Contemporary viewers always seem to prefer special effects to poetic content, or an absolute realism that loses the sense of wonder that the content provides to those who are willing. I have read reviews of this movie that criticize the look of the martians, their ship, and other details, while ignoring the absolute poetic value of *what* is represented rather than "how* it is represented. This movie lifts science fiction into an existential level---to what do we owe our existence. As a Christian, I cannot accept its premises and conclusions, but I can applaud the way they are delivered. The martian spaceship is just eerie enough to give a chill; and the lifestyle of the martians, and what they expected of their own culture and of ours, is---when thought out to its fullness---is terrifying. Hatred, the assignment of superior and inferior, and the exterminations of those that are not compliant with hive policy are all addressed within the depth of this film. Kubric's 2001 left too much to the viewer to guess; this film, which will dissatisfy cinematic snobs, actually strikes the correct balance. I saw this first in the spring of 1972, on a Sunday Night at the Movies episode. My mother, who had an innate dislike of most science fiction, actually watched every minute with me, and discussed the story with me because its implications frightened us. I did not sleep well that night, and the next morning at school, this movie was all I could talk about, because of the deepseated questions it disturbed.
Reviews
11 Reviews
Quatermass and the Pit
(1967)
Better than 2001, the best sci fi film of my adolescence
15 June 2023
Warning: Spoilers
What we bring to it
2 April 2023
One of the finest Christians I have ever known used to say, "Little is much when God is in it." And that applies to Biblical movies. They should not be judged as ordinary entertainments, because their subject matter sets them apart, a priori, so that the usual standards and the ordinary expectations must be set aside. In reading the reviews, I see how easily one can say poor production, poor scenery, poor this and that. But I would suggest another standard, perhaps the only standard by which a film about Biblical events or Early Christianity can be judged: Did it give you a sense of deeper fellowship with the subject matter, and with those whose Faith has borne witness down through the ages to even touch us here and now? If it does, then it is a success. If it does not, perhaps that is less the movie's fault than the viewer's. I have been fascinated by the Early Christians (myself being what you might call a late Christian) since I was twelve years old---over half a century. When I watched this, my worldly cares, even my medical affliction, seemed to fall away and I was able to enter into a sense of fellowship with my spiritual ancestors. On that basis, the film is a resounding success, and nothing else from the mundane world of film reviewing matters.
Connor & Jayden
(2022)
The finest Love Story I have ever seen
19 September 2022
The film, Shakespeare In Love, seems to me have a rather implausible plot; but it does ask one of the great questions of the ages: can a play (or, in this case, a film) depict the real nature of Love. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (the actual play) does so, for the het world. Connor & Jayden does so for those of us who love as intensely but, in the world's eyes, somewhat differently. This film is more than a film, more than a play, definitely more than a farce for some more haters to bash: it is pure poetry. I grew up in a time and place in the US where such a relationship would have been impossible; and those of us adolescents who were "different" were not even given a language with which to articulate our differences, because, in that time and place, gay poetry---and, of course, definitely gay love poetry---was strictly and rabidly forbidden. Even when our high school AP Latin class (which I was unable to take by the time I got there) quiely covered up the well known fact that the great epic Poet was gay; and his Second Eclogue, singing the beauty and the agony of love between males, was suppressed from the Vergilian poetry studied in that course. I am glad that I have lived long enough to see Connor and Jayden on Youtube. I do not have sufficient knowledge of cinematics, or theatrical procedures, to judge the film on those standards. But I am a published, although very minor, poet, and I have been reading poetry for nearly half a century (it will be fifty years next April). So I have some credibility when I say that Connor & Jayden transcend the merely cinematic and ascend into the realm of pure poetry./ And, like Romeo and Juliet, it gives us the beautiful, and sometimes agonizing, truth of the exquisite emotional experience of real Love---Love that is Love that is Love, regardless of the gender. I am so glad I have lived long enough (having grown up in the seventies) to have seen this glorious justification of pure and unpretentious Love. See it once, then twice, and then again and again until you have lost count, and you will see things in the film, and in yourself, that you had not noticed on the first viewing. This film may not be very long, but it is definitely epic/
The Young Messiah
(2016)
A little latitude, please . . .
12 August 2021
Let's face it: no Gospel or historical source asserts, or even suggests, that Jesus met a character named Ben-Hur, gave him a drink of cold water and stared down a centurion who didn't appreciate it, cured Mom and Sister Hur of leprosy, and then paused on His way to the cross to receive a drink of cold water from Ben-Hur. Didn't happen folks; ain't in the Bible. But these fictional possibilities were woven together by Civil War general under his beech tree in Indiana, and in Sante Fe while he was governor of the New Mexico Territory where he offered amnesty to Billy the Kid, just like in Young Guns II. But when Lew Wallace presented his novel, BEN-HUR, to the world, it has not only been in print continuously, it has also inspired three films, at least; inspired President Garfield to appoint Wallace as Minister to the Ottoman Empire; gave its name to a sandwich sold in a diner in Crawfordville, IN, and also named a mutual burial insurance society, also in Crawfordsville. All that, and it was FICTIONAL, based upon what Lew Wallace thought was plausible.
The Young Messiah is exactly the same genre. It does not claim to be a Biblical explication, nor does it quietly pretend to be. It presents a fictional child of Jesus based upon plausibilities, accounts both Scriptural and outside the Bible, and a little bit of poetic vision thrown in. Same thing that Lew Wallace did in Ben Hur.
Yes we can quibble about details. I, too, believe that the Three Wise Men (whom I believe to be certain Roman notables, but I will not say who in this forum) arrived when Jesus was a toddler. But, shucks, Lew Wallace puts them in Bethlehem shortly after Jesus' birth, and two major films put them right next to the shepherds who also visited the stable---just like in the nativity figurines we purchase the day after Thanksgiving from better department stores. Not Biblically accurate---nope---but they still broadcast Charlton Heston as Ben Hur at Easter time. The same latitude should be granted to this movie. The Young Messiah film deserves to inherit the latitude established for it by its predecessors---Lew Wallace, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and even Par Lagerkvist. El Greco painted a crucifixion scene, but the city depicted behind Christ on the Cross was not Jerusalem but Toledo in Spain---now that's latitude---and it is considered a priceless masterpiece.
When I was a Junior in High School, my A. P. literature class was expected to read all of John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, in three weeks. I wondered how such a long poem could be derived from such a slender account in the Biblical book of Genesis. Then I found out how: John Milton, with that great organ-like iambic pentameter, used some latitude; a whole lot of latitude, to create a magnificent poetic masterpiece. So, instead of quibling about exact details, as if this film were a lesson in Sunday School, let's receive it as a work of art intended in the same spirit as these other pieces of literature and art that I have cited.
I have been a Christian since 1994, and recently converted to the Eastern Orthodox Faith. My Orthodox faith is not disturbed by the film. I am only an amateur in film appreciation, although a published poet elsewhere, and I found the photography beautiful, the dialogue convincing, and the portrait of Jesus poignant, winsome, and a little bit fun (not like reading Kazantzakis' Last Temptation Of Christ). My faith is not so weak that an inaccuracy in the film will cause me to lose my spiritual balance. I just keep telling myself, "It's only a mpvie, only a movie." A very fine movie; at times, a very spiritual movie; and throughout, a very human movie. It deserves as much respect as our inaccurate Nativity scenes that we put up on the mantle, above the Christmas stockings hanging there, on Thanksgiving afternoon, after Grandma's fine Turkey with all the fixin's.
The Young Messiah is exactly the same genre. It does not claim to be a Biblical explication, nor does it quietly pretend to be. It presents a fictional child of Jesus based upon plausibilities, accounts both Scriptural and outside the Bible, and a little bit of poetic vision thrown in. Same thing that Lew Wallace did in Ben Hur.
Yes we can quibble about details. I, too, believe that the Three Wise Men (whom I believe to be certain Roman notables, but I will not say who in this forum) arrived when Jesus was a toddler. But, shucks, Lew Wallace puts them in Bethlehem shortly after Jesus' birth, and two major films put them right next to the shepherds who also visited the stable---just like in the nativity figurines we purchase the day after Thanksgiving from better department stores. Not Biblically accurate---nope---but they still broadcast Charlton Heston as Ben Hur at Easter time. The same latitude should be granted to this movie. The Young Messiah film deserves to inherit the latitude established for it by its predecessors---Lew Wallace, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and even Par Lagerkvist. El Greco painted a crucifixion scene, but the city depicted behind Christ on the Cross was not Jerusalem but Toledo in Spain---now that's latitude---and it is considered a priceless masterpiece.
When I was a Junior in High School, my A. P. literature class was expected to read all of John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, in three weeks. I wondered how such a long poem could be derived from such a slender account in the Biblical book of Genesis. Then I found out how: John Milton, with that great organ-like iambic pentameter, used some latitude; a whole lot of latitude, to create a magnificent poetic masterpiece. So, instead of quibling about exact details, as if this film were a lesson in Sunday School, let's receive it as a work of art intended in the same spirit as these other pieces of literature and art that I have cited.
I have been a Christian since 1994, and recently converted to the Eastern Orthodox Faith. My Orthodox faith is not disturbed by the film. I am only an amateur in film appreciation, although a published poet elsewhere, and I found the photography beautiful, the dialogue convincing, and the portrait of Jesus poignant, winsome, and a little bit fun (not like reading Kazantzakis' Last Temptation Of Christ). My faith is not so weak that an inaccuracy in the film will cause me to lose my spiritual balance. I just keep telling myself, "It's only a mpvie, only a movie." A very fine movie; at times, a very spiritual movie; and throughout, a very human movie. It deserves as much respect as our inaccurate Nativity scenes that we put up on the mantle, above the Christmas stockings hanging there, on Thanksgiving afternoon, after Grandma's fine Turkey with all the fixin's.
A Ghost Story
(2017)
More of a poem than merely a movie
11 August 2021
This is a work of art, not a box of crackerjacks: you don't crunch through this as quickly as possible just to get to the prize at the bottom of the box; which, a few days later, you will misplace or your mom will throw away. Like the great and magnificent poem that this is, a superficial viewing will yield a superficial impression.
I shall extend my metaphor to the musical as well: this is a theme and variations, and you must view all the variations in order to plumb the profound depths of the theme. It is a choreography of images, gestures, and incidents that, together, produce an effect. To hurry through them, or to expect them all to be equally deployed, is to miss the sum of them and to, instead, merely tally and rearrange the parts.
Like a symbolist poem, the film expects the viewer to work a little---to bring appreciation, experience, and receptivity to the viewing. And. Like a symbolist poem, it will speak to the few not the many.
I shall extend my metaphor to the musical as well: this is a theme and variations, and you must view all the variations in order to plumb the profound depths of the theme. It is a choreography of images, gestures, and incidents that, together, produce an effect. To hurry through them, or to expect them all to be equally deployed, is to miss the sum of them and to, instead, merely tally and rearrange the parts.
Like a symbolist poem, the film expects the viewer to work a little---to bring appreciation, experience, and receptivity to the viewing. And. Like a symbolist poem, it will speak to the few not the many.
Shutter
(II) (2004)
This is the ghost's movie
22 July 2021
Warning: Spoilers
I have been watching horror films for at least fifty-five years. I have only seen a handful of movies in which the ghost/monster/cause of terror is so sympathetically dominant: several of Karloff's horror films in the 1930's' Carrie, in 1976; and now this one. And, in my old age, I think I actually prefer this one to all the others.
I have watched it repeatedly in the last couple of weeks: like a great symphony recording, it does not stale---and, after the initial shock of the first viewing, it rewards subsequent viewings with a deeper appreciation of its artistry.
Tonight, I really paid attention to the soundtrack, the accompanying music; especially the ghost's theme, Natre's theme. There is a poignance and sadness to the music that accompanies. Tan's memories of her; but thjose qualities do not need the film's narrative in order to function.
The sadness of the story never descends to the maudlin. And the actress who portrays Natre does so with an obvious respect for her character, even when that character is in difficult straits. She takes the character seriously, as Karloff did with his. I believe this was her first acting experience---but one would not have guessed at that while watching her splendid performance.
I would love to see a behind-the-scenes compilation, or something as to how the story was conceived, etc. To my mind, as a viewer without much knowledge specific to the way this film was planned and composed, I think everyone associated with it must have given 110%, and the quality of the film, in all of its aspects, exceeds all expectations.
I have watched it repeatedly in the last couple of weeks: like a great symphony recording, it does not stale---and, after the initial shock of the first viewing, it rewards subsequent viewings with a deeper appreciation of its artistry.
Tonight, I really paid attention to the soundtrack, the accompanying music; especially the ghost's theme, Natre's theme. There is a poignance and sadness to the music that accompanies. Tan's memories of her; but thjose qualities do not need the film's narrative in order to function.
The sadness of the story never descends to the maudlin. And the actress who portrays Natre does so with an obvious respect for her character, even when that character is in difficult straits. She takes the character seriously, as Karloff did with his. I believe this was her first acting experience---but one would not have guessed at that while watching her splendid performance.
I would love to see a behind-the-scenes compilation, or something as to how the story was conceived, etc. To my mind, as a viewer without much knowledge specific to the way this film was planned and composed, I think everyone associated with it must have given 110%, and the quality of the film, in all of its aspects, exceeds all expectations.
Not just an ordinary episode, more like a poem
20 July 2021
If the symbolist Poet, Mallarme, had written science fiction poetry, it might have been something like this. One can note the implausibilities or lack of logic---but are those objective flaws, or simply aspects that we, in our subjective fallabilities, have insufficient ability to explain; therefore we ascribe them to implausibility and lack of logic. Mallarme's Faun and Herodias give us very little explanation of their reason for their presence on the page, or their backgrounds, but we can enjoy the poems anyhow. The same applies to this episode. Like a Symbolist poem, its purpose is to create an effect---and if we allow it, an emotional effect---rather than a middle school science textbook's scientific explanation.
Evokes painful and bittersweet memories
26 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
In the mid-sixties, I was an elementary school kid considered very weird by my neighbors, and my peers at school, because I loved---fanatically loved---the Universal horror films of the thirties and forties. The anguish enacted by Karloff, or (for the purpose of this brief essay) by Lon Chaney Jr. As Larry Talbot, Wolfman, were incredibly poignant for me, even at that young and inexperienced age.
Fast forward to the premiere of this film, at a time when my life had entirely collapsed. I had graudated college without an employable major. My parents had refused to finance a graduate degree. My fiancee had transferred from our college to some other, and had also transferred her affection to Some Other. My first couple of employments had failed miserably. This film became a metaphor of these processes in my life in that year. Although time would begin to make each of these issues right, I was not then patient enough to wait; what twenty-three year old is? But in David's confusion, torment, and anguish I found a metaphor for, and a reflection of, my own. Yes, I was overly melodramatic; and, again, I ask---what twenty-three year old is not? Although, in later viewings of it, I found---or thought I found---issues in plausibilities and continuities, those issues are minor, even miniscule, compared to its vision of an existence suddenly made bleak and dismal, no matter how brightly the sun shines. And THAT is the level upon which it spoke to me. The poignancy of the final scene, David, bullet-riddled and dead, naked (but not for pleasure), never again able to.enjoy intimacy with Alex, was not lost on me. Yes, one could argue he was finaly at peace; but, at my yet inexperienced age, I could not imagine what sort of peace could assuage so crushing a sense of loss and of torment. A good film, like a good poem, is amenable to the interpretations of all who experience it, regardless of how those interpretations may differ or conflict. My interpretation was and is personal to myself, and in no way sheds any light on the film. But, here, in this venue, I can acknowledge what it momentarily meant to me, and how it helped me face the next few (of many) difficult days, until things began to turn for me, and the sunshine was not longer slanted by stormclouds.
Fast forward to the premiere of this film, at a time when my life had entirely collapsed. I had graudated college without an employable major. My parents had refused to finance a graduate degree. My fiancee had transferred from our college to some other, and had also transferred her affection to Some Other. My first couple of employments had failed miserably. This film became a metaphor of these processes in my life in that year. Although time would begin to make each of these issues right, I was not then patient enough to wait; what twenty-three year old is? But in David's confusion, torment, and anguish I found a metaphor for, and a reflection of, my own. Yes, I was overly melodramatic; and, again, I ask---what twenty-three year old is not? Although, in later viewings of it, I found---or thought I found---issues in plausibilities and continuities, those issues are minor, even miniscule, compared to its vision of an existence suddenly made bleak and dismal, no matter how brightly the sun shines. And THAT is the level upon which it spoke to me. The poignancy of the final scene, David, bullet-riddled and dead, naked (but not for pleasure), never again able to.enjoy intimacy with Alex, was not lost on me. Yes, one could argue he was finaly at peace; but, at my yet inexperienced age, I could not imagine what sort of peace could assuage so crushing a sense of loss and of torment. A good film, like a good poem, is amenable to the interpretations of all who experience it, regardless of how those interpretations may differ or conflict. My interpretation was and is personal to myself, and in no way sheds any light on the film. But, here, in this venue, I can acknowledge what it momentarily meant to me, and how it helped me face the next few (of many) difficult days, until things began to turn for me, and the sunshine was not longer slanted by stormclouds.
Doctor Zhivago
(1965)
The whole is more than the sum of its parts
25 June 2021
Being a novel written by a poet, it is, in a way, a kind of poem rather than just a clever perceptiion of manners. Being a poet's novel, the film that came of it---the film that also shares its artistic DNA, so to speak---is also a poem. In the poetry of the films's visual beauty, I am struck by my sense---severely limited, I presume, as an American of the Cold War era---of the Soviet, the Bolshevik, response to beauty: to see it only as another useful tool to build the so-called Workers' Paradise, and we all know what happened to that. I once read that a highly respected American scholar of the Soviet culture---who had provided advice and counsel at.the Presidential and Cabinet level---said that to understand the Bolshevik response to the beauty of art, or of their own geography, or of the culture they had inherited, one must understand Lenin; and to understand Lenin's idea of beauty, one must look to his wife, Krupskaya. I have seen many photographs of her---and only one shows even the hint of a smile. The dismal sense of the Soviet Union as a land of belching factory stacks, steel gray slabs, and the rough surface of poured concrete is premised and contained within the glare with which Krupskaya stares that the cameras that took her photographs. And it is against this phsychological disonnance that the film and the novel react. Yje Bolsheviks always spoke of the masses, the works, the vast proletariat and peasantry in order to create a poitical logic that crushed or strangled the individual. I read, somewhere (I am an old man, forgetful these days) that Krupskaya was the Soviet Commisar for education, for for children's welfare, or for other such concerns, and yet she was passively if not actively complicit in the murder of four adolescent girls and their prepubescent, hemopheliac brother. This heinous murder, this martyrdom (literally, in the Orthodox Faith) haunts the novel and the film; the red flag and the red star of communism bear witness to the blood shed by the Bolsheviks, and by Uncle Joe---blood of those who were different from, or disagreed with, or were more beautiful than Bolshevik Party; and to this, the Poetic Beauty of the novel and of the film bears witness.
The Night Stalker
(1972 TV Movie)
Rethinking Barry Atwater's Performance
23 May 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Barry Atwater did not give us Lugosi's Dracula, or Lee's Dracula; which were both, in the sense of origination, Stoker's Dtacila. And Stoker, I suggest here, was guided by two previous literary vampires, Polidori's Ruthven and LeFanu's Carmilla, both of which assisted him in what I also suggest was his ultimate literary purpose with Dracula---to create a monster that could adequately compete with The Monster, Mary Shelley's greatest fictional creation, Victor Frankenstein's botched experiment. That Polidori's effort, emerging from the same Byronic ghost story challenge that nineteen year old Mary answered also, now influenced what is considered, by many, to be the most classic vampire treatment, is one of those literary coincidences that scholars love to debate. (Personally, I dissent from the common opinion of Stoker's novel: Robert Aickman's great short story, "Pages From A Young Girl's Journal" is a far better treatment of the vampire mythology.) Stoker, with the help and precedents of Polidori and Ruthven, further pushed the vampire from its cruder depiction in other literatures, either mytholigical or literary.
I say all that to say this: that Atwater cuts through the Polidori/LeFanu/Stoker complex to reach back to a less British, perhaps more Greek and Slavic, version---in which the vampire does not strive for the pretense of nobility (Lugosi's performance seemed to channel that) but for the fictive reality of the feral crudity that distinguished the vampire before Stoker dressed one in a tuxedo, as if it had attended a lodge meeting before going out to feed upon the living. It is the feeding upon the living---with the parasite's ferocity raised exponentially by a factor of the Undead---and the typical bully's victimization of the bullied, but raised from the usual environment of the playground or the gym class to the less restricted supernatural. Unlike the depictions of Polidori and LeFanu, and Stoker in their wake, the seductiveness attributed to Ruthven, Carmilla, and Count Dracula, is absent from The Night Stalker, who is no longer the patient seducer but the impatient rapist raised to the level of that supreme rapist (metaphorically), Jack the Ripper. Then, when. Skorzeny suddenly realizes that he is no longer in control, and that he is about to be dispatched by a wooden stake in God's own sunlight as it illuminates a silver cross and the extermination of the evil that is Skorzeny, we see the bully's bravado deflated: Skorzeny whimpers because, in some way, he *enjoys* imposing death and destruction upon his victims. Atwater, I think, gives Skorzeny an authenticity that Lugosi's and Lee's Draculas do not possess, because they did not inherit, through Stoker, from Polidori and LeFanu. Skorzeny's vampiric inheritance comes from the Greek and Slavic tales, unmitigated by their English step-cousins; and Atwater brings this out in so successfully horrible a manner as to be, at least to this viewer, more convincting than either Lee or Lugosi (and I gladly admit that opinion is not shared by many at all). Perhaps the closest comparison would be Max Schreck's performance as Count Orlock. I also understand that Skorzeny, and Orlock, are, literally, the verbal constructs of their respective scriptwriters; but, viewing the movie, we are not reading a script but watching the interpretation of that script by the performers. Whether Atwater brought his own nuances to the part, or they were Matheson's, or, more practically, some combination of both, it is Atwater who brings Skorzeny to undead life, and then to undead death, before our eyes; totally bypassing those seducers, Ruthven, Carmilla, and Dracula (and their contemporary descendants, the vampires of the Twilight series and its lesser knockoffs), to be a plague bearer, like Orlock, like the wurdelak and others of that sort, and with a greater honesty toward the vampiric personality than two English and one Irish writer accorded it.
I say all that to say this: that Atwater cuts through the Polidori/LeFanu/Stoker complex to reach back to a less British, perhaps more Greek and Slavic, version---in which the vampire does not strive for the pretense of nobility (Lugosi's performance seemed to channel that) but for the fictive reality of the feral crudity that distinguished the vampire before Stoker dressed one in a tuxedo, as if it had attended a lodge meeting before going out to feed upon the living. It is the feeding upon the living---with the parasite's ferocity raised exponentially by a factor of the Undead---and the typical bully's victimization of the bullied, but raised from the usual environment of the playground or the gym class to the less restricted supernatural. Unlike the depictions of Polidori and LeFanu, and Stoker in their wake, the seductiveness attributed to Ruthven, Carmilla, and Count Dracula, is absent from The Night Stalker, who is no longer the patient seducer but the impatient rapist raised to the level of that supreme rapist (metaphorically), Jack the Ripper. Then, when. Skorzeny suddenly realizes that he is no longer in control, and that he is about to be dispatched by a wooden stake in God's own sunlight as it illuminates a silver cross and the extermination of the evil that is Skorzeny, we see the bully's bravado deflated: Skorzeny whimpers because, in some way, he *enjoys* imposing death and destruction upon his victims. Atwater, I think, gives Skorzeny an authenticity that Lugosi's and Lee's Draculas do not possess, because they did not inherit, through Stoker, from Polidori and LeFanu. Skorzeny's vampiric inheritance comes from the Greek and Slavic tales, unmitigated by their English step-cousins; and Atwater brings this out in so successfully horrible a manner as to be, at least to this viewer, more convincting than either Lee or Lugosi (and I gladly admit that opinion is not shared by many at all). Perhaps the closest comparison would be Max Schreck's performance as Count Orlock. I also understand that Skorzeny, and Orlock, are, literally, the verbal constructs of their respective scriptwriters; but, viewing the movie, we are not reading a script but watching the interpretation of that script by the performers. Whether Atwater brought his own nuances to the part, or they were Matheson's, or, more practically, some combination of both, it is Atwater who brings Skorzeny to undead life, and then to undead death, before our eyes; totally bypassing those seducers, Ruthven, Carmilla, and Dracula (and their contemporary descendants, the vampires of the Twilight series and its lesser knockoffs), to be a plague bearer, like Orlock, like the wurdelak and others of that sort, and with a greater honesty toward the vampiric personality than two English and one Irish writer accorded it.
Not below average at all
1 May 2021
Warning: Spoilers
I like the rare supernatural-seeming western episode (like, for example, Twilight Zone's episode, "The Grave)"---and seeing this for the first time, I felt like it was certainly skirting the supernatural when the discussion became metaphysical about playing for the weak man's soul. And I believe Peter Falk delivered a superb performance as an agent of evil---whether he was only a human being (as sinister in his way as, say, Jack the Ripper), or actually a demonic entity. His exact nature is not clarified by the end of the episode, leaving the viewer to speculate as to what he might really have been, or what Falk might have thought the character could have been. My impression on this first viewing is that Falk made his character as sinister as he made Columbo comic, but, like Columbo's comedy, the sinister-ness is very subtle, and could be interpreted more than one way. As a Western series episode, it was engaging; but I do not think I would care to watch it on All Hallows' Eve.
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