story, she spies the very woman who sold her the thimble, who is standing across the room, her back turned to her. Just as Marsha calls out, she gets a bad shock when a store employee literally picks up the mysterious sales woman, who turns out to be a very lifelike display mannequin.

Ready to faint, Marsha is deposited on a couch in a store office, while Armbruster complains about the young woman to another employee. As it nears closing time, both the nervous assistant manager and the employee are distracted by duties and forget about Marsha, who wakes up to find herself in an eerily still, shadowy room long after the store has closed.

If the 9th floor seemed odd, her present predicament is positively frightening, as the elevators aren't working and she's effectively locked in. The mannequins situated around the room certainly don't help ease her anxiety, and when she hears them calling out her name, she realizes in a panic that she's not in Kansas anymore, so to speak.

Many of the series' best episodes featured dark fairy tales superimposed on the most prosaic of mid-20th century settings, i.e., "After Hours'" downtown department store. The moment Marsha gets on the elevator, she, and we, know that something is very off, not the least of which is the stiff, laconic elevator jockey.

The deserted 9th floor ups the weirdness factor a notch or two, as does the materialization of the sales woman out of the shadows, as if she's not just an employee, but a part of the very building itself. Her penetrating stare as she "helps" Marsha find her thimble, and her more vulnerable reaction of exasperation as Marsha retreats to the exit, combine to unsettle both the viewer and the story's protagonist.

But it's not just the sales woman who is odd. Marsha's quest for a gold thimble for her mother seems a bit peculiar (although you can never tell what a collector might obsess over). This is a strange object to be looking for in a bustling urban department store, which reinforces the folk tale quality of the story.

Sterling's script wisely interposes the comic relief of assistant manager Armbruster between the weirdness of the 9th floor and the terror of the shadowy Complaints department. Actor James Millhollin, with his doughy, everyman face and nervous ticks, perfectly captures a character who has neither the time, inclination or imagination to solve his problem customer's mystery. Armbruster is emblematic of the ordinariness of busy, everyday life that is in stark contrast to the haunted fantasy world that Marsha experiences when she becomes trapped in the deserted store.

On the other hand, the mannequins in "After Hours" represent a bridge from the prosaic world we all know to Marsha's nightmare world. They are the ultimate uncanny objects -- at a glance they look like real, honest-to-goodness people, but upon closer examination, the differences become more than a little unnerving, especially in the stillness of the night.

Japanese robot expert Midi Mashahiro called the instinctive repulsion toward things that appear almost but not quite human the "uncanny valley." (Michael Dylan Foster, The Book of Yokai, University of California Press, 2024, p. 105.) Recently, AI generated "people" have taken over from mannequins and robots in plumbing the depths of the valley, resulting in a good deal of public backlash.

"After Hours" exploits that natural repulsion, effectively raising goosebumps when night falls on the department store and its spooky denizens. But by the conclusion, Serling is winking at us, turning the lights on after figuratively yelling "Boo!" and transforming shudders into a sense of wonder. What if something made to be so very lifelike could actually capture the essence of life, if even for a short time? And what if, like in any society, there were rules for using that gift?

In The Twilight Zone Companion, author Marc Scott Zicree has high praise for the people who helped Serling turn his ordinary department store into a dark fantasy world. Zicree credits director Douglas Heyes with making "use of a wide variety of shots to create tension: long shots of silhouetted figures, closeups of Anne Francis's feet as she walks down darkened aisles, shots through pebbled glass of her face -- and through all of this, the camera is almost always in motion, as though it were itself a character, nervously stalking."

As for Anne Francis, at the time of this episode, her iconic appearance in Forbidden Planet (1956) was behind her, and her starring role in in the trailblazing TV show Honey West was several years in the future. Zicree sings her praises: "No amount of visual flair could make this episode work without a strong central presence, and this is where the contribution of Anne Francis comes in. ... There's an energy about her and a freshness, an individuality."

He also quotes Francis herself as saying, "I still have people who walk up to me and say 'The favorite show that I ever saw was that ["After Hours"].' It did make a mark, it did make an impression." (Marc Scott Zicree, The Twilight Zone Companion, 3rd Edition, Silman-James Press, 2018, pp. 117-118.)

Credit too goes to actress Elizabeth Allen for making a big impression in a small part as the enigmatic sales woman on the 9th floor. Her strange familiarity helps build the atmosphere of unease and mystery. (See also my post about Allen's contribution to the creepy Thriller episode "The Grim Reaper.")

All this talent coalesced into the making of a unique modern fairy tale of an unseen world within a world, one of the better episodes of the series.

That '70s Sci-fi TV Movie #2: A Cold Night's Death

Now Playing: A Cold Night's Death (TV movie, 1973)

Pros: Establishes a dark, moody atmosphere and nicely ratchets up the tension; the leads are absolutely believable as two men trying to hold onto their sanity
Cons: Occasional clumsy bits of dialog

This suspense-thriller starts off very much like an Outer Limits episode -- Mr. “Control Voice” voice himself, Vic Perrin, narrates (in voiceover) the recent history of a remote mountain research station as we see a helicopter delivering a new pair of scientists to the station in the middle of a snowstorm.

The facility, located at the permanently snowy peak of Tower Mountain, is being used to house chimpanzees and monkeys involved in space medicine research, testing the limits of primate endurance under extreme conditions. (My biggest beef with the movie is that you don’t need to locate your lab on top of a nearly inaccessible mountain to simulate extreme conditions for experimental purposes, but we’ll set that aside for now.)

Regular contact with the sole scientist running the lab, Dr. Vogel, has been lost, and in his last communication, the man seemed to be losing his mind, insisting that he had been talking with Alexander the Great and Napoleon.

The replacement team, Robert Jones (Robert Culp) and Frank Enari (Eli Wallach) find the facility in total chaos, equipment and papers scattered, the heat off, and the monkeys nearly frozen to death in their cages. Most horrific, they find Vogel completely frozen in a chair in the electronics room, a nearby window open to the elements.

The replacement team gets a chilly reception at the research station.

After restoring heat and order to the facility, Robert and Frank resume the experiments (apparently the show must go on). But soon, a series of incidents -- the monkeys screaming in the night, equipment mysteriously turned on, windows opened and the generator turned off by an unseen hand, food stores ripped apart and scattered across the kitchen -- cause the two scientists to turn on each other. Or is there someone or something else hiding out at the station?

A Cold Night’s Death is dark and chilling (no pun intended). After the departure of the helicopter pilot, the movie is all Culp’s and Wallach’s, and the two veteran actors do a superb job of gradually surrendering their characters to paranoia and suspicion.

There are some awkward moments. Twice in the 70 minute long movie, Frank talks at length about how he is a by-the-book type who just wants to keep his head down and do the work, while Robert is an intellectual dreamer who needs mysteries and challenges to stay engaged. Under the circumstances, it’s not necessary for the two men to have such wildly divergent personalities to begin suspecting one another, but the dialog hammers the point home.

Frank and Robert wonder who's been monkeying around with their stuff.

It’s enough that the characters demonstrate their differences by their actions: Robert goes into detective mode, wondering why Vogel shut himself up in the only room that could be locked from the inside to freeze to death, while fussy Frank immerses himself in finishing the experiments, cooking the meals and pretending nothing out of the ordinary is happening (until, as things get really bad, he becomes convinced that Robert is off his rocker and staging everything).

While there are subtle clues dropped throughout, many viewers will probably still be surprised by Robert’s late epiphany regarding the locked electronics room and Vogel’s last, crazy communications with the outside world -- not to mention the surprise ending.

In his book Television Fright Films of the 1970s, David Deal praises A Cold Night’s Death, calling it “...one of the leanest telefrights of the era. It is essentially a two-man show and the bulk of the action takes place on a single set. Regardless, it is a crackerjack production boasting a tight script, good acting and a feel for psychological isolation.” He also relates that screenwriter Christopher Knopf earned an Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America for his efforts. [McFarland, 2007, p. 18.; see also my review of the book on this site]

At this point in his career, Robert Culp was no stranger to TV sci-fi, having appeared in no fewer than 3 episodes of The Outer Limits series (including the Harlan Ellison-scripted fan favorite Demon with a Glass Hand). Later in the ‘70s he played an occult investigator in Spectre (1977), a Gene Roddenberry TV pilot that went nowhere but has since earned a minor cult reputation.

Public Service Announcement: When shoveling snow, don't overdo it.

Eli Wallach of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly fame (1966) spent the ‘70s appearing in a succession of smaller films and TV movies and series, with occasional stopovers in Italy to do westerns and suspense thrillers. One of his oddest roles was as “the man in oil” in the David Carradine martial arts fantasy-adventure Circle of Iron (1978).

Where to find it: A watchable copy can be streamed here.

A Bad Trip Down Memory Lane

Blue Sunshine (1978)

Okay, a show of hands-- who's old enough to remember the 16mm films they showed in junior high health class that tried to scare you straight? I remember several of them: one about drinking and driving featured what seemed like endless footage of particularly gruesome car wrecks; another with Sonny and Cher demonstrating the evils of marijuana was both silly and entertaining (for all the wrong reasons) -- the effects of the evil old weed were so over the top, that it had even us naive, midwestern 13-year-olds guffawing in disbelief and derision. The one that particularly sticks in my memory was a dire warning about the horrendous side effects of LSD, including chromosomal damage. Much of the film consisted of stills of babies with horrific birth defects supposedly born to reckless LSD takers. Of course, that chromosomal damage stuff has since been pretty much debunked. In retrospect, I imagine the filmmakers, in their zeal to turn kids away from the dark side, weren't all that scrupulous about the true cause of the birth defects they showed for shock effect -- such is propaganda.

Not that LSD is harmless-- not by a long shot. Like so many man-made things, it can be used and abused. Years before Timothy Leary experimented with psychedelic drugs at Harvard, the CIA became interested in LSD (among other drugs) for bolstering its "special" interrogation techniques. In the fifties, the national security establishment tested their special techniques on unwilling and/or unwitting participants. In one deplorable instance, prisoners at a federal prison in Kentucky were kept high on LSD for 77 consecutive days. In another, an army civilian employee, Frank Olson, was slipped LSD without his knowledge. He jumped out of a New York hotel window to his death. (Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Anchor Books, 2008.) On the flip side, researchers in Switzerland have recently used LSD to alleviate anxiety in the terminally ill, with promising results.

I don't know if Blue Sunshine was ever screened in an educational setting to scare kids off illicit drugs, but I'd say it's easily as effective as a bogus Sonny and Cher anti-drug dog-and-pony show, and much, much scarier (although, probably not as scary as Cher in Burlesque). While the film can be seen as a straight anti-drug cautionary tale, there are other, subtler things going on in the background that take the viewer on a trip (bad pun intended) down unexpected side roads.

Blue Sunshine starts off with an effectively eerie title sequence. As the credits roll, a full blue moon ascends to the strains of Charles Gross' haunting original music. Cleverly and efficiently, we're introduced to three characters through the title sequence: a pill-popping surgeon, an attractive divorcee, and a harried cop with family problems. Each is relatively young, in their mid-thirties, and each one seems to be having a bad time of it, near the edge of a physical or nervous breakdown, or both. They all seem to have one thing in common-- bad, bad headaches that cause them to stare wildly off into space. As each little character drama plays out, the ominous blue moon descends each time and more credits unfold to the weird, haunting strains of the theme music.

Cut to a house party, where a group of thirty-somethings are letting down their frizzy, 70's-style hair. One guy is imitating the Japanese movie monster Rodan (Rodan? Really?) Another is doing a poor Sinatra imitation. Our protagonist, Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King), is hanging back in his cheesy holiday sweater, enjoying the company of his cute blonde girlfriend Alicia (Deborah Winters). Just when we think we're going to get a break from the simmering tension of the title sequence, the Sinatra imitator (Richard Crystal) pretends to plant a big wet kiss on one of the party girls. Her boyfriend playfully grabs at the man's collar in mock disapproval, and suddenly the faux crooner's wig comes off in his hand. Everyone's stunned as the man stands stock still, a few long strands of hair dangling from his otherwise cue-bald head. Cut to an extreme close-up of the man's now wild eyes darting back and forth. He runs out the front door.

Jerry Zipkin reacts in horror to the murder and
mayhem caused by "Blue Sunshine"

The house party turns into a search party as the man's friends pile into a car to go looking for him. Jerry volunteers to search around the premises. Three women stay behind at the house -- big mistake. In one of the most gut-wrenching scenes that I can recall from that time period, the bald man suddenly returns to the house, and in a maniacal fit, proceeds to stuff the three screaming women into the roaring fireplace. Jerry, hearing their screams, returns to find the gruesome handiwork. Still in a state of shock, he's ambushed by the maniac. The man seems to have superhuman strength, and Jerry runs for his life. The struggling pair end up on a nearby road, where in desperation, Jerry shoves the maniac in front of a truck. To the truckers, it looks like Jerry's the maniac. Jerry takes off in a panic with one of the drivers in pursuit. Back at the house, the confused trucker confronts Jerry, shooting him in the arm. Jerry escapes in a car, with the trucker firing off a couple more rounds as he speeds away.

Whew! I remember being deeply impressed when I first saw this scene in the early '80s. Compared to the gothic Universal and costumed Hammer horrors that I was used to, this terror erupting from the most mundane of settings -- a cocktail party -- was a revelation.  From this wild beginning, Blue Sunshine diverges into several intertwined story lines: 1.) Jerry attempts to figure out what's going on and clear his name while the cops try in vain to catch him; and 2.) we see the bills coming due, so to speak, for a number of otherwise solid citizens who partook of too much bad acid ten years previously. Writer-director Jeff Lieberman very cleverly picks a cross section of America -- a photographer, a cop, a doctor, a young divorced woman, and an ex-football player / Congressional campaign manager -- as both victims and perpetrators of the excesses of the late '60s. It's as if the whole country, and not just a few individuals, was experiencing the mother of all bad flashbacks.

One of the film's flaws (easily forgiven), is the ease with which mass-murder suspect Jerry flits around L.A. with the help of his girlfriend, breaking into houses and knocking on doors in pursuit of the truth. For all the effort the cops put into the chase, you'd think he was wanted for overdue parking fines instead of murder. This gives Jerry a chance to piece together the full, horrific story. First he investigates an eerily similar set of murders involving a bald cop who suddenly loses it and chops up his family. Then he traces an old psychedelic portrait labeled "Blue Sunshine" to the charismatic Ed Flemming (Mark Goddard of Lost in Space fame), who just happens to be running for Congress. As Jerry figures out the common connections -- time: 1967; place: Stanford; illicit drug of choice: "Blue Sunshine" LSD -- Jerry just happens to witness a couple of more instances of Blue Sunshine's slow-acting chromosomal damage. The victims all suffer from debilitating headaches, bad dreams, hair falling out by the fistful, and, worst of all, homicidal psychotic breaks.

Is this man suffering from bad acid, or bad disco music... or both?

Lieberman sets up a number of masterful suspense sequences worthy of Hitchcock himself. One involves a red herring of sorts. Without going into too much detail, it involves a character who seems to fit all the criteria for a Blue Sunshine-induced psychotic break, and the fun and suspense comes from watching Jerry desperately trying to decide if the person is ready to explode, and if he should intervene or not. Another involves a slow elevator that might mean the difference between life and death. Lieberman's also not above a little tongue-in-cheek social criticism. Jerry's girlfriend manages to save him from another LSD-fueled maniac with the ultimate weapon-- disco music turned up to full volume.

Other touches elevate Blue Sunshine out of the realm of a simple cautionary anti-drug horror tale and into art house territory. In one scene that seems to serve no dramatic purpose, Jerry is mistaken for a dealer by a pathetic, desperate junkie, while a mute, creepy bald man (not a Blue Sunshine maniac) appears out of nowhere with an idiot grin on his face. At the film's climax, mute, bald department store mannequins look on as Jerry struggles with another victim of the LSD plague. On one level, the baldness (not to mention the madness) seems to be Fate's ultimate revenge on a generation that celebrated excess in so many things, including hair. On another, it's symptomatic of a more widespread malaise-- this empty, materialistic late 20th century (now early 21st) lifestyle that has us feeling less in control than ever, and (literally and figuratively) tearing our hair out.

Jeff Lieberman is a true low-budget auteur. He wrote and directed a handful of quirky horror films in the '70s and '80s (and managed to write and direct again in the 2000's with Satan's Little Helper). Of these, Squirm (1976; about a town infested with man-eating worms) and Blue Sunshine have earned the biggest cult reputations. (In a DVD extra interview, Lieberman said he was most pleased with Just Before Dawn, 1981, about a group of campers who encounter a machete-wielding maniac in the woods. Lieberman also noted that he made far more money writing Hollywood screenplays that were never produced than he did with the cult favorites he made himself.)

Sadly, Zalman King died just a little over a month ago; he was only 70. Some reviewers (especially IMDb users) have been pretty harsh in their assessment of King's performance. They complain that he's all over the map-- stone-faced one moment and having a conniption fit the next. I think they miss the point. King's Jerry Zipkin fits right into the film's what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen-next? atmosphere. Not only are we worried about the Stanford class of '67 and when and how they're going to flip out, we're worried about Zipkin and what he's going to do-- in the back of our minds, we're not so sure he didn't partake of the bad acid himself. In the early '80s King gave up acting to produce and direct-- primarily soft-core erotic movies and TV shows like Two Moon Junction (1988), Wild Orchid (1989) and the Red Shoe Diaries (1992 - 2006).

Fortunately, Blue Sunshine is the closest most of us will ever get to experiencing a bad LSD trip. The celluloid trip is quite fun. Back in 2003, Synapse Films came out with a special 2-disc set with the film, a CD of the eerie soundtrack and interesting extras including Lieberman reminiscing over roads taken and not taken in his film career. It's also available to stream from both Amazon.com and Netflix.


Did you ever hear the words "Blue Sunshine"?

The Scarecrow Before Christmas

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

OK, I admit it. This time of the year is a bit hard for me, because my predilection for dark and sinister movies doesn't exactly fit in with the joyous spirit of the holidays. It's not that I can't do light holiday fare-- I've enjoyed White Christmas (1954) and Holiday Inn (1942) multiple times. But, this being a blog dedicated to horror, sci-fi and thrillers, I'd rather not dilute my brand too much by including them here. On occasion, the uncanny and the holidays do mix -- Dickens' A Christmas Carol being the most obvious example. Of course, every film and TV version of Dickens' classic has been reviewed countless times by actual professionals, so adding my two cents would be somewhat pointless. And film industry attempts to mix Christmas and horror have tended to be bottom-of-the-barrel slasher stuff (e.g., Silent Night, Deadly Night, 1984; Santa Claws, 1996), which, fortunately for all of us, doesn't interest me in the slightest.

So, at the risk of going against the holiday grain, let's talk about scarecrows (or in this season of leftovers, let's think of it as Halloween leftovers). What is it about this leftover from our agricultural past that makes it so scary? While the scarecrow as a horror icon is not quite on par with the estimable vampire and zombie, there's no denying its staying (and scaring) power. As I browsed through the local Spirit Halloween store a couple of months ago, I was struck by all the scarecrow-themed masks, costumes and animated figures on display. Even as actual use of scarecrows out there has dwindled to next to nothing, public captivation with them lingers on. Someone (not me!) could perhaps write a treatise on residual animist beliefs that survive even in advanced technological societies, but what it all comes down to is the discomfort most of us have with things that are made to look human, but aren't. We know on a rational level that the scarecrow is only old clothes, burlap sacks and straw, but some tiny sliver of a much more primitive part of our brain wonders if there isn't something alive, possibly malevolent, hiding behind the dark cut-out holes that are supposed to be its eyes.

The 1981 CBS-TV movie Dark Night of the Scarecrow exploits this primal fear very effectively. So effectively, that it has stuck (like a pitchfork) in the brains of horror fans for decades, and has been released on video twice (most recently a very nice digitally restored version released by VCI Entertainment). The movie's supernatural horror is set in motion by a horror of a different kind-- small-town bigotry and fear that escalates into a murderous frenzy. In one of the great performances of his long career, Charles Durning plays Otis P. Hazilrigg, a priggish and officious postman who seems to think his uniform makes him the de facto leader and protector of the small rural town that he delivers mail to. In Dark Night's opening minutes, we find out that Otis is very concerned about the friendship of a developmentally disabled man, Bubba (Larry Drake), and a young girl, Marylee Williams (Tonya Crowe). While we see the complete sweetness and innocence of the friendship between the child and the man-child, Otis conjures up something perverse and disturbing from the depths of his reptilian brain. Goaded on about the questionable relationship by one of his hayseed friends, Otis spits out his hatred for Bubba like a tinpot Gestapo making plans to rid his little corner of the world of rabble and filth:

He's a blight, like stinkweed and cutworm that you spray and spray to get rid of but [they] always keep coming back. … Something's gotta be done… but it has to be permanent!

Otis soon gets his chance when a tearful Bubba shows up at the Williams house with Marylee unconscious in his arms, crying "Bubba didn't do it!" With rumors swirling that the Williams girl is dead and Bubba is responsible, the arrogant postman quickly takes the law into his own hands and forms a posse with three of his redneck friends. Bubba stumbles home with the vigilantes in close pursuit. Bubba's mother (Jocelyn Brando, Marlon's older sister) knows of Otis' hatred for her son, and thinking quickly, encourages him to "play the hiding game." Unfortunately, Bubba's hiding place fools no one. Otis slowly walks up to a scarecrow in a nearby field, and gets close enough to see Bubba's red-rimmed, terrified eyes through the cutout holes in the burlap head. Guns at the ready, the men are nervous and hesitant about what to do. Even the normally resolute Otis seems unsure of himself and his plan to find a "permanent" solution to the problem of Bubba. But then, ironically, a crow flies up and caws, causing the nervous men to start firing. Poor innocent Bubba, hoisted on the scarecrow framework like a Christ figure, is riddled with bullet holes.

Bubba's hiding place is quickly discovered
by the crazed vigilantes.

After learning from the radio dispatcher that the little Williams girl is alive -- she had been attacked by a neighbor's dog, and Bubba had rescued her -- Otis calmly takes a pitchfork from a posse member's truck and sticks it in Bubba's hand. The resulting inquest is a total whitewash, with the presiding judge and most of the town siding with cocky Otis and his murderous stooges in their protestations that they were only defending themselves. Only the incorruptible district attorney Sam Willock (Tom Taylor) and Bubba's grieving mother seem to know what really happened. But the redneck posse's cockiness soon turns into confusion and then terror, as a supernatural agency begins to dispense severe justice in the wake of the town's failure to act.

One of the brilliant aspects of Dark Night is its slow buildup from Otis' and his crew's certainty that they have gotten away with murder, to inklings that all is not right, to abject terror as an unseen vigilante is stalking each of them in turn. Correspondingly, the movie literally gets darker and darker with each scene, starting with the innocent play of Bubba and Marylee shot in bright, glorious California daylight, and ending in the dead of night in a lonely field where the last perpetrator is held to account. The supporting cast of redneck vigilantes each gets a neat acting turn as they fall prey to the unstoppable avenging force. First, they each encounter the inanimate scarecrow that seems to pop up out of nowhere, standing in silent accusation. Then, fittingly, they meet their fates via the very farm implements that are their livelihood.

Otis the evil mailman (Charles Durning) encounters
justice from beyond the grave.

But the movie really belongs to Durning's Otis. His attempts to keep it all together as it becomes apparent that justice will be done by a force far beyond his control or understanding keep the viewer wondering what he will do next, and what further depredations he's capable of. Little touches that reveal the character's mindset -- like a glimpse of Otis' modest boarding room decorated with flags, war memorabilia, and a bust of Napoleon -- are unusual for a low-budget TV movie. To the bitter end, the sweating, panicked Otis refuses to believe in the supernatural, preferring to believe that the upstanding D.A. Willock is orchestrating the whole thing. In the DVD commentary, Director Frank De Fellita and writer J.D. Feigelson noted that Durning (who filled in for Strother Martin, who passed away before filming got started) was initially put off by his character's unremittingly evil nature. But apparently he revised his assessment of the character and the film when it unexpectedly became a cult hit.

Two other aspects of Dark Night propel it above and beyond the usual TV movie fare. Child actor Tonya Crowe is very effective as Bubba's best (and seemingly only) friend. In one chilling scene at a school Halloween party, she matter-of-factly tells the desperate Otis that Bubba told her what he did. "Bubba didn't tell you anything" the Otis exclaims. "Bubba's dead!" "I know," she says flatly, but with a burning malice in her eyes (see the clip below). To complement the great acting, Glenn Paxton's original score masterfully accents the growing darkness and suspense.

I do have one reservation with the movie. I have a hard time reconciling the live Bubba's gentleness with the remorseless supernatural avenging force, in spite of the horrific evil that was done to him. (Larry Drake would later very successfully play another gentle, developmentally disabled man, Benny Stulwicz, in NBC's hit series  L.A. Law). I prefer to interpret the dark happenings as the result of the psychic outrage of those who dearly loved Bubba -- his mother, Marylee, and the D.A. -- sparking a kind of ancient spirit that acts on Bubba's behalf, leading the perpetrators to just deserts partly of their own making. So call me a sentimentalist!

VCI Entertainment's DVD or Blu-ray release of this timeless classic should be right at the top of your holiday shopping list for that horror aficionado in your life.


A desperate Otis, trying to find out more about the implacable supernatural force pursuing him, gets no help from Bubba's young friend Marylee: