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Tag Archives: Rod Serling

THE VAST OF NIGHT CASTS A DREAMY SPELL

02 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

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Andrew Patterson, Jake Horowitz, Rod Serling, Sierra McCormick, The Twilight Zone, The Vast of Night

Somewhere Rod Serling is smiling. Nearly 61 years after the 1959 premiere of his classic sci-fi series The Twilight Zone comes a whip-smart movie that plays as if it could be one of show’s greatest episodes. A spooky mystery tale set in 1950s New Mexico, it makes a virtue out of its small budget, creating an eerie sense of paranoia and hair-raising thrills out of offbeat characters, ingenious use of a screen gone pitch-black (and held there), evocative sound design, and a portentous score.

It seems like just an ordinary Friday night in Cayuga, NM, for 16-year-old Fay (Sierra McCormick) and her DJ friend Everett (Jake Horowitz). It is the night of the high school basketball team’s biggest game of the season, an event that will draw in most of the town. But after visiting the gym to try to diagnose a problem with flickering lights and showing Fay how to use her new reel-to-reel tape recorder, he is off to his night shift at WOTW radio. Fay, too, has a job to go to, manning the town’s switchboard. But before long, a bizarre audio tone, disconnected phone calls, a mysterious caller to Everett’s show, sudden disappearances, and other intrusions into Cayuga’s normally mundane existence suggest something strange is afoot in the isolated town.

A central conceit of The Vast of Night is that what we are watching is a Twilight Zone-like TV show. At key moments within the narrative, the view switches to that of a 1950s living room where someone is watching the events in Cayuga unfold through snowy black-and-white images on a small television set. But when the image widens and the muted color comes back up, we are thrust again into Fay and Everett’s world, the normal rules of suspension of disbelief applying.

Fay is an earnest teenager, smart but already resigned to a dead-end life, telling Everett she has no plans for college because her family cannot afford it. Everett has the beat energy of a hipster, tempered by a certain earnestness. Together, they are Nancy Drew and a Hardy boy determined to get to unravel the cause behind the strange goings on around town. As they investigate clues, they are inexorably drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery.

Director Andrew Patterson’s debut ingeniously spins the yarn written by first-time scripters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger. Told in close to real time, during the span of that high school basketball game, and full of references to classic sci-fi, The Vast of Night exists in its own off-kilter world.  Like the show that clearly inspired it, the film exists in “another dimension,” as Serling would have said, one that casts its dreamy spell not just on Fay and Everett but on anyone watching. –Pam Grady

The Vast of Night is available on Amazon Prime.

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TV Noir returns to the Roxie

30 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by cinepam in News

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Alfred Hitchcock, Dan Duryea, Elliot Lavine, John Frankenheimer, Johnny Legend, Rod Serling, Roxie Theater, Sidney Lumet, TV Noir

TV Noir is back at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater with a week-long slate of doomed men, marked women, and dark drama. Programmed by Elliot Lavine and curated by Johnny Legend, who will also be on hand every night to introduce the shows, the series runs Sept. 30-Oct. 6. The program gets off to a running start with fan favorite Dan Duryea starring as a man whose life was derailed by a little girl’s vicious fib in “The Lie,” a 1955 episode of The Star and the Story. Beverly Garland is the child all grownup and eager to make amends, but that might not be the wisest course to take with any character essayed by the shifty Duryea. That’s only the beginning. Among the week’s highlights:

“The Haunted Clown,” an episode of the series One Step Beyond: Imagine Of Mice and Men‘s Lenny as the sorriest-looking clown you’ve ever seen. Now imagine that the girl he fancies with evocative jazz score and what you’re left with is this tragic and bizarre 1960 melodrama.

The Plot Thickens: Who killed the seer during the séance? That’s the question in this bizarre little whodunit where a quiz show panel that includes Groucho Marx query the suspects and try to guess the killer. Horror maestro William Castle created this 1963 one-off that blends murder with the celebrity panel game show format of What’s My Line? or To Tell the Truth.

“The System,” an epidsode of the series Danger: In one of his earliest filmed performances, a pugnacious Eli Wallach is a “grease monkey” who refuses to listen to the smitten cigarette girl (Kim Stanley) who warns him that he’s more likely to take a beating or worse than beat the house when he tries to win big at the casino. A 27-year-old Sidney Lumet directs.

“Four O’Clock,” an episode of the series Suspicion: E.G. Marshall is a jealous husband whose plans for getting even with the wife he’s certain is having an affair take an unexpected turn in this compact thriller based on a Cornell Woolrich story. Alfred Hitchcock’s first foray into directing for television also features a young Harry Dean Stanton in a small, but memorable role.

“A Town Has Turned to Dust,” an episode of Playhouse 90: In a town suffering a terrible drought, Mexican immigrants become a scapegoat leading to grotesque tragedy. John Frankenheimer directs a Rod Serling script that still has pointed things to say about xenophobia in the U.S. 53 years after its original 1958 airing. Rod Steiger and William Shatner star.

Legends of Horror Go Noir!: The October 3rd program is devoted to horror’s classic stars. It is a sublime experience to watch Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and Peter Lorre each take their turn in the spotlight.

“The Night America Trembled,” an episode of Studio One: Orson Welles’ infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast is both dramatized and put into context (by Edward R. Murrow, no less) in this tantalizing production for the classic drama series. James Coburn (his on-screen debut), Vincent Gardenia, Warren Beatty, Edward Asner, and Warren Oates are among the cast.

“Secret Agent,” an episode of World of Giants: The premiere episode of this short-lived series introduces Marshall Thompson as Mel Hunter, an American spy reduced to only six inches high after an unfortunate brush with radiation. Or maybe not so unfortunate, since even though he’s so tiny that he could be killed by a falling pencil, his neat petite size makes him perfect for certain covert operations. Just watch out for that cat!

“The Big Producer,” an episode of Dragnet: Someone’s pushing pornography to L.A.’s teenagers and Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and his partner Frank Smith (Ben Alexander) are on the case in this offbeat 1954 episode of the classic series. Martin Milner and Carolyn Jones play teens caught in scandal, but it is Ralph Moody as a movie producer reduced to publishing dirty books that is the draw. As he explains himself to Friday, he recalls a significant incident from his glory days during the silent era. While the camera records the grim reality of an abandoned Western set, the soundtrack is a symphony of the producer’s vivid memories. It is a bravura moment and a most unusual one in a series that normally rendered the world in the same black-and-white, matter-of-fact tone as Webb’s narration. – Pam Grady

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TV Noir plays Sept. 30-Oct. 6 at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco. For further information, visit http://www.roxie.com.

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